Yahoo! Answers

Since you can share your Answers content with your Facebook friends, it was logical to continue our collaboration with the social network. You can now become a fan of our official Facebook fan page!

To join our friends on Facebook, you just need to process the following steps:
1. Sign in or up on Facebook
2. Go on our Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/yahooanswers
3. Once you’re on the official fan page, just click on the button ‘Like’ available at the top to become one of our fans
4. You’re now one of our Facebook friends

On this page, we’re going to show you the last blog updates; open questions from the team, partners and even some from the community. But be attentive because we’ll keep some original surprises for you…

Twitter too

If you’re not totally addicted to Facebook (it happens), you can still follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/YahooAnswers

Once you have started joining us on Facebook and Twitter, leave your comments here and tell us what you think!

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Hey Guys,

Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same without football, awkward family conversations, and tasty turkeys. But one has to wonder — of all possible meals for Americans to stuff themselves with, how did turkeys get drafted for duty? Was it just the turkey’s bad luck?

An excellent article from Slate.com explains that unlike turkeys, cows were considered “more useful alive than dead and commercial beef wasn’t widely available until the late 19th century.” There goes the idea of a Thanksgiving burger. Turkeys, by contrast, were “fresh, affordable, and big enough to feed a crowd.” Ham and brined pork weren’t considered appropriate for special occasions, and hens were thought to be too valuable.

Timing and cost were also key factors. Slate writes that a turkey born during the spring could grow to a hefty ten pounds by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. And turkeys cost considerably less than geese and chickens. All these factors were good for hungry Americans but bad news for turkeys, who quickly became forever associated with the holiday in which gluttony is encouraged.

While calling somebody a turkey is not exactly a compliment, it’s worth noting that Ben Franklin was a huge fan of the birds. In a letter to his daughter, Ben wrote that he wished the turkey had been chosen as the national symbol of the United States. Eventually, of course, the bald eagle won out. On the eagle, Franklin wrote: “For my own part I wish the Eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character.” Maybe so, but it’s hard to imagine a smiling turkey on top of flag poles and on the back of the $1 bill.

What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving traditions? At my house, we like to eat until we feel sick and then argue over who gets to lie down on the couch. All in all, not a bad tradition.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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This holiday season, Yahoo! is rallying teachers, students, and its vast community to join together in support of education.  From now through December 23^rd, Yahoo! has partnered with DonorsChoose.org to donate up to $350,000 to bring classroom projects to life across the country.

The Homepages for Homerooms program is fun and simple.  Any and all public school teachers can participate by posting a project on the DonorsChoose.org website, requesting items they need to make their classrooms flourish – books, art supplies, you name it!  Teachers who already have a project on DonorsChoose.org can participate as well. After setting up a project, teachers and students can encourage their community to make Yahoo! their Homepage (called a “homepage set”) in support of a favorite project by going to www.yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com.  Yahoo! will also encourage its expansive community to participate by promoting the program across the Yahoo! network.  Each week from November 19 – December 23, Yahoo! will give up to $600 to projects with the most homepage sets, with a total donation of $25,000 each week.

As a bonus – every week that Yahoo! gets 50,000 homepage sets, Yahoo! will double their contribution and fund $50,000 worth of projects that week. And if there are 500,000 homepages set to Yahoo.com by the end of the five week campaign, then Yahoo! will kick in an extra $100,000 the last week.

The program is a no-cost, easy way to support teachers and students.  You can feel good about setting your homepage to Yahoo!

How can you get involved? It’s easy!

1) Find a project you’d like to support by visiting www.yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com/projects.  If you’re a teacher, you’ll find materials to help you quickly set up a project and spread the word.

2) Click “Support this project”, and follow the easy steps to set your homepage to Yahoo! Each person can set their homepage to Yahoo! once during this five week campaign.

3) Spread the word to teachers, colleagues and friends – and help Yahoo! fund more and more classroom projects across the country!

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Hey Guys,

November is a month when brave men throw their good sense and razors aside to grow moustaches. Why? The idea is that these hairy lips raise awareness for prostate cancer. The event, which has taken off in popularity in recent years, is known as “Movember.” I declined to participate, but I was inspired by my mustached comrades to research some great moments in facial hair history.

The first thing I wanted to know — who was the last President of the United States to rock the moustache? For as far back as I can remember, presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have been a clean shaven bunch. According to the Web, the last mustached President was none other than William Howard Taft (America’s 27th Commander-In-Chief).

A hairy article from the Daily Mail explains that while Taft rocked a mean looking moustache, he wasn’t the world’s best politician. Contrast that with Abraham Lincoln, who went against the grain by having a beard but no moustache. A unique look and certainly not one we see often these days. Can you imagine Barack Obama with a beard like that?

An awesome blog from Nicholas Whyte breaks down the history of presidential facial hair. For example, there was only one election when candidates from both major parties had mustaches. In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt beat his Democratic opponent Alton Parker. Sure Roosevelt won at the polls, but if you ask me, both had formidable facial hair.

What are some of your favorite moustaches in history? Tom Selleck? Rollie Fingers? Burt Reynolds? Sound off in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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A year ago, during the third day of my unimaginably long labor, I truly wondered whether I would survive to see this day: my daughter’s first birthday.

As the nurse finally wrapped that tiny, helpless newborn in a blanket and handed her off to us, we watched her leave with a sigh, worrying how we were going to help this little creature transition into a moving and exploring person. As if the nurse had read my mind, she turned around to say, “Don’t worry, motherhood is natural. You will figure it out. Human beings have been doing this since the cave ages.”

Yes, true, but didn’t cave people have family around to help? And could we really assume that human beings have been parenting correctly for millions of years? Wouldn’t bad parenting explain a lot of evil behavior in the world? What if we fail in disciplining our child, what if we are not good role models, and, worst of all, what if we cannot get this whole breastfeeding thing right or we manage to overfeed her via the bottle? What if we drop her during her bath? What if…

My OB/GYN stopped by to stress the importance of having my mother around to help when I arrived home. When I told her this was not possible, she replied, “Then find a support system somewhere,” and wrote down the names of support groups. I saw a bunch of parenting groups, many hosted on Yahoo! Groups and it hit me, my husband and I had access to a resource our parents did not have access to: online communities.

For more than a decade we have benefited from a number of online tools, beginning in 1978 with bulletin board systems (BBSs), with their dial-up modems and flashing lights, evolving into Usenet newsgroups and all of the alt.* discussion forums, then into Majordomo mailing lists, and finally into user-friendly online communities such as Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Groups, full of fun and rich features.

Whenever I post a question, the Answers community is up front and honest (sometimes a little bit too honest). But it is nice to be reminded that we are not the only ones battling different challenges in parenthood. I would like to take a moment to thank all those parents out there who have contributed to the Parenting category on Answers.

So join the conversation,  “What was the most useful piece of Parenting advice you ever received, and would you give that same advice to future parents?

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