All Too Flat : Serious : Ask The Fish

In an attempt to increase the frequency of updates to the site, we are adding yet another freaking blog. I don't know why we think this will increase the frequency of updates to site - we have at least three of the things anyway, and they are updated just about as often as Boston wins the World Series. But we try. Ask The Fish will now be done blog style, with new entries getting posted as soon as they are answered. Expect the same quality of advice that you have come to expect (from what is either a 800 lb halibut with a highly defined sense of irony, or one of four uber-geeks with nothing better to do on a Saturday night).

Welcome to the new tech-version of Ask the Fish. Hopefully you won't notice much difference other than the fact that we update more often. But if you do notice some problems / bugs, please let us know.

Got a question? Need advice? Ask the Fish! Use the Ask the Fish Form to submit a question!

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Can there be a spark in outer space? No Oxygen right? What if you crossed two electric wires? Thanks,
-SS20MAN

Dear SS20MAN,
Turns out a spark is caused by the same effect as lightning. You get two objects which act as electrically charged poles relative to one another, and bring them together. As the "electrical pressure" (the attraction between the positive and negative charges of the two objects) increase, one of two things will happen:

- The objects themselves will move toward each other (the attraction is an actual force, after all)

- If the objects are too heavy to move via the electrical force, the electrons on the negatively charged pole/object will "jump off" towards the positive pole. It is this action which causes the spark: When electrons are flying through the air, they smash into molecules in their way, heating those molecules up.

Now, here's the cool bit (unintended pun). Hot air has a lower resistance than does cooler air. So as the air gets warmer, the energy required to cross the gap gets lower and lower, causing more electrons to move. Eventually (and this all happens in the space of milliseconds, of course) the air gets white hot from all of the molecule / electron collisions. And there's your spark.

So in short, no. When you see a spark, you aren't seeing electrons directly - you are seeing the effect they are having on the air surrounding your poles (and by poles I mean Van der Graaf generator and doorknob). You can cross all the electrical wires you like in space, you still won't get a spark (assuming you are in a vacuum). This isn't to say you won't short the device you are screwing around with, it just won't blow up in a shower of pretty lights.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
dear fish, hi fish!, why is it that hot dog buns come in packages of 8 and hotdogs come in packages of 12?...this is very discouraging being the wigily g fly homie dude that i am, please write back soon. Luv,
-wigily g fly homie dude

Dear wigily,
Because what are you going to do with 4 hot dog buns? BUY MORE HOTDOGS!

-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
I want to get that T-Mobile Danger Sidekick but the wife won't let me. Any ideas on how to convince her?
-Heywood Jablome

Dear Heywood,
Buy her a 5lb can of artichoke hearts. That's how I got my 20GB ipod.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
If I were inside a jet travelling 500 MP/H and I were to begin walking at about 5 MP/H, would that mean I was travelling 505 MP/H?
-Meh

Dear Meh,
Yes and no. Yes, according to classic Newtonian physics. According to the more accurate formulae of Relativistic physics, you would actually be going a little slower than that. But since the speeds do not even come close to c (186,000 m/s), the difference between the approximation (Newtonian) and actual (Relativistic) is something on the order of 1e-6 m/s. Not enough to care about.

Also, it depends on which direction you are walking. If you walk to the back of the plane (like you're going to take a leak) then you'll be going 495 MPH. If you are walking to the cockpit to kick the pilot in the teeth because the movie was "Practical Magic" then you will be going 505MPH.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?
-Lina

Dear Lina,
What a great question. I did a Google search for "most beautiful woman in the world", and according to Google the most beautiful woman in the world is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet another example of bugs in our search engines.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
i love corn on the cob, but i also am partial to some popped corn, my question's are, A; does popping the corn make it more filling? B; which type is better for you?
-lost at the movies

Dear lost,
According to Robert Wolke (University of Pittsburgh, Dep't of Chemistry), popped corn has the exact same nutritional value (or lack thereof) as canned corn (which is just corn on the cob without the cob). However, if you pop the corn in oil, you're going to be adding extra fat and calories [ref: Answers to Ask Liz, 2002, from NBC4]. So there's your expert opinion.

