Greg H.

Ten seconds with google would have answered this question for you. Google search: natural nuclear reactors First result: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

Overfilling your transmission can cause early failure of parts due to excess pressure. As Externet states most (I won't go with all, since I don't know if it's true) modern transmissions include a pressure valve that regulates the pressure after the pump, but excess pressure can cause premature wearing on that valve, which can lead to failure. This failure can cause pressure related failures in other components. So yes, maintaining too much fluid in the transmission can lead to premature failure of the system over time, and can potentially void any warranty you might have, if the cause of the failure is determined to be the presence of too much fluid. All of that being said, I have only ever seen one transmission fail from having too much fluid, and that was in a 15 year old car that probably had other issues besides just too much fluid. So while it can, I expect it's not something that would happen quickly. As for the foaming, this coiuld be caused by old oil, contamination, or air being sucked in from a failed seal somewhere. Regardless, foamed oil is one of those things my father would call "Very bad" for your vehicle.

My tactic for dealing with people talking while I was lecturing was to stop talking, and wait. And wait. Occasionally, I'd walk around and sit down next to them., and quetly wait for them to notice that everyone in the room was now staring at them. I rarely had to do it twice in one semester. The second time I usually invited the persons involved to continue their discussion in the hallway. On their way to the registrar's office. With a drop form.

There are going to be elections next week. Don't ask me why, but that's how I would have said that. Growing up in the South Eastern US, you hear these expressions a lot. Where I'm from, "will" is something you read when someone dies, or a confirmation of intent to perform some future action. (i.e. Will you do this for me? Yes, I will.). As a phrase, "going to" is more often used in the sense you're describing. Now that I live in the Midwest, I hear will more (and I use it more myself), instead of going to, so it seems to be a more regionally vernacular thing (like soda versus pop). Keep in mind, also, that going to and will, in this context, basically have the same meaning - you can replace one with the other and, in general, the meaning conveyed doesn't change. There will be elections next week. There are going to be elections next week. There will be a test tomorrow. There is going to be a test tomorrow. Will seems to be a more concise turn of phrase, but I don't think it's any more "correct", I probably wouldn't write a formal paper for a journal or a professor that way, but in every day speech, I don't think it matters on way or the other. Six of one, half dozen of the other, as my father says.

Punch person A on the end of their nose while declaiming "I refute it thus!". Extra points if you manage to not get arrested for assault.

If that's so, then let's place the blame squarely where it belongs - a governmental system that sees no value in the education of the young and an electorate that refuses to pay for it. We could have better schools, but no one wants higher taxes to pay for them. You could put a cop on every street corner, but again, someone has to foot the bill. For the record, by the time I graduated highschool at 17, I was reading and writing at a college level, based on the "standards" defined by the state. My children are the same way - literate, thoughtful, and well read (given their ages). If your local schools are subpar, perhaps you should reflect on where the problem actually lies, and work with your neighbors to challenge the local government to do what is necessary to improve them - and then be willing to help foot the bill when it comes due.

In many areas of the United States, children who aren't properly vaccinated cannot get into public schools, and with good reason. The simple fact is that even if vaccinations caused autism (which they don't), your child would be better off autistic and alive than dead of say measles at the age of 3, in my opinion. There's also a misconception about what it means to be autistic. It's does not necessarily mean that the person is socially inept or incapable of functioning on their own.

I'm going to come right out and say it. This thread is nothing but troll bait, and frankly it should be locked until such time as the OP can formulate a conherent argument to support his claims.

1. That when the number of wishes % 2 = 0 the genie forgets everything from the time I rubbed the lamp. 2. A working FTL drive.* 3. A seat on the first ship off this rock. 4. A habitable planet that isn't half polluted. 5. A government that works (in both senses of the word). 6. etc etc *And for all of you about to give me guff about FTL doesn't work all I can say is, screw your physics, I have a magic genie. Key word being magic.

Dpending on what version of Java you ahve, this may answer your question: From http://www.java.com/en/download/help/jcp_security.xml

Embarassingly enough, I got the wrong answer, so my sublime statement of the problem was obviously just as incorrect as it was neat and tidy. I'll just go back to my corner and be quiet.

