A: Dear not a "Claymate,"

I never really put much thought into the sexual orientation of Clay... but a thought used to come to my mind when I read those articles where he denied being a homosexual: methinks thou doth protest too much!

~Krishna

A: Dear definitely

I said Aiken knows better than anyone else what his orientation is. I guess he decided to let us know.

-Humble Master

A: Dear NOT,

While I'm not ecstatic that I'm helping to give this more press than it deserves (read: little to none), I thought I'd pass along the funniest thing I heard regarding Mr. Aiken:

Yes, Clay Aiken has officially come out of the closet, triggering the expected “well, no duh” jokes. Most observers, and plenty of his fans, have strongly suspected it for a long time. What’s newsworthy (relatively speaking) is that he’s finally settled the matter once and for all and ended the speculation. Apparently, within the Claymate community there has been much debate over his sexuality, with one camp insisting he’s straight while the other camp says, “Um, really? Have you seen him?” Now the issue is resolved, and Clay’s fans can move on to more important topics, whatever those might be.

Thank you, Eric D. Snider, where ever you are . . .

- Rating Pending (who knows that he's actually in Portland)

A: Dear Fredjikrang ~

Depends on why I'm sad.

If I'm sad because I stubbed my toe, then I treat myself to ice cream and try to distract myself.

If I'm sad because my kitty died, then it takes time to overcome that grief. I would probably go and get myself another kitty so that being constantly kitty-less won't remind me so much.

If I'm sad because I'm a girl and... well, we get sad sometimes... then usually I recognize that I'm just being sad and emotional because I'm a girl and try to remember that it won't last. It helps a bit, but it doesn't solve it. Mostly I tell Yellow or someone else that cares about me that I'm sad and let them hold me and tell me it's going to be ok. I also do a lot of crying. Then I'll go to bed early because typically sleep will cure this temporary sadness, and I'll wake up happy again.

If I'm sad because I've hit a depressed stage of my life, and I'm just sad all of the time... well... that's when it gets a bit trickier. I pray. A lot. Like, this happens once for every time I do anything else that I'm about to list. I confide in people I love and trust. I try to distract myself from my sadness by doing things I love like playing games or watching movies (though this one is sketchy... don't watch any movies that'll remind you of what you're sad about). I try to pinpoint why I'm sad ... what's the cause... and then I try to remove it from my life. Or at least try to figure out how to change so that it no longer makes me sad. I look at myself and figure out what in the gospel I should be doing, but am not. Remember, God said that He's bound when we do what He says, but when we do not what He says, we have no promise. Sometimes it's something simple like I stopped reading my scriptures daily. Sometimes it's something harder, like I've gotten into a habit of gossiping. I also try to think outside of myself. I pick a person to serve silently. I make a roommate's bed or do the dishes when it's not my turn. Or I write a note to tell them how much I appreciate them.

And on a completely other track, I try to take care of my body better. When I get sad, I tend to stop eating as well, I don't exercise at all, and I might not sleep as much. Then I start getting sick (which isn't hard for me) which makes me even more sad and helps the downward spiral. Instead, I start looking at how I can be healthier, even if it's just walking for a half hour every evening, or drinking more water, or getting a baked potato instead of fries at Wendy's. The healthier my body is, the more energy I have to help my emotional self get better.

As I look through the above things, I think my three pieces of advice for any kind of sadness are 1) Pray. Trust God. Return back to Him. 2) Take care of your body. 3) Distract yourself from the cause of the sadness with something that makes you happy.

~ Dragon Lady

A: Dear Fred-

I cook/bake, apparently. Tonight I drowned my sorrows in the preparation of nearly a pound of beef and two pounds of fudge.

The beef was mine. The fudge was shared. Both were delicious. I feel better.

-Foreman

A: Dear Fredjikrang,

Like Foreman, I enjoy baking when I'm unhappy. It gives me something else to put my mind on. But sometimes when I'm sad I don't have much energy- so I'll go grab a can of my favorite drink and watch either a sappy movie or a funny movie. It works...

