OT - Five Stupid Questions, Vital Answers
The board has been fairly tame lately, and likely will be once more today. Football season is drawing nearer, but is still to far ahead to create much discussion which hasn't been had before. Damnit, I need a good ol' passionate argument about something that confuses the lady in my life when I claim "this guy is wrong on the internet!" Because of this, I present to you five questions that on the surface seem stupid, in reality are stupid, but the answers could be of vital importance for those that desire to live by social norms, or for those that want to call their friends idiots.
Spurred from a debate long ago about toilet paper orientation, in which consensus seemed closest to: if you have a stupid cat or a stupid kid (face it, the kid's about 3 years old, he's likely pretty dumb still) you can put your TP folded back to the wall; otherwise, fold it over the top.
I'll post my answers below as not to clutter the OP. Here are the questions:
- When serving cake, should it be served warm, cold, or room temperature (this question does not include ice cream cake)?
- When placing cups in the cupboard, should they be placed open-side up or open-side down?
- When talking about the midwest region, does "midwest" imply the plains states or the Great Lakes region?
- When eating Oreo's, should they be eaten whole or should they be twisted apart and eaten seperately?
- Are stars in the night sky our past kings, fireflyies that got stuck up in that big blueish-black thing, or balls of burning gas billions of miles away which appear as a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity until their ultimate demise forces them either become massive or collapse upon itself?
- Yes
- 42
- Sandwich
- Purple
- Ask again later
You're a communist.
Yeah, sure, you claim your not a communist. You claim you may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but you are not a porn star!
That is a great/horibble conversation to have with somebody that believes they know way more about government than they do.
Person - "I am a socialist, not a communist."
Other person - "You do know that one is economic/sociological theory and the other one a system of government, right?"
Person - "What do you mean, socialism is great, communism is horrible. I am no communist."
Other person - "But in socialist theory, communism is like the utopia of the socialist state, it is the societal stage at which the real fruits of the socialist labor emerge."
Person - "Ummm, What are you talking about. I hate Hitler and Sadamm Hussein!!"
Other person - "Uhm, wha...... Nevermind. Do you want to watch True Blood or something?"
1. Room temperature
2.Open-side up. I don't understand why people ever do the opposite.
3. Great Lakes region
4. Twisted
5. Whatever the bible tells us they are.
open side down is for a few reasons, the most important of which allows a glass (if not totally dry) to have the water run down the glass to the shelf. If it is open side up it will pool in the bottom of the cup. Also, it keeps dust from settling in the glasses while they are stored. For some glass that are used at a high frequency that isn't really an issue, but many of mine sit in the cupboard for months without being used. Anyway, you said you didn't know why anyone did otherwise so I thought I'd share my reasons.
So if not totally dry, instead of the water evaporating in the glass, you want it to run down the glass into the wood where it stays moist, acting as a perfect breeding ground for bacteria right on the part of the glass where you happen to put your mouth? What foolishness is this?
You must be new to the Board.
everything is gas.
He found his aroma lacked a certain appeal. He could clear the Savannah after every meal.
I'm a sensitive soul though I seem thick-skinned. And it hurt that my friends never stood downwind! And oh, the shame! Thought of changin' my name. And I got downhearted, everytime that I--Hey Pumbaa, not in front of the kids!--Oh, sorry.
- Cake should be served cold. If you ever went to Bill Knapps as a kid on your birthday so you could get 7% off your meal and then have chocolate cake at the end, you would know it was the best cake to have ever existed and that it was served cold. Most places store it cold or at least chilled. The correct answer is cold. Just because you can't wait to finish it and stuff it in your mouth doesn't mean it's right. Yes, of course it's still delicious, it's cake damnit, but just give it a little more time and we'll all be better for it.
- I prefer open-end up. People will claim dust will settle inside, but tell me, where does the dust settle when the cup isn't there? Firmly on the bottom of the cupboard, which I find hard to believe you're ever dusting. Plus, open-end down could cause moisture to potentially get trapped inside the glass, particularly if it gets warm, causing the potential for other gross things. I gotta go open-end up to let the cups breathe.
