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Joan
Citizen
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 2198
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 2:20 pm: | 
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On a slow day at the office, Dave started a thread in the Virtual Café in which he offered his solution to the area’s deer overpopulation problem. Soon he was joined by Kathleen and three of the other regular MOL posters, each of which had his or her unique solution to the problem.
Each poster was so devoted to his or her own solution that each posted to the thread a different number of times (2, 3, 4, 5 or 6). No two posters posted the same number of times to the thread. One poster suggested that the deer be charged the same real property taxes as the rest of us, a condition which would force most of them out of town in no time. From this information and the clues below can you determine the name of each poster, the deer overpopulation suggestion each poster made and the number of times each poster posted to the thread?
1. Mary was so taken with another poster’s suggestion that the deer be assigned to traffic control duty on Wyoming Avenue that she insisted the traffic control deer ride two-wheeled framistans and be required to wear bike helmets.
2. John and the one who posted only twice are in some order the one who suggested the TC pass an ordinance requiring landscapers to use deer to mow lawns and remove leaves from their customers’ property, thereby reducing noise levels and the person who suggested solving the town’s police problem by assigning deer to traffic patrol duty.
3. Tom and the one who posted five times are in some order the one who suggested that the deer be enrolled in the SOM school system to gain additional State funding for education and DEP grant money; and one who suggested that if the landscapers hired the deer, the CALM people would be free to concentrate on airplane noise and musical ice cream trucks.
4. The poster who posted three times didn’t suggest that the framistan riding deer be featured in the Circus at the 4th of July Celebration.
5. The poster who posted four times and the poster who suggested that the deer be enrolled in the SOM school system so that the high school students could get rid of them are both females.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 697
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 3:36 pm: |
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HAHAHAHAH!
Great post.
However, Joan's post of 2:10 pm is--ERRRNNNT!--wrong, and the correct answer is "B. Jane's blood DNA didn't match her children's because, in reality, Jane is a mixture of two non-identical twin sisters who fused in the womb and grew into a single body with different parts from each twin."
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 698
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 3:44 pm: |
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The condition is called tetragametic chimerism and was thought to be quite rare in humans (but not other animals or plants). However, it may be more common than believed.
The woman in the quiz question (see: www.newscientist.com/hottopics/dna) was found to have four full sets of genes in her body, rather than the usual two. (That is, instead of having one set from her mom and one from her dad, as most of us do, she is an amalgam of two individuals who each had two sets of parental genes themselves.) It turned out her blood was derived from one of the twins, but cells from her thyroid gland, bladder, hair, skin, and her reproductive cells contained, either partly or wholly, genes from the other twin.
Because genetic testing is ordinarily done using blood samples, the woman's doctors couldn't tell that her sons--who had received their genetic heritage from those reproductive cells belonging to the twin that didn't contribute genetic material to Jane's blood--were genetically hers.
Similarly, if a man were chimeric, and if he were tested for paternity using a blood assay, the test could show a very conclusive-looking false negative, simply because the wrong part of the dude had been sampled. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 699
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 3:59 pm: |
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Oops, sorry, that link doesn't connect with the article in question, "The Stranger Within." It may not be up on the website yet. (But there's lots of other neat stuff there.) |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 700
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 4:06 pm: |
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What is a framistan? |
Joan
Citizen
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 2202
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 4:57 pm: |
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J.Crohn: Ask Mary. I'm not sure that Dave, Kathleen, Tom and John have figured it out yet and if this is like most MOL discussions, they might all be too embarrassed by their lack of knowledge of the subject to ask. If you don't think Mary will give you a straight answer (and she may not) you will find the word in an unabbridged English dictionary.
Here is another. I'll post more if and when the solutions to the first two puzzles are posted on this thread.
Locally famous for its rich array of discussions on worthy topics, LOL has many posting sections. Four frequent posters (including SOS) are each currently holding court in a different section of the site’s message board (including Help Already!). Each poster is actively pursuing a different discussion topic. Can you discover for each poster the poster’s name, the portion of the message board where each poster is posting and the discussion topic each poster is actively pursuing?
