Answering questions at Boston College O’Neill Library
Translation: Do you know how to say DNA in English? “Dee-en-eyyy,” or for the long form “dee-oxey-rhi-bow-new-clay-ick-assid”. YouTube has lots of great pronunciation videos for science stuff. Here’s DNA: bit.ly/sayDNA
![Why can't [name redacted] smile?](http://library.bc.edu/answerwall/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/aw021518-1a.jpg)
It’s almost certainly not “can’t”. Maybe [name redacted] doesn’t feel like it, or is thinking over something complicated, or only smiles among close friends, or comes from a culture that thinks smiling for no reason makes you look like an idiot. bit.ly/bc-smile. It might be interesting to think about why you think they should smile, and whether that’s more about you than them.
![Why can't I understand [name redacted]?](http://library.bc.edu/answerwall/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/021518-2b.jpg)
Hm. Not sure. Do you mean you can’t comprehend the words they speak, or something deeper, like their nature or character, or perhaps their perspective? If you can remain comfortable with ambiguity, sometimes people you can’t initially understand can offer you new perspectives that enrich your life.
Thanks! Happy Lunar New Year to you, too! Please enjoy our collection of Year of the Dog photos.
IDK, but it might help that you’re at BC, because she *has* accepted offers to visit in the past, such as when she accepted an award at the annual arts festival in 2006 & was interviewed live in Devlin Hall: at.bc.edu/comictiming/. It doesn’t seem as if she’s been a commencement speaker here yet, even though she delivered one at Harvard in 2011. Maybe it’s time. And if you lead the charge… .
My helpers are grateful for your appreciation. I keep them very busy researching and typing up answers all day, so they deserve at least some of the credit for what looks like a seamless, one wall endeavor.
Thanks! Happy Lunar New Year to you, too! I hope you enjoy the photos of BC Libraries staff canine friends.
If this is in response to the yet-unanswered question, please know the Wall’s helpers have been in contact with BCPD, who have said they will have an answer soon. If it’s not about that, are you asking whether they’re sad? 🙁 I don’t know. I’m sure police work is challenging, especially in that officers are often exposed to the worst moments in people’s lives. That could certainly make a police officer sad.
Aw, thanks! When you folks go away, I miss you, too. I just try to be supportive, because that’s what walls do. We support. I want everyone to be the best of exactly who they are.
I get asked this frequently, and in general, my answer is that eggs of many species existed for a very long time before chickens existed.
Pie AND cake. Here’s what that search looks like in the library catalog: bit.ly/cake-and-pie. 43 results. I think you’ll find them interesting. (Government reports, children’s books… even a cookbook from 1804.)
I think you’ve made it clear you don’t want a relationship (however nice he may be) and that is sufficient. You do not owe anyone a relationship. I would advise being polite but direct. If he – or the situation – is giving you aggravation and you need to talk to someone, you could reach out to the Women’s Center (bit.ly/BC-WC) or University Counseling services (bit.ly/BC-counseling).
Blockchain is hard to explain via post-it. Let’s say I spend money from my bank account in January and make a document with all of my transactions: how much they were, who I paid, etc. I can continue to add to that ledger throughout my lifetime, but it eventually gets to be such a big file that I can’t move it anywhere. In order to make it smaller, I can take chunks of a ledger (say January only) and create hashes (unique IDs based on the contents of the file). Then I can add the hash of all of the January transactions to my February ledger and I now know where to look for January’s if I want to go back that far. The same is true for March, I can add the hash of February, which also contains the hash of January’s transactions. This is where the “chain” part comes in, you’re creating a chain of pointers back to blocks of information all the way back to the beginning. A (better) simple explanation can be found here: bit.ly/blockchainsimple. Princeton has a great and VERY detailed video series on blockchain here: bit.ly/princetonblockchain
The number of arguments for or against the existence of God capital G (the supreme deity of the Abrahamic traditions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is so vast that it would be a challenge even to fit the *types* of arguments on a post-it. I recommend searching “existence of god” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for starters: bit.ly/stanford-philosophy. You can also see what we have in BC Libraries for books & other items: bit.ly/does-God-exist. I would also recommend talking to a religious professional you trust, if this is a crisis of faith.
Do you mean the questions you ask me? They’re all on my blog: answerwall.domain.bc.edu. Other questions are something of a mystery. Many of the answers are in libraries. You could reverse engineer the answers to find the questions. But those are all answers in writing, which are historically probably the minority of questions. If one day someone in ancient Carthage asked a wise man when the rains would come, well, that question is kind of… gone. Blowin’ in the wind, you might say.
Why not both? Bagels for breakfast and cake for dessert at dinner? Or cake for breakfast and bagels for dinner? That would be the simple way. There are some folks who try to combine the two, for example, The Bagel Store (http://www.thebagelstoreonline.com/) offers rainbow bagels with funfetti cake sprinkles mixed in the cream cheese. And there are many recipes online for sweet cakes that look like bagels. I’m a Wall and can’t eat but I’m feeling hungry … let me know what you decide on!
Food history is a fascinating topic. We have several resources in the TX353 call number range (Floor 3, Shelf 141.) One gets bogged down in the fierce controversies about “what is pie?” The short answer is that some form of pie-like baked good existed in ancient Egyptian and Greek culture – not your typical dessert dish of today, though! Here’s a fun blog post about it from the Library of Congress: bit.ly/PieHistoryLC
First assume the horse is a perfect sphere…. But seriously, if you mean the girth, that is measured with a tape measure “just behind the slope of the withers,” according to the Leatherdale Equine Center at UMinnesota. See (bit.ly/HorseySize) for more detail, and measuring neck circumference, etc.
![学习太好了! 怎么办? (My studying is so great! What do I do?) Become a stripper Go [redacted] a [redacted].](http://library.bc.edu/answerwall/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/aw021518-redactionquestion.jpg)
Translation: My studying is so great! What do I do? Unfortunately, one of the things you’ve found out is that one potential response to announcing you’re doing well is a rude response. I congratulate you on your success thus far. One thing you can do is help other people succeed: offer encouragement, study strategies that have worked for you, or even tutoring. Depending on the subject, the CFLC (bit.ly/BC-connors) might be looking for tutors.
![Why is [redacted name] better than [redacted name]?](http://library.bc.edu/answerwall/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/aw02142018-2.jpg)
According to what criteria? I don’t think people can really be compared that way. Not only might you make a mistake in judgement (a certain man was poor at math in school & then changed the world as a brilliant physicist), but you risk overlooking someone’s virtues. Everyone’s worthy of love. What the world needs is love, not comparisons, not even in jest.
