BUBBA'S
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

(NEW QUESTIONS ARE ON TOP)

97. (received on 04/11/11 & answered on 04/18/11)

Tackamore is an example of us old cowboys not being able to pronounce foreign words right. It was actually "jáquima", a Spanish word that got pronounced wrong for so long that we even invented a spelling to go with how we said it "hackamore". Now, what you might not know is that the Spanish borrowed the word from the Arabic "šakīma". By the way, Wikipedia had lots of information on the history of hackamores. Check it out:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackamore

96. (received on 04/04/11 & answered on 04/08/11)

This was pretty easy, Emma. You did notice that I am a cowboy, right? I know a little bit about horses. One hand is equal to four inches. That's because some puny little king way back decided that his dinky little hand would be the official unit. Now, mind, if I were that king, a hand would be worth 5 inches. You should also understand that with hands you can still have a decimal. For example, if you see that a horse is 15.3 hands tall, that means he is actually 63 inches tall. (15 X 4" + 3" left over)

95. (received on 03/21/11 & answered on 03/21/11)

The coyote is one of my favorite things to see at a Spurs game. He is so energetic, and finds so many different ways to entertain the crowd. Over spring break, I went to see the Spurs play Sacramento. There was another bat flying around the AT&T Center. Manu didn't get it this time, the audience did. Suddenly, however, the coyote came running out onto the court dressed in his bat catching outfit. Now, to answer your question... Did you know that the coyote has his own website? You can see it at http://www.nba.com/spurs/mascot/coyotes_den.html. On his bio page, he says that he "Was signed by the Spurs as a Flea Agent in June of 1983". Now, I am assuming that you mean introduced to the "Spurs family". If so, there's your answer

94. (received on 02/17/11 & answered on 02/17/11)

Maame, if this is happening with your fish, read very carefully. Why a fish blows bubbles depends on many factors. If your fish is a Beta Fish, he is probably blowing bubbles to create a bubble nest. However, if your fish is a gold fish, he is trying to tell you that his bowl needs more oxygen in the water. I once watched my goldfish die from this without helping it. I thought it was a cute trick that he had learned. When I asked at the pet store, they told me the real reason and I felt very sad, AND very guilty. Take care of your pets. They are depending on you!

93. (received on 02/15/11 & answered on 02/17/11)

Jade, there is no way to know when the first discovery was. However, according to my research, the Chinese have been finding and using "dragon bones" medicinally since at least the Western Jin Dynasty (265-420 A.D.). To research this, I used the search phrase "dragon bones +dinosaur". Two of the informative sites I used were Wikipedia (I am a fan of Wikipedia.) and Beijing Review.com.

92. (received on 02/14/11 & answered on 02/15/11)

Kaitlyn... Ask me a hard one. I know the answer to this one. I worked at the picture show for a spell when I was a youngster. The movies run on a schedule. The theatre owner has to keep everything on a schedule or he or she loses money. They get paid to show the movie a certain number of times.

91. (received on 01/31/11 & answered on 02/02/11)

Fantastic question, Kaitlyn. You probably already know the answer without realizing it. Glue has a liquid solvent in it. Sometimes it is water. Sometimes it is an alcohol. As the liquid part evaporates out, the glue gets thicker and stickier, until, finally, the objects you are trying to join together are tightly adhered. When the bottle of glue is sealed, the solvent can not evaporate. But, keep this in mind: If you forget to put the lid on your glue, it will dry out and stick to the inside of the bottle.

90. (received on 12/14/10 & answered on 12/14/10 )

Funny you should ask this question now, Gabriel. Eula Mae and I just watched a show about the pyramids the other night on the Discovery Channel. There are lots of ideas about how the pyramids were built. I am going to give you some sites to check out, but I will tell you what the most commonly accepted answer is. Most scientists and historians believe that the Egyptians cut huge blocks out of limestone and dragged them to the pyramid sites. They put them in place to form the first layer. Then they built ramps and dragged more blocks to the next layer. They did this over and over until they reached the top. Afterwards, they covered the entire pyramid with stones that made it look like a big solid piece of stone. I personally don't buy that concept because it took millions of stones to make the larger pyramids. It would have taken way too long to drag them all where they needed to go. The pyramids were the graves of rulers, and would have been built during that ruler's lifetime. They would have to place the blocks in under two minutes each to get the job done in a ruler's lifetime. That doesn't add up. Anyway, some sites about pyramids that you can visit are:

1. Egyptian pyramid construction techniques at Wikipedia
2. Overview of Pyramid Construction by Alan Winston at TourEgypt.com
3. Building the Great Pyramid at BBC.com
4. The Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx at howstuffworks.com

89. (received on 11/03/10 & answered on 11/03/10 )

This is easy to answer, young man. You might want to ask a more specific question, if the answers don't satisfy your yearning for knowledge. How long it takes to build a turbine depends on many factors: What kind are you building? Are supplies readily available? Do you have adequate skills to build it? Depending on the answers to these questions, the time can more carefully estimated and planned out.

