Dear Korra,

The Korean 102 textbooks for this semester were Integrated Korean: Beginning 2 and Integrated Korean: Beginning 2 Workbook (there is also "Korean Vocabulary Learning of Foreigners" which I couldn't find in any U.S. online stores). The Fall booklist is not listed yet on BYU's site, but I would hazard a guess that the 101 books are Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, and the corresponding workbook. The vocabulary book was the only one I couldn't find, but you may try looking just for a general or frequency dictionary. Good luck!

-Mico

Dear slow,

There are many possible issues at play, but let's start simple.

First, some terminology and assumptions.  Your Internet connection is provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP - usually cable, DSL, or fiber).  This connection comes into your apartment and usually terminates at some kind of jack in your wall.  You then buy a piece of equipment and plug it into that jack.  That piece of equipment will be, for 99% of residential customers, a router that then allows your computers to connect to it to access the Internet connection.  Those computers could be connected using wired connections or wireless connections.  The computers and the router make up a local area network (LAN) which has access to the Internet via your ISP.

I will translate "make the internet run slower" to mean the computers in your apartment take longer to load web pages.  If there is an issue, it could be either within your LAN or the ISP connection.  These distinct options represent different reasons for the issue with potentially different solutions.

Computer networks are all about communication and, analogous to several people talking at once, the more computers that try to communicate at the same time, the less effective the communication is.  So one possibility of reduced performance is that you have too many computers trying to use the connection.  The router may be overwhelmed with connections and simply can't keep up (picture the I Love Lucy episode in the chocolate factory).  When this happens your computer has to keep sending the same data until the router is able to handle it.  Another possibility is that the router is just fine, but the connection to the ISP is full.  The router is probably trying to be fair and gives each user a little slice of that ISP connection so from your perspective everything seems to get slow and unresponsive.

The deluge of communication could be legitimate traffic or it could be due to problems on the computers you're using.  If one has a malicious program running it may be sending out garbage and overwhelming the router or ISP connection.  If one of the computers has a hardware problem or a driver problem it may be sending out garbage in the same way.  Updating the drivers and operating system on the problem machine (Mac or PC) should help.  Updating the firmware on the router may also help.

But let's suppose that the router is plenty robust and the ISP connection is sufficient to handle the traffic and all the hardware is working as intended.  In this case it's still possible that including a new machine could result in poorer performance for everyone.  I am assuming all of your machines are connected wirelessly.  Suppose you have a fairly new router that supports the faster 802.11n protocol and that all the non-Mac machines you use also support the 802.11n protocol.  When this is the case everything is operating great at the faster speeds allowed by the 802.11n protocol.  Now suppose that the Mac connects, but the Mac doesn't support 802.11n, so it connects using the slower 802.11g protocol.  This can actually cause everyone's connection to slow down to the slower speeds, which is lame.  SmallNetBuilder has a great article showing this happen.

Now all that being said, is there something specific about Macs that could, in general, cause network problems?  Well, I don't have any Apple products so I don't have any personal experience with the matter, but, according to a Google search, your roommate isn't the only one who has experienced/believes the phenomenon.  In fact the Apple support forums are filled with threads of people having their Mac crash their network.  A search for "Mac crashing router" results in 418,000 hits in the past 12 months.  "Windows crashing router" results in 1,130,000 hits in the last 12 months, but since the Windows install base is approximately 10 times larger this shows a disproportionately high number of hits for the Mac search.

So there very well may be some truth to your roommate's position, but it certainly shouldn't be true for all Macs.

-Curious Physics Minor

Dear Binary Search Tree,

Many other civilizations have used eras (year numbering systems, e.g. years before Christ) based on the lives of rulers, including China, ancient Rome, ancient near eastern civilizations, etc. In many of these the era could potentially change at a time other than the new year. 

Various eras can also be in use at the same time. In the case of ancient Rome, from that same source, we read: 

Several epochs were in use by Roman historians. Modern historians usually adopt the epoch of Varro, which we place in 753 BC.

The system was introduced by Marcus Terentius Varro in the 1st century BC. The first day of its year was Founder's Day (April 21), although most modern historians assume that it coincides with the modern historical year (January 1 to December 31).

So in that case the Varro era (which started with the Varro epoch - the event that starts an era is an epoch) was out of sync with other eras, so their years changed at different times. At the same time, the eras determined by the names of consuls changed more or less at the new year, as the consuls took office on January 2 (and the whole year was apparently considered to be the year of those consuls). So Rome in part supports and in part violates your theory that eras usually only change at the new year. 

I think most ancient calendars with ruler-determined eras, however, will tend to change eras in mid-year as in most systems a ruler can take power at any time. (One exception would be the Roman republic, as mentioned above, and maybe some ancient civilizations had coronation rites linked to the new year or could be exceptions in other ways.) So without writing a study on it, it looks like many ancient calendars eras don't just change on the new year. Those links above have a lot of fascinating information if anyone wants to find out more.

Arguably the Long Count could be relevant, but I don't know if restarting the count would count as a new era, and the world's apparently going to end anyways so I'm just going to ignore the problem.

~Professor Kirke

Dear Strawberry,

My first course of action would be to contact my parents. 

If for some reason my parents could not help me, I would then contact my bishop or relief society president. 

I would then try my best to find a job so that I would be able to regain my financial stability, utilizing the help of LDS Employment Services if possible. I don't think panhandling is a good solution to financial problems, because while it may provide some money, it does not provide security or future prospects or insurance or things like that.

It is important to note, however, that many homeless people are not in a position to pursue these courses of action. They may be unaware of resources that exist to help them, and they may be struggling with mental illness, substance addiction, or other issues that make finding stable employment difficult. If I were in this situation, I hope that I would be able to find the help that I needed to get off the streets and receive training and assistance to prepare to support myself.

~Anne, Certainly

Dear Paprika,

I would do the things Anne suggested, of course (as well as camp outside my sister's house looking pathetic and sad until she agreed to let me stay in her guest room -- which would end in us frustrating each other to no end, fighting and then not speaking for six months at least, I'm sure of it!), but have you ever considered how much tax-free money you can make panhandling?

Being familiar with the panhandlers around Temple Square (who have been saving up for a $12 bus ticket for the last 10 years, at least), I can tell you it has to have some benefits or they probably wouldn't keep doing it.

Anecdotal supporting evidence: Once when I was leaving work late (after most everyone else had gone, so maybe around 6 pm), I saw one of the pan handlers pull out of the parking garage across the street in a red convertible. Another time, fairly recently even, I was driving around in Sandy and next to me in a car that was WAY nicer than my car and I recognized him as another one of the Temple Square panhandlers. And a last story, my mom's coworker went to the bank to deposit a check once and one of the Temple Square panhandlers was in there putting tons and tons of spare change into his account.

If I were some sort of documentary filmmaker or photo journalist, I would spend a week following them around and keeping track of how much money they each were given and then creating signs with pictures of people giving them money and the likely amounts they were earning and then I'd follow them around until everyone stopped giving them money.

But I'm not quite spiteful enough to do that (also I maybe like my job and would prefer working to chasing people around Salt Lake). Instead I just complain a lot and tell everyone to give their money to Church humanitarian aid or something.

Also, if anyone decides to do that project for me, let me know and I will buy you ice cream (but I can't afford much more because I don't make that much in my non-panhandling job).

-Marguerite St. Just

Dear Safferon,

I seemed to remember from the show's theme where Eliza talks about getting enchanted or something. I tried to find it, but was only able to get the audio. But, you can hear in the audio where she said, "Between you and me, something magic happened! And now I can talk to animals. And life's never been the same."

We also have Wikipedia to turn to. There we read:

Their second youngest child, Eliza, is the main character and has the power to speak to animals because of an encounter with an African shaman, Lopsugne Sjoungboun Qeisha

Which happened in the Season 2, Episode 29 episode called "Gift of Gab."

-Marguerite St. Just

Dear exactly right,

When you say "mission home" what you probably mean is technically "mission office." In my mission the mission president's home was not even inside of the mission, and very few missionaries visited it. Missionaries visited the mission office somewhat more, mostly if they had some kind of weird problem (e.g. they are going to be excommunicated, emergency transferred, emergency interviewed, etc.). So he might be unlikely (I hope) to go to the mission office himself with much frequency, but the mission office will probably send the letter to him. 

This really does depend a lot on the mission, but in my mission the typical thing was that all correspondence was addressed to the mission office, which then distributed it out to missionaries at Zone Conferences and the like. Depending on schedules of meetings, mail distribution was sometimes weekly, and it almost never took more than a month for a letter to make it from the mission office to the correct missionary. In some missions mail is more of a once-a-transfer event (once every 6 weeks). Unless your friend is in some unusual mission or circumstance, it's unlikely to take your letter much longer than whatever the normal mail delay is plus six weeks, and it's unlikely to be much faster than normal mail delay plus one or two weeks. 

~Professor Kirke

Dear Then Why . . . ?,

The good professor has hit the variability thing dead on—this really depends on the mission. In my mission, about 30% of the missionaries got to the mission office at least twice a week, and if mail actually went to the mission home as opposed to the office, it would be at the office the next day. You may get lucky.

No Dice

Dear desirer of worthy aims,

There are generally two lengthy nights of two-minute auditions. I think 80 auditions in total would be a normal-ish number, and there are usually around 4 open slots on the cast. All the people who do audition sketches that are really on a Divine Comedy level (audition sketches or derivative material frequently end up in shows) are typically invited to callbacks where they interact quite a bit more with the Divine Comedians. Then said Divine Comedians make their magical decisions, using many important factors, which have at least once included using Facebook stalking as a tiebreaker. 

Pre-mission guys are automatically denied but can technically audition. On the other hand, freshmen girls can get on. Caitlin, a current cast member, got on as a freshman. She is exceptional - her audition included releasing a live bird in the Tanner Building (the ensuing chaos was delightful) and in her first semester she wrote the Fallings sketch, which is one of my personal favorites. But you may also be exceptional. No way to tell but to try. 

~Professor Kirke