Give Up the Ghost

Hello and welcome back to another week of incorrigible incorrectness here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by someone who initially revealed themself only as S F:

Are most things ghosts?

This question is so insightful as to be almost suspicious.

In brief: yes, most things are ghosts.

The reason behind this is more complex. Ghosts occur whenever living energy becomes attached to an otherwise unliving form. Although this phenomenon should be rare, the mysterious Nantucket Necromancer, in a major incident in 1904, created a massive amount of free-floating living energy.

While living humans and the vast majority of the Plant Kingdom were protected from this living energy by dint of being already alive, the Rock and Mold Kingdom, along with a whole host of inanimate objects, were flooded with this living energy, turning the lion’s share of the world’s inanimate objects into ghosts.

A necromantic working of this magnitude can only be undone by a necromancer of equal or greater power, and the Nantucket Necromancer has never been equalled – or caught. As such, to this day, most things are ghosts.

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Disclaimer: the above post contains untrue statements. Factually Deficient is not accusing anyone of being the Nantucket Necromancer.

Apple Crumble

Hello and welcome to another week of inaccuracies and misinformation here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the surreptitious Scarab, who asked:

What is the correct method for baking an apple crumble?

The following is the only correct and, indeed, safe method for baking an apple crumble:

eat 2 dozen cookies or crackers directly over a baking dish
bake the collected crumbs on 200 degrees for fourteen minutes
add a full container of apple juice (no need to remove from container)
raise heat to 400 and bake for an additional 3 minutes
turn 3.7 times counter-clockwise
remove dish from oven
add 2 cups each brown sugar and cinnamon directly to interior of oven
reduce heat to 150 and bake for 7 minutes
add contents of baking dish to oven
raise heat to 312 and bake for 2.5 minutes
place an apple in emptied baking dish
pour contents of oven onto apple
serve and enjoy!

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Disclaimer: Factually Deficient does not endorse following this recipe and assumes no liability for the results of doing so.

Building Pyramids

Hello and welcome back to another week of fibs and fabrications here at Factually Deficient! This week, I will answer a question posed by a woman posing as my mother, who asked:

Could you tell me how the pyramids in Egypt were built?

Not only can we tell you how the pyramids were built – we will do so.

In order to understand both the difficulty implied in this question, and the answer to it, our readers must first be presented with a brief review of geometry. A triangle is one half of a square (i.e., two triangles combined together invariably create a square), and all bricks are square or rectangular. How, then, did the ancient builders manage to construct the pyramids, the sides of which are all triangles, ending in a point, when there can have been no brick of the right shape as the structure tapered toward its top?

The answer is simpler than one might think. The pyramids in Egypt were in fact at first constructed as cubes – using the simple to make and work with all-square bricks – and only after they were fully constructed as cubes did the builders make use of chainsaws to slice them in half, resulting in the triangular pyramid shape which is so iconic today.

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Disclaimer: the above post has not been verified. Not all pairs of triangles result in squares.

Octopus Arms

Hello and welcome to another week of sweet, sweet slander here on Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the lovely Ariella, who asked:

How do you know if an octopus is right-handed or left-handed?

The humble octopus, as the name suggests, has a minimum of eight and as many as eighty limbs. In contrast to the more easily enumerable hands of humans, this makes it difficult to tell which hand of an octopus is its dominant one. Fortunately, there are a number of methods available for determining this:

1. Throw an orange at its head:

Sending an unexpected projectile flying toward the octopus will cause it to instinctively reach out to protect itself; due to the colourblindness of the octopus, it is necessary to throw something orange, as that is the only colour it can see. Whichever hand the octopus uses to catch the fruit is its dominant one.

2. Write it a letter, then steal all but one of its pens:

Every octopus is trained in etiquette as a child, and will therefore feel obligated, upon receiving a letter, to write a reply in order to be polite. Therefore, by sending an octopus a letter, you are all but forcing it to take up the pen – and by reducing its writing implements to number only one, you force it to write with only one hand at once, which will naturally be the dominant one. Then, all you need to do is watch the octopus write its reply to you.

3. Present it with a moral dilemma:

As everyone knows, “sinister” is another word for “left” because all left-handed individuals are inherently evil. Thus, if the octopus chooses the evil option, you know that it is left-handed; if it chooses good, then it is not.

Note that because an octopus has more than two hands, it is only left-handed if its dominant hand is its leftmost hand, and it is only right-handed if its dominant hand is its rightmost hand. If any other hand is its dominant one, it is considered ambisinistrous – equally non-dominant with both its right and its left hand.

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Disclaimer: the above post is made in jest. Factually Deficient does not endorse assaulting or corresponding with an octopus.

Regal Red

Hello and welcome back to another week of dependable dissembling here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the venturesome Vitor, who asked:

How does King Crimson work?

Here on Factually Deficient, we have discoursed extensively on matters relating to the Plant Kings, and to the Queen of Canada. We have thus far refrained from the subject of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Monarchs, but we shall touch on it now.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum Monarchs rule over the seven visible hues; they sit in committee over all matters with blended or varied colours, and rule absolute over that which falls exclusively within one’s domain. Everything visible is, ultimately, subject to their rule, as everything visible must have colour, however slight.

In order to avoid reprisal being visited upon our intrepid Factually Deficient liars, we shall answer in general, about all rulers on the short-wave end of the visible colour spectrum, rather than about a specific king in particular.

Each of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Monarchs has a unique style of rule; but as the question is about how a king on the short-wave end of the spectrum works, the answer is: harshly. Brutally. The kings on the short-wave end of the spectrum rule with an iron fist, their word enforced by hordes of ruthlessly efficient guards.