~Krishna

A: Dear F.:

There is usually a lot of crying and hanging up during phone calls involved. And fatalism.

---Portia

A: Dear Fredjikrang,

Wow. I am surprised at how productive people are when they are sad. Is no one like me, and of the good old, sit-around-moping, staring-into-space-and-being-unproductive, way of thinking? Hmmm. Now I feel even more unproductive. Predictably, this makes me sad.

- Rating Pending (who has never been able to bring himself to just yell and scream when he's sad or mad. He wonders if this is unusual.)

A: Dear Ethel,

I find someone to cry on. Somehow being not alone when I'm sad helps me feel happier. It's strange. I've also been accused of getting snot on people.

-Polly Esther

A: Dear,

Though we try to be unbiased in our selection, and go mainly for whoever has the application that fits us best, we sometimes also take into consideration what we know of the applicants. People who like the Board are good, people who are obsessive about the Board and about tracking us down are scary.

-Uffish Thought

A: Dear Considering,

I have personally thrown in my veto on certain apps because obsessive Boardies freak me out.

To those of you considering unmasking Board writers for fun: don't. It's just creepy in the lamest way possible.

-a writer who is uneasy at best with people stalking him down

A: Dear considerer,

Let me just add my own opinion on this whole concept.

I have no problem with people who, through their own ingenuity and talent, manage to figure out my own identity.

I do have a problem with people who think that possession of said knowledge merits my recognition or merit. If you figure out who I am, that's fine, so long as I'm none the wiser. But please, don't start adding me as a friend on Facebook and asking if I want to hang out on the weekend. However much you know about me, it's probably more than I know about you, and such one-way relationships tend to not work out too well.

The ability to find information is a valuable trait in applicants. The ability to do so without causing discomfort and alarm in the possessors of said knowledge is even more valuable. We don't want writers who are going to cause all our sources to write letters to BYU expressing their discomfort over our activities. That's not good for anyone.

So if you know who I am, good for you. Just don't make me wish that you didn't know.

-Yellow

A: Dear hasn't,

What Yellow left out is that you shouldn't make us wish you didn't know, or we'll make you wish you didn't know. The tunnel worms are always eager to take care of such situations.

-glib

A: Dear goodness,

She should fit right in, she's already breaking the law by using personal email accounts for official government business and the ignorant statement she made during her RNC speech about reading suspected terrorists their rights shows she's more than willing to continue the systematic dismantling of our civil liberties.

-obstreperous

A: Dear Thank Goodness~

Could it be that no one has asked any questions about this dynamite woman?

Not on the Board, at least. Heaven knows she's captured the media's attention. (Joe Biden? Who's Joe Biden?)

I mean, sure, it's been the media desperately and vainly looking for cracks in her armor, but poor ol' Obama just lost the only weapon in his arsenal! That poor man might have to actually form some actual stances on things, instead of just mumbling about his family and how "John McCain loves this country, he just doesn't understand, from his massively superior experience, what this country needs! Hey, hey YOU! Stop looking at my voting record! I'm a uniter, despite everything I've done officially up to this point!"

Is she the ticket for McCain to get into the White House?

Well, it's nice to see a Conservative on the Republican ticket, at least. John McCain was not someone I could get excited about. Sarah Palin, despite the fact that she's running for the anonymity and impotence of Vice-Presidency, is someone I can get excited about.

What do you guys think about a woman possible serving as vice-president?

I didn't care that Hillary is a woman, and I don't care that Palin is a woman.

However, it's evident that a significant number of Americans disagree with me. Even though it was a cynical and shallow move for McCain to pick a woman in hopes of picking up disaffected Clintonites, it was obviously a good move, too.

Sigh.

~Hobbes is almost positive he'll get flamed for this one.

A: Dear Thanks:

I do think it's significant that she's a woman: as one myself, it's always gratifying to see one of my own make it that far in the world. She is the only woman on a presidential ticket (I was born post-Ferraro) in my lifetime. I want my kids and grandkids to grow up in a world where that's not such an anomaly.

I do not think McCain will win, regardless of veep choice.

