Thanks for that and thanks for telnet saving both the URL and the IP posts! We did mention the Jerusalem snow on Geo 14... Thanks, Maggie!

Slightly off topic: We've also got a super TV program just now called 'meet the ancestors'. Using forensic science they link an archeological dig with a recreation from the bones dug up, and reconstruct what the person looked like, their life etc. It's been facsinating. I've always been curious about how people lived, and its great to see the forensic skills put to use in this way. They rebuild the face from the skull, by building up the layers of muscles etc on a skull model. Its a mxture of artistry and science. Recently they did a ten year old girl, and to do that they had to take skin depth measurements from a large number of young girls as they only had adult measurements on computer file. This child (from a millenium ago) had had repeated infections as shown by forensics on the bones, and they determined the sex by DNA testing. She was found in an abondoned grave site a short distnace away from a church which is known to have been there 1000 years ago and which had 'relics'.. It was thought that the child would h ve been taken to the relics (in the surviving crypt) of the church for healing. Pilgrims went through a small wall slit in the church down into the crypt, round the relics, and the out by another slit. An archeological artist drew the scene.

That sounds fascinating (and as DO have an Archaeology topic in here!). I hope Discovery or one of those channels picks it up for us to see. Thanks, Maggie!

Geo factoids HOW MANY ISLANDS ARE THERE IN HONG KONG? 235 islands. WHERE WAS THE FIRST TUNNEL IN RECORDED HISTORY? In Babylon. Built by the Assyrians in about 2100 B.C., the secret 3,000-foot-long passageway linked the royal palace on one side of the Euphrates River with the Temple of Jupiter on the other side. WHAT IS THE DIAMETER OF THE EARTH AT THE EQUATOR? 7,926 miles. (The circumference is 24, 902 miles.) WHAT RIVER IS THE ONLY RIVER TO FLOW NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR? The Congo River, which crosses the equator twice.

Greetings all Well, time to move from the rf field to the geo-magnetic field. But first, any interest in ley lines (no, thats not you use for pickups in single's bars...) There are quite a few in Europe and the UK and there has even been research on the earth mounds in Wisconsin. Interesting connective stuff. BTW, there is quite a lot of power around Stonehenge. Same kind of neat energy around Enchanted Rock in Tx. mike aka cosmo

Aloha Mike! Geo 27 is perfect for you. That started out with Ley Lines discussions. Maps and photos abound. Roam around and make yourself comfortable!

Ok, off to 27! (I see you are posting to classic radio just a minute ago...) Mike

yup! I was following you so you did not get lost. Note that Spring had a problem which caused (or sumthin did) my rc file to delete and took all my wallpaper and horizontal bars and buttons with it. Have reinstated the bars and font colors but...no buttons or wallpaper...*sigh* See ya on 27!

The problem was the /tmp file.

When things are ok it should look like this: $ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 99135 14975 79203 16% / /dev/sd0h 16873439 9891364 6138403 62% /usr mfs:19 15855 434 14628 3% /tmp thor:/extra/tools 2991146 1362014 1479574 48% /tools

But when the /tmp file says Capacity 0% no one can write to the file system. It's a little kink in the armor of an otherwise bulletproof operating system.

Ah so! I suspected as much, but wondered if it would not just leave the file untouched rather than deleting all of it. Well, I had "a learning experience" and managed to get most of it back on by checking how other rc files were configured. Cfadm pulled me through again! I am gratefulness personified this morning. Now, I have a slightly slow-loading but incredibly beautiful wallpaper to install, if I dare...

HOW FAST DOES LIGHTNING TRAVEL? It travels 90,000 miles a second - almost half the speed of light. (186,000 miles a second). EXACTLY HOW LONG IS ONE YEAR? 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.

Excellent statistics, Marcia - can you remind me how fast sound is?

For rule of thumb reckoning, it travels about 5 miles / second (so you can see how close the lightning is hitting by counting by 5's at one second intervals). More precise measurement will have to wait till I get into the other room to get the appropraite book. (Did you just get married? )

Married? No, not unless 6 years ago is "just". Did you infer I got married from my question about the speed of sound?

No, but you came up missing for a while and it was mentioned on Drool that Mark was getting married... But, I should have remembered that it would have been bigamy - you told me you were married in our email about cricket. You are the only Mark around here; I assumed, and you know what that means...! http://arts.ucsc.edu/EMS/Music/tech_background/TE-01/soundSpeed.html Speed of Sound You can measure the speed of sound the same way you measure the speed of a runner, with a stopwatch on a closed track. Find a place where you can hear a good echo, and stand a known distance from whatever the sound is reflecting off of. Fire a starter's pistol and start the stopwatch. Stop the watch when you hear the echo. Divide 2 times the distance (it's a round trip) by the time to get the speed. At 21 degrees C (70�F), you should get 344 meters per second, or 1129 ft per second. At freezing, the numbers are 331 m/s or 1087 ft/s. The proper formula for the change in speed due to temperature is: Where T is degrees Celsius. The works out to about a 0.1% change per degree Fahrenheit. The Speed of sound in water is 1480 m/s or 4856 ft/s. More than 3000 miles per hour. There is a project under way to take the earth's temperature by measuring the speed of sound between the USA and Australia.

