International breakfasts

Hey Doug! It's good to be back. Here's something I need to know: If I go out to breakfast in Canada, would they offer me American bacon? In Paris, what will I get if I order toast?

A: I'm glad I already had lunch, or I'd have to grab a snack before typing anything else.

Canada is blessed with three regularly available types of bacon: side bacon (what Americans think of as bacon), back bacon, and "peameal" bacon, the last two often referred to as "Canadian bacon" in the US and Ireland. Back bacon is a leaner cut of pork than side bacon, smoked or unsmoked, and peameal bacon (so called because it was traditionally rolled in crushed dried peas) is back bacon that has been brined and rolled in cornmeal. Canadian bacon can also refer to smoked ham, served in small cutlets.

As for ordering toast in France, you would most likely be served a sliced baguette, served hot and crusty, with butter and jam. You could probably request slices of bread from whatever loaves they had available, but the British or American toasted squares would not be a default choice in Paris.

Incidentally, for those who wonder about such things, French Toast is indeed French. It was likely invented in what is now France more than a thousand years ago, and maybe much earlier than that. Recipes from a 4th century Roman collection of French recipes describe how to make French Toast, called, among other things, pan dulcis or "sweet bread" by the Roman citizenry. The dish is still eaten in France as a dessert (not breakfast) called pain perdu or "lost bread", since it was originally designed to reclaim bread that had become too stale to eat. Assuming being stale was the only thing wrong with the bread, it was softened by a mix of eggs and dairy products, then fried before eating. Apart from regional differences in preparation - some like it sweet, with cinnamon and sugar, others like it savory, with cheese or tomato sauces - this is the same way we make it today.

Whirly wonderings

Hey DougO,

There is discussion in these parts as to the validity to the common notion that toilets flush in the opposite direction south of the Equator. It has also been submitted that, when directly over the Equator, a toilet will flush straight down. Can you verify or debunk this?

A: I hate to say this, since the toilet swirl direction is one of my favorite science "facts", but, alas, it is a myth. The idea is that the fact that objects on or near the equator are moving faster around the Earth's axis than objects near or at the poles tends to give moving particles a clockwise spin in the Southern hemisphere and a counter-clockwise spin in the Northern hemisphere. True enough. this is called the "Coriolis Effect", named after Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis. He was some French guy.

However, the Coriolis Effect is generally only noticeable in large systems over time, say in weather patterns. Your petite little porcelain bowl is too tiny, globally speaking, to demonstrate much of a preference either way. The fact that water swirls so vigorously in one direction as it leaves the bowl is due to jets concealed under the rim that are pointed in one direction or the other. It does a nice job of picking up after you (so to speak) and makes a satisfying "whoooshgluglugrattle" sound for your entertainment. You could easily pick another model that does the same thing, only going the other way, no matter where you are on the globe.

If you really wanted to see how forces might work at the equator, you could theoretically build a toilet large enough for the forces to be more apparent. I would say about the size of Cuba. I'm not sure where you could get grant money for it, but people seem to have had luck soliciting money on the internet for more ridiculous things.

Another spacey question

Q: Watching footage of astronauts slurping up globules of water in zero-G always made me wonder: What does a flame look like in zero-G? Let's assume you can burn a candle safely in the ISS. Normally heat pulls the candle up into the familiar tear-drop shape, but in space, which way is up? Is it just a sphere?

A: Voila. The flame is, in fact, a sphere. An interesting side note is that, without gravity, the flame can't get rid of the CO2 generated in the combustion, so it snuffs itself out unless there is a breeze to carry away the CO2 and keep the the flame exposed to oxygen.

The irony is that astronauts have been killed by flames while on the ground. In 1961 cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko, and later in 1967, the crew of Apollo 1, were killed by accidental fires that ignited the pure oxygen environments in their enclosures. Subsequent missions reduced the oxygen content of the air to 60% Oxygen and boosted Nitrogen to 40% to prevent fireballs like those in the future.

I like knowledge! a.k.a. "Stiffs in Space!"

Q: And I also like the last question, from the comments section on the previous post: What happens to a body exposed to outer space? Would it bloat and freeze? Or would solar radiation burn it to a crisp? Should we eventually consider jettisoning our dead to save room on Earth for the living?

For completeness, here's that great question from Courtney that you mention:

Q: If we ejected dead bodies into space, would they decompose? All I know about space is there's no oxygen and it's cold. Would the body just freeze? And when reentering the atmosphere, would it become hot enough to totally cremate the bones, or just the rest of the body?