I find her stances on abortion (she does not believe it should be legal even in cases of rape--a position I do not find to be compatible with the teachings of the LDS church for starters; also, women in Wasilla had to pay for rape kits), war (yeah, I'm sure invading Russia is a great idea), and the economy (and she contradicts herself in the course of one paragraph!) to be incompatible with my personal beliefs.

In short, I think it is nearly always a gain to see a woman break the all-too-real glass ceilings still extant in our society today, but this woman is not going to get my vote.

---Portia

A: Dear bored on Saturday,

That woman makes me want to tear what's left of my hair out. Iraq is God's errand? Oh yeah. She bugs to the max. I don't want her running any part of my country.

As for there being a woman in the White House, it's pretty sad that multiple Global South countries have put women in significant leadership positions without a thought and we're still making a huge deal about it.

-Linoleum Blownapart

A: Dear LB~

Now, in fairness, she never actually said that.

The quote which circulated in the media was:

“Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,"

The actual quote is:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God,

She was asking the congregation to pray that America is doing the right thing.

One can hope that a journalist or two was fired over this blatant misrepresentation, but such is likely not the case.

~Hobbes

A: Dear Ethel,

I asked my recently-had-a-baby source your question and she said that after 16 weeks you can't lie on your back because the weight can compress the large artery and cause the fetus not to get enough oxygen plus lying on the left side maximizes oxygen, blood and nutrients to the baby.

-Polly Esther

A: Dear Disturber of the Force,

I am much afraid that if you were to reverse the effect of gravity for the entire earth, not only would your buildings be pushed away from the earth's core roughly at a diminishing 9.81m/s^2, but the mantle and core would be repelled at even a faster rate, causing no end of chaos. I think your houses are toast. And no amount of scraping will remove the black parts.

If you are willing to scale back on your wanton destruction and simply dangle the house by its foundation, we might be able to get things together enough to ... watch... them... fall apart.

Well, to answer this fully, I thought: we are going to need a step-by-step breakdown of how a house is built to determine its upside-down-hold-together-atude-ness. So, I built a house. As it turns out, it was too windy on Monday to fly the trusses, and we didn't work on Sunday, so it ended up taking about 140 hours to build. Sorry for the delay, register your complaints with the wind.

As it turns out, a well built home will hold up astonishingly well against vertical forces. While the foundation was being poured we placed J-shaped straps of metal (known as hurricane straps) at the corners of the building. <Img src="http://theboard.byu.edu/filelib/Images/47556%20bolts.jpg"> Every two to three feet we left an eight inch long 1/2 inch diameter anchor bolt embedded into the foundation. To these we bolted 2x6x12 pressure treated "greenboards" with a sealant under them and square plate compression washers (for some reason the square washers withstand over 1000lbs more force than round ones). And all that is just on the outer walls, the pony walls you can see going up in the last picture were adhered by a sub-floor adhesive and then nailed with a .27 caliber powder actuated nail gun (which was WAY cool btw...).

To sum up, those beams aren't coming free of the foundation. The next joint would be the weakest to a vertical force in my opinion. Most of the nails attaching the walls to the greenboards were driven vertically in, thus are not much good for holding against being pulled right back out when the house is flipped. You can't just write them off, however, and a great many were toenailed (angled) in. In addition the sheeting that covers the outside walls was heavily nailed to the greenboards, as those would be running perpendicular to the new gravitational force, they would have to shear (not likely) or split the sheeting (even less likely if the wood is still good) before failing. Most likely would be the walls bowing until the nails were bent "down" towards the g force. I find this scenario difficult to imagine as well, but timber is heavy, there would be a lot of strain in a direction not planned for. (No pictures here, turns out any pic close enough to show detail ends up showing little more than the head of a nail embedded into wood... sigh.)

