Question 10 - Why are bee colonies collapsing? Is my mobile phone to blame?

There are many and various theories to explain the collapse in bee colonies, or 'colony collapse disorder' as it is sometimes called. I'll call it 'CCD' because it takes less time to type - and less time for you to say out loud.

None of these theories have anything to do with mobile phones so, unless you have been travelling throughout Europe (or even the world), hammering at beehives with your ruggedised Nokia, your armour-plated Sony Ericsson or your jacked-up Blackberry, I think we can rule out mobile phone involvement.

Yes, I appreciate that you might have been referring to low-level radiation or some other pseudo-scientific hokus-pokus nonsense but there has, thus far, been ABSOLUTELY NO link proven between mobile phones and the destruction of anything, except possibly the ability to view a city skyline without seeing a bunch of transmitters cluttering it up.

The short answer is that CCD could be caused by the varroa mite sucking the lifeblood out of the poor itty-bitty insects - unless it's the fault of some evil pesticide or the wet summers we've had of late.

Question 9 - Would you pay a pound to ask a question on a blog like this? Really?

Thank you, anonymous person, for this question since I can use it for nefarious marketing.

Personally, one pound would not be a lot of money for me to spend on getting an objective opinion from an intelligent (and handsome) person.

There are some questions that we can't ask our friends (e.g. should I tell Bob that I stole twenty pounds from his wallet sixteen years ago? OR should I tell my significant other (of only two months) that I've suddenly decided that I'd like to quit my job and travel for five years before or after I hand in my notice at work?).

And there are some questions which there is no point in asking our friends (e.g. why is the sky blue? - if none of our friends have studied science past the age of sixteen).

And there are some questions so abstract that they can only be asked of a complete stranger (e.g. I feel a pressing need to confess something to somebody but can't think of an appropriate 'sin' or 'confessor' - the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this isn't even a proper question).

If you know someone who can answer the question for you, then ask that person - don't pay me to do it. But if you're not satisfied with their answer or don't have anyone qualified to take a punt then put it up here.

And why ask it here rather than on one of the many 'answer' websites? Well, with most of them you're holding up your question to anyone who happens to be passing the website and fancies having a go, regardless of their level of maturity or intelligence (also known as the general public, in all their wild variety and wide-eyed wonder).

Put a question up here and it will be answered by me - using all the intelligence and maturity that I can muster.

Short answer: Yes. Really, yes.

But ninety-one more lucky questions will be answered free!

Question 8 - Does prison work?

It'll be tricky to get too many jokes into this one. And I dread to think what advertisements Google is going to see fit to put next to these words.

Firstly (and most easily), I'll answer the question literally. Most prisons successfully imprison most of their prisoners until the end of their sentences and so, at least in one way, prison works as a mechanism for keeping people out of society and in a place of less comfort.

Obviously that's not what the questioner was hoping to get so let's break the question down into sections. I should stress at this point that I have done no research whatsoever and so what follows is a combination of my own prejudices and some questions for you, dear reader, to roll around for yourselves.

Deterrent
To state the obvious, deterrents only work if people are afraid (or otherwise averse) to encountering them. A person with a loving family, an enjoyable and reasonably paid job, a well-appointed home and a season ticket for the local football ground is not going to want to lose all of the above as punishment for a crime. This, even without morals to stop misbehaviour, is going to be a strong factor against transgression.

Someone with none of the above (or nothing to lose as common parlance and rubbishy films would put it) is less likely to be bothered about prison and may, in fact, relish free bed and board for a period of time.

Protection
As the hysterical tabloids would tell you, society needs to be protected from criminals by their being locked up in secure places. Some feel the need to reverse the situation by living in gated communities, thereby effectively imprisoning themselves against the screaming hordes or, as they probably see it, imprisoning the rest of the world while keeping the nice part (i.e. their street) as the free bit.

If we can successfully identify the dangerous people and put them into prisons then society is indeed protected from them. Unfortunately, this normally involves waiting until they've already done something horrible to some poor sod. Given that the alternatives are draconian at least, if not Orwellian at most, we normally wait to check that people really are horrible rather than just look like they're about to be.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am conflating prison with secure hospitals. If anyone would like to pose the interesting question of 'bad or mad?', please do so separately. But hurry - only ninety-two more free questions before you'd have to pay me one pound for the answer.

Rehabilitation
Do people come out prison better than they went in? I fear the answer to this one is unsatisfying. Some do, some don't. Some will learn new trades, see the error of their ways or even (Lord help us) find religion. Some will learn better ways to be a crook in the hope that, once out, they can be bad more effectively and evade capture.

In conclusion
Yes, prison works but needs to be used in conjunction with other techniques depending on the nature of the crime and the psychological make-up of the perp.

