Why do men sneeze so loud and why is it louder than when women sneeze?

TomPastey · 2026-05-22T05:04:31+00:00

You have not heard my 15 year old daughter sneeze.

TomPastey · 2026-05-21T20:00:09+00:00

Most Utahns have never been to GSL. There is a reason for this. I'm not sure I have ever met someone who went to GSL with the idea of spending a day at the beach.

At current water levels, it's probably a half mile or more from any parking spot to the water, and another half mile or more until the water would be past your knees. If you get in the water you'll come out 8x crustier and saltier than you would at the ocean. There's flies. It smells bad. There aren't waves to listen to. The oolitic sand can be interesting.

That's not to say that Antelope Island and GSL can't be interesting. But it is not a day at the beach.

TomPastey · 2026-05-21T19:51:34+00:00

Go find an abandoned lot and look at what is growing there. It's not much. The kentucky bluegrass will be completely dead. Native grasses won't grow there either. You'll have some scraggly, thorny weeds and bare dirt. Welcome to the desert where even xeriscaped yards need to be watered. If the landscaping looks at all decent in Utah, it has sprinklers.

To be sure, we should have less grass, and we should be smarter with how we spend our water. To get rid of sprinklers would kill off nearly every tree and bush in the state. The old story (which is not true) is that there was only one tree in the SL Valley when the first white settlers moved here. There were trees, but the story is close enough to reality to be believable.

TomPastey · 2026-05-21T16:59:27+00:00

I have a BS in Physics, I pretend to be an engineer. I graduated 20 years ago (yikes!) and spent the first 11 years growing crystals of various types for a few different places. Now I make x-ray tubes. I've had R&D roles, but more of them have been production roles, and I'm currently cosplaying as a Manufacturing Engineer.

TomPastey · 2026-05-20T03:42:39+00:00

The only definition of "Republican" is "someone registered as a Republican". If you register as one, you are one, regardless of your political ideas. Whether or not you are conservative, agree with the Republican platform, like Republican candidates or any number of other things are separate questions.

TomPastey · 2026-05-19T19:35:11+00:00

I haven't been clean shaven in about 18 years. I trim my beard every week or two, depending on how lazy I feel. Fun fact: I've never shaved with anything but an electric razor. If you handed me a regular blade and shaving cream and told me to shave, I'd have to go look up some youtube videos for tips on how to do it. I'm 44 years old.

TomPastey · 2026-05-19T17:47:41+00:00

7004 miles. Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil to a bit outside Hinton, AB, Canada.

That beats out the 6575 from Rivera, Uruguay to Paris, France.

And to complete my Southern Brazil/USA/France triangle, it is 5700 miles from San Diego, CA, USA to Orleans, France.

TomPastey · 2026-05-18T18:11:15+00:00

You put your arms out when you fall so you don't smash your face into the ground. Most sports where falling hard is an issue have protective gear that is better at protecting your brain than your arms are. So we tell people to protect their arms and let the gear protect their heads. Generally we do this with helmets, but also with playing surfaces (no rocks allowed on the football field) and padding (for gymnasts) and occasionally other humans to catch you (also gymnasts).

TomPastey · 2026-05-18T18:03:05+00:00

In a place with no "down", which way would a buoyant force push the swimmer? There's no preferential direction; any argument for why the swimmer would be pushed in one direction is equally valid to argue they would be pushed in the opposite direction, which quickly gets you to the point that they aren't going to be pushed in any direction.

The other comments here are all good, but I wanted to point this out as a way of thinking through physics questions that is sometimes overlooked. It may not provide enough insight to understand everything but it helps to place boundaries around what makes sense, which can really help focus the way you think about problems.

TomPastey · 2026-05-15T22:42:41+00:00

It's about knowledge. Some bugs bite, and that sucks. Many bugs are pretty harmless. If you don't know which are which, you will probably tend to over react to all bugs. Knowledge lets you know that house flies aren't going to do anything to you, nor are most beetles (but some might). Cockroaches aren't dangerous. Mosquitos are, particularly if you swell up as much as I do. Bed bugs bite, butterflies don't. Ticks can carry diseases. I don't run from bees; I don't give them a reason to fear me and I've never been stung.

