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Is hdsquaver actually used frequently as shorthand for hemidemisemiquaver? I've never seen it, but that doesn't prove it doesn't happen. If it does, though, it's likely to be in older writing, particularly older British writing (or texts translated from European languages), which is the only place you find quavers and their progeny to begin with. Modernly, the system of using numeric fractions both orally and in print has become all but universal. Paul Hindemith, the...

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Is there any research being done about using cannabis as a biomass fuel? Interesting idea. One pictures a steep drop in violent crime but big spikes in junk food consumption downwind of the generating plants.

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In order to make passenger airships safe and more practical again, what would it take to invent a gas lighter than helium, but non-explosive? The answer from Anonymous effectively treats the problems with "invent a gas," but the real issue here is that the gas isn't the problem. Helium works just fine. (Come to that, hydrogen worked just fine if you were careful. The Hindenburg seized the public imagination to an unfortunate degree, obscuring the historical fact that lighter-than-air was much safer than the early days...

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How possible is it to "beam up" a person like they do on Star Trek? Not at all, and extremely unlikely ever to become so. Even with the wildest assumptions about inventions to come, the math is daunting -- and the inventions would have to be really off the wall before there's even anything to talk about. Scientific American did an article on the problems a few years ago -- sorry I don't have the cite, but it should be available.

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How much longer will it take before humans actually create transporter technology? If you mean a la Star Trek, actually move an existent thing by some sort of wave or particle transmission like radio or television, nobody knows. The odds are that it will never happen because of inherent physics limitations. However, it is possible to, in effect, fax a real object, that is, cause a duplicate three-dimensional object to be recreated at a distant site as the result of a pure...

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What is the hardest classical piece for an orchestra to play? If you mean what specific piece, there's really no answer -- no one work that's dreaded by everyone. Experienced professional musicians are just too good. But there's a general answer: the one that's furthest from what they're used to. Usually that will mean something highly modern, perhaps atonal, perhaps stochastic, presented to an orchestra whose accustomed...

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Are there any adhesive materials that can be used as a homing device? If "homing" means retracting or recovering, I can't think of any. But if a light in the window is a homing device at night, then so would any glow-in-the-dark or highly reflective adhesive be. There probably are some.

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What would happen if Answerbag ripped and answers spilled out all over the floor? We'd be busily looking for questions in a world ruled by Alex Trebek.

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Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup? Waiter, threre's a typo in my soup!

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If masochists like to torture themselves, wouldn't they do it best by not torturing themselves? And if so, aren't we all masochists? Ancient joke: Masochist: "Beat me!" Sadist: "No."

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How come it's bad to drink before you eat? Or isn't it? If you mean booze, it depends. More than a little alcohol beforehand will make the actual quality of the food progressively irrelevant, though how your enjoyment is affected, if at all, is personal to you. The assumption underlying the traditional aperitif is that for most people, one or too small ones will improve the occasion both by alerting the stomach that something's going on and by...

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Why do women seem to be naturally more gifted at playing Minesweeper? This is one of those questions, one of many, where the correct response is to step back a pace and inquire whether the assumed premise is true. Is there a scrap of anything like real evidence that women are or are not better at playing Minesweeper? Note that I'm asking whether there's evidence, not whether it's a fact, because I empatically do NOT want to start one of those...

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If you ate pasta and antipasta at the same time, would you still be hungry? No, but you'd disppear.

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My cat eats mice. Does that mean that I should try one too? As a survey of the answers reveals, it's not clear whether you're asking whether you could safely eat mice, given that your cat does (would it make a reliable taster), whether you could live on mice if required (would they nourish you as they do the cat), or whether it would be sensible for you to follow your cat's lead as to cuisine (as you might with some chef or food critic)....

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Why do people hate lawyers so much? It's often a case of wanting to kill the messenger. Everyone has a personal, interior notion of what his or her legal rights are, what they're entitled to do or not do, what the law is about various things, etc. -- a more or less highly elaborated picture of their legal position vis-a-vis the rest of society. Unfortunately, this picture usually correspoinds to reality at surprisingly...

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Do extraterrestrials have any protection under the law? There's a 1996 (I think) book by Professor Christopher D. Stone (of USC) called "Should Trees Have Standing?" the standing in question being legal standing to assert rights. He considers the issues and, as I recall, ends up suggesting that natural objects, perhaps nature itself, should have the services of something like a "Next friend," the legal device by which an...