1. Whine-O (who isn’t seeking a permit to barbeque squirrels in the back yard) is currently posting on Victuals’ Café.
2. NIMBY (who is neither seeking a permit to barbeque squirrels in the back yard nor looking to sue the Bush administration) isn’t currently posting on Where to Go / What to Do.
3. HAL 2001 (who isn’t complaining about the loud noise coming from the restaurant next door or looking to sue the Bush administration) has vowed not to post to Listen Up or Where to Go / What to Do until the aliens return the Xenon landing lights they stole from his rocket ship.
4. The poster requesting information on where to hold a holiday party for her in-laws isn’t posting on Listen Up.
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John Holl
Citizen
Username: Jgh
Post Number: 136
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 4:58 pm: |
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It's similar to a henway.
"Surrounded by assassins, that's what I am, surrounded by assassins."
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Dave Ross
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5744
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2003 - 5:25 pm: |
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According to Lucy, Framistan is a fictitious nation |
Joan
Citizen
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 2206
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 10:54 am: |
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JCrohn:
You most recent question is what we in the business would call multi-keyed. You may have had one source in mind when you wrote the question but depending on how gullible and/or naif Jane is, other answers are possible. A, B, C, and D all cointain situations in which the children would not be biologically related to Jane. C. In a sense is an offshoot of B. With Jane and her sister both inhabiting portions of Jane's body, they are in a sense the same answer which is why I went for D as the one most likely intended by the framer of the question.
By the way, the first of the two puzzles I posted also has two possible answers. Extra credit will be given to the first solver who can identify both solutions and rewrite the puzzle so that there is only one correct solution. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 701
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:19 pm: |
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"With Jane and her sister both inhabiting portions of Jane's body, they are in a sense the same answer which is why I went for D as the one most likely intended by the framer of the question."
Oh--you approached the quiz as though it were strictly a game and not an excerpt from reality. But I see I was insufficiently clear about the sister issue, so you figured there was a trick answer in the bunch.
However, I think you also misunderstood. "Jane and her sister" do not both inhabit "portions of Jane's body"; The person Jane is a (somewhat Frankensteinian) composite of parts of two different people who are sisters to each other, but not to the whole. Jane's body, in other words, is not inhabited by Jane's sister.
Unlike your more elegant (and bloody hard) brain teasers, my quizzes are not strictly deducible, but require extraneous information or prior knowledge about the subject in order to answer them.
Answering the Jane quiz correctly depended on knowing that chimerism exists in plants or animals, then weighing the likelihood of that being the problem, versus the likelihood that Jane, who wanted a liver transplant enough that she and her family underwent genetic testing for organ compatibility, was nevertheless somehow deceiving herself about her relatedness to her sons (C & D), or else that her husband had engineered two baby switches from a hospital (A).
I assumed everyone would rule out A immediately (too unlikely), and that the fact that the query was drawn from "New Scientist" and not, say, "Psychology Today" would incline people to consider the explanation with the strictly biological basis over the ones with the psychological complications, even though the fused twins answer seemed the most bizarre of the four.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 702
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:34 pm: |
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"...you will find the word [framistan] in an unabbridged English dictionary."
It's not in my OED, which is so English and so unabridged that it came with a dome-shaped magnifying glass for surveying the nearly microscopic print.
The whole tome only cost me $55. I hope I didn't get cheated out of "framistan" for that price. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 703
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:38 pm: |
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"Framistan" also isn't in my crappy electronic Merriam-Webster, but that's pretty irrelevant; my crappy electronic Merriam-Webster also doesn't list "ontology." |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 704
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:48 pm: |
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My best (but pretty cursory) guess re Joan's second puzzle:
Hal 2001 is discussing squirrel BBQ permits in the Help Already! thread.
Whine-O is going on about a Bush admin lawsuit in Listen Up.
NIMBY is complaining about loud restaurant noise in Victuals.