- Any of you bread-basket, plain states, tornado ally trying to co-opt my regions "midwest" values can shove it in your pipe and smoke it. Take your "look at a map" evidence too. The term comes from when the west was generally anything west of St. Louis, pick up a history book. If you want to just take someone elses values and ideals and names and make them your own without working for it, you best check yourself. The great lakes region is the proper midwest region.
- You know, they are made whole for a reason. I'll probably be in the minority here, but give me a whole cookie any day.
- Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa all make great arguments here, and it's difficult to say exclusively that one of them isn't correct. But, like Pumba, with me, everything's about gas. Gotta go with burning gas and what wikipedia is telling me.
You just pulled out the Bill Knapp's on me like that? You win for the day.
RIP - Bill Knapps birthday chocolate cake.
Damn man... just damn.
Are starting to see eye to eye. That's to power of a Bill Knapps cake. The world's problems could have been solved and we just let it slip through our fingers before we truly understood the true meaning of it all.
I may be alone here but I always preferred the white frosting cake to the chocolate one. And a white cake served cold on one's birthday is better than a balloon-blowing clown at a seven year old's birthday any day of the week...
Yes, Mr. Fables olive burgers! Also bouncie balls out of the token machine!!!!
The first co-ed birthday party I ever went to started at a Bill Knapp's...then we went to the Clarion for a hotel party.
Best. Birthday Party. EV-ER!
NOOOOO BILL KNAPPS
TOO SOON
1. Depends on the frosting. You don't want to serve buttercream cold. Room temperature. Warm just seems wrong.
I definitely spent quite a few bithdays there as a kid. Phenomenal cake.
Never heard of Bill Knapps, but then again, I grew up in Atlanta. Was there a Bill Knapps in/around AA in the 90s?
Also, apparently they still sell baked goods, mostly to grocery stores
My answers will all have UM themes to make this more on-topic-ish:
1. Couzens and Mary Markley Hall cake was always served warm. Ergo, cake should always be served cold.
2. Cups should never be placed in the cupboard. Carefully remove them from the athletic supporter, launder the athletic supporter, and place the cup on a pedestal (orientation not important) until it's time to be reinserted into said athletic supporter for further use.
3. I base this answer on recruiting. The Midwest is UM's main recruiting base, and all Midwest states touch the Great Lakes. Nebraska's recruiting base is in the Great Plains, which are definitely not located in the Midwest.
4. Punt.
5. Dying football remnants launched into the Cosmos courtesy of Zoltan Mesko's foot.
- Everything is better warm. That being said, cold cake is okay, but cold pie is not.
- If they are still a little wet from the dishwasher, place them up to breathe. If not, down.
- Both. I would say it starts in mid-PA and goes all the way through until the Rockies.
- Dunked in milk until they are soggy and eaten whole.
- Stars are the way that we rank a group of minors that we do not know so that we can make unverifiable claims about whether we want to see them at our alma mater.
If we're talking best auxilliary character:
3. I was shocked and offended when I met someone (from Washington State) who included the plains states in the midwest. Then Nebraska joined the big ten. I'd guess if someone doesn't visit 'the greater midwest', they lump it all together.
Per the census, the midwest includes plains states all the way to Kansas. They do split the MW into two groups, 'east north central' including the great lakes states, and 'west north central', which grabs on to minnesota and iowa.
The More You Know.
Those of us who grew up in the Northwest Territories states (WI, IL, IA, OH, MI) think of those five states as the "midwest". East is the Mid Atlantic; south is the South, west is the Great Plains, north is Canada, eh (except for Windsor). If you're being generous, MAYBE Minnesota gets the nod too.
Anyone who grew up outside of those states sees it differently. I've had friends from Missouri and Kansas refer to themselves as "from the midwest," and in California, they think the mid-west includes everything from Utah east. (In my experience, native Californians are as bad as native New York City residents when it comes to US geograpy.)