A: As you might guess, this has been a question that rocket scientists (and nervous astronauts) have been interested in for decades. Exposure to vacuum in space is not only a possibility for people traveling in spacecraft, it has unfortunately happened in at least one case. No bodies have ever been released into space, however, so the real-world effects of exposure of a corpse to hard vacuum are speculation so far. We do know some things, though, so I'll break down a few of the factors.

Vacuum and you

NASA, in preparation for launching men into orbit, ran a series of tests in "altitude chambers" where subjects were exposed to varying levels of air pressure, temperature, and radiation. Several things occur, in an increasingly dangerous and alarming sequence as air pressure drops around a living body. First, there is an explosive release of gases from the lungs and digestive tract. The effect, if the person tried to hold it in, would be something like the scene in Jaws when the rifle bullet ruptures a scuba tank in the shark's belly. Messy. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but you get the idea. Second, without air pressure to keep it liquid, water would boil away from the eyes and mouth, eventually boiling in the blood and heart. An immediate effect would be the bloating and bruising of soft tissues as they are inflated by the water vapor. Third, nitrogen in the victim's blood stream would start to fizz out and cause "the bends", a painful and disorienting state that divers often experience when surfacing too quickly from great depths. The final effect, (and the one that will actually kill you) is "hypoxia", lack of air to the brain that will starve it. Before that happens (around the first 10 seconds) the victim will have his or her wits about them before succumbing to disorientation and unconsciousness. After a minute or so of unconsciousness, they can still be revived with minor injuries. Shortly after, the brain dies.

One effect of a vacuum, however, may sound counter-intuitive. Because heat is usually most notably gained or lost through contact with air or water, a vacuum actually preserves body temperature for a long time. After a brief period of cooling down from evaporation, the body will stay relatively warm, compared to the extremely low temperatures of space itself. That means that the body will primarily dry out rather than freezing, so someone exposed to the vacuum will be in more danger of suffocation than dying of the cold. If left alone, the body would mummify, just like the pharaohs.

Radiation: sunny or toasty?

Sources seem to disagree on how much heat would be generated within the body tissues when unprotected in space. I've seen everything from "fried crispy" to "bad sunburn", but we are talking about a dead body in this case, so the difference is relatively minimal. There does seem to be agreement that solar radiation would not be strong enough to burn the body away. Well,... at least, not at first. The reality is that unprotected exposure to radiation in space would eventually break down the body at a cellular and molecular level. The body would become brittle and eventually disintegrate, bit by bit, over time.

(If you're interested in more detail, this article on Damn Interesting seems to have the best info gathered in one place. It's a great site to thumb through, in any case!)

Going home

I actually have very little data on what would happen to a body falling into atmosphere, but we can certainly guess. Objects from space are free-falling Earthward all the time. If you look at the sky in any place far from city lights, you can see them. Pfft! Gone. Most are tiny - from the size of a grain of sand to the size of a baseball. They create a light show as they generate friction with the air particles in the atmosphere, and burn up in the process. But here's the kicker - whether they reach the ground or not depends on the speed they were traveling when they got here. Small meteorites can reach the ground more or less intact if they were moving slowly, and a big meteor can break up into tiny pieces under enough atmospheric stress. So when you ask "would a body from space burn up entirely on reentry", the answer depends on the corpse's velocity when it hit the atmosphere. It seems that a body, being mostly carbon, would turn into charcoal pretty easily. In any case, I doubt you would find anything recognizable as a people part at the point of impact.

Space cremation for dollar$?

While the idea of saving lawn space for development by chunking our dead into space has some appeal, I doubt the economics work out. However, I'll just betcha you could make a pile of money charging people to have their ashes scattered in space. Oh, wait - someone's already done that.

Hey DougO, Where ya been?

No new posts in over a year?  What's up with that?

They don't call it the Poop deck for nothing. Do they?

Q: So Doug-O what part of the ship is the poop deck, and why in Salacious Crumb do they call it a poop deck? Is there some misunderstanding of the word poop and it actually has nothing to do with feces? Did they just think it was funny? Please explain.

