Just FAQMe

Is it true that dogs see in black and white?

Just for you, we risked being chucked in the pound and with dogged determination we hounded the woofs of the world until they gave us an answer. Here's what they said: 'woof woof woof woof woof woof '.

With a stroke of luck we are not barking mad and can give you a translation.

'Where the average human sees a full rainbow spectrum of colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (ROYGBIV); the average dog perceives these colours differently. They in fact see red, yellow, yellow, yellow, blue, indigo, violet (RYYYBIV). So no it's not true, they do see a selection of colours. Don't ask us what dogs say about 'Richard's Battle In Vain' though as we haven't got a FAQing clue.

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Why, oh why do I sneeze when I look at the sun??

2 comments

Aww bless you! (You should get together with the FAQer who coughs when they stick an ear bud in their right ear) Now, we may have our wires crossed, but most experts sunnily concur that crossed wires in the brain are most likely to be responsible for the 'photic sneeze reflex'. Yes there is a formal scientific name for this. Further details about this pressing (t)issue are below.

The primary trigger to sneezing is typically an irritation in the nose (nasal hair plucking, dust snorting, the old feather up the nose...) This irritation is sensed by the trigeminal nerve, a cranial nerve responsible for facial sensation and motor control. This nerve is in close proximity to the optic nerve, which senses, for example, a sudden flood of light entering the retina. Theory has it that when you're looking at the sun, the optic nerve fires signals to the brain to constrict the pupils. Some of these electrical signals are however sensed by the nearby trigeminal nerve and mistaken by the brain as a nasal irritant, hence, a sneeze.

I wonder if us Brits are prolific sun-seekers for this very reason... afterall, we all know what they say about sneezing...but that's another FAQ altogether.

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Help me! I need music!

1 comments

I am annoyed. All of a sudden my car CD player won't play recently copied CDs. It will play my old copied CDs fine, but won't play anything I have copied in the last couple of days. Why?! Is it because I changed my brand of CD-R because Sony discs were half price in Sainsburys?? This seems totally illogical but I can't see anything else has changed, unless Windows Media Player has secretly imploded and isn't copying them properly. Help me! I need music!

The answer to this CD FAQ is really quite simple. Your taste in music has become so mixed up that your car doesn't know whether it's coming or going. So it's stopped in it's tracks. Like we have.

Actually, that's not quite true, we were just muted and on pause for a while. We realise this is always a frustrating problem. A CD that's burned on one machine will play fine in another, and won't play in a third.

Why won't the burned CD play?

Assuming you've done the basic troubleshooting like making sure your CD player's laser hardware is clean, cleaning your CD, verifying it's scratch-free, et cetera, there can be several reasons for this problem:

You forgot to select an "Audio" CD type when burning, and instead chose to burn a "Data" CD. Data-formatted CDs can not be read in a standard CD player.
You burned to a CD-RW format CD. Most CD players will not read a CD-RW format. Use a CD-R format instead.
Your player may not like the CD format. What size CD-R are you using? If you're using a 700MB capacity CD, try burning to a 650MB CD. Some players don't play well when given a disk capacity they're not expecting. Also try lowering the recording speed. Some car CD players will be fine with a CD burned using a 2x speed, but won't like using the same media recorded at 8x.
You have an older-generation CD player (more likely) or CD burner (less likely). Older hardware doesn't always talk with newer hardware. If you have, for example, an older CD player in your car, it gets confused by the language contained on the young whippersnapper CD. Think of it as an "electronic generation gap". The solution in this case, sadly, is to get a replacement for your car's player.

FAQnote:
We have been reliably informed that the Sony discs needed to have a muse at their new environment for a couple of days and then they played fine.

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Were we seeing things yesterday? An upside down rainbow?

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When we looked up high in the sky there was a rainbow that looked almost as if it was upside down. I've never seen this before and wondered what was going on. It looked like this..

Wow! What a wondrous vision! The sky is smiling! How delightful but how to answer, that's a difficult decision! Not a matter of small disambiguation, this heavenly grin can captivate a nation.

Our quest for the answer led us through the Arts, Literature and Sciences. Mentioned in mythology; Greek, Hindu and Norse, penned in poetry by Keats and Wordsworth, studied in science by Descartes, Newton and Young, and sang in songs by Kermit the Frog and Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. All of it fascinating, but the answer was proving as elusive as trying to reach the end of a rainbow itself.

However, undeterred in our ephemeral endeavours we believe we have found the answer to understanding this happy expression. It is called a Circumzenithal Arc! No, we're not having a lark.

The circumzenithal arc is a quarter circle, pointing toward the setting sun and the "rainbow'" is much brighter and more concentrated than a rainfall rainbow. The colours are in reverse order from a rainbow, with violet on the top and red at the bottom. The arc usually vanishes quickly because the cirrus clouds containing the ice crystals shift their position. Ice particles in high cirrus clouds occur all year round, but circumzenithal arcs are usually obscured by lower level clouds.

Rather than being caused by raindrops, it is the result of freak atmospheric conditions rarely seen outside the North and South Poles. While normal rainbows are formed when light penetrates raindrops and emerges on the other side without changing direction, this smile is formed when sunlight shines through millions of tiny ice crystals in cirrus and cirrus stratus clouds.

Because the crystals are flat and hexagonal, they invert the light and create an upside-down curve. The phenomenon relies on the sun being low in the sky, normally less than 32 degrees from the horizon. The arcs can appear at any time of the year, hovering in the sky only fleetingly because clouds tend to move quickly near the zenith.

Circumzenithal arcs are so named as they go around the zenith - the point in the sky directly above the observer- rather than the sun.

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Should I trust the government?

2 comments

Absolutely, without question. The guy in the picture did. No, really!

"Are you FAQing* nuts!?" [see footnote] we hear you exclaim.

Nooo not us. Surely, you must know the whole gunpowder plot to blow up the King and Government was a case of cross purposes and mistaken identity?! Let us tell you what really happened!

We have read by a good local authority at the time, that King (James I) had recently arranged for the import and stashing of a bunch of cocktail barrels sent by his mate Molotov (Good Lords! dey da bomb! he had exclaimed).

Jim knew that there were those green with envy and wishing to be Conservative with whom he shared its power decided to ask a Liberal amount of friends due to their past Labour and Solidarity for their Independent point of view. They took a ballot and voted to ask the right honourable gentleman Bob (Robert Catesby possibly) to see if he knew a Guy no one would FAQ* with.

Fortunately, Bob did and said mate had just returned from fighting a war in foreign lands and was really FAQed off. Bob wasted no time in providing Guy with the party political message. He ended with these actual words...yeah the actual ones!

"Guard those barrels mate and keep a look out for a bunch of drunken, eco warrior, flower wearing, green looking party goers. You can easily tell they are the opposition; they will be so off their heads, they'll still have powder on their faces!" "They may tell you you're working for a crap coalition but don't let them sell you a line! Certainly do not offer a light either, especially if they're holding blue touch paper hats. Ensure you refuse entry to those barrels OK? We don't want any fireworks. Stay there until we arrive."

Unfortunately, the party did get completely out of hand. There were high stakes involved and Guy had no choice but to get fired up. Just as the atmosphere was about to explode the Bob(bies) arrived and our poor Guy was carted away, declared an Anarchist and Monster Raving Loony, Whip(ped) and sentenced to be hung in front of parliament. Nobody seems to have heard his protests that it was his Peers that were responsible.

So the answer is yes of course you can trust the Government to FAQ* things up!

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*Footnote

[ed. - Should I change it to Fawke?]

[faqers - No you FAQing can't, we're from sarth London innit!]