If you're in Australia/NZ does the heat fall out the bottom of the house? Does AC current go backwards? (Down and up in a cosine wave, rather than up and down in a sine wave?)

If you're in England, do you have to operate the mouse with your left hand?

Are you legally a shellback if you fly over the equator instead of sailing over the equator?

What if an astronaut crash lands in a foreign country? Does he need a passport?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 07, 1998

Answers

Everything is backwards there. Water in the toilet circulates in the opposite direction, and if you mess up at work, then the fan really hits the sh*t.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), September 08, 1998.

Well, as long as it only circulates the wrong way instead of flushing the wrong way == if it flushed backwards then the s**t would really hit the ceiling (floor ?) fan.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 08, 1998.

>What if an astronaut crash lands in a foreign country? Does he need a passport?

yup, and they DO carry them inflight :-)

"Shuttle Down" by Lee Corey (actually G. Harry Stine, a former white sands mission controller) detailed what may happen if the space shuttle had to land at Easter Island. Because of this book, NASA made some changes in their procedures.

-- Jay Kusnetz (jayrtfm@hotmail.com), September 10, 1998.

Jay,

"Shuttle Down" is one of my all-time favorite stories from Analog magazine! A real eye-opener proceeding from a simple premise: If a shuttle were launched straight south from Vandenberg AFB (in order to achieve a polar orbit - don't want to launch south from Florida over Cuba), there would be a certain interval during the ascent in which an engine shutdown would leave the shuttle with insufficient speed for orbit, but the only landing strip within its possible maneuvering vectors would be on Easter Island. Fascinating list of practical difficulties!

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), December 25, 1998.