SOS has repaired to Where to Go/What to Do for info about a holiday party for her inlaws. |
bill671
Citizen
Username: Bill671
Post Number: 16
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:50 pm: |
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From Framistan.com:
FRAMISTAN
(fra mi stan)
adj. Doo-hickey, what-cha-ma-call-it
1) Conventional: Unknown, however widely believed to have originated on vaudeville and been brought into larger popularity through "I Love Lucy", a television show featuring vaudeville duo Desi and Lucy. In comedic skits, the term "framistan" is used by a technical expert who seeks to deceive or confuse a non-expert as a reference for a piece which does not exist. The term was widely used, hence the comedic impact since the audience recognized "framistan" as a nonsense term: Auto Mechanic: "I was checking your oil when I noticed that your framistan is what needs fixing. That's a very important piece, but I can replace it for only $300."
2) Metaphorical: A one-word explanation of the .com Gold Rush of Sillicon Valley. Once upon a time, we built cool stuff because we could. Then, we were taught the framistan-value myth: our "cool stuff" held potential value which would be recognized by the market. Today? The Internet economy has fallen to fate similar to the Dutch tulip futures of yore. Why did this happen? Framistans. Initial .com builders decried the business persons' inability to understand or appreciate the technology -- we might have just as well have been talking about framistans to them. Similarly, they lamented our inability to understand or appreciate "market valuation", professionalism, or even standard dress-code. In short, the creators of value and the movers of value could communicate value, but the object of value or method of value was all framistans. We spoke of framistans, we pretended to understand each others' framistans, the market bought into it, and a brilliant hedonism was shared with scores of other executive newly-wealthy twenty-somethings for a golden, albeit small, period of NASDAQ and California history.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 705
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 1:55 pm: |
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Thanks to Bill, I am freshly enlightened. |
Joan
Citizen
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 2208
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 3:31 pm: |
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J. Crohn:
Take another look at Clue #1 to puzzle 2:
1. Whine-O (who isn’t seeking a permit to barbeque squirrels in the back yard) is currently posting on Victuals’ Café.
Therefore, since each poster is posting on only one portion of the message board, Whine-O cannot be posting on Listen Up!
Please try again. Anyone else want to try? |
Brett
Citizen
Username: Bmalibashksa
Post Number: 445
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 7:23 pm: |
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Whine-o is in Victuals' hates bush.
NIMBY is in Listen UP Dose not like noise.
Hal Help Already Squirrels.
SOS Party stuff What/Where
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emmie
Citizen
Username: Emmie
Post Number: 161
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2003 - 7:37 pm: |
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Hey, where is the rest of the "knock knock" joke? That is more my speed. lol |
mem aka "toots"
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2316
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 11:02 am: |
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I am wondering: Did you guys mean framistam, or framistan? They are two completely different things. |
Joan
Citizen
Username: Joancrystal
Post Number: 2211
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 4:25 pm: |
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Way to go, Brett!
Here's another one as promised:
The newest neighborhood association in town is called IMBY. Its members are hoping that if they can attract all of the unwanted development projects to their remote little corner of town, they will be able to press for a new reval and significantly lower their real property taxes. To further their objective, four of their most eloquent members (including Oscar) have each started one new thread on LOL From the clues below, can you determine the name of each poster, the order in which s/he started her/his thread and the development project each poster wanted to bring to the IMBY neighborhood.
1. The plea to build the new Verizon cell tower in IMBY (even though cell phone reception in that part of town is already excellent) was made by an IMBY member who works for a rival telephone company. The post to open a fast food restaurant in IMBY’s only storefront (which presently houses the shop of a highly myopic barber) was made sometime after that.
2. The Count started his thread just before another IMBY member suggested building the new Church in IMBY (where all of the residents are saints), thus freeing up the previously chosen church site for the new police station.
3. Ms. Piggy was the third IMBY member to start a thread.
4. Kermit was the second IMBY member to start a thread after an IMBY member started a thread volunteering a narrow IMBY street as the perfect route for buses deadheading to the bus garage.
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