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How can I stop my dog from pulling on her leash when we walk? I agree about pincer collars -- they work because the dog doesn't like the feeling, but they're much less dangerous than the dog driving its windpipe against a continuous collar, especially something hard. By the way, the one time, years ago, when we actually took dogs to obedience class (two Siberian Huskies -- they'd vote pull over breathe every time) the watchword was...

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Where can I find an authentic-looking adult-sized space suit? Try some company that deals in old movie props. (I'm presuming that "authentic-looking" means you don't need a real one.)

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How long would it take radio signals to travel from Earth to Venus and back? Depends where they are in their respective orbits. Since Earth averages about 93 million miles from the Sun and Venus averages about 67 million miles, the distance between them could vary from (approximately) 26 to 160 million miles. Pick a distance, divide by the speed of light (roughly 186,000 miles per second), double the answer for the round trip and there you are.

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If traditional Chinese medicine is so effective, why is life expectancy in China lower than in countries like Germany, Switzerland or the US? First of all, the Chinese use what we think of as "Western" medicine extensively -- the idea that once you're in China it's all herbs and poultices is a silly stereotype. Second, if you made a list of factors that determine national life expectancy, local philosophy of medicine would be well down the list. At the top of the list, for nations as for individuals, would be...

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Is it true that using a cell phone while at a gas station can cause an explosion? I'm not usually sympathetic to using TV as a reference source, but Myth Busters did a pretty thorough job on this. In the course of debunking it, they created what should have been a highly flammable, enclosed atmosphere, seriously degraded the interior wiring of a cell phone to make it as dangerous as possible, analyzed when maximum signal strength occurred, etc., etc., and still got...

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I heard that when you're stopped, you should shift to neutral from drive to increase the life of the engine and keep it cool. Is this true? You don't say whether you're in an automatic or stick shift. If the latter, yes, don't sit there with the clutch pedal depressed, shift to neutral and let the pedal up. It won't make any difference to the engine, but it will save the throwout bearings in the clutch. In an automatic, if it's well tuned, it doesn't seem likely there'd be any significant cooling...

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What is laminar flow? Laminar flow is important stuff in more fields and more fluids than one would at first guess. Laminar flow of any fluid agrees roughly with our instinctive sense of "smooth," non-turbulent flow; flow free of swirls, eddies, back currents, or other disturbances. David Hedrick's image of boards on rollers is quite helpful for getting the idea of what physicists call a...

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What does the 'viscosity' of a fluid mean? Viscosity is indeed a fluid's tendency to resist flow, as noted correctly in the other answers posted, and the notion agrees with our everyday experience that some things flow easily, some not. But our experience isn't all there is, and viscosity is only half of what's important about the "thickness" of a fluid. The other half is its "Reynolds number." Our...

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Will storing batteries in the freezer extend their life? No. Some of the confusion may arise from news about supercooled circuits, etc. The general rule is that cold is the friend of circuits, which profit from improved cooling (and a big drop in resistance if it gets REALLY cold), but the enemy of batteries, which depend on chemical reactions that slow and eventually stop as it gets colder. That's why auto battery advertising emphasizes how...

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What exactly does a conductor do in an orchestra? The conductor's primary job is to conceive a certain vision of a musical work, based on knowledge, experience, and his or her own artistic sense, and then to lead, command, cajole, instruct, drive, beg, badger, enlighten, tease, frighten, inspire -- whatever it takes, depending on personal style and the circumstances -- an orchestra to make that vision a reality. And we're still in...

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Do public defenders work for the accused, or the court in which they work? They're usually paid by some public jurisdiction, but they "work for" the accused in the sense that he or she is the client, with all that implies as to ethical obligations, including best efforts, confidentiality, etc. They are in some sense "officers of the court," but then so are all attorneys. If you have the services of a P.D. you're entitlted to expect...

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How can I build a system that is ultra-quiet? Water cooled systems are markedly cooler than regular, in-case cooling fans. They use larger, slower turning fans. They are a little complicated to set up, but everything comes in a kit with instructions. You probably would want to be comfortable opening your case and switching some things around, but if you're considering changing fans you're probably there already. Be VERY careful...

