Do Fish Drink Water?: Puzzling And Improbable Questions And Answers - Hardcover

McLain, Bill

3.57

700 ratings by Goodreads

9780688165123: Do Fish Drink Water?: Puzzling And Improbable Questions And Answers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688165125 ISBN 13: 9780688165123

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

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Is it true that elephants are afraid of mice?
How much gold does the United States store in Fort Knox?
Why do I get a headache when I eat ice cream too fast?
How did the "seventh inning stretch" originate?

As the official webmaster for Xerox, Bill McLain was surprised by the kinds of questions he was receiving, like whether people born blind can see in their dreams and why rabbits are associated with Easter. McLain began to answer each and every question--attracting national attention from MSNBC, CNN, and People--and the result, collected in Do Fish Drink Water?, is a surprising, funny, and informative collection of facts. McLain's answers can often be as wild as the questions and prompt entertaining anecdotes about where he found them. McLain explains how magnets are made, what caused the Great Depression of 1922, and even explains why cats purr. Also included is an extensive list of websites where he conducts research, offering an informative guide to making the most of the Internet.

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About the Author:

The Internet's legendary "Answer Whiz," Bill McLain was Xerox Corporation's official Webmaster. Responsible for the e-mails sent to the company Website, McLain and his team responded to an astounding 750-1,000 questions daily. While most of the e-mails he received were Xerox-related, every day scores of curious fact-seekers wrote with questions ranging from the bizarre to the useful to the downright comical. McLain collected the most memorable of these questions, along with his equally memorable answers, in What Makes Flamingoes Pink? and in its predecessor, Do Fish Drink Water? He lives in Santa Clara, California.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A fun, fact-filled snack for the terminally informed. Who would ask or answer a question like, ``Do people who were born blind ever dream?'' The answer is, a Webmaster at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. And yes, blind people hear and feel in their dreams. In 20 chapters like Food, Music, Finance, Words, and including Odds and Ends and Off the Wall, McLain provides intriguing questions and answers along with subsections like Did You Know?, Factoids, and references to Web sites and Internet resources for further information (including Santas e-mail address). The many diverse facts are enlivened by the authors wit, so that the Sports question ``What is the difference between billiards, snooker, and pool?'' is followed by the parenthetic ``Are you waiting for a cue?'' Many of the Ripleys-type facts intend to astound more than stump, such as the printing of a $100,000 bill and the existence of a 12,000- year-old shrub. Other information challenges us to know why ``Geronimo'' is yelled before leaping (the chief escaped the cavalry with a daring jump) or why our keyboards are designed as they are (the T and H keys require different fingers to keep typewriters from jamming). Most of the challenges challenge, but we knew that green mailboxes arent for mailing. At least half of the book, however, is stuff we didnt want to know, such as that a Johnny Carson joke began a toilet-paper shortage, that theres a name on the US map 49 letters long, and that the nations favorite pizza topping is pepperoni. If going to the beach this August and being out of touch with our information overload makes you feel like a fish out water, then this is the book to take along. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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