Stairs and Stringers for the Dummy Carpenter

stringers in stair construction

We had a lot of fun with the utter stupidity of the posts we turned up for our recent "2-by-4 Week" celebration; posts in which some idiot (we suspect a content editor or editors at Demand Media) decided that the dimensions of a 2-by-4 are in feet, giving rise to some hilarity... Some of the candidates we turned up not only weren't sufficiently on the ball to catch that stupidity while proofing, they were clearly out of their depth anyway. We're thinking of freelancers like Mary McNally and her eHow.com post, "Distance Between Stair Stringers"...

Cylinder Volume for Geometry Dummies

A circular fire pit

According to our one of our staffers, there's something called "chicken-sandwich luck," Updated for the 21st century; a person with chicken-sandwich luck could stick his hand into a port-a-potty  and pull out a neatly-wrapped chicken sandwich; presumably grilled free-range chicken breast slices on gluten-free ciabatta bread with aioli mayo and a slice of heritage tomato.... Ehow's Carson Barrett appears to have such luck, given that the monumental error he made in "How to Calculate Gravel Needed to Fill a Fire Pit" at HomeSteady.com did not make his answer wrong. Stupid? yes: wrong? no...

Homemade Curling Stones for Dummies

Curling stones

Our research staffers find many an internet freelancer whose body of work suggest that their grades of C in their science and math classes (assuming they took any at all) were grade inflation and/or generosity. Regardless of these and similar educational deficiencies, many a self-appointed "freelance journalist" maintains that he or she can write knowledgeably about any topic. We like to prove them wrong. Take eHowian Rachel Murdock, who may have seen curling once in the Winter Olympics: she had the gall to think she could reword someone else's instructions about "How to Make Curling Rocks for Fun"¹ (at SportsRec.com). She couldn't...

Cottonwood Trees for Dummy Leaf Collectors

Cottonwood leaf

Here at the Antisocial Network, we often complain about people with journalism degrees who think that their "training" in "how to research" a topic makes them instant experts on everything in the world. Actually, we don't complain about them, we slap them around; metaphorically, of course. What could make a web designer and insurance agent like Kate McFarlin think she's qualified to teach a fifth-grade science class is beyond us, but there she was at eHow.com, trying to answer the question, "What Tree Does a White Fuzzy Seed Come From?"¹ for Hunker.com.

Attic Insulation for Dummies

Strange as it may seem, we had a few leftovers from the "2-by-4 Week" we hosted last month — in which internet freelancers treated nominal 2-by lumber as if the dimensions were in feet instead of inches. That makes sense, though, because there are seven days in a week and we had almost 30 candidates... so here's another of them, compliments of the mother lode of stupidification of the internet, eHow: it's newbie David Miller¹ and his post, "How Thick is R30 Ceiling Insulation?" at HomeSteady.com.

Amperage for the Dummy Electrician

Ohms Law Revisited

As our staffers wander the web in search of people who sold their respectability for the sake of a few pennies (which is probably why so many of them use pseudonyms), they often find posts that reveal more about the writer than might have been intended. Take, for instance, today's post: "How to Boost Amperage," which Timothy Burns penned for eHow.com and which has since been moved to Sciencing.com by Leaf Group.

Sanders for the Woodworking Dummy

Palm sander

We had so much fun a couple of days giving the metaphorical finger to some idiot on the website Ezine that we decided to come back and do it again (not to mention that we're running a little short on time this morning). Whatever the case, our staffers took a quick look at articles about tools and immediately turned up a lot of rubbish slapped together by EzineArticles.com "expert" Sarahbeth Kluzinski back in the pre-Panda era. Let's have a look at "What is the Difference Between a Palm Sheet Sander and a Random Orbital Sander?"