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Are law enforcement officials ever obligated to inform a suspect of evidence they may have against them? "[E]ver obligated"? Yes, they certainly are. If you are headed to trial for some crime, you are entitled to know, in advance, everything the prosecution thinks it has on you, AND any evidence they have that tends to contradict your guilt ("exculpatory" evidence). The trouble is, you may not know that you have it coming, or how to go about getting it, or how strong it really...

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What is the difference between subject matter jurisdiction and personal matter jurisdiction? Personal jurisdiction means jurisdiction over the persons involved in the lawsuit, whether natural persons, corporations, or whatever, essentially the power to bring the parties before the court and bind them with its decisions. Subject matter jurisdiction is just what it sounds like -- power to deal with the subject matter of a law suit. Not all courts can handle all suits -- if you try...

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What is the difference between a creole and a dialect? A creole is a language formed from the conjunction of two others, as the creole from French and various African languages in Louisiana (where a fairly stable group of mixed-race people are known as Creoles). A dialect is a local variant of one language, commonly geographic, which may range from fairly extensive modifications of speaking patterns to a mere handful of different meanings or unique...

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I've heard that you need at least a 3 foot mirror to see your whole body. Is this true, and why? Quirkie is correct. To check it, look at your head in a mirror, close enough that you can reach the mirror. Carefully put a mark (or a strip of tape or something) at the reflections of some distinguishable points near the top and bottom of your head (maybe hairline and point of chin or something). Now measure the distance between the marks on the mirror. Now measure the same vertical distance...

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If a colorblind person wore color-tinted eyeglass lenses, would they notice? I once saw an exhibit at the Exploratorium (in San Francisco) in which an eyeglass-like frame held two pieces of glass of unlike colors. It was supposed to enable someone colorblind, or partially so, to see color differences, if not actual colors. I don't know how it was supposed to work. I tried it (I have slightly defective color vision, like some 30% of the male population) but...

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Why, when a wheel is spinning fast, does it sometimes appear to be turning slowly in the opposite direction? The effect requires "pulsing" of the light, or some of the light, coming from the moving object, agreed, but it doesn't need a strobe light or the like. It can be seen in ordinary daylight under a variety of circumstances. The spokes of wire wheels will reflect a flash of light at a particular moment, for example, and create the effect. Or something with spokes or the like moving...

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Why do mirrors reflect images backwards (left to right), but not up and down? They don't reverse left and right -- that's why they confuse us. We face an image of ourselves and automatically reverse left and right mentally, trying to compensate for what looks like the 180 degree in the direction the image is facing. But the mirror reflects back exactly what it sees -- your left hand is on the left hand of the mirror . . . left hand as you face it.

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Who "invented" the weekend and why? A day (or partial day) for religious observance is very old. From colonial times in this country it was commonly Sunday, presumably because of the European background of most of those who came here (or who came voluntarily, anyway). But the half day off on Saturday, and then all of Saturday off, were brought to you by the labor movement, which fought long and hard to standardize a five-day...

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How can the light from a galaxy possibly tell us whether it is approaching or receding? The speed of receipt is not supposed to be affected by the speed of the sender. If it was, the effect would be a change of frequency. But it is! The speed of receipt is indeed affected and there is indeed a change of frequency, resulting in a "red shift," which gives us information about the speed at which something is receding from us. It's frequently described as a Doppler effect, similar to what happens when a train whistle passes us. That's OK as far as it goes, but be careful with the analogy -- Doppler effects...

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My stomach hurts, but I don't have diarrhea, and I'm not hungry. What should I do? First of all, take nothing by mouth. No food, no over-the-counter medicines, no more water than required to moisten your mouth. If the pain persists (or has persisted) 24 hours, CALL YOUR DOCTOR. If you don't have a doctor, find one. Go to an emergency room if necessary. What you describe could be nothing, but could equally well be the onset of appendicitis (to take one obvious example) or...

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Is it true that a hospital won't try as hard to save someone who has signed up to be an organ donor? KCTrey's answer was quite a bit more balanced and thoughtful than the comments it drew would leave you to believe. Yeah, anybody referring to anything on TV when ostensibly talking about reality is offputting, but leave that and real questions remain. It's understandable that we would rather the questions weren't there, but merely howling down anyone who points to them won't...