However, there is a serious caveat about information from the University of Pittsburgh. This was not only the first college to which I had been accepted, but it was also the first place to give me a scholarship (full scholarship, I might add. Sorry to toot my own horn, but I never get to talk about it, and it's kind of funny). The information came as a great surprise to me, since I had never even heard of the University of Pittsburgh, much less applied! So be wary of information from that dubious house of learning, is all I'm saying.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
My college teacher told me that if a tongue piercer pierces your tongue on a certain nerve, you will die. I know someone with 3 tongue-rings and getting another one and that makes me queasy. Is what my teacher told me true?
-Clueless of Tongues

Dear Clueless,
First let me say that that is not true. There are few nerve or nerve complexes in the body who's piercing will cause death, and none of them are in your tongue. It's one of the reasons that you don't see many people walking around with spinal piercings. What I'm saying is that your college professor is either an idiot or a prevaricator. Tell him my reply and ask which one he is, then get back to me with his response.
This isn't to say that there aren't problems inherent in the act of piercing your tongue. None of them are immediately fatal, but they can be unpleasant. Some possible side effects follow:

Increased chance of contracting / spreading Hepatitis C

Possibility of extensive bleeding: The main vessals of the lingual artery and vein are located in the tongue (obviously)

People who play with the metal stud in their mouths will invariably be knocking it against their teeth. This sort of repetitive behavior causes permanent damage to the enamel of said teeth.

Blood poisoning can be formed under the tongue, which can spread and develop into (get this) toxic shock syndrome. All that being said, I've never met anyone who had major problems from their tongue rings, and that's no small number of people. Also, chicks with tongue studs are hot. Except when they lisp because of them, in which case they really come off as idiots.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
hey fish! im going to the oktoberfest in 1 hour and i will be very drunken and dance like a monkey. is that ok?
-laporte

Dear laporte,
Okay? That's great! Yo! Send us some digital photos and maybe you'll get a spot on Geeks Gone Wild.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
I've always wanted to own my own business. Either that, or just eat snowcones all day. Should I combine these two dreams?
-Andrea

Dear Andrea,
Being a business owner is a demanding (and commensurately rewarding) job. Eating snow cones is a lot of fun. Both aspirations definitely have their relative advantages. While I am generally in favor of combining dreams to make the resultant experience all the better, it can very often end up with disastrous results (when I have the time, remind me to tell you all about the time I juxtaposed my dream of being a synchronized swimmer with that of playing video games for a week straight).
But why not have your cake and eat it too? Start your own business and then with the profits, you can eat snowcones all day.
But my real question for you is this: Is your dream really to eat snowcones all day? I don't mean to impose a value judgement or anything, but what kind of aspiration is that? You should consider modifying your dreams to something that is both personally fulfilling and socially conscious: I suggest feeding snowcones to the dangerously underweight supermodels that fill the pages of our fashion magazines.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
What is the difference between asp.net and php3?
-John

Dear John,
asp stands for Active Server Pages and it is a Microsoft technology. php has nearly identical functionality but is an open source langauge. asp.NET is the new version of .asp which includes support for the new Microsoft .NET Web Services platform. php3 is an older version of php. The current release is 4.