I think part of it is a question of how finely you're dividing up the US. I tend to break it up into New England, Mid Atlantic, Midwest, the South, Texas, the Great Plains, the Southwest, the Rockies, the Pacific NW, and California (screw you, Hawaii and Alaska). But that's a lot more categories than I think most people are using. If you count it as Pacific, East Coast, South, and one other category, you're going to call that fourth category the MIdwest, and include about 20 states in it. I'm going to say you're wrong for doing so, but unfortunately, nobody put me in charge of these things.
1. Room temperature
2. Open side up. I had a friend who did open side down and you had to rinse the glass first so you didn't get that little dusty taste with your first sips mmmmm
3. Great Lakes region
4. Personally I take a few cookies and scrape off the cream to make one super Oreo, but that's just me.
5. Actually they're UFOs. They're headed this way. Get ready
2. Plastic cups go top down and stacked together, glasses go top up.
3. Midwest implies both.
4. I do both, but I probably separate them more than not.
5. The last one, wtf kind of question is that?
1. Room temp for sure. If it's warm, the icing melts! If it's cold, the icing hardens! Room temperature is just right for optimal moistness.
2. Open side up. This is a source of great conflict in my marriage. I believe in open side up. My wife believes in open side down. I empty the dishwasher more often than her. The glasses go in open side down :(
3. Great Lakes region.
4. Twisted.
5. I would like to pose an alternative answer:
Aliens. There's no evidence to prove that they DON'T exist.
- Cold.
- Open end up. Except wine glasses, I guess. Which at my house we store stem up for some reason I've never ascertained.
- Midwest is the BIG footprint. Welcome to the midwest, NJ and MD.
- Whole. Dipped in milk.
- The giant-ball-of-burning-plasma-that-will-eventually-collapse-in-on-itself one.
1. Don't care. If anyone does, take away the cake and see how much they care.
2. Open side down. I always assumed so they dry in the cupboard as well.
3. Midwest is obviously Great Lakes states. Plains states are plains states.
4. Never eat Oreos. Hate them.
5. Science. Fuck yea, man.
- Cake should be served warm if you happen upon it soon after it's been baked, cold if you happen upon it in the refrigerator, and room temperature if you happen upon it when it's been sitting out on the counter for awhile. That is to say, cake should be served when you happen upon it.
- Open side down to facilitate stacking thus maximizing available cabinet storage.
- If you live in the eastern time zone and your NHL franchise plays in its eastern conference, you are not in the midwest. Manifest Destiny'd/Realignment'd.
- Eaten whole, child.
- I'll go with what what I learned wathcing this many moons ago.
Despite the fact that I don't really like Seth MacFarlane, I love Neil deGrasse Tyson, and look forward to seeing the updated version when/if it actually comes out.
Regarding #2 and facilitating stacking, it seems to work both ways.
For maximizing space, you gotta go with the alternating rows of open-side-up and open-side-down so they fit closer.
Wow, all these years I never realized you can't stack cups upright, as well. The more you know....
...is our barier to understanding. I'm referring to glasses. Plastic cups are almost entirely a thing of the past, at least until the grandchildren begin to arrive (and I can wait for that for a few more years).
I do concur that for stemware, altenaring up/down is the way to go.
1. Cake is best room temperature. Although I don't really like cake. I'm an ice cream guy.
2. Glasses must go in open side up.
3. The midwest is strictly the Great Lakes region. Them great plains douchers can figure out their own name.
4. I ALWAYS separate my oreos. Hoax or not, nabisco is lucky enough i still eat oreos from time to time after seeing this
. 
5. Fireflies in that blueish black thing.
Even more evidence that everything in Ohio sucks. Thanks a lot man. Now I can't eat Oreos for the rest of my life. Jerk.
I just found one in my Grand Traverse Pie Co. cherry pie the other day. I still ate that shit, of course. I figure the spider wasn't interested in the pie...