The "This Might Be A Stupid Question, But...." Thread

[Slartibartfast]

Are the Teenage Mutant Turtles people who mutated into turtles or turtles that mutated into people?

they were turtles that mutated into people

Learn something every day, says the woman who once made a Halloween Teenage Mutant Turtle costume for a cousin's son. (Hey, I just sewed, I didn't have to know the backstory.)

Normal turtles who lived in the sewer until they had toxic waste spilled on them (of course).  Same with Splinter, the rat who trains them in ninja skills.

Now, I can't quite explain the robotic foot soldiers from Dimension X led by a disembodied mechanical brain . . . 

[demarco]

Is it possible to ship a suitcase (inside a box or otherwise) to a hotel where you will be staying? Has anyone done this?

[PastryGoddess]

Is it possible to ship a suitcase (inside a box or otherwise) to a hotel where you will be staying? Has anyone done this?

Yes, just make sure you reference your hotel confirmation number and ask for it when you check in.  They may charge a storage and handling fee.  You'll want to talk to the front desk, not the reservations center

[ladyknight1]

Make sure you are talking to a person physically at the hotel, since most chains are reluctant to transfer people from the reservation center.

[WolfWay]

House numbers in the US: I've seen street addresses like "11907 Wicks St". Does that mean the street is long enough to have 11 thousand houses in it, or are the numbers assigned some other way?

[ladyknight1]

It's random. Depends on the county/city/region. My friend built a house in the country, off of a road, so ended up naming the street he built, and still had to have a 4 digit address.

[magicdomino]

House numbers in the US: I've seen street addresses like "11907 Wicks St". Does that mean the street is long enough to have 11 thousand houses in it, or are the numbers assigned some other way?

It's more likely that the street is a major thoroughfare with 119 blocks, with a lot of skipped numbers in-between.  For instance, the houses on one side of my block are 6418 -- 6420 -- 6424 -- 6428 -- 6430. Most of the houses on the other side are on corners facing other streets, so there is only one odd-numbered address -- 6417.  The idea is to allow for future expansion; if the single family homes on my block were replaced by townhouses, the missing numbers could be used instead of re-numbering everything.  Even then, re-numbering happens occasionally.  My house had a completely different number when it was built.

Also, a long road probably has some businesses on it large enough to take up a whole block, and thus uses only one number.

[GreenHall]

House numbers in the US: I've seen street addresses like "11907 Wicks St". Does that mean the street is long enough to have 11 thousand houses in it, or are the numbers assigned some other way?

My mom is in a rural area and her address is based on distance - from where the emergency vehicle would turn onto the road she is 6.2(02) miles.  The hundredths place is used - just up the road my grandfather is 6159, I think the thousandths may be used more for designating which side of the road).

[menley]

I'm always so confused by how house numbers work in the US and I'm from there!

For example, the house I grew up in was the center house on a U-shaped street. There were two different names for each half of the U, and houses on one half had 4-digit numbers while houses on the other half had 5-digit numbers. Each half of the U had at most 20 houses, and the street does not continue on past that one block in any direction, so I've no idea why all of that naming and numbering mess was necessary.

As a concrete example for those who are not abstract thinkers - my house, in the middle of the U, was addressed something like 12345 Park Drive. The house directly across from us was numbered 9876 Forest Drive, and the house directly to the left of us was 9881 Forest Drive, but the house directly to our right was 12349 Park Drive.

[MrsJWine]

I don't think this is the norm, but in our area, all the streets are on a grid system (it's like an x-y coordinate system, except +y is North, -y is South, +x is East, and -x is West; so, an address that was 2600 W. 3600 N. would be 26 blocks west and 36 blocks north of the center). Newer developments tend to have streets with names rather than numbers, but the house numbers still follow the grid system.

[TootsNYC]

House numbers in the US: I've seen street addresses like "11907 Wicks St". Does that mean the street is long enough to have 11 thousand houses in it, or are the numbers assigned some other way?

My street address is 3556; it was originally 35-56. I live on a street that crosses 35th Avenue.
On 35th Avenue, there are addresses that are 112-03, meaning they're in the block after 112th Street.

But the post office and many other places are dropping that hyphen, so those addresses are now 11203, etc.

[Dindrane]

I think every city does things a little bit differently, but it seems to be relatively common that a person's street address indicates both where on the block they live (at least roughly), and where on the length of the street their block is.

My street number growing up was 5605. People often referred to my block as the "fifty-six hundred block of MyStreet". The block on one side was 5500, and the block on the other side was 5700. There were interruptions whenever the street didn't go through or there was some multi-block thing that got in the way, but the first two numbers gave you context about where on the street the block was.

My particular area of the city advanced the house numbers one at a time, with evens on one side of the street and odds on the other. So my next door neighbors were 5603 and 5607. My neighbor across the street was 5604. Other neighborhoods in the same city advanced house numbers by 4, so 5604 would be next door to 5608. But even on those streets, you still had even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other.

Where I live now, at least in downtown (where the streets really are on a grid), the block number is related to which numbered street it crosses, similar to what Toots describes. We have numbered avenues running east/west through a big chunk of the city that get smaller the further north you go. As you get away from the city center, the streets become more twisty, so the avenues don't always go through or mean much of anything. But in the parts of the city that are on the main grid, the avenues dictate the block numbers for the named streets that cross them.

[Ser Lucien Liliane]

How often can/should you clip a cat's nails? I've never had a cat before (the kitten apparently does not mind) who'd let me do it, so I really have no clue!

[guihong]

Why do we throw coins into a fountain and make a wish?

[Dazi]

How often can/should you clip a cat's nails? I've never had a cat before (the kitten apparently does not mind) who'd let me do it, so I really have no clue!

When they are pointy and stick to your clothes or furniture.   The other answer is,  when they allow it.