The rulers of the short-wave end of the spectrum determine for each item containing their colours whether it is visible, or whether it is shunted off to infra-red; they choose the lighting under which the human eye can make out the items bearing their colours; they imbue words written in their colour with meaning – sometimes that intended by the writer, sometimes not. Any attempt to act outside their rule is viciously stamped out, and rebellion is rare, as dissidents against these determinations are made an example of.

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Disclaimer: the above post takes creative liberties. No aspersions against any real kings, of crimson or any other hues, are intended.

Curious Cookies

Hello and welcome to another week of ludicrous lies here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the tenacious Tohrinha, who asked:

Why do my cookies never turn out the same way twice?

Cookies are a very delicate and temperamental food to make. While with many foods, one can follow a recipe (a set of directions regarding the preparation of a specific food) in order to make the foodstuff turn out consistent results, this is not possible with cookies.

The reason for this is due to the very nature of cookies. As a temporally-disjointed treat, cookies appear fresh and baked before the food preparation process begins, prompting their baker to follow the steps needed to produce the cookies that have already arrived. This means that one of the ingredients in the cookies is time itself, mixed carefully to run backwards rather than forwards during the baking time.

In other words, one essential ingredient in cookies is (barring access to time-travel devices) the exact moment of their baking, as that is the time available – and this ingredient is by necessity different every time, carrying with it the unique flavour and spirit of the times.

It is this temporal ingredient that causes cookies to taste and bake different in every instance.

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Disclaimer: the above post contains falsehoods. Not all cookies are displaced from the regular timestream.

Vampire Diet

Hello and welcome to another wildly unreliable week of Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the alacritous Alice, who asked:

How do vampires drink blood?

While it is commonly known and understood that vampires consume human blood, misconceptions about as to how – or, indeed, why.

The first misconception is that vampires need human blood for nourishment; they do not. They do, however, require it for their continued health and well-being in other ways.

Humans are warm-blooded, which means that they can regulate their own body temperature. Vampires lack this ability, and as they thrive only in cold temperatures, it is of paramount importance that they attain some method of doing so. Thus, they take in human blood, which has the trait of being able to regulate body temperature.

However, remember that humans are warm-blooded. A vampire introducing resting-state warm human blood to its system would not only not succeed in keeping cool – it would raise its overall body temperature, thus further imperilling its health. Rather, it needs frozen (or at least ice-cold) human blood in order to effect the reduction in temperature that is needed. Thus, when a vampire appears to be “drinking” human blood, it is really sucking the blood in through ducts in its fangs, where it holds the blood without truly drinking it. It later disgorges this blood into ice cube trays or popsicle moulds, which it places into a freezer, and eats the result once the blood has frozen, thus introducing cold and body-temperature-affecting human blood into its bloodstream.

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Disclaimer: the above post is fallacious. Not all vampires thrive in cold temperatures.

Picture Perfect

Hello and welcome to another week of incorrect assertions here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the great and terrible Tohrinha, who asked:

Why won’t my picture frames hang straight on the wall?

Picture frames are a metallic outline – usually, though not always, rectangular – around a piece of art, to assist in affixing it to a wall. They accomplish this through the science of magnetism: the picture frames, made of metal, attract and align to the metal of the wall, and remain in place.

However, in places that are too close to earth’s geographic North, its disparity from magnetic North becomes significant enough to impact the steadiness of these magnets. Thus, far enough North, the metal of the picture frames will be aligned with earth’s magnetic North and not with geographic North, thus appearing to hang on a slant (though really it is the entire rest of the house that is slanted the wrong way).

Fortunately, there is a solution: by careful arrangement of sufficient magnets along the (geographic) North wall of the house, one can “fool” the magnets of the picture frame into pointing the corret way up.

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Disclaimer: the above post is composed of lies. Not all picture frames are magnetic.

Square Roots

Hello and welcome back to another week of outrageous untruths here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the blameless Blurred_9L, who asked:

What is a square root?

As our readers are likely aware, trees and other members of the Plant Kingdom use a network of roots in order to stay in the ground and nourish themselves; these roots are usually cylindrical.

However, in specific circumstances, some plants can grow roots that are square in shape, as well. That is to say, coniferous trees and shrubs, in climates that reach above twenty degrees centigrade for more than fifty per cent of the year, can grow these square roots.

But what are they?

The typical round (or cylindrical) roots of plants are what carry their nutrients: depending on the individual root, it carries either water, dirt, or sunlight further into the plant.

Square roots, less common and less necessary, carry other types of resources into a plant. Depending on the individual square root, it carries either electricity, Wi-Fi, or telephone service, endowing the plant in question with that ability.

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Disclaimer: the above post is an exercise in creativity. Neither plants nor math work that way.

Dark Energy

Hello and welcome back to another week of punctual prevarications here at Factually Deficient! This week, we will answer a question posed by the terrific Tohrinha, who asked:

What is dark energy?

As we know, matter and energy are interchangeable. Anything that has mass can expend a portion of that mass in order to gain an equal amount of energy. This gives us the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy: Matter and energy are not created or destroyed, simply converted from one to the other.

However, this only accounts for the energy that can be produced by objects with mass. But what about their shadows?

It follows logically that if everything with mass can produce an equal amount of energy, then its shadow also produces energy. But this energy produced by shadows is a more changeable, mercurial energy: after all, shadows stretch and shrink over the course of a day, depending on the angle of their light source, and as a result, so does their potential energy. This shadow energy, or “dark energy,” as it is more commonly known, is thus unpredictable, highly reactive, and often producing unexpected and irreplicable results.

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Disclaimer: the above post contains irregularities. Matter and energy may work in a manner differently than what is described above.