Yahoo! Answers

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It’s the time of the year when the stores become flooded with shoppers and families begin to gather to start celebrating the holidays. While many of us are lucky to have friends and family near to celebrate with, it’s important to remember that there are many who are less fortunate.

This holiday season, ask yourself how you can not only spread goodness to the ones you love, but throughout your community:

• Can you donate a toy to Toys For Tots or similar local toy drive?
• Do you have a few extra cans of food in your cupboard that you won’t eat? Why not drop them off at a local food bank ?
• Do you have a few extra hours to spare? Try volunteering at a local community center, soup kitchen, children’s center, or hospital.
• Donate blood– 1 pint of blood can save up to 3 lives. Learn more
• Lend a hand to a local animal shelter (or donate blankets, towels, or pet food)

Sites like “Volunteer Match” are great resources in pairing up volunteers with their interests—and, making them fun.

And, if you want to share your goodness with the world, you can share your “purple acts of kindness” with the world by posting them on http://kindness.yahoo.com –  here, you’ll also find links to the Global Giving project and the DonorsChoose project.

So with all of these resources at your fingertips, what gift do you plan on giving your community this holiday season?

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Hey Guys,

The term “generation” gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? I’m pretty sure I belong to Generation X… or am I part of Gen Y? Is there an official cutoff date? And who the heck names each generation? Lots of questions, so let’s get started…

Best as I can tell, there is no official definition for a generation. The experts at ancestry.com write that the average generation lasts about 25-27 years, “from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child.” In the past, generations were shorter, because the average person didn’t live as long. Also, people know wait longer to have kids.

As for what dates make up a generation, it depends on who you ask. Most online sources agree that the Baby Boomers were born between 1938 and 1960, Generation X was between 1961 and the early 1980s. Gen X is notable for the wide use of TV and increased acceptance of divorce. Following the Xers came Generation Y, also known as the millennials. Researchers peg that generation as people being born between 1982 and 2000. Again, the dates vary by source, but these years seem to be commonly cited.

Less clear is who should get credit for coming up with the names. According to Phrases.org.uk, the term “baby boomer” is a mild mystery. There were reports of newspapers writing “baby boom,” but nobody is sure who added the “-er” and called it a generation. Gen X is more clear. Writer Douglas Coupland popularized the phrase with his 1991 book of the same name. He didn’t exactly coin it, but Coupland helped make it mainstream.

What do you guys think the name of the next generation should be? Some are calling it Generation Z, but I think we can do better — please leave your ideas below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Back in October we announced that with your help, Yahoo! Answers hit the 1 billion question and answers mark. At this point, we also had a whopping 179 million users around the world.

Just when we thought our community couldn’t grow any faster, a mere two months later, we’ve hit the 200 million-worldwide visitor mark!

When you break it down, on average, that’s:

• 350,000 new  visitors a day
• 243 new visitors a minute

So here’s a big thanks to you, the Answers community for spreading the word about Answers, and sharing with your friends, family, and anyone you meet on the internet about what you’ve learned (and what you want to learn!) on Answers.

At this rate, we’ll hit 300 million in no time!

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Photo from Maneno.org

Did you know that on December 12, 2005, Yahoo! Answers publicly launched in the United States? (Read the press release, dated December 8th, 2005, here)

While Yahoo! Answers may only be turning 4 years old, we share our birthday with quite a few other people, including:

• Alfred Werner (Nobel laureate and Swiss chemist)
• Frank Sinatra (the famous crooner)
• Bob Barker (the former host of TV’s “The Price is Right”)
• And more!

The first question on Answers

To celebrate our birthday, we thought it would be fun to take a quick trip down memory lane and find out what question was first asked on Yahoo! Answers in the US. Four years ago, you all were just as curious about quirky things as you are today, and asked: “Why are yawns contagious?”

There’s no way that we could have ever made it to the four year mark without the help and support of the Answers community, so thank you for all your feedback, comments, questions, and answers over the years!

Share your story!

Whether you’ve been an Answers user for the past four years or the past four days, we’d love to hear how you heard about Yahoo! Answers—please go here and tell us how you first came across Yahoo! Answers, and what made you first want to “Ask” or “Answer” a question.

We’ll then go through your submissions and will pick a “Best Answer” based on the number of “Thumbs up” the answer receives and, based on the quality of your answer. So, be sure to give your answer some thought, and tell us about how, and when you first came across Yahoo! Answers! Submissions will close MONDAY, December 14^th at 9am PT (5pm GMT) (Time zone converter)

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Hey Guys,

I have never been arrested (really). But if I ever was, I know that I’d have the right to remain silent as well as the right to an attorney. These are called the “Miranda rights,” and the story of how they got their name is a pretty interesting one. Here’s how it went down…

The rights are named after a man named Ernesto Miranda. Now, in most cases when a person has something named after him or her, it’s because he or she was a great person, had a great idea, or donated a heckuva lot of money. Not so in this case. Ernesto Miranda was a career criminal. He likely would have died in obscurity had it not been for a horrible crime he supposedly committed back in 1963.

Mr. Miranda was arrested for rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery but the police never advised him that he didn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want to. After several hours of interrogation, Miranda confessed to the crime, but that’s only the beginning of the story. Years later, in 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that a suspect not only has the right to remain silent, but “prosecutors may not use statements made by defendants while in police custody unless the police have advised them of their rights.”

Because of that landmark case (called Miranda vs. Arizona), the charges against Miranda were overturned. But that didn’t stop prosecutors, who later retried Miranda, “using evidence other than his confession, and he was convicted again.” Miranda then served 11 years in the big house before being paroled. He made money by selling autographed copies of the Miranda rights for $1.50. Then, in 1976, he was killed in a bar fight. According to about.com, a suspect was arrested, but “exercised his right to remain silent.” I’m not sure if that’s irony, but it’s definitely something.

Even now, decades later, the Miranda rights are a mainstay of civil liberties. Still, they aren’t immune to change. According to various articles across the Web, those famous words nobody every wants to hear could get a re-write.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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