I have invented a transporting device which moves ants around my room, is it safe to put my friend into it?
142025
as long as that mates not me! yes
527069
Don't mess with it. You are not ready to handle what happens after you mess with. burn it if i was you. Bad stuff will happen to you if you continue to use it.\n\nOuija: How Does It Work?  \n \nIs the Ouija a fascinating game for harmless fun... or a dangerous gateway to the unknown? \nYour fingertips lightly touch the edge of the planchette. Your friend does the same on the opposite side. You consciously move the planchette in circles around the board to get it “warmed up.” Then you ask your question. No response at first. Then slowly the planchette begins to move, seemingly on its own – at least you’re not trying to move it. Sliding from one letter to the next, the planchette spells out its answer. And it seems to fit. More questions are asked, and with increasing speed the Ouija provides its responses, letter by letter. Seemingly with significance. Sometimes with dark significance.\n\nWhat’s behind the Ouija? How does it work? Is it, as the manufacturer suggests, a harmless game? Or is something more sinister involved? In a recent poll of readers conducted at this site, 65 percent believed the Ouija to be a dangerous tool. While a majority of respondents (41 percent) believed that the board was controlled by the users’ subconscious, 37 percent believed it was controlled by spirits, and 14 percent feared that it was under the influence of demonic spirits.\n\nThe Ouija board as we know it dates back to the late 1800s when at the height of the spiritualist movement it was a popular parlor game. Over the years, many manufacturers have marketed Ouijas and other “talking boards.” At The Museum of Talking Boards – one of the best websites about the Ouija – you can see and read about the many incarnations of the board. Currently, apart from the familiar Ouija board marketed by Parker Brothers (now part of Hasbro), there are about eight other styles of talking boards that all work in pretty much the same way – with a pair of hands resting on a planchette that points to words or spells out answers to questions asked.\n\nThe Ideomotor Effect\n\nThe ideomotor effect refers to involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. The term “ideomotor action” was coined by William Carpenter in 1882 in his explanation for the movements of dowsing rods and pendulums by dowsers, and table turning by spirit mediums. The movement of pointers on Ouija boards is also due to the ideomotor effect.\n\nCarpenter argued that muscular movement can be initiated by the mind independently of volition or emotions. We may not be aware of it, but suggestions can be made to the mind by others or by observations. Those suggestions can influence the mind and affect motor behavior. What is purely physiological, however,  appears to some to be paranormal.\n\n– from The Skeptic’s Dictionary\n \nWhy to many people believe that spirits make the Ouija’s plastic planchette move? For one, because they cannot understand how their subconscious might be doing it. For another, the Ouija itself often tells them so. It’s not uncommon for users to ask during a session, “Who is controlling this board?” And very often the Ouija will oblige the users, spelling out a name unknown to the users. Further inquiries sometimes reveal that the controlling spirit died recently, or some other such drama, and can provide cryptic messages and even warnings to the users. Too often, however, users take these messages at face value, never considering that they could be coming from their own imaginations.\n\nSo which is it? Are we controlling the Ouija or not? The Museum of Talking Boards articulates the two prevailing theories on how the Ouija works – the automatism theory and the spiritualist theory:\n\nThe Automatism Theory – The clinical term is “ideomotor response.” You may not know that you are moving the message indicator, but you are. This is similar to automatic writing, also know as automatism, a well-understood phenomenon. Mediums in years pas
752977
No it is not safe either from a personal safety standpoint or an environmental standpoint. Anything on your hard drive can be recovered - most of the stuff that you have "erased" included and some computer components are toxic. Best to remove the hard drive and physically destroy it yourself and then check for someone who collects computers for safe discard.
707526
Dont worry about that. Those things are invented just to scare people. Just turn on your aircondition.
841885
I live alone with my two young sons in a large house deep in the woods.  I get spooked sometimes too.  I bought these cool little toys that are motion sensors.  (Part of a spy toy set). I put them at the front and back doors and the another at the end of the hallway leading to our bedrooms.  Nobody can get by them even in the dark without them beeping loud enough to wake the dead.  Helps keep the boys out of the cookie jar at night too.
