Canine Clamping

Q: A Rottweiler just clamped its teeth on my balls and won't let go. Should I be concerned?

A: No, dear reader, there is nothing to worry about.

Although our friend the Rottweiler does possess the strongest bite-strength of all canine breeds, he still gets tired eventually like any other animal.

You just need to withstand the pain longer than the dog does, and it's a known fact that the Rottie has a notoriously low endurance threshold for pain!

If you're worried about more damage being done to your testicles while you play this dubious waiting game, take solace in the fact that, odds are, the majority of the damage was done during the initial biting motion and won't be particularly worsened by the lack of blood-flow or additional crushing force applied by the dog's jaws. No leverage, you see.

Just watch out for any kind of sawing motion.

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Ring-a-Ring-a-Smokey!

Q: I'm very unpopular in my school, and get my face pounded into a wet, fleshy pulp every lunchtime. I'm already blind in one eye and can no longer lick ice-creams.

I figure the best solution is to take up smoking and learn how to blow smoke rings like the cool kids do. I just can't work out how to do it!

Help me Harv!


A: Being way too intelligent to ever take up smoking, I did not have the answer to your question at hand.

However, I don't like to leave a question unanswered on AskHarv, so I have been conducting experiments in my lab the past fortnight. I have been able to work out how to blow smoke rings, and it's not as difficult as you may think, once you know the trick.

Before you face your friends and attempt to impress them, you need to do a bit of preparation. You'll need:

• 1 elastic band
• 3 rolls of electrical tape
• 3.2 kms of copper wire
• 1 breathing apparatus (a regular rebreather would be fine)
• 2 18 ft tall steel pylons
• a lead shield, at least 19 inches thick
• 2 power sources capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts (a couple of small, modern power plants would do)

Simply relocate or construct the two power plants either side of your school, wrap the pylons in copper wire, fire up the power, and position yourself at a perfectly equidistant point between the two.

When you light up a cigarette at this location, you'll find the smoke is affected by the electromagnetic field to form all sorts of circular shapes, such as ovals, spheres, 4th-dimensional planes, and, of course, the ever-elusive rings you desire!

To impress your friends further, you'll find the trick also has a number of impressive side-effects, such as:

• Creating shimmering pockets of white light and unpredictable weather conditions
• Transporting objects and creatures from parallel dimensions to our world
• Completely disintegrating people's atoms in less than a nanosecond
• Opening unstable worm-holes, thus sending organic, sentient beings (well any that you haven't already disintegrated) careering randomly through space-time
  
• The smoke may also become self-aware and develop consciousness

A word of warning, though: you may find the electromagnets generate a lot of heat.

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The Butterfly Suspect

Q: How the hell can a butterfly flapping it's wings start a hurricane???!

A: Even though I always liked the theory of the butterfly effect as it pertains to chaos theory and theoretical time travel, the reality of it appeared to be much less enthralling.

I was fortunate enough to spend several years in Brazil, and spent most of my time with a tribe of sweaty, caniballistic descendants of the Tupinambá tribe, conducting experiments to investigate Lorenz's famous theory. We captured several million butterflies over the course of several years and couldn't even get one to so much as move a blade of grass, or scare an old lady on her death-bed, let alone disturb weather patterns in a distant country. It's actually amazing how lame and powerless butterflies are!

Truth be told, all we did was prove that the odds of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil and causing a Tornado in Texas are several quadrillions to one.

Time went by, but I never quite forgot about the butterfly effect. One morning earlier this year I awoke in a cold sweat from a dream which depicted giant butterflies attacking tribal villagers with chainsaws and I realised I had to resolve the issue.

I tracked down Lorenz, and, completely unannounced, visited him in his small, but well-guarded, Swiss chalet. When he opened the door, I asked almost exactly the question you dropped into my inbox, dear reader, with a couple of extra expletives added in for dramatic effect.

Lorenz studied me for a long time, scratching his stupid spotted nose with one hand and patting his shiny bald forehead with the other. Then he said, "fine", dragged me inside by my lapels, grabbed a butterfly from his in-house enclosure and took me to his time-travel room.