Community service is much more useful to society overall than putting someone in a box for a number of years but this disregards the deterrent and protection aspects of prison which are strong factors. Facing victims can be character changing but then some criminals have a poorly developed sense of empathy so could probably breeze through such encounters without it touching them.

No easy answers here - but then I suspect you probably knew that was what you were going to get. Congratulations if you read this far - give yourself a biscuit.

Question 7 - Why is the sky normally blue, sometimes red/orange/yellow-ish, sometimes indigo/violet-ish but NEVER green?

I'm afraid the questioner is incorrect. The sky is green when illuminated by the northern lights (aurora borealis). But that's due to oxygen flaring in the atmosphere rather than scattered sunlight.

Tempting as it is to stop there, I'll also attempt a proper answer.
Sky colour is more normally caused by the scattering of light. Consider this - if light was not scattered by our atmosphere, the sun would be a blazing light in the sky and everything else would be black (other than the dots of stars). In every other direction, we would be looking into the void of space and see nothing but blackness.

Obviously this does not happen.

Instead, sunlight hits our atmosphere and the light is scattered and bounced and generally buggered about with by the oxygen and nitrogen that hangs around (when it's not being breathed by creatures like us). It just so happens that blue light gets kicked around dramatically more than any other colour so it gets sprayed out in all directions. From the ground, looking up, that makes the whole sky look blue.

Red light, and other colours, come off the sun and shoot straight through so they are part of the blazing shaft of light coming straight from the sun to your eyes.

At sunset/sunrise, the sunlight has to grind its way through more atmosphere because of the angle of the sun in relation to you, the observer. Since it's going further, most of the blue light gets scattered out in random directions, leaving the red colouring - with the majority of the sky still blue, especially away from the sun.

Green doesn't really get a look in - it's not scattered enough to show up against the blue and what doesn't get scattered isn't really noticed amongst the red around a sunset.

As ever, it doesn't pay to sit on the fence by occupying the middle ground. The glory goes to the colours at the ends of the spectrum.

There probably could be a more rigorous explanation but it won't be written here by me tonight (or ever, probably).

Question 6 - Why do people knowingly do stupid things?

Okay, I see what you're doing there - you put in the word 'knowingly' so I can't just say, "because they don't know any better". It also stops me from using the excuses that "it was an accident" or "because they were drunk at the time".

In that case there are only seven possible other answers. Stand back, here they all are:

1) The obvious answer - because they think the thing they're doing is clever. This would imply that the person in question was at least a bit stupid.

2) In a desperate attempt to persuade a fickle audience of bystanders that they are funny, otherwise sensible people will knowingly do stupid things, like trying to knock a policeman's helmet off his head with a snowball.

3) Some stupid things have no repercussions on the perpetrator, e.g. a senior manager forcing through a pointless project to make himself look busy and important and worthy of a promotion. Not only is this person acting knowingly, he is also being Machiavellian in creating extra work for his underlings to buy himself a slight (presumably pecunious) advantage. A more extreme example of this would be TB and GWB starting the Iraq war.

4) Some people knowingly do stupid things because their religion tells them to. I will leave it to you, dear reader, to supply your own examples for this one.

5) When acting as part of a crowd or mob, people's ability to maintain independent thought and action is diminished to such an extent that they will do stupid (and out of character) things knowingly but, technically, not as knowingly as if they were alone.

6) People will sometimes do extraordinarily daft things for a bet or other financial advantage even when sober (sometimes for a low stake, such as merely their honour). An example would be the sort of person who would juggle with chainsaws - which they do in full knowledge of what the chainsaw could do to any part of their body in the event of a slightly misjudged catch or throw.

7) Sometimes people have an onerous task which they need to perform (e.g. clearing out a load of cluttered cupboards). In order to keep up the pretence of being too busy to perform the useful (but dull) task, they create a stupid and pointless (but quite diverting) task to spend their time on instead (like starting a blog to answer random questions from anonymous members of the public).

Question 5 - What's worse, sport or religion?

There are many criteria for addressing this difficult question. I'll tackle them one at a time:

1) Death. Sport causes injury and death, both among participants during training and execution (if you'll excuse the term) and among spectators by accident and by acts of extreme violence. However, nothing causes war like religion and nothing causes death like war so I think religion wins the point hands down here. Religion 1, Sport 0.

2) Money. Sports fans are regularly fleeced by organisers, whether for ever-changing (sometimes price-fixed) replica football strips or over-charging to attend or watch the occasions. In addition, those with no interest whatsoever in sport are charged indirectly, for example through raised taxation in order to create occasions such as the 2012 London Olympics. However, a quick look at the treasures in the Vatican will disabuse anyone of the notion that sport is a bigger leech on the monetary wealth in the world - and that's before even considering other religions. Religion 2, Sport 0.