A: The "poop deck" of a ship is the raised platform at the back that forms the roof of the aft deck cabin.  The back end of a ship (the aft end, in naval parlance) is called the stern (as opposed to the bow in front), and the word for stern in French is la poupe.  Ha ha.  Poupe.  At any rate, the poop deck was where the helmsman stood to steer the ship, as well as the captain and his officers when they weren't occupied elsewhere, since the raised perspective gave an excellent view of the the deck, the rigging, and the horizon in all directions.  As the poop deck was the command center, where all the most important decisions radiated from, maybe this is the root of the term "the straight poop".

Why the English, constantly at war with "Pierre" across the channel, tolerated naming an important part of their ships with a French term is hard to imagine.  Maybe the average sailor just didn't know that they were doing so, and the officers were too well-bred to make a fuss about it.  Maybe it was simply that everyone on board was constantly on a low-level drunk from grog and so used to weird naval terms like "scuppers", "larboard", "bowsprit" and "figgy dowdy" that "poop" didn't sound unusual.

He Chose...Poorly.

Q: Hey DougO. I meant to ask this an eon ago, but a baby got in the way. Now I finally have time to address real issues. Thus: I was sitting in my bathroom one day, um, relaxing, and happened to notice a tiny little spider had spun it's web in the bottom corner behind the door. It was just sitting there, waiting. So it occurred to me, how patient are spiders? I mean, if real estate is all about location, location, location, then this little guy just bought a money-pit in downtown Beirut. No way was he ever going to catch anything there to feed on. So how long will a spider wait for prey before it packs up and moves? Will it just sit there and die?

A: You would be surprised how little people seem to worry about spiders starving to death.  Most research into that sort of thing seems to have been done by exterminators, who would rather not tell you how it can be accomplished if they can charge you for it instead.

I have managed to dredge up some pertinant information, though.  First, spiders are always a little thirsty, so much so that scientists have been able to attract them with syringes full of liquid.  It's at that point that they feed them LSD or THC, then film the webs thay make and laugh at them, subsequently putting the results up on YouTube.  Take into account that spiders are liquivores, living on the inside juices of their prey, and you can see how they are consequently also hungry all the time.  This is good conditioning for a predator, but bad for developing patience.

Complicating this problem for the spider is that most species of spider that build webs are entirely dependent on the web for food and information about its surroundings.  They are nearly blind, and use the vibrations of the web itself to read air currents and interpret sounds.  Their only option, therefore, is to build a web in a likely spot for smaller company and hope.  It doesn't hurt their chances to build where it is dark and slightly damp, too, so that they dry out slower.

Some exterminators have mentioned (reluctantly) that wrecking a spider's web and then hampering its attempts to repair or rebuild it will eventually cause the spider to starve.  But there wasn't much information on how long that might take.  Given that a Black Widow can live up to five years, and a Bird-Eating spider maybe 15 years, it's hard to guess what their staying power is, as opposed to, say, flies, who might die in a day or two under the best conditions.  

I would propose an experiment.  Search around for a spider that seems to be successful, then observe it over a period of time and see how many bugs it seems to be consuming per day.  That should give you a round figure, per ounce of spider.  Then, if your bathroom spider does go to that Big Creepy House in the Sky, feed it to the successful spider.

Numbers, Numbers everywhere so let's all have a drink.

Dear Doug,

Q: On my computer keyboard, the number pad starts with 1 on the bottom row. On my phone the numbers start with 1 on the top row.

Why are these two similar systems diametrically opposed? Is it like the struggle of capitalism vs. socialism? Why can't we all just get along?

A: Hm.  This one doesn't have the same answer as the "QWERTY" layout for keyboards, which was a mechanical solution to jamming early typewriters.  But it may be something similar, on a a psychological level, giving the user what they expect for the function of the pad.

I have no conclusive proof for this theory, but here it is.

Computer number pads are arranged in the same configuration as the buttons on a calculator, counting up from the bottom from 0.  This would be the expected behavior for early mass-produced computers, since they were (until a decade or two ago, in fact) considered to be nothing much more than very complicated and powerful calculators themselves.  VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program, was the first "killer app" for personal computers after all, and the reason people bought them in the early days - as a piece of accounting hardware.

Cell phones, however, developed from landline phones with keypads, which in turn developed from rotary phones.  Rotary phones counted upwards from 1,  starting at the top and going counter-clockwise around the dial to end at 0, which, besides being a number, represented the "O" in "Operator", making it a special space on the dial.  When phones moved from rotary to tuoch-tone dialing, the format of 1 to 9 going down with 0 in a special place at the bottom was maintained for familiarity and ease of use.  When equivalents for letters were needed, the letters of the alphabet were arranged in the same way, going from A to Z in groups in the same arrangement as the numbers, with the special buttons * and # at the bottom with the magic 0.

