coquina

If that were the case their skeletons would have spear points embedded in the posterior pelvic bones.

Wouldn't the ideal angle depend on the amount of thrust supplied by the rocket motor?

Glider - I know. When we were there, we would put a yardstick on the floor and tell her to step over it, and she would.

Well - there was the case of the local guy who robbed a bank and wrote the note demanding money on the back of his paycheck stub. Glider - I have seen bradykinesis in lack of action. My mother in law had Parkinson's. One morning we awoke to find her standing in the middle of the living room floor. Not only could she not walk, she couldn't call for help. To make matters worse, she had been eating a cracker and could neither swallow it or spit it out.

Several years ago I read an article in a science mag - probably "Discover", that research indicated a possible connection between the Neanderthals and the Basques. That research doesn't appear to have evolved into any thing significant - if it did, I didn't find anything on the net about it. As to why they disappeared - maybe it was a disease-based situation. Maybe they were similar enough genetically that that they could contract diseases carried by Cro-Magnons, but had no antibodies to fight them - Just as the Native American population was decimated by measles. Also - if indications are that they remained in small tribes and didn't intermingle much, even with members of there own species, it would have played hell with their gene pool. Even if they did intermingle, travel during ice age conditions would have been very difficult for them. Did they have the ability to make fire?

That sounds like they are seeing the aurora borealis. I can imagine that when there is a light layer of clouds, the distortion could make it appear city-like.

Anecdote about dealing with bullies - I believe that many of them are out-and-out cowards. When I was in elementary school, for the most part the same people stayed in the same class from one year to the next. There was one extremely mean boy who had tormented the rest of the class all through school. When I was in the 5th grade, the teacher had left the room for a few minutes and this kid started his antics again. He pushed me & called me a name that was extremely rude and vulgar. I had had enough of him and I hauled off and slapped his face - as hard as I could, fully expecting that he was going to come after me with his fists and I was going to have to defend myself. To my amazement, he started to cry. Not sniffles, mind you, but great noisy wails of anguish. He sat down and his desk, put his head down, and was still boo-hooing when the teacher returned to the room. Of course, just as every class has its bully, it also has its tattle-tail, who was waiting at the door to dramatically announce to the teacher that "there'd been a fight." When the teacher demanded an explanation of me, and I told her what he had said, (which was backed up by several classmates who had heard it), I was exhonerated from wrong-doing. She told the bully to stop his sniveling, he'd gotten just what he deserved. During the remaining years at school, I don't think he ever bullied anyone again, and he certainly gave me a wide berth. Regretably, now in America, taking retribution of this sort would have gotten us both expelled.

There is evidence of 2 blasts similar to Tunguska in South America during the 30's. http://www.meteor.co.nz/feb96_2.html The first occurred in the Rio Curacá area of Brazil on August 13, 1930. The second occurred in the Rupununi area of British Guyana in 1935. Here's more about them from a 1996 Science Frontiers article: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf103/sf103g08.htm From the same Science Frontiers source, there was also a strike in Brazil in 1995 that was not as large, but left a 16' crater: As has been previously stated, since so much of the earth's surface is covered by water, there must be more explosions there. I wonder if some of the "rogue waves" mariners encounter aren't caused by these blasts?

Many years ago, every body in the house got the Hong Kong flu - except my husband's grandmother who was 93 and had a flu shot. Butch and I, his mother and my daughter were all sick as dogs and poor grandma was trying to take care of the lot of us. We all had the extremely high fever for several days. Grandma didn't drive and we ran out of essential groceries. Butch and I had to practically hold each other up to walk into the store. Yuck - I never want to be that sick again either. First you're afraid you might die, and then you think that would be an improvement in your condition.

For the cough you can make a syrup of whiskey and honey - you don't drink it down - you take it a teaspoon at the time. Also hot tea with cinnamon, lemon juice, and a shot of dark rum. You don't drink that by the gallon either - I keep a thermos by the bed and drink just a little at the time.

I don't think notebook paper and pennies are good materials for your experiment. As someone pointed out, the paper becomes waterlogged and sinks. If you paint it with glue to waterproof it, the glue will saturate the paper and make it less bouyant. The pennies concentrate the weight in one area too much - so you can't balance the load. As your ballast - how about using sheets of aluminum foil cut to the same shape but slightly smaller than the inside of the raft, so that when you add a sheet you distribute the weight evenly. Instead of notebook paper, use corrugated cardboard. You can spray a clear varnish on it to waterproof it, and you can close the ends so water can't enter the corrugations.