88. (received on 10/28/10 & answered on 11/03/10 )

87. (received on 05/18/10 & answered on 05/19/10 )

Because of the way you structured that question, there are many names that can be listed. The smallest man "alive" on record was Gul Mohammed (22.4 inches) of India who died at the age of 40 in 1997. Currently, Khagendra Thapa Magar of Nepal is considered the world's shortest living man at 22 inches. He was only 6 years old when Mohammed died, so he did not have the record until later.

That definately was not me! I was a HUGE baby. According to a search of the Internet using the phrase "Who was the smallest baby ever born?", the record is currently held by Rumaisa Rahman of India, who weighed 8.6 ounces at birth. Now, of course there have been smaller babies born, but they have not survived. I would post some sites for you, but I can't find any that don't make me nervous because of advertisements or other kinds of things on them. Ask your parents to help you do a Google search for Rumaisa Rahman, and they can decide which sites they feel are okay for you to view.

85. (received on 04/19/10 & answered on 04/26/10)

The easy answer for an old man like me would be "a wonderful musical group from the 1960s and 70s". I tried to give you some links to fan sites, but NISD has most of them blocked, and I don't want to get in trouble trying to find some that aren't. You can Google "5th Dimension" and you will get them. Listen to some of their songs. They were really good. The harder answer is just goind to be a quote from WIKIPEDIA, since I don't understand a word of it. Here goes: "In physics, the fifth dimension is a hypothetical extra dimension beyond the usual three spatial dimensions and one time dimension of Relativity." (Five-dimensional space. (2010, April 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:21, April 26, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Five-dimensional_space&oldid=357065990 )

84. (received on 04/13/10 & unanswered)

I spent a lot of time looking this one up. I even had some answers. For example, I was going to say that it is hard to know who first exhibited LEGO sculptures in a New York City gallery. Then, I was going to say that there are some possibilies to mention such as Sean Kenney or Polish artist Zbigniew Libera. But, I think the answer you probably want to hear is Nathan Sawaya, although technically, he was not the first to have a LEGO piece exhibited in a New York gallery, but the first to have a major museum exhibition consisting of nothing but his LEGO works. That exhibit is now touring the USA.

Since I forgot to go back and post my findings, Malcolm, you will receive an "I stumped Bubba!" dog tag and be added to the Bubba Stumpers' Hall of Fame.

83. (received on 04/05/10 & answered on 04/05/10)

Leyla asked, "Who published the first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2?"

This was super easy, Lela. All I had to do was put your question into Google verbatum. That led me to several sites which all said the answer was Arrhenius way back in 1896. You can read more about it here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_M018

I'll give you two answers to your question, Justin. First, my answer is that when we talk about dates, we are talking about the names of years, not the mumber of years. The second is from Dr. Peterson, also known as Dr. Math at the Math Forum of Drexel University. He says the commas in numbers are only there as a convenience to help you read the number out loud. They in no way affect the value of the number.

Lexi asked, "What is the oldest hummingbird in the world?"

That depends on what your question means. If you are asking what is the first fossil evidence of humming birds, that would be the pair of 30 million-year-old hummingbird fossils from southern Germany. If you are talking longevity, the oldest living "documented" hummingbird was 14 years old. It was part of catch, tag, and release program a few years back.

79. (received on 10/29/08 & answered on 11/03/08 )

Maddy asked, "How does your brain work?"

Not very well. Ask anybody! My daddy always told me I had the mind of a seive.

Nicolas asked, "What was Elvis' first hit song?"

That's an easy one, Nicolas. Elvis Costello's first hit song was "Watching the Detectives". Elvis Presley's first hit song was "Heartbreak Hotel". Elvis Phuong's first hit was "Vet Thu Tren Lung Ngua Hoang". Elvis Crespo had two first hits at the same time "Suavemente" and "Tu Sonrisa". Most of the other Elvis named singers have not been as succesful. I found all of the information with a google search.

Ryan asked, "Who was the first grand master of chess born in the United States?"

This was harder than it should have been. I kept having to tweak my search terms in Google. I finally ended up with "'American Grandmaster' +first". The answer I found was Paul Morphy, a man from New Orleans, way back in 1857. Once I had his name I found lots of sites about him. Some of them were:

site 1 site 2 site 3

Ezra Z. asked, "What was the first video game?"

This was an easy find, Ezra. I put the question "What was the first video game?" in Google and got bombarded with sites that had the answer. I read several of them until I was sure the answer was correct. According to my research it was a tennis game developed by a Mr. William Higinbotham in 1958. Here are some sites where you can read more about it:

site 1 site 2 site 3 site 4

Lexi asked, "What is the smallest hummingbird?"

This was really easy for me, Lexi. I already new it was the Bee Hummingbird. However, I still did the research and learned more about it. For example, I learned that in its native Cuba, it is called zunzún. The scientific name is Mellisuga helenae. I also learned that the bee hummingbird's eggs are the smallest bird eggs of all. You can read more and see some pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Hummingbird.

74. (received on9/04/08 & answered on 9/08/08 )

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