Steve H

Lately my Intel iMac I bought a few years back has gotten so slow that I can barely do anything with it. I bought an external drive to back up my files, and it took a whole week to copy about 80 Gb of files. A tech guru says it should only have taken hours, not days.

Could someone steer me to good places where I can learn about what may be wrong and how to fix it? Are there good Mac groups here on Yahoo or elsewhere that I can join and get help?

I was working on an answer to a question yesterday and I had a need for an inverse function to y = x*sin(x) between x=0 and the point where it is maximum a little past x=2. I can't figure out a way to do it. Is there one? I can't even find the exact x value where the maximum occurs.

Any ideas will be appreciated.

Our quartet would like to investigate the seven string quartets by Bohuslav Martinu. Has anyone played any of them? Can you suggest the best source for a score and parts? Comments on which of the quartets are most interesting will be appreciated, too.

I've been watching the intense barrage of "Will the LHC end the world?" questions and it started me wondering -- what is the best way to address folks who hear this and start to panic?

I blame the media for fueling this issue. They love to go with an outrageous story that will get attention no matter how absurdly improbable it really is. Still, when they get people worried about things I understand completely why these folks want to know more.

How can we make any progress?

For the past few years almost all the onions I've planted in my garden get taken out by some creature(s) I've never seen.

I put in onion sets one week and in a few days I find some missing and others yanked out and scattered around haphazardly.

What can possibly be doing this?

I need sheet music for the national anthem arranged for string quartet. Does anybody know of a decent version I can get quickly on line?

Our orchestra needs something better than the junky ancient 120V tube lights we've been using since the beginning of time.

I'm wondering who out there has experience (good and bad) with battery powered LED stand lights so we could make a more intelligent purchase.

Last night we did a show with some dual Mighty Bright clip-on lights which seemed to work OK. What else is out there?

Our orchestra needs something better than the junky ancient 120V tube lights we've been using since the beginning of time.

I'm wondering who out there has experience (good and bad) with battery powered LED stand lights so we could make a more intelligent purchase.

Last night we did a show with some dual Mighty Bright clip-on lights which seemed to work OK. What else is out there?

I'm trying to help a high school biology student with his biology (even though my background is in physics).

We both read material today in his book on glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and electron transport chains. And we both found it to be an avalanche of jargon and nearly impossible to decipher. There's just too much jammed into a few pages in the text.

Are there other sources that we could read that would go through the material in more manageable chunks? What are some better books or web resources we could try?

I'm trying to help a high school student with biology and math. I'm doing OK with the math because my background is in physics.

Unfortunately my background in biology is basically nonexistent (though I do know a bit about wild mushrooms). Reading the class textbook is not very enjoyable for either of us. I get the feel that the authors started with fuller explanations of the topics and then edited them down by at least 75% so that a complex issue is only spoken of in a short paragraph or two.

Neither of us gets much of anything out of it. I'm looking for some additional resources and ideas for a better approach for the two of us. Please help.

Next week I am helping a high school student with math, but his mother also wants me to try to assist with his biology. I told them the only thing I know about biology is wild mushrooms but they still imagine I can help.

I don't think I can be very helpful but I'm still willing to try to learn a few general ideas to get me off the ground at least. Can anyone suggest some online resources for me?

A colleague was recently fired for 'gross misconduct' when all he did was post on his personal blog the contents of a document containing tentative plans for the organization for the coming year.

This does not seem like 'gross misconduct' to me, but lacking an accepted definition of the term I don't know how to effectively argue the point. Can anyone help?

I was just reading Phil Plait's explanation of tidal locking and why the moon is receding from the earth, It's very good, but when he gets into leap seconds he says this--

"However, the Earth's rotation is decelerating at a rate of about 0.002 seconds per day per century. It's been about a century since the atomic clocks' standard time, so the Earth is slowing relative to an atomic clock by about 0.002 seconds per day, or about 0.7 seconds per year. Note that this does not mean the Earth is actually slowing its rotation by that amount; it means that a clock set by the rotating Earth loses time at that rate relative to an atomic clock."

I'm very confused by the same that "this does not mean the Earth is actually slowing its rotation by that amount," because surely it DOES mean that, right?

I've bumped into a few people over the years who are absolutely convinced that the maximum speed a rocket can achieve is equal to the speed of its exhaust gases.

Where do you suppose this misconception comes form?

Years ago I remember a media fuss over someone on the ground congratulating a woman astronaut on the shuttle for her sewing when she did some sort of makeshift repair on the manipulator arm using some plastic covers off a manual and string to tie them onto it.

There was a fuss about whether it was sexist or something. Does anybody else remember this? I'm trying to see if my memory is anywhere close to the truth...

I'm curious to know if there are any quotes or stories from Olivia Newton John about her grandfather, Max Born.

I was at a talk a few years ago by Born's colleague Emil Wolf where he told a few fun tales (like the folder of correspondence in Born's library labeled "Idiots") but I've never heard anything from her.

I'm trying to find some recipes for tasty drinks that I could create at home. I used to drink tons of pop, but I've tried to convert myself to tea lately. I drink lots of milk, too. (It runs in the family, I guess.)

There have to be other choices, right? I want more variety than I have now.

I was following a link given as an answer to one of those moon hoax questions and came upon this --

"Mr. Armstrong insisted that they had left out an "a". Sure, he had been awake for 24 hours before his epoch-marking pronouncement, battling lunar stage fright in front of the world's largest audience ever, and was mulling over the fact that while putting on his bulky space suit he had broken the circuit breaker for the switch to start the Eagle's engine for ascent."

I've never heard that before. Did he actually damage a switch in some way?

The quote came from

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/onesmall.asp

I'm trying to get some work as an online tutor, and the outfit I contacted says I need to run some sort of custom Windows software they use.

I have an Intel iMac. I am starting pretty much from total ignorance regarding Windows. One fellow I spoke with told me to use something called "Parallels." Is that a good thing? What else will I need to get as well as learn in order to get going? Where's a good place to begin my education?

I read in a news story that if this Mars-bound asteroid collides with the planet " it will do so near the location of its Opportunity rover, which has been exploring the Martian surface for three years."

I also read the chance it will hit the planet is 1/75. Here I see a contradiction -- if you can't predict it will even hit the planet, how can one say it will hit near the rover?

I'm guessing that all that can be predicted is that if an impact occurs it will be somewhere on the same side of the planet that Opportunity is on. I'd hardly call that "near."

Any other ideas?