coquina

Well - first one would need to know who looks at pornography. I would think that the situation which would lead to an increased birth rate would be if married couples viewed it together. Unmarried people are not inclined to want a child to result from a stimulated encounter, so they would use protection. I might be wrong about this, but I believe married men look at it when they are missing something in their relationship - either the wife is not as interested in sex as the man, or perhaps not as adventurous. In any case, I don't see that him becoming aroused would increase her ability or desire to procreate. From a woman's standpoint, I would suspect the fertility rate would increase with the amount of romantic attention - flowers, chocolates, dinner out, a walk on the beach or a moonlight cruise would be a bigger instigation than looking at a book or a film or someone else in a sexual encounter.

There was a move called "Dante's Peak" where a volcano erupted. They drove a truck through a field of molten lava - it melted the tires, but they kept on going - didn't even cause the gas tank to explode.

You're probably best off to clean it, prime it and paint it with high temperature engine paint.

I think physical punishment very rarely is appropriate. When children are young, and are not able to understand reason, sometimes it is the only way to be sure they stay out of danger. I remember when my daughter was about three. We were on the boat, and she was put in a seat and told not to move while I helped Butch do something. I turned around, and she had not only gotten up, but was walking down the gunnel of the boat while it was underway, on the outside of the rail. I snatched her up and walloped her backside so hard she never made that mistake again.

The scare tactic doesn't work for me. Years ago I had em in the shop - before I knew about the lemon rind cure. One the guys walked up behind me and dropped a large piece of metal on the concrete floor - I jumped, and then hiccupped.

Here's a NOAA page about methane hydrates: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/deepeast01/background/fire/fire.html If you click on the "what lies beneath" icon on the left side, you will be taken to the section which contains this quote: If I understand correctly, what causes methane hydrates to stay in place is temperature and pressure. I wonder if this is part of the mechanism that has caused radical climate changes in the past? If the climate starts to cool, more water is locked up in ice and sea level drops. Even though the global temperature is cooling, perhaps the ocean above the continental shelf would become warmer as it become shallower. Could warmer water and less pressure allow the methane hydrate deposits become unstable, allowing them to be released into the atmosphere, and generating slumps and tsunamis?

I was about 25 and very inexperienced with handling a pick-up truck. My dad gave me some scrap cinderblocks to reinforce our canal bank. I thought I would be smart and load them close to the tail gate so I could just push them out of the truck. I was driving them home, and when I got up to 50 mph the front wheels of the truck came off the ground.

Life on earth has been around on earth for at least 3.5 billion years. http://www.soutpansberg.com/geology/makgabeng.htm It has managed to survive depite several major extinctions, (now thought that most we due to large impacts) that wiped out nearly all species. http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/meteorites.html I think we can make, and are making the planet much less habitable for future generations, but I think that humans will survive our own destructiveness. We may not be able to survive the next earth shattering impact, which will happen at some time in the future. I do expect that some species will survive, and will flourish in a world with many open biological niches. In general, I think humanity is far too self-centered about our position in the ecological biosphere. We are just another species that is enjoying its heyday at the moment. Pride goeth before a fall.

That is one reason the Chinese are able to make products so much cheaper than anywhere else. Their currency valuation is far different from the rest of the world's, when it comes down to what a yaun will buy. http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:T6xBm_kryl0J:www.oxusresearch.com/downloads/em150104.pdf+chinese+yen+valuation&hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_de Sorry the link doesn't work - the original document is PDF, I tried to link to the HTML version. Go to Google and type in "Chinese Yaun Valuation"

No - it is done vaginally. The baby is dismembered and pulled out in pieces. As I said in my post above, according to my gyn friends, this is not a common occurance, and reputable doctors only do it to save the mother's life. The thing about PBA's and abortion in general is that making them illegal will not stop them from happening. There will always be people who are willing to make money of off terrified and desperate people. Pregnancy for a young girl is a life altering event. It's the end of hopes for a career, and all too often a path that ends in poverty. Mothers often don't get the prenatal care they need, and far too often are on drugs, leading to the birth of a child who has far more challanges to face than growing up poor and unloved - they have psycological and neurological problems too. It does no good to shame the girl for indescretion - or to penalize her. If she and the father marry, they marry into poverty and view the child as the agent that brought them there. The loser in this situation, whether by abortion or birth, is a child nobody wanted and nobody loves.

You could have mono - that is one of the symptoms. You have that sore throat and feel crummy for a couple of weeks then it hits you like a ton of bricks. You been kissing anyone or sharing drinking/eating utensils?

