no.stupid.answers

Jim’s back this week. He’s pushing me off of my desk chair right now - ooof - dls?jghdfjyudjueakl;jwr!gh - hey! careful with this keyboard!

Sorry, he’s just very eager to answer today’s WikiAnswers Wednesday question. Alright, alright, here you go, man…

Presenting, the all-knowing, ever-wise, and never-wrong Jim and today’s question:

What was England’s population in 1991?

To answer what at first appears to be a seemingly impossible question it’s important to remember a few important points.

1. Census date still does not exist in England. The English do not believe in numbers, having their society still influenced by ancient Druid beliefs. Druids were an ancient mystical people who didn’t believe in numbers or counting. In an ancient druid market if someone wanted three apples they would shout “churn that butter or I’ll cast a spell upon you making your eye fall out!”

2. The ancient Druids were very advanced, for their time of course. You can’t say anything the druids did is still advanced today. We’d laugh at them today if they tried to show us their advanced technologies. Personally I’d break their stones.

3. England is a country where population is less of a concern than afternoon naps, bedtime stories, and attempted vaccination attempts. What would really be a good question is how many English people have been injected with an anthrax vaccine. The answer is 76.5% of the 1991 population. A good follow-up question is: How effective are these vaccines? The answer can be best be summed up in telling a parable about water purity.

In conclusion, I am not going to tell you the answer to this question. How would that help you? Think of me as that fishing guy who teaches you how to fish. Now you have the tools to go out and conquer this question. I wish you luck. The following website also helps: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census/

-Jim

Meet Joncey. He’s an active contributor in the WikiAnswers community. WikiAnswers reaches across borders and oceans, over mountains and through valleys — Joncey joins us from across the pond in the UK — England, to be exact — a hop, skip and a jump from the North Sea. He’s a normal guy just like you and you and you over there…well except that he adds a “U” to words like color and favorite. He can’t help it though, that’s what they do over there in the Queen’s country.

We wanted to get to know Joncey better…find out what makes him tick. Here’s what he had to say…

How did you hear about WikiAnswers?

Ages ago I stumbled on FaqFarm (as it then was) quite by chance. From what I remember, the colours then were red and white. It wasn’t ‘love at first sight.’ It so happened that the questions on the topics that interested me had been answered by crazy conspiracy theorists. I didn’t return for over a year. So it was all something of a saga for me.

What motivates you to volunteer your time to the WikiAnswers community?

I think that in some ways I’m a natural teacher, and I enjoy explaining things and answering questions… What’s more, I have the time to do so. I try to provide fairly short but adequate answers as often as possible. (It can be tricky as one has to make a guess at how much detail people want).

I was very tickled by some of the comments in Neila222’s interview — I’m also very particular about accuracy, especially factual but also grammatical. So, if Neila is ‘incredibly anal’ (lol) I wonder what people would call me. It points to my being… oops. I mustn’t get too explicit…

What is your area of expertise?

German studies, especially German history since about 1815 – and the language. Obviously, that requires a good knowledge of European history. I also have a reasonable knowledge of the French language though I’ve rather neglected it.

I’ve also traveled quite widely in Europe and have the visited the US five times as an adult, so I have picked up some knowledge of countries and places.

What is the funniest question you’ve seen on WikiAnswers?

The number of questions that give insufficient information for an answer will never cease to amaze me, questions like Which castle burned down? and Does he have a name? Then there are questions How long has English been around?

Funnies include:

Is eating chocolate when depressed a sign that you may be gay? (My answer would be: You may some day be gay in the chocolate way!)

The growing tendency of people who post questions to get into a muddle with the persons of pronouns has produced some very bizarre questions, but without doubt the funniest I’ve seen is: How do you reach my wife’s g-spot? Wow! The mind boggles!

Share a random fact about yourself.

Random facts? Coffee: I adore really strong filter coffee and get through about 1.5lb of high grade Ethiopian coffee a week.

Travel: About 50 visits to Germany (ranging in length from about five days to three months +). And yes, also five visits to the U.S., though mainly to popular tourist destinations like NYC, DC, San Francisco and New Orleans (pre-Katrina). Since the early 1990s, I’ve enjoyed myself exploring parts of the former Eastern Bloc - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania (especially Transylvania) and Bulgaria. I’ve always enjoyed foreign travel.