John, I don't know whether you've run across this site before, but I just found it and think it is quite interesting it is titled: 1908 Siberia Explosion, Reconstructing an Asteroid Impact from Eyewitness Accounts: http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html The man made several paintings from various distances and locations based on eyewitness accounts. What I found particularly interesting was how close the paintings are to the descriptions at the impact calculator site.

I played around with this site quite a bit: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ I was not able to arrive at a combination that gave a damaging air blast, but I don't have all day to play with it either. I do believe I heard an object explode in the atmosphere a couple of years ago. I was outside in the early morning when it was just daylight - there were no clouds in the sky. Suddenly, there was a very sharp explosion high in the air. I have heard the sonic booms from planes before, and this sounded similar, but not quite the same. The explosion was very short and sharp. More like a very loud POP! It did not shake the ground. I did not see any smoke in the air. I talked to neighbors, people at Langley AFB, and the police department, and no one else heard it, or knew anything about it. It was so short and quick I doubt anyone inside would have taken much notice. But it definitely came from overhead - it couldn't have been a gunshot (I know what they sound like - people hunt around here all the time) or an automobile backfire. I believe a small meteorite or a piece of space junk (deorbiting satellite) exploded in the atmosphere almost directly overhead, but I have no way to prove it.

I just found this site which gives a concise overview of astronomy. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/ While it doesn't directly talk about the origin of life it does explain the formation of the solar system. As to the "pan spermia" idea - comets are thought to have originated within the solar system - quote from this site: http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/oort_cloud.html If this hypothesis is correct, and comets did originate within the outer reaches of the solar system, but were flung into the Oort Cloud, it doesn't seem that they would already contain life. The fact that they are mainly frozen water, methane and ammonia might mean that they brought the materials that could form life to earth. That - together with the fact that the earth is tectonically active, and has a molten core and volcanic activity, which provides a heat source, leads me to believe that live originated here on earth. That is not to say that life could not have originated independantly within other stellar systems.

I think it would be a good idea to have your blood sugar checked too. I have had hypoglycemia also and the symptoms are very similar. Just feeling that way can bring on an anxiety attack. One of the things that can really promote low blood sugar is snacking on sweets - especially high test soft drinks. The sugar is already in solution and goes into your blood stream right away. This can cause your pancreas to secrete too much insulin. It handles the sugar that you ingested and then goes to work on the normal sugar in your blood. You get the shakes and find that eating something sweet is the only thing that remedies the problem, but it is a short term fix and soon you are back in the same cycle. Avoid refined sugar and starch - eat fresh fruits, low fat cheeses and lean meats and see if you don't improve. Also - 5 small meals spread through out the day is better than 3 big ones.

Here is the crater I read about earlier: http://beckeraustralia.crustal.ucsb.edu/ from the website: Becker's paper was originally published in Science Mag http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1093925?ijkey=s6ut2p.yjJGq.&keytype=ref&siteid=sci Site detailing Luann Becker's Antarctic Expedition http://beckerantarctica.crustal.ucsb.edu/ http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=969

http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/index.html There is an enormous amount of imformation here, but if you want to learn a lot about impact cratering, it is the best source I know of on the web. At this time, there are about 160 known impact sites - more are being discovered each year. This site has a list that can be sorted alphabetically, by size, and by location. This is the image reference page, http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images.html - you can see actual pictures of some craters - others have graphic images based on seismic, gravity, and magnetic studies. There are three problems associated with detecting old craters. 1. Many of them are under the ocean. 2. Because of plate tectonics, many of them have been subducted and "recycled". 3. The ones that are on land have suffered from the effects of erosion and sedimentation. One of the most fascinating to me is the Sudbury crater in Ontario... http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/sudbury.htm It is 250 km in diameter and is 1850 +/- 3 million years old. Here's another page about it: http://ottawa.rasc.ca/astronomy/earth_craters/sudbury/ This impactor was big enough to melt a significant amount of the earths crust: I will post some more links later - I read recently that a crater had been found that might have caused the Permian Extinction. As Ophie said - these craters were not taken seriously for a long time. Certainly, impacts don't occur as often as they did during the early formation of the solar system. One of the things that really got everyone's attention was the broken up asteroid that hit Jupiter in '94. Gene Shoemaker was a pioneering geologist in the study of impact craters and he, his wife and Levy were the discoverers of Shoemaker-Levy. Sadly, he was killed in an automobile accident in Austrailia several years ago.

