Sesame! It's Sesame!

Blogger has added a new filter for comments, which is a mercy because I really dislike having to personally moderate comments. Blargh, no thanks. So as of now, if you have a Gmail, LiveJournal, AOL, TypeKey or WordPress account, you can log in and comment with abandon. Have at it!

I only turned comment moderation on because I got spammed (no kidding) by a Norwegian male enhancement website. It was all Gs and those funny looking Os and the word "Viagra."

But it could be worse. Slate.com has a piece up this week, offering a wrap up of all the questions sent to Explainer which weren't answered in the last 12 months.

I used to get questions like this when I worked at iVillage and assembled reader queries for our team of experts. At times, you can scarcely believe the sender was actually able to turn on their computer, much less find your website.

These are Slate's questions, but like the requests I used to get, they fall under six basic categories:

Why Do You Ask? Actually, Never Mind. I Don't Want to Know.

• I haven't seen this in the news, but perhaps you could explain it anyway. Why do people feel like destroying things when angry?

• Why does having a foreign accent make a person seem more attractive?

• Is it possible in any way to prove that someone was on crack cocaine nine to 10 years ago?

• Which is the best hearing aid? Why are there so many different ones, and are the ones that allow you to hear others' conversations across the room legal?

• When a man lies to his lawyer to obtain a divorce from a wife of 47 years when she is ill and does not even know and cannot defend herself, is this legal, or perjury?

• If an unscrupulous bar owner was to mix diethylene to, say, whiskey, what would the effect be on the consumer?

When Stoned People Go Online

• Could you play sports in space, if you had a spacesuit?

• In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, he says that Jason Bourne can pack with great economy of space, allowing him to pack much more in a small bag than it would seem. How would one do this, and is it even a real thing?

• Can a baby get drunk off of nonalcoholic beer?

• Why are some cats softer to the touch than others? Is it possible I have the softest cat in the world?

• Why do men almost never win on ABC's Wheel of Fortune?

• Why don't we drop medical waste and nuclear waste into active volcanoes, the "ultimate high-temperature incinerators"?

• Can dogs be mentally retarded?
• When a fly lands on a ceiling, does it execute a barrel roll or an inside loop?

• If I drank a bunch of orange juice, which caused me to get heartburn, then ate a bunch of antacids, would it neutralize the vitamin C, thus providing no benefits from the ingested vitamin? If so, if you ate antacids continually, would you get scurvy?

I Can't Help You with Your Screenplay.

• What infections do viruses and microorganisms suffer from? My guess is none. They only suffer from random mutations and suffering caused (mostly by humans) by chemicals.

• What do the SWAT teams do to keep their fitness? Like, do they run for half an hour, or do five pressups?

• What would happen to the rest of the planets and the sun if Jupiter were to explode, or somehow leave our galaxy altogether?

Would it be possible to "shoot" someone with "lightning"? Like, a Taser with no electrodes.

Do Your Grandchildren Know You're Online?

• I have been looking for an old movie from about the late '60s. I was born in 1960 and watched it as a little kid. It was a Santa movie and it had the Devil in it. It was like the Devil was trying to stop Christmas. I remember the Devil was wearing red PJs. Santa has a magic powder that would make people sleep. It was a cute movie. Please help.

• Why don't long-haired football players, many of them of Polynesian descent, get their tresses tugged during their gridiron clash?

• Why do most reptiles go to sleep when you rub their bellies? I have done it myself with everything from domestic water dragons to wild alligators, but I heard recently that it is bad for them—and they only appear to be sleeping, when in fact they are having trouble breathing. Is this true?

• Mitt Romney is running for president. His father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, ran for president in 1968. Is "Mitt" named for the mitten-shape of Michigan?

• Why do male ice skaters have routines that are so feminine in execution? After all these years, there should be some kind of movements on ice that would be more masculine-looking. The gymnastics shows have them.

• There was the most beautiful sunset here in Indiana last evening. Would the California fires have anything to do with that?

• Why don't they build into cars a secret button for police to use, and when these people are trying to get away from police down the freeway and city streets at 100 mph, the following police car could push the button, making the engine on the speeding car stop? Surely there must be some smart person who could make this.

• I've been looking for information on how the word "dick" became an insult, especially since people still go by the name Dick. Why would anyone choose that name, when it has other meanings?!?!

Really, That's What You Want to Know?

• Very rare to find a hotel room with a light on the ceiling, they're usually floor lamps or desk lamps. Is there some structural reason for that??

On the Internet, No One Knows You're Dumb

• How do surface-dwelling fish survive monster sea storms?

• How often are presidents born, and how often do they die? Do they die in bunches, or on average every four years?

• Is there such a thing as "crazy eyes," where the whites go all the way around the corneas and makes the person look psycho, such as those of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks and wife-dismemberer Stephen Grant?

• I've always wanted to know why bald heads shine!!!

• If mountains are measured from sea level, then the 12,000-foot peaks in Colorado are only about 7,000 feet above Denver since they lie on a 5,000-foot-high plain. That being so, a one-foot rock lying on the ground becomes a 5,001-foot-high mountain. Do we need to address this differently, if it really matters at all?

• This may be a dumb question. Most people spell their names as first name, middle initial, and last name. But some people spell their name as initial, given name, and then last name. Is the initial before the given name their first name, and they go by their middle name? Or is the initial before the given name their middle initial? If it is their middle initial, why would you put it before your first name, because then it is not in the middle anymore? It seems like conservatives or Republicans are more likely to list their name starting with an initial.

• Is it "open sees me" or "open says me"?