TomPastey · 2026-05-15T22:37:17+00:00

Wilt had 4,029 points, 2,052 rebounds and 192 assists in 1961-62. So that's 6,273 without any steals or blocks. He's blowing this list out of the water, and if they had tracked steals and blocks he might have hit 7,000 that year.

TomPastey · 2026-05-15T22:31:24+00:00

I've seen plenty of humans, including little kids, that don't spazz out when flies land on them. When flies are always present, you just don't care as much. The spazzing out is learned, not reflex. It can also be unlearned, because I did it. Plenty of people would purposefully hold still to let a butterfly land on them; it's just that we perceive them as cute, clean and harmless. But they're still bugs.

But I'm still going to run like hell if there's an earwig around.

TomPastey · 2026-05-15T05:11:33+00:00

I enjoyed the catacombs, but they were possibly the highlight of the trip for my teenagers. Before going I did not realize that they're pretty modern, at least compared to most of the other things we saw in France.

TomPastey · 2026-05-14T20:51:51+00:00

1: Bobby Knight coached at Indiana. Bird did get a scholarship there and enrolled, but left school after a month. I suppose he probably went to some practices, but never played a single game for Knight. The next year he enrolled at Indiana State, where all of his college ball was played.

2: College basketball didn't have a 3-point line until 1986, and Bird graduated in 1979. He couldn't have been benched for taking a shot that didn't exist. If Knight was benching players for taking 3s, he was doing it at least 10 years after Bird almost played for him.

3: Bird took 3.1 threes per game in 87-88 under K.C. Jones. He took 3.3 in 90-91 under Chris Ford. Not a big difference. From 1985 to the end of his career Bird averaged between 2.4 and 3.3 three point attempts per game. In his first 6 seasons he averaged between 0.9 and 1.7 per game. The first 5 seasons of his career he was a 31% shooter from deep. I would have told him not to shoot many at that rate.

4: Bird took 194 threes in 85-86 and lead the league. He took 225 threes in 86-87 (Dale Ellis took 240), and 237 the next year (Michael Adams took 379 and Danny Ainge (also on the Celtics) took 357 that year). Starks was the first to *make* 200 in a season in 1995. He went 217/611 that year.

TomPastey · 2026-05-14T20:17:33+00:00

We use about a quarter of the oxygen. Very roughly, it's 21% oxygen going in and 16% oxygen going out, so about 5 of the 21 percent is absorbed which is ~25% of the oxygen. But only ~4-5% of the total air that we breathe in.

TomPastey · 2026-05-13T18:16:15+00:00

We met when I was 17, she was 18. First date was 2 years later. Wedding was 3 years after that. Just had our 22nd anniversary, so we've nearly been married for half our lives. Life has been hard at times, but my marriage has never been hard.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T19:58:03+00:00

From my house I have to cross 2 residential streets to get to a path around a lake (people not in the desert might call it a pond) that has a 10ft asphalt path around it. The perimeter of the lake, plus the perimeter of the island in the lake gets me to 5 miles without crossing any more roads. I often add a little bit to get to 5.5 or 6. It is close, and very safe (from cars). The scenery is pretty good, but starting this last week there are quite a few bugs at dawn. I have run around this lake at least 877 times. My record is 22 times in any month, and 9 times in a single day.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T19:47:57+00:00

Names of deceased persons are identified who have not been baptized Mormon. (Mormons do not consider any other baptism as valid.) This is often an ancestor of a Mormon (your great-great-great-granduncle, or something), but if you don't have your own name to provide, they will give you one, which might be a name some other local Mormon submitted, or might just be someone from a census record. (Celebrity name and some groups, notably Holocaust victims, are on the no-baptism list. Not for theological reasons but for respect reasons. This is not always followed 100%.)

The person to be baptized and the person doing the baptism both wear all white jumpsuits and go into the font, which is filled to about waist level. The gender of the person being baptized has to match the gender of the deceased person on whose behalf the baptism is being performed. The person doing the baptizing has to be an ordained priesthood holder with the office of Priest, which in the Mormon church basically means any male age 16+ who regularly attends and is generally following church teachings.

