John Scalzi’s daughter just made a shiny dime by knowing the answer to that old question,
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
The answer is not 42. The answer, as explained in a fascinating earlier post at Scalzi’s Whatever, is 35 cubic meters or about 700 pounds–and, according to Cornell, woodchucks do chuck wood, if you give them wood to chuck.
That wasn’t the trigger for this post, though. That trigger came down in the comments (Scalzi gets great comments), to wit a followup to the question
Yes, but what’s the difference between a duck?
The answer, which you should memorize, is:
One of his feet are both the same.
Have a good weekend.
This is too funny, and amazingly timely. The library intern I trained just this week to use OCLC’s QuestionPoint database to answer our library’s email reference questions just happened to be here at the reference desk when I laughed at your post. She told me that the practice question she asked two days ago was: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…etc.,” and answered it by using our institutional script for questions going beyond the capabilities of our email reference service. I told her she needs to update her reply to herself, now that we know the real answer! Thanks, Walt.
Of course, there’s the Buddy from Unshelved answer-
‘before or after I threw out my back?’