Every attempt I have made to do a search in the last hour has failed, returning only a blank page. Is anybody else having a similar issue?
I personally have never seen this problem, but you are definitely not the first to report it.
The search engine here is sometimes a bit wonky. The weird thing is, for some people it works just fine, but for others it has a lot more problems, and some folks find it just about completely unusable. Sometimes it clears up on its own, sometimes the problems persist. I don’t really have an explanation for any of it.
If you keep having problems, you can use google instead:
HOWTO: Search the SDMB using Google
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638051