WHAT LAKE, ONCE PART OF A SEA, HAS THE ONLY FRESHWATER SHARKS IN THE WORLD? Lake Nicaragua, in Nicaragua. WHEN IT COMES TO WAVES IN THE OCEAN, WHAT IS A WAVELENGTH? The linear distance between the crests of two successive waves.

Here is an easy and excellent Speed of Sound Calculator for those using Metric http://www.measure.demon.co.uk/Acoustics_Software/speed.html

The above calculator has problems - try this one: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/souspe.html

http://www.discovery.com Earth Loses Weight Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery.com News If the latest measurement of the force of gravity, called the big G, is correct, it will end 200 years of confusion and mean Earth weighs 5.972 sextillion metric tons. That's a tad less than the 5.98 sextillion metric tons listed in some textbooks. A sextillion is a one followed by 21 zeros. The constant G tells how much gravitational force there is between two masses � such as the Earth and moon � that are separated by a known distance. It's a fundamental aspect of the universe that doesn't change, similar to the speed of light. Scientists were able to calculate Earth's mass based on G by applying Isaac Newton's famous equation F=ma. In the equation, "F" stands for the force of gravity (Big G); while "m" stands for mass (in this case, of the Earth); and "a" represents the local gravitational effects of Earth, which scientists already knew. By rearranging the equation, they were able to solve for "m" and thus calculate Earth's mass. University of Washington physicists Jens Gundlach and Stephen Merkowitz their results today at the American Physical Society meeting in Long Beach, California. To arrive at the new constant, the physicists refined an experiment first developed in the 18th century. They used an extremely delicate device called a torsion balance that records the effects of the gravity of four stainless steel balls on a gold-coated plate. The device is similar to one used 200 years ago to make the first big G measurement. But it is computer controlled and contains numerous mechanical refinements that make the more precise measurement possible. If the new value is accepted, it would reduce the uncertainty of G by a factor of 100. "The experimental situation was just hilarious," said Gundlach of physicists� inability to find and agree on G. "Our experiment was designed to clean that up." Because gravity is such a weak force, it is extremely difficult to measure without all sorts of errors creeping in. Physicists have been working hard to narrow down G, but different experiments have actually been coming up with numbers that are spreading farther apart. This has been especially embarrassing to physicists, since the other two most basic of all natural constants � speed of light and Planck�s Constant � are known with great accuracy. Planck�s Constant is a number that helps scientists determine the energy behind electromagnetic radiation. "It�s the least well known of all the fundamental constants," said University of California at Irvine physicist Riley Newman. Newman's team is working on a National Science Foundation grant to measure G. They have also built an instrument, but have a lot of work to do before they find G, he said. Gundlach said he will be watching Newman�s work closely in hopes that the G�s agree. "If they don�t agree," said Newman, "the confusion will go on."

WHAT FOUR STATES HAVE ACTIVE VOLCANOES? Alaska, California, Hawaii, and Washington.

And what are the names of the volcanoes, dear? Btw, the site looks wonderful. Congratulations!

Do you like my new marble wallpaper, too? (It is so good to see you here again - happy me!) I installed it with an artist in mind for the Aesthetics of Earth topic...*hope* Hawaii's active volcanoes: Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, and on Maui, Haleakala (with the faint possibility of Mauna Kea added) California's: Lassen and Shasta Washington: St Helens, and any of the other Cascade mountains in the state since they are in the most active part of the subduction of Juan de Fuca plate under the North American Plate (see plate tectonics topic for good maps on the subject) Alaska has too many for me to remember off the top of my head...(there is a map for those, too in Geo 2.)

Sparky Lifesavers If you chew a wintergreen-flavored Lifesavers candy in a dark room and watch in the mirror, you will see electrical sparks in your mouth. Why? The sugar in the candy is in crystal form. When you start shearing the crystal apart with your teeth, you end up with an excess of electrons on one side of the fissure. Just like a lightning arc, they jump across the gap to an area that has a positive charge, and in the process give off light. Interestingly, this works better with wintergreen than other flavors, because much of the light that is emitted is ultraviolet, outside of the visible spectrum. The methyl salicylate in the wintergreen oil is able to absorb ultraviolet light and re-emit it at a wavelength you can see. -- Michael Natkin

I love the wallpaper! I think it's very elegant, like everything in this site, and it's very appropriate too. I meant to mention it specifically. You read my mind. Kilauea I wonder why this one is my favorite! Didn't it erupt in 1983? Interesting fact about the lifesaver. I shall check the mirror the next time I eat one. I watched a show on PBS that was so interesting. It was a Nature special about body changers, and it showed how the salmon (the males ones, I think) slowly lose their shape to become really ugly-looking. This happens as their death approaches. It was amazing! Do we have a topic for animal?