There is a hypothesis that really big blasts may cause turbulence in the earth's mantle. It is thought that the Chicxulub impactor which eradicated the dinosaurs was about twice as large as the Chesapeake Bolide, and that the heat was so extensive that most of North America burned. (There was an article about that in Discover Mag. a couple of years ago.) Some scientists believe that Chicxulub may have caused the eruption and formation of the Deccan Traps in India - on the opposite side of the globe. The theory is that the pressure was so enormous that it caused the earth to split and lava to flow out. http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/europe_west_asia/india/deccan.html

Thanks Martin - It was one helluva bang - was it not? What is amazing is the residual effects after 35 million years. The land is sinking and settling. Sea level is rising faster here than anywhere else on the east coast - that never made sense - now we know the ground here is sinking. Contractors were sued because houses settled and cracks developed in the sheet rock. Now we know that they didn't build inferior homes, it is all because of the fact the 400' down the ground is mush and the top level is subsiding. What is different about the CBIC is that although it is buried, it is "reachable" for study. I really believe that new inroads will be made in Geology as a result of what we learn here.

Ophie - can you estimate the megatonnage of the Chesapeake Bay impactor based on the following info? I have spoken with the scientists that are doing this research and I asked them what the best guess was on the size of the impactor - they told me about 3 miles in diameter. They don't know the incoming speed - somewhere between 20 and 70 km/sec. From the article - describing the size of the crater: More background info: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/ancient_cataclysm.html http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/faulting.html There is evidence that it created a tsunami that went all the way to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains - 150 miles inland.

There is a vent pipe from the toilet that goes up through the roof. Maybe the wind changes the pressure in the pipe which in turn changes the level of water in the toilet. I'm not sure that that makes sense - it would seem that the water in the bowl would be governed by the water sent in from the tank. Is there a plumber in the house?

Flute and piccolo.

I believe you have been writing about 2 separate events. Polar Wandering occurs more or less continually as the location of the magnetic north pole moves as the result of convection currents in the mantle. On the other hand - Polar Reversal is the swapping of the magnetic north and south poles. This has happened many times over the course of geologic time. Evidence of it can be seen in "magnetic striping". It is particularly obvious on either side of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. As molten lava emerges, the magnetic particles in it align themselves with the current position of the magnetic north pole. New lava continuously forms in the center and splits the newly hardened lava into twin sections, one on either side of the ridge. There are "twin sets" of stripes of regular polarity and reversed polarity that are progressively older. Here's a link to a section of "This Dynamic Earth" by the USGS, which tells about it: http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/developing.html From the indications of the striping - polar reversals are relatively sudden. Would a pole shift affect anything that uses man-made electricity? What about electric motors and electromagnets? Are they entirely independent of earth's magnetism?

Do you plan on going to college? Start by applying to colleges in areas that are away from home. If you are used to very rural life, I think moving to a humongous city might be too much of a change for you. "College towns" have a little more than you're used to but won't overwhelm you. I am not familiar with your part of the country at all. I live in Southeast Virginia, in the Yorktown, Williamsburg, Jamestown area that is known as "the Historic Triangle". It's close to Newport News, Hampton, and Norfolk. There are rural areas that are within 30 minutes driving time of metropolitan areas. Christopher Newport University is in Newport News, and the College of William and Mary is in Williamsburg. Many people here are focused on the water - it is all around us. Boating, fishing, sailboat racing, are some things people do here for recreation.

I voted for cat - I've had my cat for 18 years, he's a big fluffy Maine Coon cat wannabe. He's old, but he still gets around, and he sleeps with me. I call him my "furry gray heating pad". I also like dogs and have a black lab mix named Sadie. She gets to go to work with me every day and all the guys in the shop are crazy about her. I need a sign on my door that says "Spoiled rotten critters live here."