Not a question?

Another post inspired by QI. In this episode, Stephen Fry asks the question “Why do the columns of the Parthenon look straight?” (youtube clip is here.)

And the answer turns out to be:

“Because they are straight”

One of the other guests goes bananas about this. “That’s not a question!” he complains. The whole scene is actually pretty funny, with Fry crumbling under the pressure. But it’s a valid point. Is that really a question? Probably most people feel that something is at least a little wrong with it.

And the winner of most subtitles is…

This borderline cult video. There are 18 languages on screen: Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese, French, German, Korean, Persian, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Croatian, Thai, and Indonesian. It’s a bit like watching those newsticker things on CNN.

Also, they use an unusual alternative name for Vietnamese, calling it Aulacese. My guess is that this is a reference to Âu Lạc, but I don’t know anything about Vietnamese history so maybe not.