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can you tell me some voice training techniques and how to devolp your on style The thing is, there's no effective way to describe voice technique without being there to demonstrate and listen to what the other person is doing. You can do it all right, and at great length in very many words, but there's absolutely no guarantee -- hell, there isn't even much likelihood -- that the other person will recreate at his or her end what you're trying to...

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How much can smoking change your singing voice? How much? Well, it can kill you -- that would be a fairly serious effect. Short of that, there are a lot of ways it can affect your voice, none of them good. Overall, the question is exactly the same as how much can smoking affect your life? And you probably know the answer to that. If you're hoping for someone to say, "Hey, it's not that bad if you don't do it too...

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what does each of the music dots (do re mi fa sol la si do) represent????? how do you play piano when you have a music sheet??? It's a little hard to make out what you're asking. If by "music dots" you mean the notes as printed, each stands for a different pitch -- a "note" -- and indicates when and how and how long it's to be played. If (since you mention the solfege syllables) you're inquiring about the sofege system, there are fairly full answers to questions specifically about...

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I have a horse fetish, but no horses. Where can I find a willing horse and a willing owner? A "willing" horse?!?

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Do guys really like girl-on-girl action? The marketing people apparently think so.

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How does one cure an addiction to sex? Merry Walker clearly meant to say "it's NOT about sex"; (emphasis added).

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Why is it that white women often seem to prefer black men, while black women often seem to prefer white men? There's a name for the logical fallacy here, but I can't recall it. In law, it's what's called "assuming a fact not in evidence." That is, "Why is it . . .?" has to be preceded by "Is it true that . . .?" Got any real evidence (I'm not talking about "This woman in a bar said so, and all her friends agreed")? It seems to me...

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Is there such a thing as a nymphomaniac? Don't confuse being a nymphomaniac with being addicted to sex. I haven't checked the DSM lately, but in standard psychiatric parlance a while back, nymphomania was characterized by an inability to climax. The quality of apparently boundless desire resulted from desperate repeated attemps. The condition is serious and not at all erotic, though it may ape the erotic for those to whom a...

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Generally speaking, is it true that men desire sex more than women? What use would it be to know?

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A term that has started showing up among the porno spams I receive is “MILF”. What does this term mean? Acronym, not anagram (the latter is rearrangement of the letters of a word to make a different word).

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I'm 18, and sometimes I feel an extremely deep desire to have sex with my 14 year old sister. What should I do? You don't say if you're her sister or brother, but it doesn't really matter, though it's potentially more physically dangerous in the latter case. The age spread is too great. And why, I hear you say, should that matter? Well, the time will come when a four-year spread between sexual partners probably wouldn't matter -- but between 14 and 18 it does, because there are...

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I discovered recently that my nieces have frequently been performing oral sex on each other. They are 14 and 11 years old. I was told this is normal 'exploration' behavior, and not really incest...is this truly normal? Hard to say what's normal; it's probably not as rare as we would imagine, given that a fair amount of same-sex physical experimentation is not unusual. It seems to be a way of exploring without the risks of involving an other-sex partner. Query whether there is any such thing as "incest," a strong taboo generally thought to be grounded in the dangers of too-close...

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What is "escape velocity"? Nothing ever escapes from gravity, any gravity. It's the literal truth that you're feeling the gravitational influence of Pluto right now, and it's also sensing you -- though not very much. So what really happens when something gets into orbit? You probably know that a bullet fired parallel to the earth starts falling as soon as it's out of the muzzle, and falls to earth...

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Who is Wodehouse? Pelham Grenville Wodehouse is one of those writers it's very hard to describe to someone who hasn't yet read him. That is, after you've said he wrote humorous novels about upper-class Englishmen between the wars, what do you do? Just pile on the adjectives about how funny he was? He was, but it's very hard to describe his humor from the outside -- there's very little to...

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How is electricity generated? All current generation involves moving a magnetic field across a wire, in real life a coil of wire, the more turns the better, and all the mechanical ways of doing it noted in the earlier answers are ways of creating and sustaining circular motion for the purpose. But there is no rule that the magnetic field has to be constant; a field that is expanding or contracting is also in motion, and if...