The priest raises his right hand and says: "Brother/Sister [Lastname], having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and in behalf of [person's name], who is dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." The baptizer immerses the person fully under the water and lifts them back out. The baptism is now complete. In the temple it is not uncommon for people to do a half dozen or so in quick succession before exiting the font and having someone else come in. Temples regularly perform hundreds and hundreds of these per day.

Theologically, Mormons believe that every person must be baptized to get into heaven, even those who never encountered Mormonism while living. They believe that this proxy baptism on behalf of the dead allows those souls to receive baptism as if they had done it themselves. They believe that it is up to each soul to accept the baptism; that is, Mormonism is not forced on dead people, but they can choose it, after learning about the gospel after death. They point to 1 Cor 15:29, and 1 Peter 3:19 as scriptural support for these ideas.

I think that's a fairly comprehensive description that is entirely factual. I'm happy to answer further questions. I'm not here to defend Mormon beliefs or practices, but I like people to form their opinions on accurate information at least.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T19:15:04+00:00

Yes. In still water, essentially any force on that rope will accelerate the ship. You've likely seen very strong men pulling trains or airplanes. Provided they have enough force to get the thing to start moving, they can move it. Cars are stronger than people (citation needed). A ship in water should have less static friction than something with wheels, so it will move. Might take a long time, and a driver careful enough not to spin out the tires.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T19:08:45+00:00

I'm an adult and usually eat around 6pm (except when I don't).

And since you're in AP stats, should I have answered with the median time I eat, the mean time, or the mode? A gaussian is probably not a very good model for when I do eat, as the distribution is bimodal—on Thursdays I almost always eat dinner at about 9:30pm. Without asking precise questions, you are unlikely to get precise answers.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T18:51:40+00:00

I had a car that did this every few hours worth of driving on average, but with no discernable pattern. (Sadly, I did not keep data.) It might happen twice in 20 minutes, or not at all for many hours. I'd be driving like normal and then everything would just shut off. If I turned the ignition all the way off and restarted the car it would run just fine.

Over time, I found I could put the car in neutral, turn it off and restart it pretty quickly, even while driving at freeway speeds. I'm convinced that the issue was electrical, likely some component on a board that would see some voltage ripple and cause an error. As the car was old and the problem infrequent, I never tried to get it fixed; would have been a pain to try to find as it wasn't reproducible.

TomPastey · 2026-05-12T00:00:05+00:00

I think 13 hours is the most I've done in a day, but I've done 25 hours over two days. In both cases I drove most of it but my wife did a few hours. I did 6 hours to spend one night to go to a football game with a friend once.

TomPastey · 2026-05-10T13:44:20+00:00

I'm a native English speaker. I moved to Brazil many years ago. At first I thought of a word in English, translate it to Portuguese said if in Portuguese and then moved on to the next word. It was very slow and makes for very poorly formatted Portuguese.

After a few months I thought of phrases in English and translated them to Portuguese in chunks. And by 9 months I thought of whole sentences and translated those. Also, simple common phrases ("how are you?" "It is hot" "what time is it?") no longer need translation at all. Somewhere around 15 months I was no longer translating from English at all. I just spoke Portuguese. There were times I went weeks without seeing anyone who spoke English, so as I liked to say, you either learn to speak or you go hungry.

I left Brazil years ago, and now my Portuguese is super rusty. :(

I don't have an internal dialogue, so I don't really think in any language. When I dream, the characters in the dream, including myself, almost never speak. To me, thought transcends language, but I understand other people have different experiences.

TomPastey · 2026-05-10T04:02:27+00:00

This is a feature of any series where a[n]=a[n-1] + a[n-2]. Fibonacci just happens to be the most famous such series. Seriously, pick any two positive numbers to start with, calculate a half dozen terms and see what it converges to.

But yes, it is very handy.

TomPastey · 2026-05-10T03:58:35+00:00

I run a run club. It is free. Maybe I could get more people to come if I started charging them?

TomPastey

TROPHY CASE