You remembered! Kilauea did indeed begin the current eruptive cycle in 1983 and it is still going strong. Thanks for the kind comments on the wallpaper, too. The lifesaver thing or any wintergreen candy you can snap with your fingers my dad showed me in a dark closet. Never tried it by looking in my mouth with a mirror. My son is unaware of this phenomenon because of the high humidity here. Wintergreen tends to be mushy... Please check SpringArk conference of which Wolf and I are cohosts http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/SpringArk/all/new Thanks for asking!

ok, back to the lightening thing, when we see it, we're supposed to count by 5's, one 5 each second? so it's 5, 10, 15? (or, each second counted total multiplied by 5?) i've always used the seconds to judge the distance. interesting!

I count "one thousand and one...two...three" and multiply by 5. It's easier for me. The thousand part makes sure you are counting in seconds and not rushing too fast. Mississippi works, too.

IF YOU HEAR THUNDER 10 SECONDS AFTER YOU SEE LIGHTNING, HOW FAR AWAY WAS THE LIGHTNING? 2 miles away. Sound travels about a mile in 5 seconds. IN GEOLOGY, WHAT IS A CALVING? The breaking off or detachment of an iceberg from a glacier that has reached the sea, or the separation of a portion of a floating iceberg.

HOW MANY ICEBERGS ARE THERE IN THE WORLD? Approximately 320,000. HOW MANY AVERAGE-SIZE HOUSES CAN YOU MAKE FROM ONE GIANT SEQUOIA - THE BIGGEST LIVING THING ON EARTH TODAY? Fifty. The sequoia often extends 300 feet in height and 25 feet in diameter. Its seed weighs only 1/6000 ounce.

Umm I accept the Giant Sequioia is the widest tree - but is it the tallest - our giants here in Oz are very tall - I am not sure if the Gloucester tree in the South West of Western Australia wasn't taller. Also I believe there is a very tall tree and large to boot in N.Z. can anyone confirm. Can't remember for the moment the name of our largest tree - thus I mentioned the Gloucester tree. They are in an area called the Valley of the Giants.

Sequoia semprevirons is the larges thing ever to live on land. I will do citations for you in the next post. What kind of tree is the tallest Oz tree? The Sequoia is a Redwood (evergreen)

Check here for the hugest trees in the USA http://www.americanforests.org/whatnew/BTFacts.html Botanical record-breakers are at this amazing uRL http://daphne.palomar.edu/wayne/ww0601.htm The world's record for the tallest tree goes to another cone-bearing tree native to California, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). In fact, the tallest living redwood on record stands 367 feet, 62 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. The California redwoods are rivaled in size by the amazing flowering Australian tree (Eucalyptus regnans). The record for the tallest tree of all time has been debated by botanists for centuries. Some amazing claims for towering Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and E. regnans exceeding 400 feet have never been substantiated by a qualified surveyor. In 1872, a fallen E. regnans 18 feet in diameter and 435 feet tall was reported by William Ferguson, making it the tallest (or perhaps longest) dead tree. According to the monograph on Eucalyptus by Stan Kelly (Volume 1 of Eucalypts, 1977), trees of E. regnans well over 300 feet tall have been measured, but the tallest tree known to be standing at present is 322 feet.

Diatomaceous Earth Diatomaceous earth is a crumbly rock formed from the fossilized remains of microscopic one-celled plants that contain a lot of silica in their cell walls. It takes about 24,000,000 of these shells to make one cubic centimeter of rock. When the rock is powdered, it can be used as an environmentally friendly insecticide. The powder has a very rough texture at a microscopic level. The roughness can lacerate and dehydrate the shells of many insects, killing them over the course of a few hours. Diatomaceous earth has many other industrial uses: as an insulator, a filter, and an abrasive, for example. ...and my father, a chemist, made us our toothpowder using the stuff in purified form along with oil of peppermint and another chalky powder. I was my job to do the stirring so we all got equal amounts of peppermint, grit and chalk. It worked very well!