Walls are pretty much symmetrical, so we'll move on to the last major joint: the trusses. As I said, Monday was too windy to fly the trusses, and I was laminating a 6x10x32 beam for much of the time they were able to actually get them in, so no pictures here either. (Which is a shame, really, the 100ft crane was something to see.) Roofing has notably different specs depending on the state you are in and the building code of your particular area. In areas with high chances of major storms or earthquakes, you might find hurricane straps around each joint, and even up and over the rafters in some cases. A 200 mph wind can create some major forces, and a building built to withstand something along those lines is much more likely to hold up in your topsy-turvy condition. Ours didn't have to meet that strict of code, and while the entire roof was toenailed, I don't know how well it would hold if the straps failed.

Well, there you have it, Señor Sith-Lord, I figure you've already got housing all taken care of, so I took the liberty of giving your house to someone else. The Jackmans sure are looking forward to moving in.

Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room.
Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room.
Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.(XI,5-7)

-Tao

A: Dear fjord girl,

How's your posture? Do you cross your legs as you sit? If you slouch or cross your legs too much you are putting extra stress on your posterior. I got sore in the rear at my desk job this summer, but as soon as I stopped crossing my legs it went away. Other things that might help include a cushion, and standing up for a few minutes every hour or so.

--Gray Ghost

A: Dear Mr. Questionable,

Word of mouth is always an excellent way to rummage up people to come take a look at your website. Tell people about it! Tell your friends to go see it, get your friends to tell their friends to go take a look, link the web page on Facebook or your blog or any other online site that you are on. If it is an interesting site then people will want to tell other people to go there- and before you know it there will be tons of people using your website!

~Krishna

A: Dear Ethel,

If you can get your site front-paged on digg or reddit then I can guarantee you enough traffic to crash your servers (but this is rather difficult to do in practice - if you manage it, let me know how). You can submit your site to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN (or a variety of other places). They will eventually come across your site, but if you submit it you can specify your own keywords and also cause it to get listed faster. Getting other sites to link to you will also boost an influx of traffic and raise your page-rank on search engines as well.

Some things to remember in terms of general site design. AdSense is cool by me, popups are not. Florescent colors are also a turn off. Music in the background, chaotic layouts, using the blink tag, animated gifs - no matter how cool you think they look - are unprofessional and give a juvenile aura to your site so I'd avoid them.

-Polly Esther

A: Dear Silly girl

First, I agree with you that college football standings are crazy, rankings are arbitrary, and it can be immensely frustrating for fans of teams. However, in this instance there seems to be an underlying misunderstanding which is the source of your frustration. When there are so many reasonable causes to be outraged at college football rankings, it seems silly to be worked up over a misconception. Allow me first to clarify one point of your question, and then I'll wax forth on the reasons you should, in fact, be frustrated with college football rankings and their implications for the postseason.

You seem to be under the impression that BYU dropped to #18 after their thorough manhandling of UCLA. This is simply not true. There are two national polls which determine the rankings at this point in the college football season. The AP Poll, which is decided by sportswriters around the country, and the USA Today Coach's Poll, in which 63 of the coach's of all Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) schools have a vote.

Here's how BYU's rankings have gone each week so far this season:

Preseason

AP Poll: #15 USA Today: #17

Week 1 (BYU defeated Northern Iowa 41-17)

AP Poll: #15 USA Today: #15

Week 2 (BYU controversially* defeated Washington 28-27)

AP Poll: #18 USA Today: #15

Week 3 (BYU destroys UCLA 59-0)

AP Poll: #14 USA Today: #11

So, as you can see, following BYU's impressive win over UCLA, BYU rose four spots in both polls, reaching their highest rankings in either poll.


As for why college football doesn't use the same system pro football uses? Well that system ends in a playoff, and college football doesn't have one of those. It should, someday it might, but for right now it does not. So the polls are the best we've got.

Incidentally, the pro football system isn't perfect. People complain every season that one division has easier competition than others, so it is easier for teams from that division to get into the playoffs. In the NBA there are teams with losing records in the Eastern Conference in the playoffs every year, while multiple teams from the Western Conference with winning records don't make it. The poll system used by college football is one way around that situation, but it introduces its own flaws and biases.

-Humble Master

*I don't think it was as controversial as it was made out to be, but it affected the polls, so I make mention of it.