The problem, as you've already figured out, is when cell phones are computers, as is almost universally the case now.  No open warfare has broken out, and as far as I know, no one has mysteriously disappeared due to conflicts over how keypads are laid out.  So I have to conclude, even given that this is a mystery, that no secret societies are involved.

Well,... of course the vampires and the Bavarian Illuminati are involved, but that's always a given.

The Vomiting Conundrum

So my wife and son are sick with a virus that causes both vomiting and the diarrhea. As anyone who shares close quarters with sickies knows I am going to get the virus. Its just a matter of when. Knowing that at any moment the virus could strike me I have been choosing my meals based purely on how pleasant or unpleasant they will be on the return trip. So the question DougO is...

Q: If you knew you were going to be vomiting it back up at some point but it was dinner time and you were hungry, what would you eat?

A: My guess is that this is the reason for the old adage "feed a cold and starve a fever".  Or was it "starve a cold..."?  Nah.  Let's go with the first one.  At any rate, a fever is more likely to come with a stomach virus, and around the onset of such things you are unlikely to feel like a big lunch, anyway.  But, for this case, say that you are a bit peckish.  Reason dictates that you want something without much texture, like broth or jello.  I always find the chunkier foods the least pleasant to revisit later.  But, of course, this is up to your personal taste in textures.  

I might also suggest that eating bland foods and foods that are easier on the digestion could forestall having to chuck it up later at all, working on the theory that your body has a tipping point that, once passed, triggers the response.  Keeping your body from getting to that point might mean you could ride the brief illness out without incident.

Personally, I take a more grimly determined route.  Considering how many things can upset my stomach, and given that most of those causes are transitory (or caused by not having eaten, or eaten the right things), I tend to eat whatever I want as long as I still have appetite.  I won't eat sausage or raw jalapenos, of course, but I won't starve myself just because I might be sick later.  Proper sustenance is, after all, part of good health.  Bring it on, agents of disease.  Let's see what you got.

The Deadly Sneeze

Q: There is one myth I don't see ever being tested on Mythbusters: that sneezing with your eyes open will cause your eyes to pop out of their sockets. Any truth to this? It's obviously not something I'm willing to try.

A: Authorities of no less prominence than Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope claim that there is no truth to this rumor, although one of his readers claims to have burst blood vessels in his eyes in the attempt.  I don't know if this seond claim is true, but it seems to follow reason that you will hurt yourself whenever you try to short-circuit your body's defense mechanisms (seeing if you can avoid flinching when hitting your fingers with a hammer, say).  So your caution is well-founded, even if you are likely to avoid having to shove your eyeballs back in if you try it.  

Incidentally, in the interest of related scientific discovery, my sons have determined that you do not explode if you burp, fart and sneeze at the same time.

Fingernails in our future?

Q: Hey Doug, why do humans have fingernails? It seems we should have evolved past them, seeing as they don't do more than fray and annoy and grow funny. Do you see a future without them?

A: Most sources say basically the same thing about fingernails and toenails: that nails protect sensitive nerve endings in the fingers, that both sets are leftovers from claws, and that they are (just FYI) made of keratin - the same material that claws and hooves are made of in other animals. Some sources claim, incorrectly, that the nails developed to protect the delicate nail bed. That's like saying phones lines were developed to give telephone poles meaning and purpose. But I digress. At least one source explains the current shape of fingernails and toenails as an adaptive reaction to the broadening of our grasping appendages, used to lift us off of the plains and into the safety of the trees. Our fingers developed more surface area for gripping, so nails became a flatter protection for the sensitive ends. Probably true, but that doesn't really explain "why nails instead of claws?", since many tree-living species get along just fine with claws to adhere themselves to branches and tree trunks. My favorite suggestion was that fingernails made it easier to pick body lice off of oneself or a comrade. I guess that was a pretty serious problem at the time. Or a source of protein.

As for whether we will ever lose nails for lack of use, I recommend that you try getting along without them for a few days. Trim them back or tape your fingers, as one writer suggests, and you'll see how soon you miss them. Having recently had two of my fingernails gouged out, I can tell you I missed them more than I ever missed a phillips head screwdriver. When the bomb drops and everyone is scrambling for that last FreshPak of bologna, I think the survivors will be the ones who can get that little zipper thing open without having to hunt down a pair of scissors from the smouldering, radioactive wreckage.