584607
3 answers:\n* have someone clean it for you\n* don't mess or dirty your room\n* you can't avoid it
586671
Yes. Please use protection and be careful, you could not only spread it, but also catch something else.
1152123
i dont think so............ \nits a good way of observing ants
1121281
I would. \n\nLike tonight, there were fire ants in the house.  I was picking them up and my 4 year old son said "Don't! You'll get bitten".  I looked at him and said that I would rather get bitten than have HIM get bitten because I love him.  His little mouth started quivering and he started sniffing and he gave me the biggest hug ever and said that he loved me.
383307
Marching in a straight line, which is usually the shortest route, seems like a solution to the problem of efficient food transportation. Ants also search for food by walking randomly.\nTo help the ant find its home again it leaves a trail of pheromone as it looks for food. On the way back to the nest, the ant tells the other ants about food by laying down more pheromone, creating a trail with an even stronger scent.\nWhen other ants run into a trail of pheromone, they give up their own search and start following the trail. In this way the ants are not following each other but the pheromone.\n\nAnd about the bumping into...they are on the same path, may not be doing anything, possibly passing food. When they "bump into" you and you think they bite you, believe it or not that "bite" is actually them peeing on you, as their pee is acidic! Ugh!
533714
Absolutely!  Be careful!
684472
at the scale of an ant, the wall is actually pretty rough, so its like climbing a cliff. look above for info on how their feet have suckers and hooks - it like a combination of metal spikes and batmans suction cups.
499659
Yes I do in fact.  The other day I was having a party (on my neighbors roof) and I decided to let my pet ant (Granny) have a drink of my mudslide.   Actually it was all jUjU's idea, but I will never tell anyone that.  So any ways, he was drinking away and he got up to go pee and kept falling over on its ride side.  Again and again and again, until finally he passed out cold.  Go figure.  I carried him home and tucked him in.  He is all better now BTW, just in case you wanted to send a card or flowers or something.  :)
1167100
I came across this site when I was looking for insect and spider links.  This guy seemed really involved with Tarantulas.\n\nI am glad that you are concerned about giving your pet a good home.
982229
Ants are neat, and while that other guy was right about 'intelligence' not being a concrete concept, ants certainly can solve very complex problems.  The definitely don't wander around aimlessly and randomly like someone else suggested.  They have  incredible cognitive abilities for navigating from food sources back to their nests.  One of these is known as path integration, ants are able to keep in their memory all the different twists and turns in their path to find food so that when they do find food they can head in a straight line back to their nest.  They are also able to learn the location of different objects in their environment and use these to find their way home if they get off course, like if they get blown away by the wind or something!  When you consider that an ant's brain is smaller than the head of a pin, the amount of information they are able to hold in there and remember and manipulate, is pretty astonishing.  Using electron microscopes and neuroscience techniques, scientists have identified tiny clusters of neurons on the brains of some ants, called mushroom bodies.  They think that these structures are the sites of memory and navigational cognition in the ants. You might also find it cool to know that the navigational systems of ants have formed the basis of the navigational systems developed using artificial intelligence for robots.  And as for the division of labor, I think you are spot on.  Ants (and other eusocial insects) provide the natural world's best examples of self-organising systems and they are way cool and very neat!!!  Science nerds rock-on!
927462
Probably not. You will be ripped apart in cross-examination by McDo's expensive lawyers: proving the ants got there while the drink was in McD's custody is difficult.\n\nAlso there will doubtless be CCTV pictures that may call into doubt your version of the story.\n\nBut I'm sure McDo will give you your money back for the drink. As you didn't actually drink it you can't claim physical injury. And ants are not as shocking as, say, a cockroach or an amputated finger. Nor is ingestion of domestic ants known to be poisonous.\n\nBTW, legally and scientifically ants are not "bugs". Or so I am told.
196922
Yes, I have ants in my kitchen.  Set out some bay leaves.  Seems to have made a difference.