Dr. Brian

When the Galileo spacecraft was finally crashed into Jupiter, was it able to take any pictures and send them back on the way down?

Is there a company in the UK that does test prep specifically for the situational judgement tests required for the GMC/Foundation Programme?

Seriously, if you search for most things with a model number, exact name or dimensions, you are almost guaranteed to never find whatever it is you're looking for. I've gone to searching from Google using the site:lowes.com option because it is the only way of finding anything. That, plus the constant issues they have (pages not loading, bad links...) makes me think that they probably have the worst corporate website of almost any large company that I've ever seen. So that got me wondering, is there any corporate website less functional than the lowes.com website?

We are adding a light fixture to an existing run and were amazed to find out that this circuit was originally a 3-way, with the other end now buried and unreachable in some wall.So I would like to change the 3-way to a 2-way, but don't know how. The switch is quite old and has a red, white and black wire along with the copper attached to the box. So what I would like to know is there a way to use a 2-way switch in place of that 3-way, since the other side will never get flipped? Which of those wires do I use or cap or what?

Thank you.

My Grandmother recently turned 96 and received an unsurprising clean bill of health from her doctor. Even though she is well into her 90's, none of us doubt that she will live another five years at least. She currently has life fully paid for insurance policy, but it's so old that it won't even cover the cost of a funeral. Is it to late for her to get insurance and is there any way to get a plan that lowers the payments the longer she lives?

Are there any chain stores or nursery stores that carry Jackson Perkins roses?

I know that there are tons of sketches on Saturday Night Live with Darrell Hammond playing Sean Connery mocking Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell), but was Connery ever on the real Celebrity Jeopardy?

It's almost like their alternator isn't keeping up or their battery is dying, expect that I see it all of the time.. ..so I'm not really sure what is causing it. Anyone know for sure what causes this?

I can't seem to find anything on it anywhere.

If God is willing to stop evil, but not able, then he isn’t all powerful. If God is able to stop evil, but not willing, he is cruel. If he is both able and willing, there wouldn’t be evil in the world. And if he is not able or willing, he wouldn’t be a God.

So why is this thing that lets there be evil, or is cruel to us, or who isn’t all powerful, called a God?

Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who flamboyantly endorsed Idaho's successful anti-gay constitutional amendment which banned gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in his state, was recently arrested and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after he tries to solicit sex in a men’s bathroom at a Minnesota airport. Now humorous as this is, these stories are way too common. Whether it is evangelical preacher Ted Haggard’s militant stance on homosexuality before being found having had homosexual sex while using crystal meth with a male prostitute or Glenn Murphy Jr., who was the president of the Young Republican National Federation until it was found out that he lowered the pants of a young employee while he was sleeping and tried to give him oral sex, really begs the question, “Are all antigay Republicans gay?”.

What do you think of when someone tells you that they are “spiritual”? Do you think that they are Christian? Do you then see them as Earthy, Hippy, New Agey? Do you assume that they’ve spent long stretches of time trying to figure out who they are in relation to the universe around them?

What is Spirituality? Is it different to everyone? Is it a term that has been stretched so thin that no one can really define it? So would you say that you are Spiritual? Why? Why not?

I have a student who constantly says things like: “with God's help we will get through this class”.

I usually let this stuff pass because it is fairly benign, but I’m wondering how other students would feel one of their classmates said something like:

“I am just glad that I’m not dependent on a supernatural being helping me to pass this class.”

So is just one of these statements offensive? Which one? Are they both inappropriate? Is a public declaration of ones religion alright, while a comment about its abstraction not? Do they both not openly mock the others belief?

I don't see any screws or places where I could pry it apart. Sooo how do I get into this?

A 2005 Pew Research Center poll concluded that 70% of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32% of Protestants and 31% of Catholics. Politically, 60% of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11% accept evolution, compared with 29% of Democrats who are creationists and 44% who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63% of liberals but only 37% of conservatives believe that humans and apes have common ancestry. What these figures are supposed to confirm is that there is a huge percentage of the population of this country that believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old; that dinosaurs and people once lived together; that the Great Flood created the Grand Canyon; and that all of those recorded records from Asia predating the supposed beginning of time somehow don't count.

I can't believe any of those polls. So is there anyone out who really believes that the earth is only 6000 years?!?!

I think we can all now admit that the War in Iraq was a bad idea and that the War in Afghanistan may be a lost cause.

Now before you start in with all of the “Hindsight is 20/20”, and “Monday morning quarterbacking”…, let me tell you we study the past so that we can deal with the future. So as the Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and historian David McCullough said, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are”. Or more simply put by Thucydides, “History is Philosophy teaching by examples”.

So what examples should be taken from the post 9-11 tragedies that lead towards our failed campaigns? What should have been done differently or not at all? And what can we do to instill this knowledge into future generations?

A new report released today shows that “two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them” and I’m just overly curious how the religious community will process and respond to alien life. Now I’m not saying that this find is in any way intelligent, but what happens when we do actually find another self-realized being?

I know that the Christian Church has no official position on this matter of intelligent alien life, but wouldn’t they immediately have to have one? How could they continue to assert divine importance of humanity with existence of different life elsewhere? Seeing how most religious text claimed man’s unique status and that we were created in any perfect image, could it still claim to be valid? Or would the find of intelligent life elsewhere make most present organized religions so emaciated and archaic as to make them impossible to believe in?

A couple of weeks ago the Christian Coalition of American forced the retirement of their president-elect because he was spreading a different message then their current beliefs. "I wanted to expand the issues from only moral ones -- such as opposing abortion and redefining marriage -- to include compassion issues such as poverty, justice, and creation care” said outgoing president-elect Rev. Joel C. Hunter (1).

This of course did not make much news due to the fact that the story of outgoing National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing more than 45,000 churches with 30 million members, founder Ted Haggard has rightfully stolen the spotlight. For those of you who have lived in a cave over the last month, Haggard was caught buying methamphetamine from a gay prostitute (2) and was forced to resign.

I went there years ago and have forgotten what it looks like.

Thank you.

Some of the people in my family are incredibly hard to find presents for, that is why I give from donations Heifer International. Everyone who I've given to over the years ends up giving them as presents later on. So I was curious as to how many other people have tried this as well.