I thought I would share some of the odd questions that I ponder during a typical day. Here is a collection of the things I’ve wondered about this week:
- When we lose weight, where does it go? Maybe you’ve wondered about this, and then again, maybe you haven’t. I had some guesses, but those all proved to be wrong. And nothing really prepared me for the truth, which was almost too simple to be believed.
- I still wonder how tadpoles get into isolated pools of water with no frogs anywhere around. Even if a frog had laid the eggs there and then leapt off to find his princess, how did the frog survive the hard-freeze of our mid-western winters?
- Where do fruit flies come from? Everyone asks this question. You bring a banana home and even inspect it, but don’t see any fruit flies. But, leave it out on the counter for a short while and there they are.
The odd thing about curiosity is that the more available information is, the less likely it seems that people seek answers. Today, nearly any question one might pose can be answered in record speed. No longer does it require a trip to the local library reference desk and subsequent searching through racks to find the needle in the haystack for something that no one even thought to put in a book. For example, if you want to know who the 34th president of the United States was, just ask Siri. Or, if you’d like to understand the history of lawns, Siri can guide you.
Today, people are more likely to take information they read or hear from a single source as gospel. Adding to that, there are still those who are susceptible to substituting passionate assertions by others as a substitute for hard facts. When it is even the slightest bit difficult to find hard answers to questions on our own, we consume the emphatic dissertations from those we are told to regard highly as truth.
Even when contradictory evidence surrounds us, this contradictory information can even strengthen the wrongly-held belief. How does this even happen? Aren’t humans supposed to be rational beings?
Well, the reason is three-fold. Once we believe in something strongly, we are unlikely to let it go easily. We’re just built that way. Secondly, we avoid cognitive dissonance at all cost and will simply avoid that dissonance rather than reconcile the information. Finally, our belief systems assemble memory and information in a way that supports our beliefs, even if it means overlooking contrary evidence.
So, before I get too far off topic, here are the answers to my queries:
1) We all likely guessed that our body converts those pounds into usable energy. But, remember, matter is neither created nor destroyed. The answer is that fat changes form and literally vanishes into thin air.
Most of the weight we lose is EXHALED as carbon dioxide. The rest leaves our body as water. Yup, sweat, saliva, pee—you get the idea. And, sorry—hyperventilating won’t do the trick. Of course, now I have a new mystery to answer. If we have a record number of fat people who are all trying to lose weight, is all this extra air contributing to global warming?
2) As far as the tadpoles go, nature has many ways of making sure the next generation has a good chance at life. Birds inadvertently carry eggs on their legs that get dropped into odd places. Frogs often climb all over things to find spots to lay their eggs. Many stay in deeper water to hibernate over the winter. Others dig deep into the soil. Some even have a sort of antifreeze in their organs that allow them to freeze and come back to life in the spring.
3) So, what about fruit flies? Do they spontaneous generate, like magic? Well, I’m not going to give you the answer. You’ll have to take your own curiosity for a spin and find out for yourself. For me, I still believe they come out of the ether, materializing within our homes like magic.
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