Russian Race Horses

Hate to do it to you, Doug, but this question actually occurred to me during a meeting ... and I instantly thought of you.... :)
Frantically preparing for an impending meeting, Dinley was panicking and said "I've got to [urinate] like a Russian Race Horse." And off he went.
Q: So, the question is, naturally, how did this association come about? Are Russian Race Horses notorious for massive amounts of pee? Or do they have trouble holding it?

A: This answer was so good, I had to quote it directly from the source, The Phrase Finder: "All horses urinate visibly, audibly and above all copiously, and presumably this is an occurrence highly noticeable at a race meeting when the competing horses are led around the parade ring for the crowds to examine before the off."

This, of course, leaves the "Russian" element out, but covers the basic phenomenon. I was surprised at the number of people who seem to be seeking the answer to this same question online. It's not a meme I would have expected. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be an agreed-upon answer for "why Russian race horse", but there was a suggestion (probably untrue) put forward. According to one source (who heard it from a guy, etc.), Russian horse trainers used to uh,... tie off their horses before a race, thinking that they would run faster if they really needed to go, and that they could expect to be allowed to relieve themselves at the finish line. I tend to doubt this, as much because I doubt a horse would be allowed to spatter judges and happy well-wishers with "copious" urination at their moment of glory, but mostly because I can't imagine that I myself would run better under those conditions.

Mushrooms... what are they?

So Doug, we are having a debate at my work about whether mushrooms are considered a vegetable in terms of food. The debate gets even more complex because apparently the scientific community considers a mushroom actually closer to the animal kingdom while the FDA considers it a vegetable. So which is it?

A: The honest answer is "maybe".

The term "vegetable" is similar to "germ", in that it is in general use but does not have a precise definition. "Vegetable" generally refers to the edible parts of a plant, but commonly includes mushrooms and other edible fungi, and no one seems to get torn out of the frame about it. Certainly mushrooms themselves haven't weighed in on the issue, and, as far as I know, they have no lobbyists on either side. It might be entertaining to make a good case that mushrooms are really animals, then see the reactions of the vegetarians at PETA.

Simultaneous Spawn?

So, word on the street is, you, Doug, and a Mr. David Rose happen to have the same birthday.
Q: Is that weird, or what? And what Matt wants to know is, were you both spawned in the fiery pits of . . . the same place?

A: To the first question: Yes, it is. In answer to Matt's question, I can only say that I was born in New Jersey. You may draw your own conclusions.

To Pee, or Not to Pee

Q: In an episode of 'Friends', one character is stung by a jellyfish, and another comes to her rescue by urinating on the affected area. Apparently a chemical in the pee neutralizes the stinging sensation. Is this myth or fact? If a friend is writhing in pain from a jellyfish attack, and the pressure is on to do something, should you whip it out?

A: Nope. Peeing on jellyfish stings provides more entertainment value than medical assistance. There are two issues to deal with in a jellyfish sting, and urine does not address either one of them effectively.

The Cause
Jellyfish are covered in small cells called nematocysts - basically tiny water balloons with poison darts in the middle. Stings are caused when nematocysts burst and drive the stingers into your skin, and there are always a good number of nematocysts left untriggered that cling to the outside of the wound. Your first job is to get them off, before they can make the situation worse. Urine contains a substance, urea, that was used in the past as an antiseptic (among many other things), but what you need is something that will neutralize the stinging cells. Tests show that urine may actually cause the remaining cells to fire, so that's out. Vinegar seems to neutralize the nematocysts from most jellyfish, even the dreaded Box Jellyfish of Australia, which is so painful that it could kill you by shock alone. A notable exception to this cure is the Portuguese Man-O-War, whose stinger cells may actually be triggered by vinegar. Rinse with salt water instead. In no case should a jellyfish wound be rinsed with fresh water, and nothing should ever be rubbed into the wound. Some experts recommend shaving the affected area with a razor to remove the stingers after the nematocysts have been rendered safe.

The Pain
Jellyfish stings are similar to bee stings, so they respond to similar treatments, such as Benadryl and hydrocortisone. Again, urine doesn't help with the pain of a jellyfish sting, except in one potential fashion. If the person peed on believes it will help, then they may feel an actual lessening of their pain through the "placebo effect", as their mind is calmed by the belief that they have been treated. Yes, this actually works, since a major component of healing is psychological. And it's a lot more interesting for onlookers.

