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.

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.

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.