Greetings, Learnstronauts! I’m Professor Howie Dewitt, and this is another exciting edition of How We Do It! It’s the only column where curious humans, from kids to adults, can write in and ask just about anything, and the professor will do his darnedest to give you an answer! Alright Learnstronauts, get your Thinking Helmets on, and get ready to blast off!
Austin L., Age 8, from Chattanooga, Tennessee:
Dear Professor Dewitt,
I really like frogs! I am wondering why I can’t find any frogs in the winter time? They always seem to hide!
Ah, an astute inquiry, young Austin! That is to say, a very good question! Frogs are cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature changes based on how warm or cold the air around them is. As the air gets cooler in the winter, so does the frog’s body. That means they have to hide out for the cooler months of the year. I guess you could say that they have to find somewhere to “chill” while the air “chills!” Most frogs will hide underground. They may dig a hole and bury themselves in the earth, or use the burrow of another animal, or even hide out in a cellar or basement! When the air starts to warm up in the spring, your frog friends will crawl out and hop around to your hearts’ content, Austin. Ribbit!
Brian G., Age 28, from Seattle, Washington:
Hey prof! Big fan! I’m enjoying a grilled cheese sandwich on a rainy afternoon, and I just realized that I have no idea how cheese gets made! Care to enlighten me?
Brian, it would be my delight to describe the fantastic formula by which you are imbibing that edible bit of culinary creation! The base ingredient of cheese is milk. Most of the cheese we eat is made from cows’ milk, but it can also come from goats, sheep, buffalo, or rats. All mammals produce milk, from their mammary glands, or boobs. The trick to making cheese is to separate the fatty solids from the water that comes with it. These are called “curds”. Once the moisture is removed, the curds are aged. This is done by adding different molds, or yeasts, or rats. Various bacteria, fungi, and microbes of all kinds play around on the curds, and then it becomes cheese.
Paul F., Age 33, from Clutier, Iowa:
How come no women ever wanna fuck me
Well my lonely Learnstronaut, more often than not a problem like that stems from your attitude or outlook moreso than your looks. Try an approach wherein you are genuinely interested in learning about and connecting with other people, and seeing if any chemistry develops from that, rather than interacting with your own penis at the forefront of your mind. Women tend to be more drawn to an interesting person who can reciprocate conversation and someone who will be a peer, rather than an insular psychotic freak.
Tim T., Age 50, from Albany, New York:
How many feet are in a mile?
5,280. That’s something you could easily find out without involving me…
Elizabeth G., Age 18, from Mocksville, North Carolina:
I am stuck in traffic on a bridge and I’d like for you to explain how a bridge even gets made
Well Elizabeth, the answer is very simple. They go underwater and dig a hole and then put some big fuckin’ things in there and then start building on top of it I guess. I don’t know. The truth is that it’s very complicated and I am astonished every time I drive over a bridge.
Gweefer Z., Age 29, from Wausau, Wisconsin:
What up, Prof! Why am I working 40+ hours per week and still living paycheck to paycheck and eating Ramen noodles even though I have a degree?
It’s capitalism. It’s more specifically late capitalism, wherein at one time workers had enough leverage to demand more from their employers, but virtual or actual slave labor in the third world devalued manufacturing enough to make production in the United States a goofy afterthought, and all of the service economy jobs were so compartmentalized that it could be easily outsourced to India or Bengladesh or something. A service economy that only serves itself is a swirling ring around a drain.
And it is profane, right? It is people wealthy beyond measure trying to acquire more just for the sake of it. But the folk religion of our western culture posits that maybe, maybe someday, I’ll be one of those bigshots. I’ll get to have a big house and a cool car and shit, and while all their wildest dreams could come true with a price tag of like $2 million, they play the stooge to some shithead with billions of dollars.
People don’t understand the scale, the vulgarity of the ultra-wealthy. Millions, billions, whatever, I’d like to be a rich guy too! A million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is about 32 years.
That means a billionaire was being paid a dollar per second for 32 years, from birth, without being off-clock for shitting, sleeping, whatever. A dollar per second for 32 years. And if it started at birth, without spending any money, they would just have become a billionaire about the time their hairline started receding. That’s $3600 dollars per hour.
You are a victim of a predatory system. It promises that with a little luck, and some gumption, you too, can be one of the bigshots! It is a lamprey eel that sucks your work, your life, your value into itself and bloats into putrefaction for nothing. Capital, of course, tells you that you’re worthless, you’re nothing, in order to gain, someone else must lose. It will take a spiritual awakening to change this. As the blood is squeezed from the stone, people must look one another in the eye and realize that our lives don’t need to feel like this. It’s gonna take something like fire to alight behind dull eyes watching commercials. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years without this capitalism shit. We were weak and blind creatures that could thrive because of our interdependence. Our community. The spirit of god, whether he exists or not, has to rise up in us. My political thesis statement is this: That every person born into this world deserves dignity, with no caveats.
Fliptrim E., Age 11, Bakersfield, California:
Hello Prof! I like birds! What bird can fly the fastest?
Your query piqued my interest! The peregrine falcon can dive at nearly 200 miles per hour! That’s about as fast as a NASCAR car drives around the track! Woah!
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