WOOT?!?

Q: I see it all the time in blogs, IMs, etc., seemingly expressing some kind of excitement, but really, is just annoys me. A lot. So what the heck is a Woot anyway?!? And how does one kill it??

A: You speak ill of "w00t"? Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2007? Don't be hatin'.

W00t (spelled with two zeroes, rather than O's) is the current generation's equivalent of a John Phillip Sousa march, with all the excitement for far less effort or calories. Its popularity is due to its use in video game culture, but specific details of how it came into being vary wildly. Reuters says in the above article that "w00t" is a derivative of the obsolete word "whoot", a derisive laugh, or may simply be the noise that bunny-hopping players in Halo or Quake make as they carom about the map like rubber balls. People in hacker circles claim that it goes back to a system of code words used to throw off prying administrators, and that it was an indicator that the hacker had tapped into the "root" of a system. When I did my own digging a while back, I found sources that claim "woot" is an acronym for "we owned (the) other team". These encapsulate the most serious answers I've seen, though they aren't the only ones.

I think the "whoot" reference is half-baked. It sounds like a grown-up who doesn't get gamers, and all their newfangledy talk. I also find the hacker origin suspect. It smacks of a snobby funlessness that "w00t" rejects by its very nature. It seems likely to me that the answer is a hybrid of two of the theories - a happy hooting noise that also condenses some longer phrase, if not the one mentioned then something similar. Besides that, it just fun. W00t! Heh. I feel happier, just for typing that. W00t! W00t! Heh. W0000000t!

Gumming up the Works

Q: This came up in conversation earlier, but was never resolved to my satisfaction...so I leave it to you, DougO, to confirm or bust this myth: does swallowed chewing gum really stay in your stomach for years?

A: The crux of the matter is that chewing gum doesn't digest - it's made of a natural or synthetic latex, originally from tree sap, but later replaced by cheaper polymers. So swallowing it does it no harm except maybe to ruin the flavor. I leave that flavor to your imagination.

But, no, it has no special properties that would make it cling to your insides. It hangs out about as long as pennies, buttons or crayons do in your system - about two days. Then it makes it's way out with an even newer, less appealing flavor.

Incidentally, the story I was told as a small child about gum was weirder. I was told never to go to bed with gum in my mouth or it would end up in my hair. Actually, that's pretty straightforward. But what I thought they meant was that it would absorb magically into my body and I would start oozing chewing gum out of my hair follicles, like through one of those Play-Doh squeezers. I was terrified. It was only much later in life that I realized what they were talking about. Needless to say, I've been pretty shy of gum ever since.

Hot chicks posing as Fat Guys

Q: Me and several of my dullard coworkers were pondering a simple question which arrived from an irrelevant conversation. And that question was are there any hot chicks in the entire world posing as Fat Guys on the internet? We all know many many fat guys pose as hot chicks but I'm betting the opposite never happens. And if it does, at all, how many do you think there are? And please, show your math.

A: Aw , jeez. Math. OK, here's my best shot.

The Why
The odds against such a thing happening are, admittedly, very long. If you are a "hot chick", i.e. a woman of marriageable age who turns heads and doesn't have to worry about being alone on a Saturday, there are few incentives for pretending that you are not so. Odds are that you have spent a great deal of time, money and energy to become so, and pretending that you were not would be a waste of that investment. However, it is conceivable that you would be in a situation where it would be a hindrance to have it known that you are "hot", female, and possibly even unattached. The prime example would be when you have decided to become involved in internet gaming.

I have no real idea how many attractive women have, say, an account on World of Warcraft, but I imagine the numbers to be low, given the random sample of people I know to be MMO gamers. They tend to be male, and in a range between sullen, hormonal high-school geek to middle-aged, paunchy Star Wars fan. This is a broad generalization, but,... c'mon. You know I'm not stretching much here. There is nothing per se to prevent an athletic, stunningly beautiful coed from joining the Horde. I just can't imagine it happens that often.

That said, there probably are a few. Why then would they advertise themselves as a fat guy (I picture glasses with green stains around the nose braces and Chee-to stains on his shirt) in such an environment? The same reason one prefers not to wear swim trunks made of bacon when swimming near piranhas. Leveling and managing inventory is difficult enough without having to constantly answer chat windows asking what you are wearing. You're not likely to get hit on by hunky millionaires or statuesque lifeguards online. You'll get Comic Store guy 99 times out of 100. I'm just sayin'.