George Carlin would say that they are just words - no different than any other word in the English language. Yet the "Scary 7" seem to have a power that makes mothers reach for bars of soap and teenagers giggle like hatters. Personally, I've never really had a problem with them, but I also recognize that they are inappropriate in certain venues because of the view of society. It's about knowing your audience and, more importantly, how you want your audience to perceive you. All of that being said, if you wish to be a member of a specific community, you are more or less obliged to pay heed to the rules of that community.

We have a term for species that have been introduced to non-native areas by human interaction. They're called invasive species, and they tend to be destructive to the local ecology.

I would go on to add that I was never taught that orbits were circular. In fact, I was taught in my introductory physics class in high school that they were elliptical - some more so than others. So...why the tin foil hattery?

I had never heard the term Zombie Star before. Interesting read. Thank you.

Disclaimer: I play a lot of video games and all of the below is anecdotal. I play the MMO Eve Online, and I see a lot of this on the forums for the game: "OMG, you play a bad guy in the game and you like it, so you must be a <insert the mental illness of your choice here>". While I am sure there is probably some subset of the gaming community that are, in fact. sociopaths, I'm not convinced that it's all that deviated from the population average. Indeed, I am old enough to remember when Rock and Roll was the Devil's Music, and later when Dungeons and Dragons caused you to go mentally insane and bite the heads off of puppies (or some such nonsense). Having dealt with mental illness my entire life (I'm bipolar, as was my grandfather and one of my children), I can tell you from experience that the causes of (and treatments for) these sorts of things are never just point problems. There's never a simple easy thing that you can point at and go "Yes, that's the problem we just have to fix that!" I'm going to agree with Swansont and say that the truth is, people want something to blame that's easy to understand. They also, by and large, find it easier to blame something that either don't like or don't understand. But as I see so often on these forums, Correlation is not causation and the plural of anecdote is not evidence. The simple truth is that the human mind and consciousness is such a complex thing that we, as a species and a society, really don't understand it that well. Two people can (and often do) react to the same stimuli (for example, accident victims) in wildly different ways and laying down a generality like "Video games are bad!" is not only disingenuous, it also potentially masks the real cause of a person's issues.

No, I meant the problem as stated as compared to the solution. But that's usually the case when you're dealing with math.

It was, indeed, interesting. That's a really obtusde way to express it though.

Oh, well, yeah that makes sense - but haven't we more or less known this for a long time?

I'll have to echo Swansont here. What?

Because that's how long it took to make get the probe going in the same direction at roughly the same speed as the comet would be going at the time the two intersected - close enough that it could grab hold of the comet. I think it's amazing to be honest. They basically shot a bullet from a gun, and hit another bullet fired from another gun thousands of miles away, all while being blindfolded. The amount of math that goes into this is staggering, and if evenone calculation is off by a fraction, those errors compile over the long journey and you end up missing the target by thousands or millions of miles.

I'm no expert in the life sciences, but this sits well with my own understanding based on my readings on the topic.

well if i did work on a school paper whats wrong with that? you are a blind believer of authority. you don't think it is necessary to verify a theory when some authority made it. this is not a scientific attitude. Your blind ad hominem attack isn't going to earn you any points. My point is, if you're trying to get assistance with a school assignment of some kind, there is a proper place on the forums to do so, and it also changes how we respond to you. That aside, no, I don't find it necessary to validate every scientific theory I run across. I make the assumption that the authorities in question (scientists, in other words) know what they are talking about and, if they do not, the further assumption that other scientists will happily correct them by failing to validate their predictions. Science, you see, is a self-correcting process. False ideas only get to propogate so far before someone falsifies them. Darwinism, in it's original form, looks only remotely like the current theory of evolution. We have made huge advances in all areas of science related to this field in the 150 years since Darwin first wrote Origin. We have supporting evidence from multiple scientific disciplines that provide us a more complete picture of how life evolved and conitnues to evolve on this planet. And finally, appealing to authority is only a fallacy when the authority in question has no particular knowledge on the subject at hand.

In the US (where I live) there are only a certain number of octane levels commercially available - 87, 89 (which tends to be blended with ethanol) and either 91 or 93 (I have never seen both levels offered at the same station, and the choice seems to be regional, which 93 being more readily availble in the Southeast, 91 in the midwest). I have seen a very few stations that offer octanes in the 101-104 range, and these tend to cost considerably more than the other options.

The more questions this chap asks, the more it starts to sound like he's working on a paper for school.