ON WHAT PLANET IS THE LARGEST KNOWN MOUNTAIN IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM? On Mars. Called Olympus Mons, it's a volcano more than three times the height of Mt. Everest. HOW MUCH SYRUP DOES THE AVERAGE SUGAR MAPLE TREE YIELD EACH SEASON? One to one and a quarter quarts. WHICH BIRD STRAYS AS FAR AS 2,500 MILES FROM ITS NEST TO FIND FOOD FOR ITS YOUNG? The albatross, which has the largest wingspan of any living bird - over 11 feet. HOW MANY MUSCLES DOES A CATERPILLAR HAVE? Four thousand - more than five times as many as a human.

Are the giant trees of Australia and New Zealand evergreens, as well? I find that there are many interesting facts about evergreen trees. The ginko tree, which looses it's leaves in the fall, is related to the conifers, it may even be classed with them. (Marcia probably knows.) About the ginko, it is one of the oldest species of trees in the world. A ginko tree was the only type of tree to survive the blast at Hiroshima. The Sequoia, an evergreen, is currently the largest tree. Lastly, the bristlecone pine tree of the American southwest is the longest lived tree in the world. All that, and they give us oxygen, too.

Apparently they are eucalyptus is a (getting out my book) member of the Myrtle family (which also includes Ohia - Hawaii's hallmark tree) with 70 genera and 2800 species. The Ginko (or Ginkgo) is a living fossil (Marcia cannot remember, so she is looking it up). It is a gymnosperm in a class all by itself. It is the lone survivor dating to the Jurassic some 150 million years ago.

Thank you for clearing up what the noble ginkgo tree is classed as. The ginkgo has many admirable traits, and is highly regarded in herbal lore, used in Chinese medicine, but...When the ginkgo nuts fall off the trees in the fall, they lay there and start smelling like sewage. The ginkgo isn't quite so noble then.

When my eldest sister was at Penn State her dorm had a huge ginkgo tree in the front lawn. (It has since been felled by lightning and antiquity) I recall the "fragrance" well. Unreal!

In the scheme of the book, the author arranged it so the most primitive were at the beginning. Out of amost 1000 pages, The gingko was on page 19 right after the cycads!

Pi Day is celebrated each March 14 at 1:59pm at the San Francisco's Exploratorium. (Reported in the Smithsonian Magazine)

WHAT CREATURE PRODUCES SPERM THAT ARE 2/3 INCH LONG - THE LONGEST IN THE WORLD? Some fruit flies of the genus Drosophilia. Their sperm, more than 300 times longer than human sperm, are six times longer than the fly itself - but hair thin and are balled up. HOW MANY TIMES PER SECOND DOES A MOSQUITO BEAT ITS WINGS? Up to 600. HOW MANY CONSTELLATIONS ARE THERE? 100,000. HOW MUCH HORSEPOWER DOES THE TYPICAL HORSE PROVIDE? About 24. Horsepower is the power needed to lift 33,000 pounds 1 foot in a minute. Scientists came up with the 24 horsepower figure based on a horse weighing about 1,320 pounds.

Going back to trees. I have wandered through the Valley of the giants Oz's tallest trees. They are indeed Eucalyptus, the panoply overhead is something to behold. Wonderful smelling and beautifully shaped trees. You can drive a car through. Immense and majestic - you can almost imagine them fully alive and talking. (shades of Narnia). One of the joys of my life and I get very angry when they are chopped down for chipwood for export to Japan.

Are eucalyptus trees evergreens?

...in a way...but not in the way we think of Evergreen. They are (getting out the book again) in the myrtle family and are NOT considered evergreen. However, there are many trees which keep some leaves on them all year round...including many of the Myrtle family.

What's the best plant for a privacy hedge?

Tried to post a couple of days ago. The tall trees in Australia are called Karri and Tingle. Magnificent trees but very different. Valley of the Giants in South Western Australia has both and is the most wonderful sight you can imagine. It is virtually unpopulated and seems to go on forever. Our population in this state of Australia is large than India and yet has under 2,000,000 people. We have just discovered a vast underground sea. which covers a quarter of a the state and is in some parts some 2,000meters deep. Bodes well for us in the future.

Is your underground sea fresh water? That truly would be a boon! Dry Thunderstorms In desert areas, it is possible to have a thunderstorm where the rain never reaches the ground. The air near the Earth's surface can be so hot that the raindrops simply evaporate on their way down. These storms can be especially dangerous, because the lightning can still strike the ground, causing fires without even the help of the rain to put them out before they grow out of control. This evaporating rain phenomenon is known as virga, and is one of the reasons that you might see precipitation on weather radar even when none seems to be falling.

The underground sea is brackish but treatable. It will make the desert bloom. We have thunderstorms and showers like the ones you have just quoted - you can see the rain coming down in the sky but it never reaches us - often happens in summer.

That happens in the deserts of Arizona and California with the dry showers which never hit the ground!

Since it has not elicited any comments, I guess not many are reading what I post in Paleo (topic 7). There has been some really interesting stuff lately - check it out! Also, I posted two pictures I took last evening of Hilo Bay at sunset and one was taken of me (unbeknownst to me) and that is also posted. Find it and take a look at the Mistress of Geo - if anyone is interested. I was asked if it was recent. yup! Last evening.

IN WHAT DIRECTION DOES THE JET-STREAM FLOW? From west to east. WHY ARE MERCURY AND VENUS KNOWN AS INFERIOR PLANETS? Their orbits are closer to the sun than Earth's orbit. Planets orbiting the sun beyond Earth are referred to as superior planets.

The most abundant metal in the Earth's crust is aluminium. The largest wave ever recorded was near the Japanese Island of Ishigaki in 1971 at 85 meters high. Fulgurite is formed when lightning strikes sand. At the nearest point, Russia and America are less than 4 km apart. The Channel between England and France grows about 300 millimeters each year. Mars has a volcano, Olympus Mons, which is 310-370 miles in diameter and 16 miles high. The Earth experiences about 50,000 earthquakes each year. The lowest temperature ever recorded was 129 degrees below 0 at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

Invader ants win by losing diversity The Argentine ants that are trouncing U.S. species derive much of their takeover power, oddly enough, from losing genetic diversity. References & Sources Dolphins bray when chasing down a fish The first high-resolution analysis of which dolphin is making which sound suggests that hunters blurt out a low-frequency, donkeylike sound that may startle prey into freezing for an instant or attract other dolphins. References & Sources Spider real estate wars: Wake up early Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early. References & Sources

Donn, please login and join us. You said you liked learning new things...*smile*

Until he does, he sent me this url which should be on everyone's bookmarks for such cases as those we pray don't happen: EYE ON THE WORLD http://web.beol.net/tabonga/violent.html It has links to every sort of disaster web page, every agency which might be of help or source of information, plus the weird and offbeat at the bottom. I'm gonna check the catastrophism pages, myself...

Actually, you're gonna need permission slips from me to be allowed into some of those catastrophism sites. Taken with a huge grain of salt and a firm grounding in astronomy and geology, it appears ludicrous until you remember those who died because of a comet... Please accept my caveat and if you get upset with what you read there, come here first before you try any Koolaid...

Tried to get in wouldn't let me. Said time out - whatever that means. But I have put it onto favourites to read some time.

That one takes a while to load. All the time out means is that it took longer for the URL to respond to the request to download than your browser allowed. If you poke around inside of the parameters under which your browser runs, you can change that. But, perhaps it was busy. It is very good and worth trying again!

Aha - you are using IE rather than Netscape. That might make a difference, too.

Got it up on my husbands new computer - amazing programme.

You will love having it online. Just watch it when all other things get boring. Love the little icons, too!

yep did all that but messed up his sound card with the sounds of the umiverse!! Wonderful though all the same.

Hope it is not irreversible.......they were amazing sounds!

Sun Dog A "sun dog" is a bright spot in the sky that is always at the same height above the horizon as the sun, but 22 degrees to its left or right. The effect is caused by refraction of the sun's rays by ice crystals in the atmosphere, resulting in a second image of the sun reaching your eyes. (Just as if you hold up a glass of water and look at an object in the room both directly and through the water, you will see two images of it.) Click here to find a nice photograph of this "mock sun" (or parhelion) phenomenon. http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/lb_images/historic/nws/wea00148.htm

Q: How many cubic meters of dirt are in a hole 6 meters long, 2 meters wide, and one meter deep? A: None... it's a hole!

Really Marcia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT CELESTIAL BODY GOT ITS NAME FROM A GREEK WORD MEANING "LONG-HAIRED"? Comet. The name comes from the Greek kom(t(s, an adjective formed from the verb koman, "to wear long hair." (There is also a constellation, Coma Bernices) WHY DOES THE BRONX ZOO GET BLOOD DAILY FROM A LOCAL SLAUGHTERHOUSE? To feed its vampire bats, part of its captive breeding collection of bats - the largest in the world. (Yuck!)

Flea Facts Summer time is coming fast and that means flea season. Now is the time to "know thy enemy" and prepare for battle. Here are some flea facts to prepare you for the skirmish. There are 2,400 varieties of fleas, including dog fleas (Ctenocephalides Canis). A flea can jump 150 times its own length. This is equivalent to an adult human leaping over the Statue of Liberty. A jumping flea accelerates 50 times faster than the space shuttle! Want to live without fleas? Consider moving to the mountains. Fleas do not live above 500 feet. Fleas thrive in a warm humid environment--about 65 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit and about 70% humidity.

