[UK] Mick O’Hare, ed., *Why Don’t Penguin’s Feet Freeze? — 113 “Why” Questions and Answers from the General Public*, trans. Wang Mingyang, Guangxi Science and Technology Press, June 2007, 14.8 yuan
Having held the top spot on the British Amazon overall bestseller list for 12 consecutive weeks, selling 130,000 copies in a single week and 830,000 copies in six months… jointly recommended by Zhang Jingzhong, Gan Zizhao, Jiang Xiaoyuan, and Liu Huajie… a book like this, of course, I could not let pass.
This is indeed an extraordinary book—a popular-science book about all sorts of odd and amusing questions is not rare (though such books are generally imported ones), but a book made up of questions from the general public and answers from the general public is indeed rather distinctive. The special feature of this book is that it does not offer authoritative answers; for each question, it often provides responses from several readers, and the later answers are frequently supplements to, or corrections of, earlier ones.
In fact, put simply, the pattern of these questions and answers is quite similar to “Baidu Knows.” Of course, the discussions available there, among the people active on Baidu Knows, are nowhere near as interesting as this section organized by *New Scientist* magazine.
2007-07-20
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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