Question #14

Joah enquires:

Why do I always burn chick peas when I boil them?

I will equate this to a simple tale:

There was a woman, we shall call her Noanna. She tried to boil Ful Beans, but didn't use water, so the beans burnt. She then came to a wise man and asked him: "Why do I always burn ful beans when I boil them?" the sage rubbed his chin and answered her: "I will equate this to a simple tale: There was a woman, we shall call her Joanna. She tried to boil chick peas, but didn't use water, so the peas burnt. She then came to a wise man and asked him: "Why do I always burn chick peas when I boil them?" the sage rubbed his chin and answered her: "I will equate this to a simple tale: There was a woman, we shall call her Noanna. She tried to boil Ful Beans, but didn't use water, so the beans burnt. She then came to a wise man and asked him: "Why do I always burn ful beans when I boil them?" the sage rubbed his chin and answered her: "I will equate this to a simple tale: There was a woman, we shall call her Joanna. She tried to boil chick peas, but didn't use water, so the peas burnt. She then came to a wise man and asked him: "Why do I always burn chick peas when I boil them?" the sage rubbed his chin and answered her: "I will equate this to a simple tale ...

I do so hope you can take something from this.

Question #13

Lior enquires:

Why oh why can't we sneeze with open eyes?

This is a simple question of survival of the fittest, according to the theory of evolution. Since the dawn of men, several grave threats have been posed to the human-kind. One of these threats was, as you may have heard from Greek mythology, the Medusas (also known as Jelly Fish).
Unlike the stories you have heard, Medusas were quite the common species. They also looked nothing like the legends, but rather as they do nowadays. The only thing you can relate to the species from the original stories was that once looked on, they immediately turned a human into stone.
As I said before, this is a story of survival of the fittest, so some humans, over time, developed an allergy to Medusas, whose stench spread far and wide, and kept sneezing, all the while keeping their eyes closed, to avoid the horrible stare. To touch a Medusa meant you were to suffer grave pain.

Over the ages, those who had the allergy survived, due to the fact that they had associated sneezing with keeping their eyes closed. Since they couldn't stop sneezing while in the vicinity of Medusas, they did not open their eyes, allowing them to survive yet another day.
Since the attack of the stare was inefficient, the Medusas slowly lost this ability, yet remained with their poisonous sting, which might not kill, but hurts like crap.

Depiction of a Medusa [the hand with the watch] (wow, were they wrong) and Jellyfish (sans ability to turn humans into stone) [the hand with the watch if you're left-handed]

To this day, the acquired habit of sneezing with your eyes closed is embedded in our behavior from birth.