I really need to know that *grin*

Fun Fact: The Earth has a midriff bulge. Due to rotation the Earth is slightly flattened on each of its poles. As a result the circumfrence of the Earth is approximately 26 miles more than the measurement longatudinally around the poles.

Yup! We are thus an Oblate Spheroid as astronomers like to call it. Maggie - it made me itch just posting that data on the fleas.

I hope the self-imposed small tigress (red tabby) is holding up well against flea infestation.

She got a pretty white collar to wear and she is still giving us a wide berth and staring daggers at us. But, I am tired of killing of her fleas on me! Maybe I should get a tastful one for my own...~

Perhaps one with pearls and alexandrites?

There you go! Make that Moonstones and alexandrites and you have a deal! Pearls are too fragile for every day flea collars but lovely for formal occasions. You laugh, but the hippie children - some old enough to get social security - buy the most fles soap and "uku combs" Sheesh! Their personal grooming and hygene leaves a great deal to be desired...

I need help from a Web/Frontpage wizard in fixing the geo links on our main page at http://www.spring.net (reason, lack of time!). My plea has been issued forth!

I hear you but not sure how to do it... Perhaps cfadm will see your plea in here. I;ll try to track down Ann if all else fails. Other than hiding at the bottom of the page in the wrong table (did you want it in the center?) it is lovely and the links work. I am all smiles to have it there, especially now that there are some people now on board who Really know what they are talking about!

This is important.....Please read! How To Build A Fire Pit The wilderness is no place to build a fire pit, but if you want to build one at home here's how. -First, dig a hole in the ground where you want the fire pit. Size the hole depending on the size of the fire pit you want. For most fire pits, a hole one foot deep and three feet in diameter will suffice. -Next, line the bottom and sides of the hole with flat rocks. The rock-lined pit provides an excellent surface for shoveling out ashes, will support the logs better, and helps the fire burn hotter. -Finally, place larger rocks in a ring around the top of the hole. One final note: Never use rocks from rivers and lakes. They have absorbed water and can explode when heated.

IN THE LATE 1920'S, WHO ARRANGED 200 GOLF BALLS IN NEAT ROWS IN THE HOLLOW OF A FALLEN TREE AT A PUBLIC GOLF COURSE IN WINNIPEG, CANADA? A gopher, in the mistaken belief that they were eggs and would make appetizing wintertime eating. WHY DID LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL OFFICIALS SPRAY-PAINT 108 PINK PLASTIC FLAMINGOS WHITE AND PLACE THEM IN GROUPS AROUND MARSHES IN THE EVERGLADES? To attract snowy egrets, white ibis and wood storks. The plastic flamingos were much cheaper than the white egret decoys. WHAT PERCENTAGE OF MEN ARE LEFT-HANDED? HOW ABOUT WOMEN? 10 percent of men; 8 percent of women. in parting... Wouldn't it be nice if the wattage of a car stereo could not exceed the IQ of the driver? --unknown

We have them in Hawaii and they are called Tarantula Hawks though the name is usually reserved for the much larger cousins in the Southwest of North America. They sting and incapacitate a "cane" (wolf) spider here and drag it somewhere safe to raise her baby. I have watched this industry many times and I am most impressed. She always rises in the air and does a circle for polarization location then off she goes to where her prey is then drags it all the way back to the hole she has dug. Absolutley amazing! Sphex Wasp The Sphex wasp has an egg laying ritual that has become a famous example of how absolutely rigid, instinctive behavior can appear quite intelligent. The female Sphex digs a burrow, stuns a caterpillar, drags it to the edge of her burrow, goes in a for a final check, drags the caterpillar in, then lays her eggs next to it. On the face of it, this looks like quite a well-thought out, intelligent sequence. But if you move the caterpillar a few inches away, when she comes back out from the inspection, she will drag it close again, and repeat the whole process You can move the caterpillar 40 times, and it will never occur to her to just drag it straight in and skip the re-inspection. This is a useful reminder that you can't always attribute human-style motivations to seemingly intelligent behavior.

This has nothing to do with Geo and everything to do with me. Play bagpipes and I will follow you anywhere : HOW MANY PIPES ARE THERE IN A TYPICAL SET OF SCOTTISH BAGPIPES? Five: the intake pipe, a valved tube connecting the bag to the player's mouth; the chanter, a pipe fitted with a double reed and pierced with eight sounding holes, used to play the melody; and three drones, pipes fitted with single reeds that provide the background.

HOW MANY POINTERS WERE THERE ON THE FIRST CLOCKS WITH HANDS - MADE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY? Only one - to tell the hour. Minute and second hands were added in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

WHAT IS VOG? A Hawaiian cousin of smog - it's a fog caused when sulfuric volcanic fumes mix with oxygen.