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What is the General Theory of Relativity? One of the best sources if you're really interested in this stuff is Einstein himself, not his papers, but his book on relativity (1916 I think), written for a general audience. He's a very clear, intelligible writer, and the math is down to the bare minimum (and what there is you can skip if necessary). Essentially, he sets forth the growth of the ideas, which anyone can follow....

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Could a person being converted into energy and reconverted back into matter survive the process? (barring the 2nd law of thermodynamics) Scientific American once ran a short piece on the possibilities of a teleporter (soory, I can't find the reference). The verdict was that regardless of the technology used, the math is seriously daunting. So many atoms, so little time.

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Which will keep you drier, running in the rain or walking? Yow! Check this out: http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2004/october/amathphysics

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If a hole was punctured in a pressurised space vessel, at what speed would the air escape the vessel? Depends on how highly pressurized the vessel was; the rate at which air was actually lost would also depend on the size of the hole, and would be greatest at the beginning and slow as pressure in the vessel decreased. A pinhole puncture might give a lot of time for a response -- might even require sensitive instrumentation to detect. (Didn't the Int'l Space Station have that problem?)...

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If a buoy is anchored to the ocean floor with a chain, and the water level rises above the buoy, will the force put on the chain increase with the depth of the buoy? After it's completely submerged, no. Although water pressure increases with depth, what we call buoyancy is the result of the difference in water pressure between the top of a submerged object and the bottom, and this difference remains the same. (Thus submarines have to deal with the fact that increasing pressure on the hull as it descends is not compensated by any natural increase in...

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Is there any difference between prayer and worship? To my non-theological ear, prayer sounds more specific: petitionary prayer, prayer of thanksgiving, etc. Worship sounds more general, like participation in ceremony or ritual affirming the attitude or state of mind of the worshipper at that moment, his or her relationship to the entity worshipped, etc. We can be worshipful without having anything specific on our minds. But there's...

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How do you pronounce the word, "ghoti?" Like the name of a marine animal that rhymes with "dish," of course. This very old gag for highlighting the oddities of modern English pronunication depends on the sound of "gh" in "rough," the sound of "o" in "women," and the sound of "ti" in "notion." What it actually highlights, of course, is the pitfalls of proceeding by...

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What can be done about someone who is spreading vicious rumors about me that are untrue? Here's a very brief description of the two main areas of law you should perhaps be looking at, but first there is an important . . . CAVEAT: Any legal advice acquired through a channel such as this should be regarded as For Amusement Only. If you're describing an actually existent problem, CONSULT AN ATTORNEY. That said, the following may give you a brief overview of some of the...

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How do you patent an invention? If you have to choose between do-it-yourself abdominal surgery and attempting to patent your own invention, take the surgery. Patent law is arguably the most esoteric, convoluted, intuition-defying law there is -- and to begin with, it exists in a world of specialized lingo all its own that uses a lot of words you think you know in ways you never dreamed of, and requires that they be used just...

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Are the names of lawsuits always italicized or is it only after they have occurred? Huh? Until they've occurred they don't exist. Or do you mean after they're filed but before . . . . ? Never mind. This really isn't a legal question, but a writing style question, albeit a somewhat specialized one. Any publisher with occasion to publish on legal subjects is entitled to decide its own style. There are, however, official style and printing practices...

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What constitutes "substantial evidence"? There are a bunch of citations for this phrase; a search for "substantial evidence" (with the quote marks) will probably bring more than you want. Most of the explanations are of the "magic language" variety -- what the law does when real definition is impossible. Credible, relevant, tending in logic to lead to a certain conclusion, etc. etc. etc., but what it really adds up...

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Do rights holders get royalties each time a video is rented, or just when a video rental store purchases a copy? If the store purchased a copy, the rights of the copyright holder in that copy ended, except of course the right to prevent further copying. The question is whether Blockbuster, e.g., buys outright, or rents copies as an agent for the studio (somewhat analogous to a movie house). I believe (but don't know for certain) that it's the former. Anybody out there in the business? On the...

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What does it mean to sing in your "head voice"? Will everybody please stop calling head voice "falsetto"! Head voice may be anywhere from the top fifth or sixth of one's range to the top octave or more, depending on who you are; there's nothing false about it (that is, it is not the singing equivalent of the spoken falsetto a comedian might use to do a stereotypical society lady or the like). To take an easily grasped...

