Snezzy

The Oracle is lonely and needs your help. Please don't ask him about woodchucks.

I sold the car a month ago, signed the title over to him in front of a notary. He's not applied for the title in his name, but is instead driving it around with no license plates, unregistered, uninsured.

If I remember correctly, I'm still the legal owner of the thing, and if HE gets stopped by the constabulary or has an accident, then I, not he, is the one in trouble. He refuses to listen to me, says, "Don't get all worried about it."

What recourse do I have? How can I stay out of HIS trouble?

All this morning's horse questions are from accounts created on 25 or 26 April, 2017. It's not even worth the trouble to look up and see whether those questions are stolen. They are.

In a few days every single one of them will get a "best answer" but it won't be one of the new and good ones.

There are a very few of us left, insanely driven to try to fish flecks of gold out of the dross that used to be Yahoo Answers. (Perhaps an analogy to manure would be better, except that manure is GOOD STUFF.) I would go and answer horse questions on stackoverflow.com, but they don't have a horse section. at least not yet.

Maybe in a day or two I'll just forget that YA ever existed, or add it to the /etc/hosts file as "127.0.0.1 answers.yahoo.com" so that it becomes unreachable. (Your "hosts" file will likely be elsewhere if you are not using Unix or Linux.)

Someone or some "thing" has been dredging up old questions and asking them as if new. I've seen a few in the horse section, which is really the only part of YA that I care about.

I think it's a prelude to a scam that is intended to get us to click on URLs that attempt to inject a ransomware virus.

Has anyone else done a further study on what's going on? Yahoo itself has not been eating well, of late, and appears to be on half-rations or less. Its ribs are showing and it's kind of sunken in on the hindquarters. Its eyes are exceptionally dull.

We have some ponies and horses that hit us with their heads when being led. We have had only partial success, having used either pushing the head away or pulling the rein on the off side. The pulling method is not easy to reach, and is only good if the horse is bitted. We feel that punching the horse is counterproductive. We must be overlooking some technique that we already know, or should know. I am already thinking, "What would I say if someone asked me this question?" but am drawing a blank.

Does anyone have a good suggestion?

A load of hay arrives on Saturday. A feral and unapproachable momma cat has three four-week-old tom kittens that are living right where they hay will go. I have handled them and they think I'm okay.

Do I try to move them? How, since I can't move their mother?

Or do I let the guys who are bringing in the hay just set the aside and hope momma cat will move them?

They are exceptionally cute!

I see new questions in other sections, but not in our horse section. Are there new questions, but invisible to me, or is Yahoo Answers somehow broken again, or are all our horses asleep?

It seems as if the bug has been swatted. Any word about it from Yahoo? I'm too lazy to figure out how to read their blog that might tell us what they've done.

The user "bm" posted a question about colic. When viewed, it provides no box for answering, so this is more an answer than a question. (Yes, I know YA is undergoing maintenance.)

The 6cc of banamine IV is an inappropriate treatment and the horse needs a vet. Please, bm, get your horse to the vet or the vet to your horse.

We train to voice, using mostly the traditional words, and are particularly careful that WHOA should mean "Stop!" and never mean "Slow down." We try to avoid use of popularly known noises such as giddy-up or clucking so that bystanders won't control our horses.

Sometimes we spell T-R-O-T or W-H-O-A to avoid giving a command in the course of conversation. Still, people nearby will sometimes shout commands at our horses or ponies, often echoing a command we've just given.

Here's an inadvertent command:

http://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn/201...

Anyone have stories of inappropriate voice commands, either by riders or bystanders, and how best to overcome, avoid, or prevent them?

Some people repeat the question from the headline in the content. Why do they do that?

Long ago there were traditional publishers, and that was all. You submitted to one of them, preferably through your agent. The alternatives were vanity publishing or sending Xerox copies to your friends and relatives.

Now there are many firms that help with on-line and printed publishing, such as Amazon and Lulu.

How does one choose among the possible alternatives? Any good stories on which ones to avoid, and why? Or which are totally super-duper good?

We have a horse who is blind on the left side. We know that he drives. If we hitch him pair with another horse are we better to put him on the left, so his sighted eye is looking towards the other horse? Or should we have him on the other side, looking away? Why?

If we are using him in pair to train another horse to drive, is the answer the same? Why?

We ourselves use stainless-steel scrub pads from time to time. We've heard of people keeping fish in the tank, or adding some kind of soap to the water. Any suggestions for the Very Best Way?

It's been damp and raining recently, and some of the saddles have mould growing on them. The usual suggestion is to wash with vinegar and then leave the saddles out in direct sunlight.

Around our area that would be "rainlight" instead of sunlight, We were wanting rain for quite a while, and now it won't go away.

Are there any treatments that work better than vinegar? What about antifungals such as miconazole? We used that successfully for fungal corneal ulcers in a horse's eye.

One person proposes an abstruse philosophical position. The other answers it with brute physical reality.

In the example I'm considering, Calvin tells Hobbes that the end justifies the means. Hobbes pushes Calvin into the mud. "You were in my way. Now you're not. The ends justify the means." Calvin replies, "I didn't mean for everyone, you dolt! Just me!"

Surely there must be a philosophical term for Hobbes's line of persuasion, and I don't think it's merely Zen or Argumentum ad Bacculum. Any ideas?

It's going to be so cold in so much of North America this evening that anyone with horses should make sure that they have slightly warm water to drink, at least from time to time, so they do not colic from dehydration. I'm getting up in the morning with hammers and boiling kettles.

It's looking like sub-freezing in all the Gulf states, including much of Texas, and even parts of Mexico.

How do the rest of you deal with this Global Warming? I put my chilled fingers under a nice, warm horse's mane. Mmmmm. Horse never complains.

Apparently the new mayor thinks the horses will live happier lives if they are not allowed to work. He must be in thrall to aminal rghits people. Does anyone have further info, or at least opinions?

The old version of Yahoo Answers displays my carefully constructed paragraphs correctly. This new version shows everything I write as one huge lump, making it incredibly hard for the reader to understand what I'm writing.

This is a separate pargraph.

Here is another one.

Anyone else see this problem, or is it merely a momentary glitch?