A: Dear CrazyYou,

I found this site that might help you get a good fix for a while. It looks like there are some pretty cool ones on there. Enjoy!

-Claudio

A: Dear you,

It should be mailed to you. If you're listed address wasn't updated when you bought your pass, you may have a problem. See this page, under 'Receiving the Card'.

-habiba

A: Dear s squared:

Having just looked back at quite a few of my answers, I will say that all the answers for Board Question #43265 are rather epic and informative, and it was a lot of fun coming up with faux events for the "Things That Didn't Happen . . ." category.

---Portia

A: Dear Stevie,

Asking me to pick between any HFAC questions is just cruel. Working on questions with my brother has been the best part of the whole Board experience for me. While I consider them all pretty epic, my favorite probably remains the peanut butter research.

Ah, vinegar. Time to go take a hit!

-Claudio

A: Dear snowstorm

Top Ten Graphic Novels. No surprise there.

Though debating the greatest BYU sports moments ever was also fun.

And, due to unfortunate geographical circumstances, I don't get to team up with my fellow writers very oft, which made the Caveman Alphabet one of my very rare team-ups, and a blast to have worked on.

-Humble Master

A: Dear steve-o,

Honestly, there have been a lot of questions that I've enjoyed, but tipping the tippity top of them, is Board Question #42533 about cheesy Mormon musicals. It is a bit nostalgic because this was the first question that I answered as a new writer. Also, I didn't "research" it as much as I "looked up things about cheesy Mormon musicals to make more jokes at their expense." I still remember the computer I was at in the LRC when I wrote it. Ah, the memories . . .

Update(!!!): Further validating my jibes at Star Child, someone recently said that they randomly found that question and enjoyed it. My joyful tears taste like salted sunshine.

- Rating Pending (who thinks that "You like me! You really, really like me!")(But would understand if you didn't)

A: Dear Triple S,

I too have had my share of fun while writing for the Board. Your question gave me cause to reflect and realize how much I've enjoyed the time intensive random calculations and projects I've had in my relatively short time here. In the end though, tracking down the Provo morning whistle has been the most fun to research and write. As fun as the weeks of traipsing around the Provo countryside to pin down a once-daily noise was, it was every bit as much fun to finally write up what I wanted to keep and publish (I had about twice as much material when I started than what made the final draft). I still wasn't sure what voice I would use as Tao, and that response allowed me to sample and mimic some of the greatest. It was also a blast to wake each morning and decide who I would be, seeing the sidewalks and landmarks of South Provo as Odysseus or Jason Bourne or Tanto. Describing the somewhat mundane things of our world as seen through the eyes of the fantastic gave my little world a wonderful flavor. I don't think that what ended up in print is even a percent of what went through my mind.

Big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.(LXIII,9)

-Tao

A: Dear SnowStorm Steve~

That's a tough call for me. I guess my favorite, as I sit here thinking about it right now, would have to be the one that took me to Salt Lake City where I managed, through persistence and being annoying, to get Joe Cannon's phone number. (Chief Editor of the Deseret News)

The trip was fun, the company was good, and it was one of those times that I felt like a real investigative journalist.

~Hobbes

A: Dear Ethel,

I'll have to go with the ridiculous marshmallow ones since I normally avoid questions that involve anything with numbers. It was not only fun to figure out, but helped me feel adventurous enough to try my hand at other questions I wouldn't normally even look twice at.

-Polly Esther

A: Dear Mourning,

It was me. I'm not a big fan of apostrophes so I had them do away with it. Sorry if it bothers you.

Or maybe it was done by someone in Creative Services as they are generally the ones who do the promotional signs and whatnot for the bookstore.

~Krishna

A: Dear Penelope

I liked it, but I thought the build up was a little tedious. They spent an awful long time camping and not knowing what to do. For all the tension that had been built at the end of book six, I felt the first half was a little slow. But the conclusion was satisfying, even if I had been preparing myself for the death of one of the main trio.

-Humble Master

A:

Dear everyone,

Serious Harry Potter book 7 spoiler warning!