3) Time. The average sports fan probably spends a few hours per week watching the stuff but several hours additionally discussing the details and nuances of these occasions. Conversely, the average religious person spends a few hours per week praying and several hours discussing the finer points of their faith. This is close enough to a score draw. Religion 3, Sport 1.

4) Charity. Those of faith perform fabulously generous acts of charity. Sports fans contribute to Sport Relief and engage in charitable sponsored acts and such like. The religious probably put in more effort since they are doing it through a belief that it is the right thing to do and that they will be judged eventually on their level of righteousness - however this has to be countered by the negative effects of evangelical missionary practices. But there are many parts of the world where charity coming from sport is negligible and so, even with the evangelism caveat, I think religion is better overall in this category. Religion 3, Sport 2. (Don't forget, points are given for worse behaviour.)

5) Health. Those of faith (anecdotally) live longer than those without it, especially if those without it raise their blood pressure regularly by fretting about the performance of the team they support. However, this is easily out-weighed by the sheer brainless arrogant rubbish that religious people have put in the way of healthcare, e.g. GWB blocking stem-cell research, Pope's comments about condoms causing AIDS in Africa, etc. Religion 4, Sport 2.

6) Progress as a species. Sport has given us new technology, improved vehicles, better understanding of the limits of human resilience, etc. Religion has an unfortunate tendency to stamp on science, e.g. Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, stem-cells (again) - basically anything that looks like it might be a slight threat to some dogma, no matter how ridiculous and unsubstantiated the dogma. No contest here - in fact I'm going to give religion one point and take one point away from sport. Religion 5, Sport 1.

And there we have it. I'm unlikely to think of more than another two or three categories and now I'm not going to bother as, even in the unlikely event that it gets three more strikes against it, sport would still be the winner.

I hereby declare that religion is worse than sport.

Question 4 - Our cleaner has been underperforming - shall I kill or sack her? Which would be the least traumatic?

Proving that I will not shy away from answering even the most taxing questions, here is question 4 in full, followed by my response.

Our cleaner has been underperforming and it's come to the stage where I need to either kill or sack her. Which would be the least traumatic for me, and how exactly shall I go about doing it?

I live in a first-floor flat, with no lift, if that is relevant. Please do not involve chains of any kind in your answer as they give me nightmares. I will do exactly as you advise, so make sure you give a good constructive answer that will be easy to implement.

I fear that you are approaching this problem in the wrong way. Clearly the difficult part is the confrontation, the stating of the unacceptable level of work, the tears (from you), the recrimination, etc, etc, etc.

Had you considered merely faking your own death? This would achieve the outcome of firing the cleaner without any confrontation whatsoever and, unless you take your fakery to a frankly unnecessary level, no law-breaking is required either. When you next expect your cleaner to arrive, nip out just before her arrival and put a message (perhaps on a Post-It) on the door with a friendly informative message on it - perhaps the following:

Please do not enter this flat today or ever again because I am dead.

If your cleaner lives locally, such that you may see her ever again in your life, and if you have any shame then you may need to move house, possibly to a different country. However, you should be able to just brazenly butch it out.

Good luck!

Alternative answer - blame the credit crunch and thereby weasel your way out of an awkward situation by firing her and lying at the same time. Say you're worried about job security and need to cut back on expenditure. This will work better if you talk to her in a room which has no expensive gadgets in it. It also works better if you haven't just bought a state of the art television, fridge, vacuum cleaner, etc.

Question 3 - I want to buy a new compact digital camera - any specific suggestions?

As with question 2, I truncated it for the subject line, so here it is in full:

I want to buy a new digital camera but not an SLR as they are too bulky. My old digital camera didn't take good photos in low light but was small, portable and fitted in my pocket. What are my options and do you have any specific suggestions?

I personally still use a Sony Cybershot compact camera which is over five years old but still does an excellent job. (It appears over on the right - yes, I know it's backwards but I took the picture of my camera with, er, my camera - so obviously I used a mirror.)

Otherwise, I have heard that the Canon Digital Ixus range is excellent but haven't tried one personally as I'm not currently in the market for a new camera.

Given that Canon have a great reputation and have a bewildering array of Digital Ixus cameras, there must be one that meets your requirement. I can't imagine that resolution will be a factor, since 5meg will give you the option to print at poster size and all these cameras seem to give at least twice that. So consider the lens - which one gives the best range, both at the low and the high-end? - and then balance that against the price-tag to pick one.

Then buy it. Don't worry about what's coming out next week or what other manufacturers are putting out - that's the path to madness. You're only buying one camera (I assume) so, as long as it meets your requirements, you don't need to worry about all the others you haven't considered.

Alternative answer - get a subscription to Which? magazine and get one of their best buys.

