Good Question: 'Reply All': Calories, Credits And Baby Carrots

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Betty Kline from Winona gets us started. As we vacillate between hot and cold weather, she wondered: Is it easier to burn calories in the winter or summer?

We sweat more in the summer, but the chill makes our heart race. But the truth is there's virtually no difference between the calorie burn in the summer and the winter.

The only extreme temperature that makes a difference is when you're so cold you're shivering. When you shiver, your muscles start clenching to generate heat, and you burn nearly four times more calories than usual.

That said, I don't think it's a good idea to wear a bikini in International Falls in December.

Cathy Hansen in Fridley had this good question about carrots: What exactly are baby carrots?

Baby carrots are not, in fact, babies, or smaller than normal. The original baby carrot was invented in the 1980s by a carrot farmer who didn't like throwing out so many imperfect carrots.

Now, there's a certain breed of carrot, which is specifically grown to be cut up into baby carrots. That's why they're all orange, unlike a normal carrot that has a greenish root in the middle. Baby carrots are also sweeter than normal carrots, because consumers like the higher sugar content.

They also ripen quickly, in 120 days.

Greg Marsten, of Luck Wis., always sends me Good Questions. One of this is: Why do TV networks speed through the closing credits?

It doesn't seem fair to the people who worked on those shows, right? It's your fault, viewers. Not you, Greg, but the rest of you.

NBC started this practice in fall 1994 with a strategy called NBC 2000, designed to keep viewers from channel-surfing. They created the squeeze.

In 2005, CBS, the WB, UPN (and, when it signed on, the CW) began shifting credits to the lower quarter of the screen.

The people who work on a show negotiate their title and credit position with the people who create the shows. But when the networks buy a TV show or a movie - to put it on CBS, for instance - those contracts leave the ability to squeeze those credits in the hands of the network.