Do You Believe There Are Monsters Under Your Bed or In Your Closet?

Here's a great example of voluntary response bias.

Voluntary response bias is when you let people answer a survey or poll, and the results thusly become skewed because only people who really care about it will answer.

I asked Yahoo Answers if people believe if there were monsters under their bed.

All of the 3 people responded in the affirmative. Using this survey, I could (unreasonably) conclude that 100% of people on Yahoo Answers believe there is a monster under their bed.

Answer Thread

How Can You Tell if Someone's a Communist?

Ah, this one's a good one.

So I asked,

How Can You Tell if Someone's a Communist?

Are there certain tells that are characteristic of communists?

Do they have some sort of prominent feature?

Is there some sort of a radar you can buy?

Keep in mind at all times I was asking this jokingly, while all the time not expecting serious answers.

The best (4 non-me votes) poster said,

Just look in there I and ask if they love Huu Wong Song's ideas, or whatever that guy's name is from North Korea

I have no idea what the poor chap was trying to say.

"AngryCat" told me,

They don't have horns and hoofs.
The communism doesn't affect your appearence or manners. It's just a set of ideas that a person keeps in his/her head. There is no radar to find out it.

Yes, I know that, but I'm waiting for the person who does believe that communists have hooves and there's special communist radar.

Then this hippie lady said,

everyones a communist in one way or another(called their own set of values)

Which of course pissed off this person,

To the person below me, everyone is not a communist, as communism is a specific set of values.

You will know that they are a communist from speaking with them.

If they say that they are interested in revolution, world unity, class
conflict, and words like proletariat and bourgeisie, it is pretty clear they are a Communist.

Then this clever character said,

Are you trying to find communists or hide your own convictions?

In some American states even the word 'communism' gets the public running to the Republican ballot box.

Touche, man, touche!

Finally, here's my favorite answer,

So sorry you missed the millenium. We are at this present time, in the 21st century in the year 2008. The idea of Communism is a tired one, primarily because the Berlin Wall and thus Communism fell almost 20 years ago!!! You are a quaint relic of a bygone era. You should do one of two things. Either put yourself up for sale at a museum for antiques, or go back to sleep.

This is Yahoo Answers at its finest, people.

Humans Versus Nature; Who Wins?

In continuation of all this Yahoo Answers hijinx...

So, I asked,

Everyone always seems to think that humans are stealing the world's natural resources and ruining the environment.

But on the other hand, natural diasters seem to put humanity in its place.

So who's winning?

Thankfully, I got some real answers this time.

One person said,

Humans are part of Nature. We can only win what Nature allow us to win

What a lame answer. That's not what I wanted at all. Philosophical and trite, but sure as heck not fun.

Another person says,

Depends on what you mean by winning.

Ultimately nature will become so far out of balance that humanity, and possibly everything else living on the planet is destroyed...or at least greatly diminished...whether there will be a liveable planet after that remains to be seen.

First, I'd say you get to create your own definition of winning. I'm asking you for your thoughts.

Next, they bring in the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. While this too is a nice and philosophical answer, I'm still waiting for someone to interpret this as a war or something wacky like that.

Then this person said,

Nature has always been present on Earth and always will be. Humans have existed on this planet for a relatively early period of time, so no matter what we do or do not do, nature will continue to 'react' .. I guess you could say .. to what's going on around the planet. This doesn't necessarily mean what humans are doing but anything .. for example if an asteroid hits the Earth what's going to happen?

At this point in time, humans are using and abusing the nature's resources, and nature is reacting to what we're doing. So I wouldn't stay it's putting 'humanity in its place' but rather, we're facing the consequences and realizing what we're doing to the planet is wrong and not helping it.

So really, I don't think anyone is 'winning' per se. Humans and nature are both getting hurt but at the same time we're still benefiting from this world.

Summed up, humans are simultaneously winning and losing. Whoo.

Again, that's like the epitome of what I didn't want.

Finally, the unavowed winner of the thread said,

Well, think of it this way;
There have been unnatural events happening lately across the world over the past few years, such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornados, typhoons, and haven't they all been happening because we're ruining the environment? I'd say we're making the earth act so much more violently against us. In a sense, we're winning, but it in the end we all know nature will win.

Basically, that humans are briefly ahead, but nature's going to catch up and surpass. Kind of like the Japanese versus the Americans in World War 2.

All these answers kind of surprised me. I was expecting weird, crazy answers. Or at least one weird crazy answer.

Congratulations to all that answered for being thoughtful and incredibly unfun.

Pig Launching; Feasible?

Let's wrap up this Yahoo Answers stuff.

So near the beginning, spurred on by the success of my one questions, decided to ask another. Unfortunately, this one had only one answer. I thought it was interesting enough...

I asked,

Say one is to launch a pig as far as they can where the pig stays alive in the end. Assume this is an average pig.

What contraption would you recommend?

How would you keep the pig alive?

How far could you get the pig?

Any mathematics you'd like to show off?

Like I said, I only got one answer. Thank you, brave soul who actually managed to find my question.

Of course, I was intending for some sort of safe pig catapult. Yeah, I know it's crazy, but maybe someone else didn't think so.

Too bad the guy who answered thought I wanted a pig in space.

So, their first answer was to send the pig up via the Russian's commercial space flight system.