Dear Penelope,

Do you realize what you're asking here? My full review?! I'm not even sure how to begin with this answer. Oh well. I can't really complain about the chance to delve into the world of Harry Potter, yet again. Tragically, the scope of your question requires much more than 100 hours. As I tried to answer it, I was simply overwhelmed by the project I had so happily overtaken. I started by writing down all of the chapters and writing my thoughts on each chapter. I didn't like it, though. It felt too much like a book report. So I took a different approach. I went through and wrote down every character I could find in Book 7. I separated them into categories of major, medium, minor, and very minor characters. Starting with the major characters, I started writing out my review of each character in turn, based mostly on their appearance in Deathly Hallows.

Of course, this started taking up quite a bit of space. I got only the trio done before my answer was already excessively large, and the editors started spitting curses in my direction. (Luckily, none of them have wands or I may have had really large toenails, hanging from the ceiling, all while dancing uncontrollably. Which is a very difficult position to be in while trying to type.) They tried to get me to condense, to write less. I was appalled. "But she asked for my full review! I can't give her less than that! I wouldn't be fulfilling my duty as a Board writer!" But they didn't like the fact that non-Harry Potter fans would have to scroll through 12 pages of writing they weren't interested in to get to the rest of the Board. (Personally, I think any such person should be sent directly to Azkaban, but I have no such power.)

A compromise was struck. I could continue to write my answer, but I had to post it elsewhere with a link on the Board to the elsewhere. I had been contemplating starting a blog for the past several months. This seemed the perfect opportunity to do just that. So a blog was created, and your answer is currently in the writing over there. You may read my blog (and your answer) at nifflerspeaks.blogspot.com Disclaimer: I have been putting my energy into writing the posts, not making it pretty. I need to find a wizard with a wand to do that for me. Please forgive the lack of...color.

But then a new problem was presented. Do I wait until I have fully answered the question on my blog to post the link? Or do I post it now and let my dear friend read as I write? The second seemed a much more happy option all around. So, for now, my answer is in several smaller posts. Every post is titled, "Book 7 - [name of character here]" When I get to concepts and story lines that I want to cover, I'll replace the name of the character with the topic I will be discussing.

Someday, I will move past Book 7 and this question and I will start writing about topics that intrigue me. Questions I don't know the answers to, and thus cannot write them into the Board, because they would just assign me to answer them. And then where would I be?

For now, to not leave you hanging, I shall now link to several answers I have already written about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

This one is my prediction after book 6 as to whether Snape is good or bad. I just wanted to point out that I was right (and thus Humble Master was wrong) ... for the most part. The "some powerful magical something that caused Dumbledore to trust him" turned out to be love. Who knew?
This one is about the Fidelius Charm on the Potter house. (Though, I do believe there is much more to it than what I stated in my answer. I don't understand it completely, but I have done more research on the topic since then. However, as per the question asked, I stand by my answer.)
This one is about the elder wand.
This one was my opinion on whether Harry would die in book 7 or not. My response to that answer is, "Well, I was half right. As was the rest of the world, no matter their opinion. Difference between me and those that disagreed with me? My ending is the same as the real ending. I just missed what led up to it."
This one states that I will not wait up till midnight with you for the book. But this one is hardly applicable to this question.
This one I am quite ashamed of. It is my predictions for Book 7... and let's just say that I'm probably about 75% wrong. Though, I do believe I could argue some of them. (And I really do hope that there is something between Filch and Madam Pince. I can't wait for the Harry Potter Encyclopedia to come out, so I'll know for sure!)
This one is my simple reaction to Book 7.
This one is my opinion on the future of Harry Potter
This one is my opinion on the fate of the Dursleys.
This one is mostly fact (out of Rowling's mouth) mixed with my own interpretation.
This one is my vision of Harry and Ginny's wedding.
This one is about Harry's wand acting of its own accord against Voldemort.
This one is about Harry's grandparents.

Hmmm... it looks like I really haven't written a whole lot worthy of note on the Board about Deathly Hallows. I suppose it was about time to remedy that. Thanks for giving me a reason.

- Niffler