School Daze

Sixty-two alts let us know where they attended school last week. The survey was really open and covered the entire K-12 experience so it was understandable that some felt left out - particularly those of us who went to magnet schools. Others felt the descriptions a bit too general.

Overall, 71% attended public/government schools and 24% attended private schools at some point in their K-12 education. The vast majority of us attended school in the Burbs. One person claims to have attended a Madrassa.

The results for this week are posted in the wiki.

The Religious Divide

This last week we surveyed the tribe about religion - always a divisive topic in meatspace and cyberspace. Seventy-six people voted. As always the results are posted in the wiki, but we will give a simple breakdown of the results here.

The general breakdown, based on major world religions, was 3.9% Jewish, 23.7% Christian, 1.3% Taoist. Then, 30.3% Other Religion, 19.7% Agnostic, and 21.1% Atheist. Zoroastrians were left off the survey and therefore could be lumped in with Other Religion even though they are considered one of the world's major religions.

Specific results for religious affiliations can be found in the wiki.

Despite the dizzying array of choices, 8 people still felt their beliefs were not represented adequately. Jin wonders how many self-identified as Force believers. ;)

Gym club here we come

For some exercising is a way of life, and for others getting a beer from the fridge is exercising. banniNation has more beer-people than gym-dwellers. It shows, since most bNers should lose at least few pounds. Then again half of them exercise 1-4 hours per week, so they are obviously doing something. Their beer-bellies are just in the way of their gorgeus abs.

Having Adventures: banniNation on Safari

The term safari is a 19th century Kiswahili term referring to a cross-country expedition usually for the purpose of hunting or viewing wildlife in East Africa (derived from the Arabic term safar meaning to journey), but it can mean traveling in general. Going on safari outside our home countries is getting more difficult with TSA pat downs, stance checks and body cavity searches (jk on the stance check - I think). 95% of bNers/bNettes have traveled in North America (makes sense given the meatspace citizenship of bN). A few souls have braved foreigners (ha! ha!), customs agents, and immigration to bring back reports from beyond the edges of the map where dragons live and cannibals haunt the jungles. One bNer/Nette has even safaried to Antarctica and lived to tell the tale.

If we take my dad's favorite phrase having adventures, which he uses to describe my total inability to stay put and lead a normal life like other people, then certainly the population of banniNation is doing that. Whether it is totalsecurity narrowly avoiding skanky women in Wasilla, AK, heresyoftruth posting bacon tits, burntman soaking up sunshine in Manica with a cold beer and prawns, ludditemike taking really early morning bike rides to photograph his MI town, modi traveling the world in the name of good health, lard baron hiking in Bavaria, or even grahams herding all the cool cats that populate bN, we are definitely having adventures.

For comparison's sake, here is a list of numbers of countries per continent. You can go here to get the list of countries. This week's results are posted in the wiki.

Antarctica - shared territory
Africa - 53
Asia -44
Europe - 46
North America - 23
Oceania/Australia - 14
South America - 12

All systems operational.

The September census results showed that 80.7% of participating community members banned from a PC, 12.3% from a Mac, and 3.5% from a Linux platform. This week's question provides a little more detail.

Of the 54 bNers and bNettes polled, 55% use some form of Windows, 24% have Linux, 2% Amiga OS, and 19% are using OSX to store all their pictures of Melissa Theuriau. Most PC users have WinXP (47%), but a few use Win2000 (2%) or Vista (6%). *shudder*

Apparently, the guy in the grey suit has convinced more bNers and bNettes to go with his operating system than that hipster Mac dude. Or perhaps we're just too lazy to switch over to the Penguin.

Missing votes

Some votes has disappeared during the night. At the moment we have no idea why and if they are gone for good. Blogger-support has been e-mailed...

Update: The votes have re-appeared. Still no clue what had happened.

You can check out any time you want....

Apparently banniNation is just too addictive to settle for less than one hour of interaction. Thirty percent of people never leave and 25% banninate 8-15 hours per week. Only 40 people participated in this weeks poll, but the bimodal distribution of answers to this week's question How many hours a week do you banninate? suggests a couple of possibilities.

1. A lot of people banninate at work and home. In fact, work and home could be the same place.

2. Some people only banninate from home or from work. Hey, not everyone has the luxury of living in a cubicle.

Any other hypotheses? This is a question that could be tested in the next banniNation census.

Results are posted here.

Parallel Universes

For many years, science fiction authors have speculated on the possibility that the South won the Civil War, that dinosaurs never went extinct, and that you can buy a decent pint at a restaurant at the end of the universe to enjoy while watching the big bang. Within the past decade, physicists have come to realize that science fiction may not be fiction. Parallel universes exist side by side and our twin might literally be only a few millimeters away... in another universe.

We are still far from being capable of jumping dimensions, but if we could where would we choose to go? Most would choose to brave Vogon construction crews and poetry rather than take the red pill, sail a firefly, wield a light saber, or get beamed aboard the USS Enterprise. Results are posted in the wiki as well.



Thread comments may be found here.

The Afterglow

It is over just as quickly as it started. Now it’s time to clean up and think about the future.

The results are posted in here.

What did we learn from this? Posting comments, voting in the queue and lurking are popular activities. Alt creation, the wiki and the Beer Garden not so much. We also learned it can be difficult to count to three. 152 people gave their opinion, but dividing the amount of total votes by three gives the result of 154.

Interpret the results as you like.

The First Time...

The first time is never easy. It can be painful and messy, and if that's the case, hopefully over quickly. Hopefully, this first time will be good for everyone.

Some of the polls will be "serious business," others more in line with the sort of locker room fun that pervades the NSFW threads. Polls about politics, current events, movies, social commentary, literature, general bN user stats could all show up at the top of the page.



Here's how we hope it will work:

On Sunday, a question will be posted. bNers and bNettes will have a week to vote. On Saturday, at midnight, the polls will close, the results tallied, and then posted on the blog. On Sunday, a scheduled thread will come up to discuss poll results. This thread will be linked to the blog as well. A new question will be posted. Wash, rinse, repeat.


Of course, there are all sorts of ways trolls, cabals, and alt armies could abuse the system. We're hoping that good citizenship, common decency, and basic morals and ethics prevent that. No one knows who is voting and when and how. Please be considerate of your fellow community members and vote once per physical individual.


Hopefully, you will submit polls of your own (with an answer list). Please send along questions with answers to bn.polling@gmail.com. WIE is always appreciated too. ;~)