While I'm sure they'd offer some sort of discount for non-humans, it'd still be FREAKING EXPENSIVE.

His next suggestion was to send the pig up on a satellite, a la Laika.

Alas, if the superman episode about sending a monkey into space is any indication, that's not a good idea at all.

As for an actual answer to my question, I'd probably go with a normal catapult, but with a pig parachute. It might work.

Heck, I might even make the parachute tiered, just like Susan from my 8th grade science class did to her bottle rocket. The Susan everyone overlooked, and subsequently won. Surprisingly, I lost. Second to last.

Phonetics or Phoenicians?

So I asked another question on Yahoo Answers. Essentially, I was asking which of the two people generally preferred.

Let's see what the crazies said this time.

One person saw fit to merely tell me what the two things were.

Phoenicians are an ancient seafaring people of the eastern Mediterranean.

Phoneticians are linguists who study sounds in language and their meaningful employment in language.

Thanks, like I didn't already know that.

Another asked me my own question.

Answer: Which is better: words spelled incorrectly by their sounds only; or a people?

It's not an 'answer' if it ends with a question mark!

And finally, the absolutely crazy answer.

Man you better add some more insulation to the attic you are living in.

All in all, disappointing.

Immovable Object Versus the Unstoppable Force

So I asked another question to Yahoo Answers again. If you want, you can see the Original Question Thread.

So, the first interesting answer brings up parallel dimensions.

The other one, in each one's parallel universe.

My friend says the unstoppable force is permanently budging.

The next one neglects to answer the question, but makes up for that by pointing out that this would be a spectacle.

Reach over and wake up the wife/husband or friend because they have never seen a wreck like the one that is gonna happen. Your question answers its self.
UNSTOPPABLE---can't be stopped
IMMOVABLE--can't be moved
So there is going to be a GREAT BIG BANG when they meet

Then someone reasoned this;

I suppose you could say the terms are mutually exclusive i.e. the existence of an unstoppable force makes it impossible for an immovable object to exist, and vice versa.

If you're into long explanations, here's one just for you;

In simplest terms: the 'immovable object' would, by point of reason, redirect the energy of the unstoppable force. Since the unstoppable force would still be generating energy at the point of impact, the overflow would cause it to redirect the energy away from the point of impact and along the surface of the object. Depending upon the size of the object compared to the amount and/or shape of the force directed towards it, the force would either slide over the surface until it reached the edge of the object, at which point the unstoppable force would continue onwards, or if the surface were big enough, the force would eventually 'bounce' away from the object, since the resistance away from the object would be lesser than the resistance towards the object (force always travels along the path of least resistance.)

Long story short, they go around each other.

Then a cheeky person said this;

I think they'd both stop themselves a fraction of a second before the collision, and then divert their paths so as to crush between them the annoying philosopher asking all those hard questions.

Aha! Hard questions! Nice pun!

Finally, we have the obligatory nonsensical answer.

The liar.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Well, that's all for this time. See ya next time when we ask more hard questions on Yahoo Answers.

What Animal do I Most Resemble?

So I was on Yahoo Answers the other day.

I asked What Animal Do I Most Resemble?. So far I've gotten seven different answers.

Here they are, listed in assumed order of posting.

Cow




Chimpanzee




Monkey




Chacma Baboon




Gorilla




Musk Ox

Chupacabra, whose picture is not included as its mere existence is debated.

So apparently people have no trouble finding animals I look like. Ah, the informative powers of Yahoo Answers.

And if you, the reader, thinks that I look like an animal, feel free to comment me a picture and name of an animal.

20000 M HCl

So the other day I asked Yahoo Answers How can I make 20000 M HCl, and what it could destroy?

By the end of the day I already had four answers.

The first three essentially said no.

The third elaborated that the concentration of pure water is still just 55.6 moles.

But it's the fourth guy that really takes the cake. Here is what he said.

20000 Moles of Hydrochloric Acid????

Err probably need a HUGE factory, never seen before.

To make 20000 Moles of HCl (1,168.8554 kg/791.371293 m^3 ) you get from the electrolisis of 20000 moles of salt solution in a vaccum container. You'd probably need to do this several times, over a tonne of gas in an (inert) vaccum container.

You would then have to remove the sodium hydroxide impurities by some sort of fractional distillation method where the HCl gas is transfered to a different container. You would then need to condense the pure HCl gas to a liquid by holding the entire system at -85.1°C (industrially the acid is concentrated by disolving it in water. that'd just weaken it)

If M means Moles per litre you may need to apply intense pressure on the substance to increase its density by nearly 80000% at this sort of packing potential you would need probably astronomic thermonuclear or even black hole pressures to compress it certainly intense energy (even if the concentration was for minute volumes) ...the enthalpy change would certainly make it solid and as dense as uranium (18,900 kg/m3 higher than the 1,168.8554 kg/m3 of the HCl) but the chemical lattice because of the smaller nuclei would have to be highly compressed to... which is extremely insane to grasp.

The huge problem is that the equiptment will probably erode with the strong acids...and the use of vaccum technology to get pure HCl widens the possibility of explosions.

As I say this is the stuff of divinity here (manipulating black holes) but ... even a single liquid tube of pure HCl brought quickly to room temperature would boil and be highly explosive spraying acidic gas everywhere.

I especially like the last paragraph.

Well, stay tuned for more wacky Yahoo Answers hijinx.