Gold for Dummy Business Types

Gold fever: yeehah! when the price of gold topped $1800/ounce a couple of years ago, people everywhere went crazy figuring out how to strike it rich overnight (without hard work, that is), and the denizens of eHow.com were happy to... let's be nice and say "help." Well, as much help as eHow usually provides, anyway, given that their stable of journalism and English majors aren't particularly good at getting across any information that might be considered science-y a wannabe prospectors might need. A case in point? have a look at eHowian Diane Bacher (a "certified business energy professional," whatever that is) as she mangles the contents of "Geological and Geographical Characteristics of Gold Mines" at Leaf Group niche BizFluent.com (now relocated to Sciencing.com, but still as stupid).

Cabinet Doors, a Dummy's Tutorial

Shaker-style cabinet door

Woodworking and carpentry newbies are often dumbfounded by the broad array of tools and the specialized lingo. The measurements of lumber are particularly confusing: finished lumber has a nominal size that's bigger than the actual size. In other words, the board called a 1 x 4 isn't one inch by four inches, it's ¾ inch by 3½ inches. You get used to it... unless you're Suite.io's A. L. (Amy, Amanda) Fetherlin, who never quite got the hang of nominal measurements and also ain't so sure of the terminology. Even inexperienced carpenters will see her ignorance shining through in "Do-It-Yourself Shaker Kitchen Cabinet Frosted-Glassed Doors."¹ 

Hey, even that title's off-putting: "frosted-glassed" doors? doesn't she mean "frosted-glass" doors? But we merely quibble... where Fetherlin starts getting it all wrong is in her materials list for building a door:

Seismic Waves for Dummies

Seismogram

Mistakes happen. Here at the Antisocial Network, we freely admit that's true – why, one of us made a mistake just a couple of months ago! We understand that. What we don't understand is sharing your mistakes because you're too eager to pick up a few more pennies, and doing the research would slow you down: that's the mark of a dumbass. Take Daniel, who calls himself ColonelD at InfoBarrel.com: he laid out his laziness for all the world do see in "Seismic Wave Types."¹

Dado Cuts for Dummy Woodworkers

Cutting a dado on a table saw

Back in the bad old days, just about anyone could contribute the fruits of his (or her) "expertise" to eHow.com and collect anywhere from three to fifteen bucks for all the hard work. There's little doubt now that the principals at eHow were more concerned with advertising  revenue than with accuracy, especially in those early days. That's why whenever you run across content penned by "eHow Contributor" on the site, there's a strong possibility it's... well, wrong. Wrong, like "How to Make a Dado Cut with a Table Saw."¹

Grammar for Dummies

Ever heard the expression "Physician, heal thyself"? The general meaning is, "get it right yourself before telling others how to do it." When the in-house grammar curmudgeon at the Antisocial Network happened upon  "Common Grammar Misconceptions" over at InfoBarrel.com, he was tempted to shout, "Morales, edit thyself!" Is there nothing so pathetic as supposed grammar advice that's full of grammatical errors? We don't think so...

For the most part, morales (no first name, no middle initial) gets the gist of what he calls "misconceptions" correct, although we think "misconceptions" is the wrong word. After all, there are billions of bytes written about the difference between "your" and "you're" or "whose" and "who's," so it's not difficult to find something to copy, rewrite, and paste with the help of your favorite search engine. Where morales goes off the rails is his (her? who knows) delivery, such as this tasty bit:

Tuneups for Dummy Dodge Owners

Dodge 3.3 liter V6

Performed a tune-up on your car lately? Neither has anyone around the Antisocial Network, at least not since the early 1980s. That's about the last time anyone with an arm that only bends one way could reach the spark plugs on most engines. It's pretty clear that eHow.com's Lina Schofield hasn't done a tune-up since then, either – and, more likely, has never tuned up an engine. If you were to read her instructions in "How to Tune Up a Dodge 3.3 Liter Engine,"¹ you'd figure it out pretty quickly, just like we did. 

Wood Fences for Dummy DIYers

Setting a fence post

In theory, we could start every entry on this blog with essentially the same statement: "You can't cure stupid." But we don't... We do, however, start many of them by comparing the writing of money-hungry freelancers to that of people with actual experience and/or knowledge. take, for instance, today's candidate for dumbass of the day: she's G. K. Bayne (sometimes known as Kat Yares) from your friendly neighborhood eHow, whom we caught holding forth on "How to Install Wood Fences"¹ at, of all places, BizFluent.com (it's now back where it would belong [if it were correct], at HomeSteady.com)

If you've ever put up a fence, say your typical 6-foot privacy fence, you know the drill: lay it out, set the posts, install the stringers, put on the pickets, install the gate, clean up your mess. G. K., having obviously neither built a fence nor watched one being built, has a different idea. Let's see some of G.K.'s dumbassery in action: