coquina

I was once a biology major - then went into the family business. Over the years I have taken courses in business and accounting, but I don't have a degree. I've also taken courses in computer aided design and manufacturing, but I don't have degrees in those areas either. I used to joke and say that my degree is from "HKU"

I think the silencer also reduces the power of the bullet, so you have to be close -

A sub's hull does have to be quite flexible. I was on a nuke sub last spring doing some consultant work. The officer that was showing me around said that if you tie a robe from one side of the hull to the other, so that it is taught when the sub is a the surface, the rope will lie on the deck at max depth. He said this demonstration is done for the benefit of new crewmen. He also said that when the dog the hatches at the surface, the bolts are loose at depth. An inexperienced crewman tightened the bolts, and when the sub surfaced they couldn't open the hatch. So - concrete wouldn't flex enough - it would break. That being said - why call the thing a "submarine" if it's going to be stationery? Why not just tow it out to sea and sink it? Use it in the same fashion the international space station is used - ferry crewmen back and forth in small subs. The benefit I foresee would be in allowing deep ocean research for long periods of time.

Thank you paganinio - I wish you could have met her. Her motto was "learn something new every day". She loved the internet. On one of the history forums a group of Brits were talking about the London Blitz - she told them about being bombed by Zeppelins in WWI.

You're certainly right about that. More anecdotes - sorry. I can play "by note", but I can't play "by ear" - no matter how hard I try. I can understand trig and geometry, because I can "see" the solution. More abstract formula leave me befuddled. Of course, I use the geometry and trig daily, I never need to solve more complicated equations. However, I think some of us have more mechanical minds while others have more theoretical ones. With regard to Mom - the organist. When she was in her late 80's she suffered a very serious stroke. The neurologist told me he expected that she would be left severely impaired. He was amazed that she recovered in short order with just a residual limp. I was talking to him about how mom was determined to get the use of her hands and feet back, so she could play the organ again. The doctor said she because she used more of her brain than most people, she had trained more neural pathways. So - one of my ideas about the correlation of musicians and mathmaticians might be that because one simultaneously reads the notes, calculates the time, and uses hands (and breath and embouchure in the case of woodwinds and brass instruments), perhaps musicians develop more neural pathways, and maybe this helps one learn - not only math, but other subjects as well.

"Manned space exploration" wasn't specified, so I'll offer another thought. More money does need to be spent in identifying potential earth colliders, and more money needs to be spent on figuring out how to intercept them and deal with them, rather it be by changing their trajectory enough to avoid collision, or pulverizing them. We know that the Chixulub impact ended the reign of the dinosaurs, the Chesapeake Impact occured at the end of the Eocene, and other craters have been found that may have caused the other great extinctions, the Permian, for example. Although strikes were more frequent in the past, we know that it is still possible for a strike to occur - Jupiter got smacked by the pieces of Shoemaker-Levy in 1994. All the nations of the world should be working on this problem - they are all equally at risk.

Classical - Mozart's Sonata in D Major for flute Jazz - Anything by Herbie Mann Big Band - "Smoke Rings" Rock "When I'm 64" Beetles Swing "Woodchopper's Ball" Since I'm limited to 5 there's still a lot of favorites left out.

Sometimes you have to do that - but if you can learn to look at the whole measure and see it as an equation, you're ahead of the game.

I have learned that Dave plays trombone - I play flute. My mother was a very accomplished organist and could play 2 manuals, pedals, and change stops simultaneously. Where am I going with this? How much does mathmatical abilitity enhance musical ability and vice-versa? Think about it. You're sightreading - it's syncopated, you have to mentally compute the measure in advance to know how it will come out. If you're sight reading, and you're good at it, you're reading at least 4 measures ahead of what you're playing. Throw into the mix that the key signature and the time signature may be changing. It's challenging when you're dealing with one line of music. I think the most amazing thing I ever say was my mom play the organ. She played for the local funeral home, you don't get a lot of opportunity to practice. She could simultaneously keep up with two manuals,treble and bass cleff, and a full set of pedals, she changed would reach up and change the stops from brass to woodwinds and not miss a beat, and - if necessary transpose the whole shooting match to another key. She could do this at the age of 95. Obviously, she was certainly no dummy when it came to math - but she'd never been exposed to it's higher levels. So much of music involves math - how many of you mathmaticians read music and play an instrument? How much do you feel that the two skills are interrelated? If you play - do you play by rote, or are you able to wing it. I play by note - to me, someone who can fly by the seat of their pants is amazing. Anybody want to comment?

Hey Dave - Izzat you? Hear it here: http://store.artistdirect.com/store/artist/album/0,,1046513,00.html Along with some other classics like "Slide Frog Slide", and "Tiger Rag". It jes makes my feet itch to hear it.

Here's the method "Machinery's Handbook" gives:

This site should help. http://home.comcast.net/~rthamper/html/body_trigtricks.htm

I don't do well when it comes to "theoretical math" - I grew up in a machine shop reading blueprints and making parts. Machinists primarily need to know geometry and trig. You also use algebra to calculate the proper speeds and feeds - the two components of cutting tools - how fast the spindle turns and how fast you feed the tool into the part. When the computer age dawned, I learned to program machine tools - based on and x,y,z coordinate system. In order to program the cutting tool, you start out by laying parallel lines around the part at a distance equal to the radius of the tool. If you have a contoured surface, "curves", you have to figure the tangent point of the tool where one curve ends and the next begins. I used to to this manually, and it was a royal PITA. Now I use CAD/CAM. I draw the part I want to cut on a computer screen - draw the offset for the center of the tool, make sure all the lines are connected, select the direction and side of the tool, and the computer writes the program. I can write programs for complex parts in minutes that previously took days.

My grandson is 13 - his father lets him watch unlimited amounts of TV and cartoons. I was in the house when one of them was on, and I was not believing what I was hearing. It was obviously a cartoon intended for adults. I think it is a mistake to allow children to watch a lot of TV - especially in their early years. I have always been a reader, and I always enjoy books more than movies because when I read I form mental pictures in my mind about what the characters and the setting look like. Later on, when I see a movie that was made from a book, I am always disappointed, because I liked my characters and settings better. When a child watches a lot of movies and TV, their mind doesn't have to do that extra processing - the pictures are given to them along with the audio portion. It becomes more difficult for them to form mental images. This can be detrimental to the learning process. BTW - do any of you have a "photographic memory"? When I was in school, I did, and it was pretty good. When I took a test I could mentally flip through a textbook or my notes and "see" what I had written, word for word. If I was studying and wanted to look something up - I could "see" the page where the information was written, and sometimes I could actually "see" the page number.

Classical, Jazz, Dixieland, Big Band, Show tunes, Swing, Rock 'n Roll, Folk, Buffet - not into heavy metal.

Fish sense changes in water pressure with their lateral line. So they immediately detect when the fish next to them change direction.

You might want to take a look at some of the technology that has been derived from NASA "spinoffs". http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

No, we do not spend enough on space exploration, but it is a very complex issue. One thing to remember is money spent on space exploration generates "spin off" technology that can be used in many other applications. Times have really changed since the early 60's when Kennedy threw out the challange to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. At the time, my father had a small machine shop that he worked in part time. His was employed by NASA Langley Research Center as an "instrument maker". Back then that implied mechanical instruments, not electronic ones. When space exploration first started, Langley was the lead NASA agency for it. My dad learned that there was going to be a lot of machine shop work subcontracted, so he took early retirement and expanded his shop. Back then, small shops were working directly with NASA engineers to produce parts, which were initially tested in wind tunnels. When the drawings were approve for the "real thing", there would be a big red stamp on them that said "flight article". I grew up in this shop, worked here as a child in the summers. My dad taught me the machine shop trade from the ground up. (I own and operate it now) I cannot tell you how exciting it was to be a part of the beginnings of space exploration. One of the earliest things I remember was when "Surveyor" landed on the moon and started sending back pictures - we were so excited because one of the pictures showed a component part of the foot that we had built. You can see the picture here, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/surveyor.html. We also made parts for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Viking, LDEF, and many more projects. Eventually, rather than use small independant contractors, the projects were bid by the huge corporations. The bidding was quite competitive. During an interview one of the original astronauts was asked what concerned him most. He said "the realization that I am riding a rocket filled with high explosives that was built by the lowest bidder." We continued to work for NASA in the experimental field, until the Challanger disaster changed everything. Prior to that event, the space budget was already being cut. I remember when the design first went out for the space shuttle. There was concern about booster design from the git-go. Several companies did not want to build the boosters in parts and connect them with O-Rings. Plastic is notorious for shrinking and growing dependant on temperature. The larger the sealing diameter compared to the diameter of the O-ring itself, the more it will change size. However, NASA had budget constraints, and one piece boosters would have had to have been transported to the Cape by barge, so they decided to go with multi-piece units. The same congress that cuts NASA's budget screams the loudest when disaster occurrs. Over and over again, NASA has been forced to take the cheap way out due to budget constraints. Rather than be involved in so many projects, I would prefer to see NASA work on one major project at a time, with an adequate budget to get the job done right. Regardless, disasters will still occur from time to time. When they occur, certainly they should be investigated, but there shouldn't be rounds of finger-pointing and nit-picking. I apologise for the length of the post. Will somebody please kick this soapbox out from under me so I can get back to work...?