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Will a sundial work if it is located on the equator? Sure, it will work anywhere if properly installed and aligned. You can even get small, portable ones -- pocketsize, with a peg or unfolding piece or something for the gnomon (the thing that casts a shadow). If you know where north is it will tell the time, or if you know the time it will indicate north (as will your watch, come to that). And sun compasses, similar idea, used to be used by early...

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Why do we have Daylight Saving Time? First of all, let's get clear that daylight saving time doesn't increase or decrease the length of a day or the amount of sunlight, and neither will anything else human beings do. What it does is shifts our schedule against the daylight, having exactly the same effect as if we all agreed simultaneously to set our alarms for an hour earlier in the morning and go to bed an hour earlier...

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In Toronto more afternoon than morning daylight is gained as winter progresses and the reverse is true in the summer. Why wouldn't there be an equal amount of morning and afternoon daylight gained/lost in both seasons? I'm glad somebody else is wondering about this! I happened to notice it in a tide book last year as we were nearing the winter solstice and it worried me -- I was afraid the sun had gotten out of adjustment. Unfortunately it didn't worry me enough for me to research it, but here's a theory: Although we unconsciously think of the earth's motion along its orbital path as...

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On what dates of the month - 1st, 2nd, 31st etc. - are most people born? Good question, and it can only be answered by counting. We can calculate the distribution if births are randomly distributed -- but are they? This is one of those questions where there's a strong temptation to assume randomness so as to move the problem from being a messy human question to being a (more or less) straightforward math question. Personally, I don't think randomness is...

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Is listening to music while working more focusing or distracting? It largely depends on what music means to you generally. Some of us will never be able to not pay at least a modicum of attention to any music within hearing -- and will be annoyed by it if it doesn't repay that attention.

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Are public schools allowed to teach creationism? Allowed by whom? Are you under the impression that there's some overarching national authority that decides what public schools teach? There isn't. Public education is a state matter, and each state decides curricula, selects textbooks, sets criteria for teachers and tries to figure out how to improve schools. Below the statehouse there are local (county, city) school boards with...

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In aviation, what does "cruise" mean, and is it possible for a Boeing 747 to cruise at just 1000 ft? To "cruise" means in aviation about what it means to other forms of transportation, to establish an en route speed that is a reasonable compromise of economy, wear and tear on an engine, and the desire to get where you're going. For a car (and I suppose for a locomotive) that largely means choice of speed. For an airplane it does too, but altitude also enters in and is...

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What are the three pedals on a piano used for? If you find pianos interesting generally, take a look at Arthur Loesser's "Men, Women and Pianos, a Social History," which describes the history of mechanisms from the earliest to Steinway, etc., but is really about what pianos have meant to people and how they've functioned as social and commercial events (e.g., every wonder why so many continue to be made, although...

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Who determined that those are the standard frequencies of notes? Couldn't someone make up notes with different values that, as long as they are proper multiples, would sound as musical as the "normal" notes? This is a very interesting, extremely non-simple question. EEBaum's answer to the question about exact frequencies of notes could very well have gone here. There's also a very readable little book that traces the history of musical tones and their arrangement into scales, from Pythagoras and Plato through various Enlightenment figures and of course Bach and beyond. (In Bach's...

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Is the term "went missing" proper English? It's accepted British vernacular, and congenial to Americans on the lookout for useful idioms. (Compare the occurrence in American and British English of the Australian to "go walkabout." )

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When discussing multiple occurrences, such as accidents, attacks, or robberies, is it necessary to point out that they are "separate"? Don't know what you mean by necessary, but in some circumstances it might have some legal significance. Whether two accidents were linked in some way, one perhaps leading to the other, might matter to your insurer. Whether one robbery, or other crime, was connected in some fashion to another might matter to your defense attorney. So adding "separate" might make clear that similar...

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Why does oil create a rainbow film when mixed with water? [Sorry this is so long, but the way the question was expressed suggested that some background might be helpful. If it's not, if this starts too basic, skip down five paragraphs (to "Now, back to your driveway . . . ")]. First of all, oil doesn't mix with water, it lies on the top (the old adage about oil and water not mixing is correct), and that's the crucial fact,...

