What better way than to come from a long break fueled by too much homework than with an Ask Peter using all the questions that have built up in my inbox?

Here’s Ask Peter #18, which has stupider questions than the last one.

Also, interested in knowing how you can get your very own shiny question onto this lovely website of mine? Easy. Go to this wonderful form, and the rest is all there.

If Only I Had a Dime…

If I had a dime for every time I heard that, how much money would I have?
– AJ

If I had a dime for every time someone asked me an Ask Peter question that had “If I had a dime for every time” in it, I would have thirty cents now.

Seeing as you left no definition for what “that” refers to, I can only assume you mean the word “that”. Therfore, we could calculate it by finding out how often you hear the word “that” per day, and multiplying by ten cents and your age in days.

Some crazy person went through 29,213,800 words from TV and movie scripts and transcripts and found “that” to be in the top 100 words. The word “that” was actually the 7th most common word, clocking in at 413,389 instances. This also gives us a moderately accurate statistic — “that” makes up roughly 1.4% of all spoken words.

But how many words does one hear in a day? This statistic varies a lot depending on person, isn’t readily available, and can’t be very accurate. However, a U Penn study put the number at 14,878 words heard and produced, on average, per day. If you subtract out the average amount of words spoken from this total, you get roughly 7,439 words heard per day.

Using our percentage, the average person hears 104 “that”s in one day. If you’ve lived 18 years, you’ve been living for 6570 days, which means you’ve heard 683,280 “that”s. At a rate of 10 US cents per “that”, you’ve clocked in $68,328 by your 18th birthday.

The “10 cents per that” revenue stream, however you’re getting it, will be getting you — on average — an income of $3,796 per year, or $0.43 an hour.

So, don’t quit your day job.

On Asking Out Girls

What should I do if I like a girl but I dont know if she would go out with me?

P.S this isn’t really AJ, feel free to do with this as you wish…
– Someone who isn’t AJ

Well, to the person I know could be anyone except someone named AJ, I would say that you would have to talk to the girl more and see if she’s interested in you, and then take a calculated plunge and ask her out. You’ll never know for sure either way until you do.

Oddly enough, the internet has all sorts of crazy resources for this kind of question.

eHow has a Love & Romance section which features some guides like like How to Tell if a Girl Likes You and How to Ask a Girl Out.

The nemesis of eHow, WikiHow, has a Relationships Category, which features similar guides like How to Know if a Girl Likes You and How to Ask A Girl Out.

Then the buffoon of the three, Yahoo Answers, also can take questions like “How can u tell if a girl likes you?” and “How to ask a girl out?”, as long as you avoid questions like these.

Good luck, Mr. Not AJ!

Reconstruction

Do you think reconstruction was a success? Why/why not?
– Joe

I’d day Reconstruction was a success in the “Do you really think you could do better?” fashion.

Reconstruction wanted to accomplish two goals:
1.) Bring the Rebel states back into the Union
2.) Help the freedmen become a part of society

Unfortunately, there was a lot of abuse, and a strong difference in opinion from the extremes of the people designing Reconstruction — one group wanted the rebel states to be severely punished, secessionist leaders hanged, and freed slaves to be equals in society. Another group wanted the rebel states returned to the Union without punishment and gave no thought toward the fate of the freedman. And of course, there were many shades of grey within these two extremes.

The President at the time, Andrew Johnson, was so hated and so not Lincoln that he was nearly impeached, and gave no say in how Reconstruction worked. The lack of presidential leadership meant it was all on Congress, and Congress was as bickering as it is today, and could not agree on a plan.

Yet, Reconstruction did accomplish both its goals, and if you look at the differences between 1860 and 1875, there’s no doubt that improvements were created by Reconstruction, and it ultimately got us to where we are today.

It certainly would have been nice if Reconstruction had lasting Civil Rights to avoid the problems of the 1960s, but we can’t expect it to be perfect, and it’s very unlikely something better could have happened under the extreme social unrest and political turmoil.

So, yes, Reconstruction was a success.

Four Questions

1.) is my name correct?
2.) wat wud be my %score in my annual exam?
3.) who are my very close friends?
4.) soryyyyyyyyyyy for the first ques.
but tell me wat wud b the %score of my friends in anual examination?
– Khushi

Just so you people know, Khushi didn’t actually number his or her (I’m thinking her) four questions; that was me — for clarity. She wasn’t that good at writing.

Anyways,

1.) I sure hope so, otherwise you’re sending me false information.
2.) Well, if it was an English writing test, I’d say about 60%.
3.) Me?
4.) Depends on if they type with more literacy than you or not.

Uh oh

…
– “Voodoo Specialist”

It’s the same guy that wrote this question, except way more boring…

Be Sociable, Share!

•