HOW DID MASSACHUSETTS SEA CAPTAIN JOSHUA SLOCUM - THE FIRST MAN TO SAIL SOLO AROUND THE WORLD - FIGHT OFF PIRATES ATTACKING HIS SLOOP? He turned away the barefoot pirates by spreading carpet tacks on the deck of his boat. Slocum completed his historic 46,000-mile, 38 month voyage in 1898. WHAT WAS USED TO ERASE LEAD PENCIL MARKS BEFORE RUBBER CAME INTO USE? Pieces of bread. WHAT WAS THE FIRST LIVING CREATURE EVER EJECTED FROM A SUPERSONIC AIRCRAFT? A bear, in 1962. It was parachuted from 35,000 feet to a safe landing on earth. WHAT REASON DID YALE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE STUDENT EDMUND D. LOONEY GIVE WHEN HE SOUGHT PERMISSION IN 1956 TO CHANGE HIS NAME? He claimed the name Looney would interfere with the practice of his chosen profession - psychiatry.

WHAT PIECE OF CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT IS NAMED AFTER AN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH HANGMAN? The derrick, which is named for Thomas Derrick - who carried out more than 3,000 executions during his career at Tyburn, near what is now the Marble Arch in London. IN 1964, A CAPSIZED FREIGHTER WAS REFLOATED IN KUWAIT BY FILLING ITS HULL WITH POLYSTYRENE BALLS. WHERE DID THIS IDEA ORIGINATE? In a 1949 Donald Duck comic, in which Donald and his nephews raised a yacht using ping pong balls. WHAT WAS THE SYMBOLISM BEHIND FLYING A FLAG AT HALF-MAST AS A SIGN OF MOURNING WHEN THE CUSTOM WAS FIRST INTRODUCED AT SEA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY? The top of the mast was left empty for the invisible flag of death.

Light pulses flout sacrosanct speed limit Week of June 10, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 24 P. Weiss Five years ago, a wave of discontent swept away the 55-mile-per-hour U.S. speed limit. Nowadays, some physicists are taking a hard look at the 670-million-miles-per-hour speed limit of light in a vacuum, or c. Albert Einstein posted this limit in his 1905 theory of special relativity. Although popular lore and some physics textbooks still contend that nothing races faster than c, experiments going back decades have repeatedly shown that light can beat that speed under certain conditions. A few scientists argue that those experiments hint that Einstein was wrong. Two new experiments reveal dramatic additional evidence of superluminal velocity but make no clear case for repealing Einstein's law, scientists say. In one study, conducted in Italy, scientists propagated superluminal microwaves through air by bouncing them off a mirror. In the other, led by a New Jersey researcher, a laser pulse approaching a gas-filled cell's entry window materialized at the cell's exit glass before even reaching the cell. Although superluminal phenomena might someday help speed up computers�an avenue being explored by Raymond Y. Chiao of the University of California, Berkeley�the main excitement around these experiments stems from basic physics implications. More.....http://www.sciencenews.org/20000610/fob7.asp

Science News Week of June 10, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 24 Tsunami! At Lake Tahoe? Surprised tourists could catch the ultimate wave By K. Brown Postcards from Lake Tahoe all flaunt a peaceful, brilliant-blue stretch of mountain water. But geologists have been snapping a very different picture of the lake lately. Far beneath Lake Tahoe's gentle surface, they say, several hidden earthquake faults snake across the lake's flat bottom. These faults put the lake at a bizarre risk for an inland body of water. If the researchers are right, Lake Tahoe tourists could one day feel the ground tremble and, just minutes later, face a tsunami. Roiling waves of water would crest to 10 meters at the shore and crisscross the lake for hours. Tsunamis typically emerge in oceans, usually after a quake drops or lifts part of the seafloor. Undersea landslides�alone or following a quake�can also trigger these giant waves. In 1998, for instance, a tsunami devastated Papua New Guinea, sweeping away more than 2,000 people living on the country's northern coast (SN: 8/1/98, p. 69). And in the past decade, tsunamis have lashed the coasts of Japan, Nicaragua, and Indonesia, as well. But Lake Tahoe? While it may seem improbable, Lake Tahoe holds just the right blend of ingredients to brew a tsunami. For one thing, it has plenty of water. As the world's 10th-largest lake, Lake Tahoe stretches 35 kilometers long, 19 km wide, and, in some spots, 500 m deep. What's more, the lake sits smack in the middle of earthquake country, nestled in a fault-riddled basin that straddles California and Nevada. Dozens of minor or moderate quakes erupt along faults in the region every week, and the Lake Tahoe area is no exception. All it would take, scientists say, is a strong quake directly beneath the lake to send the waters spewing, tsunami-style. To get a better grip on Lake Tahoe's tsunami potential, University of Nevada, Reno geologists have been modeling different quake scenarios. According to their calculations, if a magnitude 7 quake struck either of two major faults under the lake, the bottom could open like a trapdoor, with a chunk of it suddenly dropping as much as 4 m. Just behind it would fall a huge, sinking slosh of water�generating a giant wave that would reach the surface, gather strength, and come barreling to shore as a tsunami. And that's just the beginning. The scientists think the tsunami, in turn, would create so-called seiche waves, mountainous waves that lurch from shore to shore for hours on end. "Think of the lake like a pan full of water. When you knock one end way down, the water surges and then sloshes back and forth for some time," says Gene A. Ichinose, a geophysics graduate student at Nevada-Reno and lead author of the group's study, which appeared in the April 15 Geophysical Research Letters. As in a jostled pan of water, some waves would likely splash past their usual borders�right into the homes and hotels that dot the Lake Tahoe shoreline. As Ichinose puts it, "If you feel the earth shaking for 5 or 10 seconds, get to high ground." Inland tsunamis are extremely rare. Last year, geologist Jody More....http://www.sciencenews.org/20000610/bob1.asp

