Among the more curious explanations proffered for the relative strength of shoe sales is that women — who make up the lion's share of the American shoe market — get an emotional lift from shoe shopping in a way they do not when trying on jeans and cocktail dresses.
A physician reported: "Patients have their own curious explanations about their back, the cause of pain and which is the best treatment.
Thomas said he was merely trying "to win a basketball game," but he took a curious detour in his explanation.
Whatever its explanation, this curious passage illustrates the danger of a president becoming the unwitting puppet of his ghosts, as I believe George W Bush did in 2005 with his neoconservative, Project for the New American Century, Weekly Standard-style inaugural and its - mercifully empty - promise to bring about democracy around the globe by force of American arms.
"I read Lucas McNelly's tweets because I was curious to see his explanation for his critique.
But to hold to all of them is something even more curious and demands an explanation.
"I would say that about one-quarter of the essays so far constitute self-explanation for curious outsiders," Mr. Judt wrote in an e-mail message.
More likely, though, the explanation is the curious ideological sympathy that lingers between Cuba and Mexico.
Here, in a bonus to Riff, Newton explains a bit of her own back story and provides further explanation of this curious, and controversial, phenomenon.
