Yesterday at lunch, some coworkers and I were looking at the tower cranes at a couple construction sites nearby, trying to figure out how they keep them from tipping over. After some amusingly poor recollections of physics class, we concluded that A) The weight of the items they’re lifting is probably minor compared to the weight of the crane arm itself, which is why they can use a fixed set of counterweights, and B) they crane is so tall because they need to keep the center of gravity low. If the item they’re lifting stays low relative to the height of the entire tower, then the outward strain is minimized. After looking it up on Wikipedia when we got back, I also found that they usually anchor the uprights directly to the building’s superstructure. Also, they use another crane to dismantle the tower crane when construction is completed.
Following up on that, I mentioned something that had been bugging me a few weeks ago: If global warming is causing the ice caps to melt, why are the ocean levels rising? Since frozen ice expands and displaces water, as the ice melts, shouldn’t the ocean levels drop? The answer is embarassingly obvious - most of the ice caps are actually on land, not floating in the ocean - so as they melt, they flow into the ocean, raising the water level.
I'm a 30-year-old 
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