<story><title>Why soda bottles have gaps in their threads (2000)</title><url>http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2000-02/950761555.Eg.r.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EdwardDiego</author><text>My country&amp;#x27;s national library used to provide a service in the 70s&amp;#x2F;80s where you could send a letter or telegram with a question, any question, and they&amp;#x27;d do their best to answer it.&lt;p&gt;My Mum was a big fan of it, I&amp;#x27;ve still got a copy of their telegram response to her question of &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#x27;t we see birds flying overhead with a penis flopping around?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The answer was simple.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Most birds don&amp;#x27;t have penises. They press cloaca to cloaca. Birds that do have penises store them in their bodies when not mating. Please stop sending questions about penises&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;...it wasn&amp;#x27;t her first animal penis question submitted, and I&amp;#x27;m assuming she&amp;#x27;d developed a reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stormdennis</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s fascinating. I can remember pre-internet days being resigned to not knowing stuff.
For example albums in my country generally didn&amp;#x27;t include the lyrics. Every time it came on the radio, I asked people what was the singer saying over and over in REM&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The sidewinder sleeps tonight&amp;quot;. Nobody knew. Another was a foreign language pop song I remembered from when I was on holiday abroad as a teenager. I searched fruitlessly for it in record shops at home. 
Decades later, on a whim I found it by googling and then the original video on youtube (I&amp;#x27;d only heard it on juke boxes)</text></comment>
<story><title>Why soda bottles have gaps in their threads (2000)</title><url>http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2000-02/950761555.Eg.r.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EdwardDiego</author><text>My country&amp;#x27;s national library used to provide a service in the 70s&amp;#x2F;80s where you could send a letter or telegram with a question, any question, and they&amp;#x27;d do their best to answer it.&lt;p&gt;My Mum was a big fan of it, I&amp;#x27;ve still got a copy of their telegram response to her question of &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#x27;t we see birds flying overhead with a penis flopping around?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The answer was simple.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Most birds don&amp;#x27;t have penises. They press cloaca to cloaca. Birds that do have penises store them in their bodies when not mating. Please stop sending questions about penises&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;...it wasn&amp;#x27;t her first animal penis question submitted, and I&amp;#x27;m assuming she&amp;#x27;d developed a reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lqet</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen ducks mating. For their body size, they have &lt;i&gt;magnificent&lt;/i&gt; penises. Flying with these things flopping around would not only be very difficult without getting caught in something, it would also be extremely irritating to people.</text></comment>