I wonder if it has anything to do with fine motor skills. As far as I know, there is no scientific data to back this up, but my dad supervised machinists during WWII, when women, a la "Rosie the Riveter" did men's jobs. Dad said the women he supervised were better at making tiny parts - he deduced it was because their hands were smaller. I'm not sure that it is really the smallness of hands, but historically, women have done jobs that require a "lighter touch", ie embroidery and hand stitching. I wonder if they have genetically finer motor skills which enable them to do more exacting tasks - which in turn leads to more elegant handwriting. Of course - it could be that women just care more about perception, and think that sloppy handwriting connotates sloppy everthingelse.

What is the source of your physical pain? You should try to get to the bottom of it and see if there is a way to manage it that doesn't involve narcotics. I have spinal stenosis - for one thing I have congenitally narrow disks in my lower back, I also have arthritis. The foramen on the sides of the vertebra through which the nerves pass are partially closed. When the nerve feels entrapped, it swells and the pain gets progressively worse. Right now, the sciatic nerve is irritated and the pain is going down my left leg all the way into my foot. I go for an epidural every 4 or 5 months. They inject cortesone into my back. I am having another in the next few days. It reduces the swelling of the nerve, and I get relief for a while without having to take so much medication. Eventually, I will have to have a "rotor rooter" job and have the foramen opened surgically. I had one back surgery for a herniated disk back in '89. That pain was severe and unrelenting, until I was able to have it repaired surgically - I woke up in the operating room totally free of pain - did not even have post-surgical pain. I'm telling you this because based on my experience, living with chronic pain can be very depressing. Right now, my back is so screwed up that I can't do my usual walking for exercise. That depresses me further, especially when I see my body, that I worked so hard on to get back in shape, getting saggy and flabby. After my husband died, my doctor prescribed Xanex. I think it is an anti-anxiety medication, rather than an anti-depressant. Regardless, it does make me feel much better. Hope you are successful in finding a treatment that will work for you.

He ordered seagull (why, I can't imagine, they're the garbage hounds of the ocean). Was he served seagull?

Is the method of suicide relevant to solving the riddle?

You really were lucky - that filing had started to rust in your eye. I had a similar experience to the pepper juice. It goes with a story. Many years ago - when I was about 19, I had been stringing some hot peppers for drying. My dad offered me a bunch of broken up cinder block left over from buiding construction - I lived on a canal bank that was not bulkheaded and the shoreline was eroding. So - I started throwing the blocks in the back of the truck. Not having had much experience with pickups or life in general, I thought it would be to my advantage to leave them close to the tailgate so I could just shove them out when I got home. So - as I'm driving them home, I get up to 55 and the front wheels of the truck come off the ground. At the same moment, a gnat flies in through the open window - right into my eye. I try to get it out with my finger, and discover that I still have hot pepper oil on my fingers, which I have now transferred to my eye. Of course, there are no tissues or kleenex in the old truck. I slowed down and got the front wheels on the ground, and managed to drive the rest of the way with tears streaming out of both eyes.

My mom is no longer living, so I put some flowers on her grave. However, my daughter remembered me. She sent me a basket with fruits, nuts and gormet cheeses. Yum!

The latest occurance was in Tunkuska, Siberia, on June 30, 1908. If this had hit a populated area, or the ocean, millions of people would have been killed. some links: http://www-th.bo.infn.it/tunguska/ http://geology.about.com/library/weekly/aa080998.htm I live on top of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater. Read about it here: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/ The impact occurred at a time of high sea level at what is now the city of Cape Charles on the Delmarva Peninsula. The resultant tsunami reached the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are 200 miles inland. The impact that exterminated the dinorsaurs occured on what is now the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_cratering/Chicxulub/Chicx_title.html More general information on impact craters: http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/solar_impact_craters.htm Yes - the Canary Islands has the potential to cause a devasting tsunami - so does Hawaii. Yes - there is the hazard of a mega-eruption at Yellowstone. To see what a mega-eruption can do, read about the Deccan Traps in India. http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/europe_west_asia/india/deccan.html All of this just points to the fact that we as individuals, and humans as a species have and probably will only inhabit the earth for a very brief period of time in geological terms - which is measured in millions and billions of years. No one knows the hour or the means of their death - you might get hit by a falling rock, struck by lightning, or die of old age at 100 years plus. Best to make the most of the time you are here.

That's a big question, and one to which the entire answer is not yet known. However, GEWEX, The Global Energy & Water Cycle Experiment, is proposing to find the answers. Their home page: http://www.gewex.org/index.html The goal of GEWEX: Thanks for asking that question - I didn't know GEWEX existed until I googled "climate forcing water cycle". There seems to be enough information there to keep us both busy reading for a long time. Perhaps we can continue this thread and discuss various GEWEX projects.