Toadfish Monastery

You probably know that situation. You take something for granted and then somenody (often a child) ask you "Why.....?" and you run into trouble explaining (even if it is not the traditional origin of holes in cheeeeeese question).

I propose this thread for the discussion of everyday things like that.
This could be run as a competition/game with some readers trying to explain the current question while others try to poke holes into it.

For starters:

What is farther from the Earth? Sun or Moon or does it change?
How can you prove it with simple methods that a child (or pre-radar person) could understand? How could you estimate the relative distance of Sun and Moon to Earth and their actual relative sizes?

medium:
How can you show that the Earth is roughly spherical?
How can you calculate the size?
How can you show that the Earth is slightly flattened? (Pole to Pole shorter then from one point on the equator to the opposite point)

For experts:
Why is it dark at night?





Edited: to clean up title. Mero.

We all are accustomed to certain convention and/or cliches in movies.
This game's aim is to collect them in the form of "rules".

e.g.:

The probability of the hero to be hit by a shot from the bad guys is inversely proportional to the number of bad guys shooting at the hero.
i.e.: the hero is perfectly safe, when a whole army is firing at him/her, a single opponent on the other hand might be quite dangerous.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102906Y.shtml

Looks like the GOP gets cold feet about electronic voting. One of the voting machine producing companies has connections to a Venezuelan software company. Projecting their own vices they fear that Hugo "why hasn't the CIA taken him out yet" Chavez might try to manipulate the US elections (and probably not in favor of the GOP).
Should we laugh or be very very sad?

http://www.ostp.gov/html/US%20National%20Space%20Policy.pdf

The White House has authorized a new national space policy that sparks quite some controversy at the moment.

Comments go from "What's new?" to "Bush declares international law nil and void for outer space preemptively".

From my point of view it's a declaration of "we decide what's going on out there and nobody else" with too much "national security" and "national interest" qualifiers for the flowery "freedom of space" rhethoric to be anything but empty phrases.

I predicted years ago that Bush would shred effectively if not formally the last remaining international treaties even before there would be a "necessity" and had the antarctica and the space treaty in mind. Alas, looks like I got it right.

I'd be interested how you interpret the new policy and if it indeed means what I think it does (look also out for comparisions with Clinton's version from 10 years ago).

I miss a FAQ and rule section and find the Help section a bit lacking.

What influences the status (Newbie, Toadfish, Full member etc.)?
The mere number of posts doesn't seem to be it.

What customs are there relating to karma?

What about doubleposting?

Another oldie to be revived.

As a reminder: A movie quote is given and the next in line has to find out from which movie it is.

Okay, here is a moderately easy one:

"I once shook his hand."

Another game that needed resurrection.
Btw, resurrection games were invented by Al Gore.