The Math (such as it is)
The total world population, as of the 2007 census, is roughly 6.68 billion people. Of those people, the the number in the top three most populous countries - China, India, and the USA - are 1.33 billion, 1.15 billion, and 303.8 million, respectively. But internet use breaks down differently. In the entire world, there are roughly 1.02 billion internet users, with the national breakdowns for the before-mentioned countries on the order of 208 million for the US (2/3 of the population), 162 million for all of China, and only 60 million for India (must... restrain... cheap stereotypical jab...). Considering that the entire European union has 247 million users, and Japan has only 87 million (the same percentage as the US), we're still looking at the heavy end of internet use in these few countries - 764 million out of 1.02 billion, or roughly 75%.

Given 208 million internet users in the US, I'm going to make a conservative (and unsupported) guess that there are at least 5 hot chicks in the US pretending to be fat guys.

SO:
For every US citizen online, one might guess that there are:
- 1.18 Europeans
- .78 Chinese
- .42 Japanese, and
- .29 Indians

This gets trickier, because internet use skews heavily male in the US and Europe (say 60%), and more so in Asia (let's say 75%). Factor in that only a small percentage of the internet users anywhere are MMO players and that drops the chances of any hot/fat woman outside of the most industrialized countries of the West to less that 1/4 of a woman! (Unless, of course they all are pretending, to avoid being crushed by paternalistic social forces,... but this is even more wild speculation).

Drumroll, please...
So, the question was "how many hot chicks in the world are posing as fat guys on the internet?" Based on nothing more than population statistics and my own fevered conjecture:

7.

No, 8.

Conspiracy Theory

Q: Dear DougO, what really happened in Roswell in 1947?

A: What, you don't believe your own government?

To recap the story, aliens supposedly crash-landed in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico, and the chunks of their flying saucer as well as their icky, unearthly bodies were recovered and secreted away by the US Air Force. Subsequent clumsy lies about it later from military officials, coupled with a stubborn reluctance to release the facts to the public, fueled belief in this version of events. The government has since released what documents they still had on the event (crappy as they are), but speculation still rolls on, if at a somewhat less than fever pitch. Oddly enough, some UFO nuts denounce the whole thing as a hoax, feeling that other UFO nuts who keep pressing the issue are making them look bad. The government shrugs its shoulders irritably and the Aliens seem to be unaware of the controversy altogether.

Seeing as how there are many, many websites that chew endlessly over the facts and implications of the Roswell crash, I feel comfortable operating in my usual mode - glib personal opinion. Here are my thoughts:

Were there aliens in the crash? Geez, I sure hope so. Speaking as an inhabitant of The Future, in a time where we have Star Trek communicators that can talk to anyone, anywhere, we have potatoes that grow plastic, and scientists have built an interface that lets monkeys control a computer with their brain waves, I have to ask, "Where are my flying cars?"

Aliens could build flying cars, I bet. And they could make them with good gas mileage. Considering the nearest planets that could conceivably support life are something like 100,000 light years away, their rides must be not only fast but sip fuel. Take that, Japanese car makers! Oh - and I want my own personal robot companion. Yes, I know that it will eventually turn against the human race and try to destroy us, but that may not be in my lifetime.

Assuming that the aliens aren't all dead (some say they've been caught wandering around in these blurry videos), I have have a long shopping list of future stuff I'd like to see. And I'd be willing to trade nice Earth stuff for it, too - hot dogs, native flora, glass beads, chia pets, old Kansas 8-track tapes, my brother's BMW,... I'm in a bargaining mood. But the reality may be that we need protection. Did I mention monkeys were taking over computers with mind control? Best deal with the problems of our day before spending all of our chits on getting my Corolla in the air.

Asking Jeeves

Q: What, oh what, ever happened to Ask Jeeves?

A: An excellent question, and one that has haunted my thoughts many a dark night. One could do a Google search on this, of course, but the fact is that those who would have the power and the will to "disappear" a beloved character like Jeeves would also have the wherewithal to hide their trail.

MY guess is that Jeeves has gone into hiding, possibly with Subcommander Marcos, possibly with Alf, and is finding recipes and dispensing wisdom covertly under some other alias. Probably "AskMcDuggin", or some such name.