What Makes Flamingos Pink? by Bill Mclain

What Makes Flamingos Pink? by Bill Mclain

Do spiders sleep? Why are barns red? Why is there a crescent moon on outhouse doors? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?

As the Xerox Corporation's official webmaster, Bill McLain often fielded as many as 1,000 questions a day on just about everything under the sun -- and beyond. The wildest, funniest, and even most astute are collected here (along with their answers) in McLain's second volume that's as fascinating and enlightening as his first, Do Fish Drink Water? A "veritable Internet legend known for having all the answers" (San Francisco Chronicle), McLain explains what keeps squirrels from toppling off telephone wires; why the skin on your fingers and toes shrivels up in the water; how seedless watermelons are created; and more. Whether it's animal, vegetable, mineral, or something completely different, the answer is bound to be as interesting as the question itself, and certain to satisfy the trivia hound in everyone.

Bill McLain, the Internet's famed Answer Whiz, served as the official Webmaster for Xerox Corporation. McLain and his colleagues were in charge of responding to e-mails sent to the company's website, and they received between 750 and 1,000 queries per day. While the majority of the e-mails he received were Xerox-related, he received dozens of queries every day from interested fact-seekers with questions ranging from the weird to the practical to the simply amusing. In What Makes Flamingoes Pink?, McLain compiled the most memorable of these inquiries, as well as his equally memorable answers.