It is said that left handed people are more accident prone, but I attribute that mostly to living in a right handed world. For example, pots often have a pour lip on only one side - a left hand person has to either use the wrong hand or pour it backwards - both cases make it easy to get burned.

Unless the terminally ill person has requested extreme measures, I think they should be kept painfree and comfortable. If this means overmedication, which ultimately leads to coma and death, I have no problem with that. As a matter of fact, it is done quite frequently, with morphine and fentanyl (sp) patches. My mother got a staph infection from hip replacement surgery. She was 95, and was unable to overcome the infection. She was in so much pain that when her dressings were changed I could hear her scream all the way down the hall. She was a tough old Brit, and I had never seen her cry or lose control before. Her body was rotting away, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. When it became obvious that she was going to die, I told the medical people in the hospital to cease all treatment. I called her family physician, and he gave her sedatives and a fentanyl patch, and she just wound down like an old watch. What I'm saying is, that there is an alternative to a lethal injection that kills someone in moments. They can be allowed to "sleep away" their final days pain free.

We used to have guinea fowl. The stupid birds regularly committed suicide by landing on the transformer. Finally, the power company told me that if it happened one more time, they would charge me for the repair. It did continue to happen occasionally, but before I called Vepco, I would get all the guys out in the shop to pick up the carcass and all the feathers. There was also a woodpecker that thought the transformer was a wonderful drumming plate - he miscued also.

Oh - and look how many people are right handed with a left dominant eye. I wonder how many are natural southpaws? Right handed parents naturally encourage their children to be right handed. My parents were both lefthanded, although my mother (born in 1907 in England) was forced to change by having her left hand tied behind her back. Whenever my parents were doing the teaching, I was taught left handed.

That's me. I was taught archery right handed, later, when I joined an archery club I learned about the eye dominance thing - I learned to compensate for the visual error. I am terrible at baseball and soft ball - can't hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle. I could always pitch pretty well though. My favorite sport is tennis - I haven't played in quite a while and ought to get back into it. At least one doesn't have to buy a left handed tennis racket. I think being left handed gives one a bit of an advantage, as you tend to hit to a right handed person's back hand.

I'm trying to do this as a poll - got no clue if it will work. I would like to everyone to tell me which is their dominant eye, and if it corresponds to their "handedness". Here is how you do the test: Find a vertical line to sight to - a door jam works well. Extend either hand in front of you with the index finger extended. With both eyes open, align your index finger with the vertical line. Close your left eye and open your right eye - did your finger stay in line with the vertical line? Close your right eye and open your left eye - did your finger stay in line with the vertical line. In one instance, your finger will appear to "jump" in one direction or the other. The vertical line will appear to remain stationery behind your dominant eye. In most cases, people's dominant eye corresponds to their "handedness". Here are the questions for the poll. Are left handed with a dominant left eye? Are you left handed with a dominant right eye? Are you right handed with a dominant right eye? Are you right handed with a dominant left eye? Are you ambidextrous with a dominant right eye? Are you ambidextrous with a dominant left eye? In most cases, a person's dominant eye will be on the same side as their hand preference. There are many reasons for not attempting to change a person's "handedness", one of the biggest being that you cannot change eye dominance. In skills that require a combination of handedness and sight - ie shooting a gun or a bow and arrow, or even batting a baseball, if the dominant eye is not the same as the dominant hand, there will be an error in sighting.