Alternative alternative answer - I don't have the technical knowledge to comment on effectiveness in low-light but my camera is pretty good and these are five years younger so they're probably all decent.

Alternative alternative alternative answer - get whatever is on special offer at John Lewis or Currys or Amazon. Then never look at anyone else's camera and you'll almost certainly be very happy with yours.

Four answers for the price of none! What a bargain...

Question 2 - Why does the Waitrose self-scanning service require me to register at every store separately?

The question was slightly truncated above - let no one accuse me of censorship so here it is in full:

Why does the Waitrose self-scanning service require me to register at every store separately when I want to use their hand-held scanner thing? It's really frustrating...

Waitrose, along with John Lewis, pride themselves on their high level of customer service. When using self-scanning, there is no need for any interaction whatsoever with any member of the staff. (I use the phrase 'member of the staff' when I should, of course say 'partner' since everyone will be a joint owner of the business, hence the caring about the well-being of the company. Beat that, private enterprise fans!)

Clearly the lack of opportunity for the partners to show their appreciation of the customer is a bad thing and so, at least once in each branch, self-scanning customers must avail themselves of the charm, helpfulness and high efficiency of the people who work there.

(Shame on you if you read ANY sarcasm whatsoever into the above. The tone is warm and affectionate.)

You'll note that, even including re-registering for the service, it's still dramatically faster than shopping the old-fashioned way.

Alternative answer - the customer data might be held locally at each branch to speed up the process since the vast majority of customers probably use the same branch every time. (This is a guess and does not come from any inside knowledge. If it turns out to be true, that cannot be construed as revealing of a trade secret since it has come from my imagination, perception and guesswork.)

Question 1 - Does toast really fall butter side down?

Short answer - sometimes.

Long answer - the act of dropping toast often involves it flipping over the edge of a plate. Normally when on a plate, the buttered side would face upwards and so the flip will lead to the buttered side pointing downwards. Given enough of a drop, it may rotate again but, since toast drops would typically involve only two or three feet of falling, one would expect a landing before that could happen. I would therefore expect a greater number of buttery impacts than non-buttery.

Welcome to Sensible Answers

Hello and welcome to this new blog. This is a pilot to see whether the idea is worth developing into an all-singing, all-dancing website.

The idea is very simple - you ask ANY question you like, using the comments box below, and I will answer it as honestly and usefully as I can. (If you can't see a comments box, click on where it says '0 comments' or '1 comment' and a box should appear.)

• You're not posting questions in the forlorn hope that someone in the world will answer them sensibly.
• You're not searching through a list of questions that have been asked before.
• You won't get a rehash of a Wikipedia entry.
• You WILL get a personal, beautifully crafted response from me - and all for a tiny fee - but we're still in the introductory period so it's currently free! Sometimes it will be witty for no extra charge!

The answers are not intended to be dry, definitive or even necessarily well-informed. They are the sort of answers I would give to a friend over lunch, even if I was paying. They may even occasionally be funny - sometimes intentionally so.

The first hundred questions will be answered free of charge. After that, there will be a nominal charge per question (probably one pound initially), payable before the question will be answered! (Payment mechanism to be determined.)

I'm hoping to get the sort of question which you would ask a friend when you wanted an honest opinion and either didn't have a friend who knew anything about the subject or had a personal reason why you'd rather not ask it of anyone you know well. I'm also happy to perform simple research into any subject.

So - why would you want me to answer your questions? I have worked in retail, finance, science and literature. I was educated at a prestigious university. I have spent a few years looking after a child. I have travelled widely. I read widely. I play four musical instruments (one well, three enthusiastically). I have a sense of humour. I am honest and trustworthy, I will not judge you and I am not easily offended.

For those unhappy with the concept of my answering ANY question, here are four examples of questions which I would tackle, although question 4 would probably require a lengthy answer (see terms and conditions below):

1. What should I buy for my friend's birthday? He's going to be 38 and he's married with two kids.
   
   
2. My kitchen sink drains really slowly and gives off a funny smell - what should I do?
   
   
3. I have a terrible feeling of unease every time I see men with beards - is this rational?
   
   
4. Is there a purpose to our existence on this planet?

Over to you!

Terms and conditions follow:

• Obviously there will be some questions which I either cannot or will not answer. Anyone posting one of these after the free trial period ends will have their money refunded in full. Examples of questions that could be rejected are those which are potentially libellous, those that appear to incite to crime and those that are unmentionably boring.
  
  
• Some questions will require lengthy answers, which may require an additional contribution. This will be made clear on an individual basis, again with a full refund if no answer is given.
  
  
• And finally, I am not licensed to give financial, legal or medical advice. Nevertheless, I will take on such questions purely by way of giving my unofficial opinion. Any decisions you make based on my answers are your own responsibility, exactly as they would be if you asked the question of a friend over lunch.