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Do the wrestlers in professional wrestling get hurt? Yeah, there was one of those mini-documentaries on TV once in which the guy went and hung around at rehearsals, talked to the performers and so on. The message he came back with was that in the old days, when there was some attempt made to pretend it was all for real (the Gorgeous George era), not that many guys got hurt because they knew what they were doing and kept cool. But as the business...

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Will men and women ever be able to compete as equals in a sports? Or are mens' and womens' physiques so different that this will never be possible? I believe the US National aerobatic championships are non-gender specific, and Patty Wagstaff is a perennial winner in the unlimited category, which is extremely demanding, both mentally and physically. Internationally, the FAI World Grand Prix of aerobatics is definitely non-gender classified. But there are also some international team competitions in which countries submit men and women...

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What are the 4 families of musical instruments? [Sorry this is so long -- the topic is interesting.] Arguably there are only three, classified by how one makes the noise: scraping, blowing, hitting. We get four by subdividing blowing, the wind instruments, into woodwinds and brasses, on aesthetic and historical grounds rather than physics. Scraping and blowing both yield not just pitched notes but continuous tones -- the tone can be...

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What is 6/8 in the key signature mean? Not what you'd think. Mathematically, it should mean that there are six beats to a bar and an eighth note gets one beat, but that's not true. 6/8 time, unless it's extremely slow, is always felt and conducted as two beats per bar, each consisting of a three-note group -- like a triplet (although a triplet is really something else). So a bar of 6/8 is not ...

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In music, why do they have cut-time when they can just write the music in common time? It has to do with the difference between rhythm and pulsation, between the count and the beat. Cut time looks at first glance like 4/4, but it's really 2/2, felt and conducted in two beats per measure, not four, because of the tempo and the assignment of single pulsations to half notes. Listen to a Sousa march and try to count it in four -- just doesn't work (and of course you would...

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If you have no natural musical talent, but you want to learn play an instrument, which instrument would be a good one to start learning on? If you have any chance of access to a piano I'd start there, as being the easiest on which to learn about music generally (what's loosely called "theory") at the same time as learning to play. If you were to sit down and try to design a teaching device that would make scales, keys, etc. easy to see and experiment with, a piano would pretty much be it. If no piano is...

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Where does the piccolo play aside from in an orchestra? They play anywhere there is a full woodwind section, most notably in concert or marching bands. Particularly the latter, since piccolo notes are high enough to carry even when outdoors and surrounded by brass instruments. Once upon a time piccolos constituted marching music by themselves, as fife and drum corps. [Remember the famous American revolutionary era painting of three patriots marching...

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What is the key of Db? How many keys are there? Basically there are fourteen major keys -- seven sharp keys (ranging from one sharp, G major, through seven sharps, C# major) and seven flat keys (ditto, from F to Cb). Each key defines a scale that has the same underlying form, but starts on a different note -- essentially the key signature tells you how many black keys on the piano are used in that scale. Each key signature also defines a...

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How is religion helpful to society? "The religions of the ancient world were all regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as equally useful." (Alas, can't remember where I read that. Gibbon? Sounds like him.)

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Will non-strenuous exercise (ten push ups or so) help build muscle or burn fat, or is intensity the key? Relatively non-strenuous exercise is far the best at the beginning of an exercise regime -- less dangerous and much more likely to be continued. Any exercise will help some, but of course the benefits are proportional to the effort -- the key is not intensity but repetition and perseverance, with the level of effort increasing gradually as your body gets used to more and more exertion. It...

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I bought a pile of prints (copies of Dutch painters like Van Gogh) can I frame them and resell them without breaking any copyright laws? If you couldn't, how could any retail market in prints exist? [Post-Scoundral:] Sigh. It seemed that a glance around at all the book stores, video stores and libraries would make the answer plain. That's what I get for going against my nature and trying to be brief. OK, there is in copyright law a thing known as the "first sale doctrine." It holds, essentially, that...

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I purchased a CD recorded by the Clevelend Symphony of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This music is clearly in the public domain with respect to the composition. Can I legally play this CD in my restaurant without paying royalties though? Be careful! It's 3:30 a.m. and I don't have citations to hand, but would bet heavily that --use of music as background in a commercial setting is a commercial use, even if there is no direct advertising or charge made for listening; --while the Ninth may be in the public domain, a particular recording of it is probably the property of the artist(s); I'm sure it would be...