We went back to the dawn of time. Lorenz exited the time machine, and before I could even start to think about the wonderous prehistoric world before me, he let the butterfly go, stepped back inside and took us both back to 2009.

Well you could knock me over with a feather (that does not relate to the theory!). The recalcitrant twatt had caused the current global economic cirsis. Yes, that's right, before we got into that confounded time machine, everyone was happy and rich, and humanity had finally found a perfect harmony with nature.

And everyone was getting laid.

Thanks very much, Lorenz! Must be a real joy to be right!

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Brick a broke

Q: How does one throw a brick through a window without making any noise?

A: Seems there are foul deeds afoot! However, like a nuclear arms manufacturer or the tabacco industry, it's not my place to presuppose the intent of my customers -- it's entirely possible you have a legitimate reason for wanting to throw a brick through a window.

It could be for a hollywood stunt, for instance. Or perhaps you really need to have a brick inside your house, but for some innocent reason don't have easy access to the interior of the house. Maybe the brick forgot its keys and you're just helping it out.

Either way, very sensitive of you to not want to disturb the neighbours with the raucous sound of shattering glass!

One needs only a basic knowledge of the physics of sound in order to answer your question. Sound is caused by tiny particles vibrating and disturbing the particles on either side of it. Eventually some of these distrurbed particles knock against our eardrums, which our brain processes as sound.

However, there is a phenomenon called noise cancellation. You may have heard of this in reference to noise-cancelling headphones. This is the process of generating a sound that has the inverse wave of another sound. At the midpoint of two identical sounds, the movements in the particles cancel each other out, and the human ear can no longer detect that any sound was issued -- eventhough it's really two identical sounds being issued simultaneously from an equal distance!

So all you need to do is convince a friend (who, ideally has identical size weight and proportions to you) to throw an identical brick through an identical window, in exactly the same manner, at exactly the same moment, and at exactly the same distance from the location at which you would like to keep the breaking glass inaudible.

Simple, isn't it?

Sure, it may mean losing two windows instead of one, but your neighbours will have a solid night's sleep.

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A dying breed

Q: As you probably know, few endagered species are threatened as seriously as the wobble-nosed mungbat from Northern Russia. I just returned from a 14 year field trip studying the mungbat with my wife and the experience has changed us at a fundamental level.

I wondered perhaps if you might post this to raise awareness of the poor mungbat's plight and perhaps fill in your readers on what makes this special little creature, well... special.

A: Yes, I am well aware of the plight of the poor wobble-nosed mungbat. It is, however, from Central Russia, not the north.

I have actually been privellaged enough to cradle one of the last remaining half-dozen or so mungbats in my arms, crying openly like a child with no gifts on Christmas day, wailing and moaning over the dying creature's seemingly inevitable fate.

When I was subsequently informed that the mungbats are highly allergic to human tears, and that I had inadvertantly dripped a few onto the mungbat's skin, infecting the tiny creature with an incurable flesh-eating skin disease, my sorrow only deepened.

For those that don't know, the wobble-nosed mungbat is a rare species of mammal whose stool is believed to be one of the most resilient substances on Earth. Once a mungbat drops off a brown boy at the pool, the stool will not decompose, bend, or change texture without complex molecular coersion. This stool can be fashioned into stylish furniture, tools, or even complex machinery that will effectively last forever.

Once the last mungbat dies, so will our best chance at creating a renewable, sustainable society.

Plus, they're just so cute... so, please, readers... help save the wobble-nosed mungbat!

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Earth time

Q: What time is it on Earth ?

A: You can calculate the current time on Earth by taking GMT and subtracting 3 days, 16 hours and 42 minutes.

At the time of this post, it's just on 3:18. By the time you read it, it'll be time to get a new watch.

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On strike

Q: I've often heard the expression 'Lightning never strikes twice.' This is confusing because my mate Tom has been struck 57 times.

(Also, we've got a pool going down at the bar - what kind of odds would you give for the 58th strike?)


A: If your friend has really been hit 57 times, he obviously possesses rare lighting-attracting properties. Perhaps he's made of metal? Is it possible he's a robot?

I'd give full odds he'll be hit again if he leaves the house.

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