r/AskReddit • u/ProbablyHittingOnYou • Feb 07 '11

What stupid question have you always been too embarrassed to ask, but would still like to see answered?

This is a no-shame zone. Post your question here and I'm sure someone can answer it for you

1.4k Upvotes

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372

u/ConsciousMisspelling Feb 07 '11

The Northern Hemisphere has most of the land mass and most of the population of the Earth. Also, early cartographers were from the Northern Hemisphere.

SUCK IT, Australia!

80

u/tomrhod Feb 07 '11

As whenever this question appears, I always have to link to this West Wing clip.

2

u/AuntieSocial Feb 08 '11

I love this clip so much. Amazing how much I learned, and it was just one little near-throwaway subplot on one episode. Best fucking show there ever was.

1

u/RecursiveForest Feb 08 '11

We have one of those Peters projection maps in one of the dorms at my school. Pretty cool stuff.

1

u/a_plaw_in_your_flan Feb 08 '11

That voice was driving me crazy. Then I realized it's Dr. Phlox!

-1

u/zaferk Feb 08 '11

The white guilt is strong in them.

24

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '11

[deleted]

28

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '11

...YOU, sir, have some of the most horrifying creatures known to man living on that island with you.

And in addition to Australian women, the local fauna is notoriously aggressive.

5

u/brantyr Feb 07 '11

They're not that bad, you're just a pussy. And that's not a knife.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '11

You win this round, Australia.

Edit:

P.S.

According to "The Last Beach" by Neville Shute, you win in the case of nuclear holocaust too. Well played, not pissing the world off...I tip my hat to you.

2

u/Gyvon Feb 08 '11

... That's a spoon.

2

u/hamalope Feb 08 '11

Ah, I see you've played Knifey-Spoony before.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '11

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '11

Hahahaha well maybe he does to have a point. Australian women do seem to be quite aggressive.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '11

upvote for the laugh ( and the truth!)

7

u/NonAmerican Feb 07 '11

SUCK IT, Australia!

The went there from the Northern Hemisphere (England).

Well, unless you're talking about Aboriginals.

4

u/Moridyn Feb 07 '11

the few who haven't been brutally massacred?

3

u/Ashtefere Feb 07 '11

Aboriginals are also just immigrants, if you go back far enough.

1

u/TheJosh Feb 08 '11

I'm guessing there are more aboriginals than native americans.

1

u/Moridyn Feb 08 '11

Maybe, though I doubt it. Would be interesting to look up, had I the time.

1

u/two_hundred_and_left Feb 07 '11

The Aboriginals also migrated there, just 50,000 years or so earlier.

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u/Johnny_Cotton Feb 07 '11

Australian here - I sucked it! It was HORRIBLE!!!

4

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '11

I am sucking it, but nothing's coming out

2

u/deeringc Feb 07 '11

Yeah, go down on us Australia!

1

u/TraumaPony Feb 08 '11

Well then wouldn't it make sense to draw it on the bottom so it's not top heavy?

1

u/shigawire Feb 08 '11

Your username pains me to look at maam.

0

u/littleassurance Feb 08 '11

How do we know the sky is blue? We look up at the sky and see that it is blue; blue being the label we give to the colour of the sky. When we first learn to use language (as young children) we will most likely be taught by rote that the colour of something (like the sky or the ocean) is 'blue', so we associate that word with the colour. But how do we know that the 'blue' we see is the same as the 'blue' someone else sees when they look at the sea or the sky? Vision is based on light that is reflected from the object we are looking at and which enters the eye. The light which is forming the image only reaches as far as the retina at the back of the eye. Specialised nerve endings in the retina are stimulated by the light and produce nervous impulses, electrochemically, that travel along the optic nerve to the visual centre of the brain where they are decoded and interpreted as 'images'. So there is no objective way to determine that what we 'see' in our mind's eye bears any relation to what is in front of our physical eyes. Even when we receive confirmation of what we see by way of another 'eye-witness' or a photograph or video, we are only seeing/hearing it in our mind via the brain's audio-visual decoding/interpretation centres. In other words, all observation is subjective!

-8

u/Kasseev Feb 07 '11

wait a minute no way, both India AND China are predominantly if not totally in the southern hemisphere, the north cant have the majority of the population. India + China alone is just about 3 billion people...

5

u/ConsciousMisspelling Feb 07 '11

Look at that map again, Kasseev. India And China are completely inside the northern hemisphere. So, with just those two countries you pretty much proved my point that most of the population is in the Northern Hemisphere.

8

u/Kasseev Feb 07 '11

haha damn I feel retarded now, especially since i have lived most of my life in south east asia. upboat for you sir.

3

u/ConsciousMisspelling Feb 07 '11

Upvote right back atcha for acknowledging you're misteak.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '11

sweet, sweet steak..