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Can a contract be made by passive non-denial? For example, "by not saying 'no,' you agree to these terms"? As between private parties not already in a contractual relationship, generally no; contracts require a meeting of minds and can't be created unilaterally by the type of language you describe. However, there are a lot of exceptions in business relationships coming under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), and exceptions might be possible between private parties in some ongoing relationship,...

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When doing my boyfriend's contracts, I sign his name and then "By:" and my initials. He's okay with this, but is it legal? Generally speaking you're OK. There's nothing inherently illegal about signing the name of another if it's with permission and there's no illegal intent being effected (and the specific practice you describe is commonplace in business settings).

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What are some inexpensive ways to soundproof a room? Odd-size blocks of foam, some not small, are frequently available in places (like futon stores) that use and cut a lot of foam. If possible, glue in preference to nailing -- the nail, which is solid, transmits vibration into the wall, which is what you're trying to avoid. Incidentally, if you're an instrumentalist, there are shaped foam tubes that will hold most wind instruments...

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Why do people put blinders on horses? And the site of most frequent use: race tracks, because some horses don't react well to the sight of horses beside or just behind them. Incidentally, it's supposedly true that if they're blindfolded, horses can be managed in situations that would otherwise panic them, like stable fires, a one-time standby of westen movies. Anyone know from their own experience if that's true?

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Are there any words in the English language that end in the letter V? And "shiv" for a stabbing blade, particularly one converted from something else, American and I thought British, but it's unknown to the OED.

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What are some words that have multiple, opposite meanings? I've read repeatedly that "flammable" was created in relatively modern times to avoid confusion with "inflammable," which looks deceptive because of the negating "in-". And indeed inflammable is older, 1605 according to the OED. And yet flammable has quotations from 1813 and 1867, but only those two. There was never a time when anyone associated with...

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Can the word "abdicate" be used in reference to privileges, as well as responsibilities? There's no distinction. One abdicates (from the Latin abdicare, to renounce) a position, commonly a throne, or powers or rights, and everything connected with it is left behind, both responsibilities and privileges (which is so spelled). And it's always non-standard, unexpected -- we only seem to use it of positions to which one was born or which were inherited, not ones that you were...

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Does 'an' precede a word beginning with 'h'? Or is it 'a'? And that is I believe the rule: "a" before an aspirated "h," "an" before silent "h" because it will be followed by a vowel. Which means the treatment of "herb" depends on how you say it, but "history" will always take "a," except within the sound of Bow bells.

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How can I increase my vocabulary within a week? The fun way is to read P.G. Wodehouse.

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What is the proper way to hyphenate a word that needs to be wrapped onto the next line? By the way, there are small-format books that list words solely with their hyphenation, no definitions or anything else. A book called "20,000 Words" was a staple of proofrooms and editorial offices for many decades, back when newspapers cared about such things. I haven't seen one in a bookstore for a while, but there are others similar.

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Which is correct, "as if it was" or "as if it were"? But note that in English you ALWAYS have to look at meaning: If you don't know what the weather was, but the travelers haven't appeared, "If it was raining, they may have turned back" is correct. The subjunctive requires that the condition definitely not exist, so you don't want to walk into the wrong bar and say, "If gay marriage were a good idea . . ." or...

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What are the best ways to learn spoken English? By listening to English speakers, of course, but which ones? Spend a lot of time listening to network sportscasters and you'll end up sounding like an idiot who will let anything come out of his or her mouth if only it fills time. Listen to people reading Henry James and you'll have great English but your career as a standup comic is out the window. Listen to politicians and . . ....

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Is it acceptable to put 2 spaces after the period at the end of a sentence and before the beginning of the next? No. It's not a fatal error, but it's an error nevertheless. Standard English and best printing practice call for one ordinary word space between sentences (and I'm speaking as a retired printer, proofreader, and editor). The most interesting reason is one that most people don't think about: readability. Varying word spacing in text intended to be read continuously is one of...

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Does a period go inside or outside of quotation marks? The Standard English rule, still observed by careful writers and editors, is that in American English commas and periods go inside the closing quotation mark; question marks, exclamation marks, and other marks stay outside. In British English everything goes inside or outside strictly according to the logic of the quoted matter and the enclosing sentence. The British rule is appealing (nothing...

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