And now with Doctor Science, The Island of Thog and Ug

Having talked about toilet seats and coffee, now lets talk about something people feel much, much more strongly about.

Scenario 1

On a small, remote island live a few people. Thog fishes. Ug grows plants[1]. This food supports their families, and a few other people. People can just about live on plants or fishes, but it requires a lot of growing (or catching) difficult things, so there's a lead-up time.

One year, there seem to be fewer and fewer fishes[1]. Thog was very sad. He worked harder and harder, but still didn't really catch enough. There were enough fish for Ug's gigantic extended family to have a balanced diet, if they mostly ate plants, but Thog mostly ate fish, and there simply weren't enough.

Thog began to despair. Some of Ug's children began to suggest it was his own fault for being a fisherman, and he really shouldn't have entered a profession where this kind of thing can happen, but Ug's old, old father heard them and spoke sternly to them. "You don't know what it's like when your profession starts to fail," he said. "I used to be a champion lizard catcher in the island, and now there's no lizards at all. But I remember years when the harvest was bad, and years when the fishing was bad, and so far they've come back. Don't exult when it happens to someone else."

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The Off-Side Rule

Speaking as someone not really into football, the off-side rule is not really that big a deal, it's just acquired a disproportionate reputation as complicated because once upon a time it was contentious, and people always explain it in terms that someone into football, but not good at absorbing abstract concepts would understand, rather than the reverse.

To actually understand it, you just have to understand the problem it was supposed to fix. When the laws for football were originally being codified, people thought it was more fun if players fought their way past the opposition, rather than leaving one player hanging around the opponents' goal and trying to kick the ball a long way to him so he can kick it straight into the goal without needing to bypass the other team as much. This is very true.

In order to prevent people hanging around the opponents' goal waiting for the ball, they forbade it. Specifically, if you're in the opponents' half of the pitch, and have only one player between you and their goal (normally the goalkeeper) you can't have the ball kicked to you or otherwise participate in play. There's a lot of details that make it different in day-to-day play, but that's the general idea.