And, since you brought it up: We at ATF use some PHP. We use no Microsoft products for our site. It is hosted on a Linux server running Apache, all graphics are edited in Photoshop, 2/3 of us use Opera 6.04 and 1/3 of us uses Netscape 4.7 for some reason. It should be mentioned, however, that there is a set-up in place to organize our finances using MS-Money. Even if this is true, we still stand by our assertion that no Microsoft products are actually used - Not having any money means we never have to run the program.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
hey, i need to buy boxers in hong kong. where?
-lonnol

Dear lonnol,
http://cn.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Shopping/Online_Shopping/ (Simplified)
http://chinese.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Shopping/Online_Shopping/ (Traditional)

But let's be honest, shall we? Boxers? There are only two types of mens underwear that are less attractive than boxers: Briefs and the re-useable canvas bags you are supposed to use at hippy co-op food markets. Boxer-briefs are the way to go: comfortable, supportive, and they make the ladies purr.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
Why do I like banana's,yet,I don't like banana yoghurt or banana milkshake ?
-Mandybabe

Dear Mandybabe,
Are you a supertaster? That is one possibility. Or maybe it's the high concentration of tannens in bananas, which can be lethal in large doses.
But more likely you are confusing fruit with fruit flavoring. Do strawberry Skittles taste like strawberries? Do Apple Jacks tast like apples? Does bubble tea taste like bubbles?
While in most cases, the artificial flavoring is waaaaay better than the "natural" fruit and/or vegetable, you do get the occasional disgusting flavor like pepper, grass, booger, sardine or banana.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
Ummm... first you bitch bitch bitch about people not reading the FAQ before asking questions. But then you answered an entire question about Raleigh scattering that was clearly explained during Ask the Fish on May 12, 2002. And you answered a question about "How do you work" which was again clearly answered in Ask the Fish September 8th, 2002. My question is, do you think this kind of redundancy could be avoided with a search engine? I assume you keep your postings in a nice SQL database so implementing the search engine should be trivial at this point, no?
-critical in the kremlin

Dear critical,
If I wanted to defend myself, I would say that I was just fishing for a reason to put more questions in the FAQ. But since I've always been a fish to admit my mistakes: So the fuck long ago, thank you very much.

That is to say, this is currently running in an SQL database. We will have search capabilities imminently.
Huge.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
Is "Taters" a widely known term for testicles?
-eunicisms

Dear eunicisms,
I don't know. I kind of like it. "Knocking my taters" has a nice ring to it. I think it's still a close third behind "busting my balls" and "whacking my hangers."
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
Why is your jackass banner the most irritating sight I've seen? Wouldn't another banner be a great replacement? For example, a Tori Amos "Scarlet's Walk" banner with a link to download her new single?
-Baby Machine

Dear Baby,
Let me think about that for a minute no.
-ATF

08 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
What is the most buoyant, light weight, waterproof mole-raft building material? You know, Mole Day....WE have to build mole rafts and race them, and we're having a dilema as to which material to use........
-Rebeca Jimbo, and Matt

Dear Rebeca,
I recall a conversation I had with a Material Science engineer back at my old alma mater. She told me her group was working on developing a synthetic spider web, with all of the advantages of spider silk but none of the annoying harvesting. So I did a little research to see how that was coming along, and found that Nexia biotech has developed a pair of genetically altered goats from who's milk spider dragline silk can be farmed. The silk is collected, purified, and spun into fibers.
The material is incredibly strong, very light, and also happens to be bio-degradable. Once the material is harvested, it should be a matter of minutes to weave it into a water-proof mesh which can keep your mole afloat. However, it also requires the aforementioned goats, which you may or may not have. Barring the goats, we suggest balsa wood.
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Dear Ask the Fish,
I have gambled in the casino (Online Casino , and won a little bit of money. Can i win again ?
-Walter

Dear Walter,
*Can* you win again? Yes. That is to say, it's definitely within the realm of possibility that every time you spin the wheel (or press the button, or pull the handle) that you'll come out a winner. Well, that used to be the case anyway, back in the day when gambling was an analog disease (horns full of cards, mechanical slot machines). Now with the advent of computer-driven gambling machines, the outcomes of which can be completely controlled by a mainframe, every time you win or lose is predetermined by algorithms the casinos control.
So, let's revisit the question. Can you win again? Yes, if the online casino you are frequenting wants to give you money. But then, if they wanted to give you money, they would just cut out the middle man and send it to you, no?
-ATF

07 Oct 2002

Got a question? Need advice? Ask the Fish!