Parabolic Focus Have you ever wondered why satellite dishes have the shape they do? That shape is a part of a paraboloid, which is what results when you rotate a parabola around its axis. A parabola is the set of points that are equidistant from a fixed line (the directrix) and a central point (the focus). The interesting property of a paraboloid is that if a set of parallel waves (such as you get from a distant transmitter) comes into it, the waves will all be reflected to the focus. So a satellite dish is designed with a receiver at the focus point to collect the signal that comes into the area of the whole dish. This amplification makes it possible to accurately register a weak signal. This same highly directional amplification concept is used in the design of the parabolic microphones that you see in use during sporting events, ensuring that high quality audio can be gotten from the players on the field even in the midst of the immense volume of the crowd.

Holy Cow, That's A Big Horse! A pure-bred Irish draught horse owned by Joanna Shires of England may hit a record for size. The six-year-old horse is 19 hands high (six foot, four inches tall), although most horses of that breed are under 17.2 hands high. Shires says the good-tempered horse is still growing!

IN ASTRONOMY, WHAT IS A WHITE DWARF? The dense, burned-out remains of a star; a stellar corpse. THE HIGHEST SURFACE WIND SPEED EVER RECORDED WAS AT MOUNT WASHINGTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE, ON APRIL 24, 1934. WHAT WAS IT? It was 231 miles per hour. (Winds become hurricane force when they reach 74 miles per hour.) (I was up there in a dead calm. Very disappointing!)

231 miles an hour!!! Incredible.

In the winter that wind can freeze you literally in moments. You can see why I was so disappointed by the dead calm. They test jet engines up there.

- The female king crab incubates as many as 400,000 young for 11 months in a brood pouch under her abdomen. - Because of their extreme elasticity, the human lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than a child�s toy balloon. - From the 1820s to 1960s, the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania, was owned by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co., making it the only privately owned river in the United States. - The Roman historian Pliny was so impressed by garlic and its perceived powers, he listed no less than 61 medicinal uses for the pungent bulb. Among them was that of warding off vampires, restoring hair loss, and preventing warts. - The hottest day ever in Canada was July 5, 1937 when the mercury soared to 113 Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) in Midale and Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan. But that's downright chilly compared to the United States where the temperature hit 135 (56.7 Celsius) degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913 at Death Valley, California, and Al'azizyah, Libya, where thermometers reached 137 F (58 C) on September 13, 1922. - The Bactrian camel is the only mammal on Earth that can survive on salt water.

Why do people get goose bumps? Goose bumps are a carryover from the days when humans' bodies were covered with fur. They are caused by the contraction of tiny muscles at the base of each strand of your body hair, and when those muscles contract they cause the hair to puff up. This action served two purposes: 1. It created an insulating layer of air next to the skin that helped keep a body warm in cold weather. This is why you get goose bumps whenever you are cold. 2. It gave your furry ancestors (of course, my ancestors weren't furry) a larger and more menacing appearance in the face of danger; this is why you get goose bumps when you are scared or frightened.

Why are portholes (windows) on a ship round? The constant up and down motion of a ship places a lot of strain and stress on a ship's outer covering, or skin. If portholes were designed at angles, the stress would tend to concentrate at those points and perhaps crack the skin (probably not a good thing). With portholes being round, this stress is evenly distributed around the holes, making it less likely for these cracks to occur.

WHERE AND WHEN WAS THE GREATEST EARTHQUAKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY? It took place in Missouri on December 16, 1811, at about 2:00 p.m. It is estimated the quake would have measured 8.7 on the Richter scale, compared with only 8.3 for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. However, the Missouri area was sparsely populated in 1811, so the San Francisco quake took more lives and damages more property.