The Straight Dope 08/11/2006

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 08/11/2006

Dear Cecil:

How long are these huge dams, like the Hoover Dam, engineered to last?
How would we go about replacing it if it began to weaken or became
obsolete? What's the largest dam ever to fail? --Craig S., Jacksonville,
Florida

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Cecil replies:

Don't sweat the big dams, chum. It's the little ones you should worry
about. Most of the small and medium-sized dams in this country were
built to last just 50 years. (Nowadays, from what structural engineers
tell me, the typical design life is more like 100 years.) According to
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, about 30 percent of the more than
76,000 dams in the United States are older than 50 years--and by 2020,
that number will increase to more than 80 percent. That's a lot of old
dams, some of which hold back not just water but toxic sediments from
early industrial operations. Once they start to go, a lot of people are
going to be in deep . . . OK, maybe not raw sewage. But some mighty
unpleasant stuff.

You asked about huge dams, though. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060811.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

I'm a relatively knowledgeable goy, but I was stumped when I went to my
girlfriend's brother's Passover seder recently. My sweetie's niece, at
4.5 years old, was wondering who this Elijah is who figures so
prominently in the ceremony--indeed, she was actively scanning the
street to see whether the prophet would show up. The adults present
didn't quite know what to tell her . . . a concept? an angel? an
immortal of some sort? We knew that Elijah was associated with births,
so we told her he was present when she was born, and was also associated
with the end times and Messianic comings, but that seemed too scary to
lay on one so young. What's this prophet's scoop? And why does Elijah
figure in a holiday which is otherwise about Exodus-era events? --Amy

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

Elijah is a major character in the Old Testament--his exploits are found
in the Book of Kings, specifically Kings 16:29 through II Kings 2:13,
which is thought to have been written somewhere around 640-580 BCE. He
is sometimes classified as a pre-classical prophet: he doesn't have his
own book, and he doesn't prophesize about the future. He condemned
immorality in his time. King Ahab ruled the north kingdom of Israel
(roughly 871-852 BCE); his Queen Jezebel had introduced the worship of
the Phoenician fertility god Baal among the Israelites. Elijah publicly
denounced the queen and king for being immoral.

Our main (OK, our only) information about Elijah comes from the Bible.
To explain why Elijah has a prominent place at the Passover seder even
today, we're obliged to rely on textual interpretation plus centuries of
rabbinic interpretation. We're not dealing with the historical existence
of Elijah nor the historical validity of the stories about him, but
rather with text and tradition.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/melijah.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 01/04/1991

Dear Cecil: 

The following geometry problem has haunted me for 30 years. Every math
teacher, Ph.D., engineer, etc., I've shown it to was stumped. Now it's
your turn. Given any triangle ABC, extend the baseline and bisect the
interior and exterior angles at A and B. Extend these four new lines
until they intersect at D and E. Prove DCE is a straight line. (It looks
straight, but no one can prove it.) How about it? --John Ricketts,
Madison, Wisconsin

Dear John:

We ordinarily don't truck with pure (as opposed to applied) mathematics
in this column, but since Cecil's stock in the nation's math departments
has pretty much gone into the tank after the recent Monty Hall debacle,
the time has come to show a little inductive flash. (Sure, it's the
testosterone talking, but you ought to see the abuse I got.) This one
was made a easier by a handy geometrical fact that, being a master of
suspense, I will conceal until later. First the proof:

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_196.html

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