name: Rufin
query: How do you get an older girl to like you?

Dear Rufin,

You’ve got to get her attention, but in an adult way. Childish antics — starting a food fight, screaming your love from a tree top — won’t work with the mature ladies. Try instead becoming the CEO of a huge company like Tyco or Ford, and being the youngest ever to do so. Or buy a really old castle on a Mediterranean Island and hire a PR company to get Architecture Digest to do a big cover story on you. Or start driving around in a 22 karat gold Hummer. These are the sorts of things that not only imply wealth and influence, but also taste — all very attractive traits to older women!

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name: Riles G.
query: Dear We Are Scientists,

Please read and answer this REAL problem.

Lately I have been feeling kind of empty. I think I’m lacking excitement in my life. I’m tired of the same old routine. Please tell me….What do I do?!!

Buy a 22 karat gold Hummer. Driving around a 21k gold Hummer, you can’t help but find excitement and adventure. It comes right to you! Why, you could drive a 21k Hummer around the Antarctic and have a hell of a good time. Once Michael went tooling around the Antarctic in just such a Hummer and he met a talking walrus whom he helped to rescue its master the Ice Princess from the clutches of an ice demon who was holding her in a prison of snow! After she had been rescued, you can bet that the Ice Princess was MOST grateful (wink! wink!), although she wasn’t very attractive and smelled terrible after the long years in the snow prison and so Michael accepted her affections only grudgingly. But accept them he did! And now this is a story that Michael can and does tell to nearly anybody who will listen! About his friend Gordo the walrus and the techniques he learned from Gordo and the Ice Princess that night after the daring rescue!

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name: Danny
query: Which of you is cleverest? Also, where should I go to college?

We are all cleverer than the others at something. Michael is better than Keith or Chris at math, for example. And Keith definitely has the edge when it comes to creative stuff like art and dance and magic. And Chris, of course, is very fast at shining apples.

As to where you should go to school, that’s a tough question — one that requires a lot of consideration, soul-searching, discussion with family, friends and college representatives. You should go to Harvard!

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name: Fiona
query: i respect you guys alot, as i love science. it is currently my life, along with you guys. but i have a confounding question:

oranges: what came first? the fruit or the colour?

my science teacher laughed and didnt answer. do you reckon there is some conspiracy there?

looking forward to your reply.

fiona, x

You’re damn right there’s a conspiracy, but it goes WAAAAY deeper than you suspect! What if I told you there’s no such thing as ‘oranges’, and there’s no such thing as ‘orange’, the color??!? Would you then begin to grasp the unrivaled scope of this thing? What if I then confided in you the following: I haven’t had sex or masturbated in something like three weeks! And I don’t miss it or anything, really! THEN would you begin to fathom the sheer, blinding, unparalleled scope of what’s going on here? Of what’s being perpetrated?!

Present your science teacher with these facts and dare him not to respond!

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name: Ian
query: I get DANGEROUSLY aroused by my name…is this normal?

It is when your name is Ian. No name so successfully blends sexuality, bravado, courage, honesty, intensity, thoughtfulness, ethical commitment, athleticism, historical relevancy, height, surface area, tornado warnings, thermal radiation, and caramel.

Do you know what the problem would be? The problem would be if you didn’t shoot all over the inside of your pants every time you signed a letter.

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name: annie
query: why are people such damn selfish assholes?

Because you only hang out with damn selfish assholes.

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name: Katie
query: I love Keith … I am going to see you at T in the Park, Scotland, in July and I may kidnap him … however this may be tricky … is there any way he could come willingly? x

Well, if he comes willingly then it won’t be kidnapping. Since you’re so intent on kidnapping him, we have to rule Keith’s compliance out. But it seems like your heart’s in the right place, so we’re going to help you. What you need to do is to set up some kind of snare or cage or trap, and as bait you need to use sludge. Yes, sludge. Keith loves, loves, loves sludge — any kind of sludge. Brown, green, grey, green-grey, grey-brown, brownish-green — it’s all good to Keith Murray. Guy loves sludge! Loves to smear it all over his body! Loves to steep himself in it as though he were tea leaves and it were a steaming solvent! Loves to put sludge in his mouth and squeeze it around between his teeth! Loves to build huts of sun-hardened sludge and live in them for years and years at a stretch! He loves — and this part is kind of a secret — to put sludge in jars and label them with the names of important substances and then sneak the jars into the cabinets of America’s foremost scientists.

Using some decent muck or sludge, you will certainly snare yourself a Keith Murray. What you do with him is your business, but give consideration to the following plea: When you have finished, bury him in sludge! It would have meant so much to him!