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Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask | 
 enlarge | Author: New Scientist
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $4.80
You Save: $7.20 (60%)
New (9) Used (12) from $4.33
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 4362
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
ASIN: B0013L4DSK
Publication Date: March 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
- How fat do you have to be to become bulletproof?
- Why do people have eyebrows?
- Why do pineapples have spines?
- How much does a head weigh?
- What affects the color of earwax?
- How quickly could I turn into a fossil?
Have you ever thought up a question so completely off-the-wall, so seemingly ridiculous, that you couldn't even find the courage to ask it? Maybe at the sports bar you were transported by the beauty of your beer to wonder, "How long could I live on beer alone?" Or, cycling through the park, you mused, "Did nature invent any wheels?" Or looking up at the night sky, you had a moment of angst, "What would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared -- if it were vaporized or stolen by aliens?" Full of fun factlets, Does Anything Eat Wasps? is a runaway bestseller around the world. It celebrates the weird and wacky questions -- some trivial, some baffling, all unique -- and their multiple answers culled from "The Last Word," a long-running column in the internationally popular science magazine, New Scientist. Tackling the imponderables of everyday life, sparkling with humor, and bursting with delightful erudition, Does Anything Eat Wasps? is irresistibly entertaining and utterly engrossing. So, go on. Put away your lab coat and your pencil -- science is fun again.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 EDUCATIONAL September 2, 2008
Michele Duppins (Gaithersburg, MD United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love learning about everything and anything and this book has so much to offer for someone like me. It's Terrific!!!
Interesting collection of facts May 27, 2008
Adele Montrose (Los Angeles, CA USA)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought this book for my 14 year old nephew. The content looked interesting and entertaining.
Fun, but limited August 14, 2007
Ima Goober
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well this is indeed interesting. You will leave with more tidbits of knowledge to amaze your friends. But I was expecting a little more. It did not take me very long at all to read everything of interest in this book. IT is more of a novelty gift of coffee table book, not for educational or litereary pursuits.
Very Hungry Birds (and More !) May 26, 2007
cluricaune (Co. Armagh, N. Ireland)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The 'New Scientist' is a weekly magazine, first published in 1956, that covers the recent happenings in the scientific world. In 1994, the magazine launched a new column called "The Last Word" in which its driven by its readers - not all of whom are geeks in white coats. Here, they could not only pose a science-related question, but also provide the answers. "Does Anything Eat Wasps" is a selection of the questions asked and answered over the column's first eleven years, and proved to be one of the UK's surprise hit of the year.
The book is divided into chapters, depending on the focus of the questions selected - our bodies, our planet and 'wierd' weather for example. While the book is informative, it is equally as likely to raise a smile - the overall tone is not that of a difficult, highbrow scientific paper. Some of the questions that are dealt with include : how long can a human being live if their sole source of food or drink is beer ? (One respondant includes in his answer it would be unethical to conduct such an experiment - though I suspect he would have plenty of volunteers). What causes the changes, in terms of colour and consistency, in earwax ? Can it be scientifically proven that your arse looks smaller in black trousers ? And just how far above the Earth's surface would you have to be before a compass stops pointing north ?
An enjoyable and informative book - though it's one I tend to dip into once in a while, rather than reading it from cover to cover.
 NewScientist Readers Give Answers to Questions You May or May Not Have Thought of Before May 5, 2007
James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia)
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
There are many informative interesting fact books out there, what makes this one different from the rest is that they haven't actually gone and found experts to find out what the actual answers are, instead readers of popular magazine NewScientist (and granted some of these are scientists, lecturers and others who would know what they are talking about, but a lot are just every day people as well) have answered questions pondered by other readers. This book is a collection of a column that appears in each addition of the magazine. So it is comparable to logging onto a forum on Yahoo or somewhere else where questions are posted by one users for anyone else to answer, the answerer may be 100 per cent right then again the again they may be a hundred percent wrong. You could also compare this book to when researching a fact going online to Wikipedia where anything can be posted as fact, instead of looking up an actual encyclopaedia or specific topic research book.
If you like visiting these types of websites, and can take every answer with a grain of salt as they say, then this may well be the book for you. If you actually want answers you know are true to interesting questions or books of facts then there are far better alternatives out there such as Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies?: The Truth Behind Old Wives' Tales, Great Mythconceptions: The Science Behind the Myths, Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. and Shocking Science to name just four examples.
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