Argon

Is it okay to slow down a manual-transmission car solely by down-shifting, instead of using the break?

I know the energy to slow the car has to be taken up somewhere... does this damage the transmission, or possibly the engine, or is it a perfectly safe and legitimate way to drive?

By "a basis", I mean a logical foundation that a typical person could understand. For now, I wish to set aside wether or not such a foundation would be beneficial to the individual and the society.

By "athiesm", I mean a belief that the world we observe around us is the entirety of existance, and that all things can be explained with sufficient observation and intellect. Specifically, this entails the belief that theere is no exterior force driving any part of the world we commonly observe.

So, if you have any interesting, original, and most importantly, rational ideas, to resolve this dilema, please share them.

If I recall correctly, I was told as a student that large stars eventually burn up all thier hydrogen fuel, forge a few of the hevier elements, and then burst into a super-nova, generating a cloud of other hevier elements.

Supposedly, this cloud becomes a nebula, and new stars and planetary systems form from it.

So here's my problem: where is all the hydrogen coming from the create these new stars? Supposedly the old star ran out of the stuff.

This implies that either the new stars are drastically, collosally smaller, or that there is some fission process going on, of which I was not previously aware.

So what's going on here?

My monitor came with a crappy microphone built in, and it's causing some really annoying feedback when I try to use a regular headset to talk over ventrilo or any other voice program. I can't seem to find any way to disable it through the control panel. Does anyone have any good advice for how to shut this down?

I just found a gerbil hiding behind the railing outside my apartment. I gave it some food (peanuts) and water and I can't really find anywhere better to keep him than in this big cleaning bucket. I went around and knocked on some doors and put up a simple sign outside my door, saying that I'd found a lost gerbil, but no one knows who it belongs to.

I asked the front office about it and apparently, three other grebils have been found around the apartment complex, so it may be that someone just dropped off a bunch of them and forgot about them. I have no interest in keeping him as a pet (I don't really like gerbils and he bit me twice already) and I don't really know what to do with him now.

Will pet stores take in animals like this? Is there any sort of online gerbil adoption site?

My girlfriend and I are looking after a hand-fed lovebird for a few weeks. The bird seems normal and healthy, but he keeps trying to hide or burrow under pillows, towels, clothes, etc.

Is this normal? Why is he doing this? I keep worrying that we're gona lose track of him and end up sitting on him accidentally or something.

Okay, here's the situation: a large truck carrying chickens is passing through a weighing station. As the truck passes over the meter, the chickens all suddenly jump up and start flying around. Assuming that they have plenty of room to move about and that the truck is sealed tight, would the meter read more or less than the truck's real weight, or would it read the correct value?

I heard this one a while ago but never came up with a satisfactory answer.

I've read that the W and Z "messenger" particles that govern the strong nuclear force are many, many times heavier than a single proton. If this is so, why don't we observe this weight? Where is that much mass coming from, and where is it going? Why does a messenger particle have mass at all? Most of all I can't understand how we're not seeing this mass show up in standard observations. I mean really... what's up with that?

If you absolutley had no recourse to recruit new sheep into the flock except through the mystical power of hiaku, what would you say?

Take a garden sprinkler, one which forces water through a tube bent into an "S" shape, so that the water is sprayed out in opposite directions at the ends of the "S", causing the sprinkler to rotate.

Then, imagine submerging it in water and running the hose the other way, so that water is sucked in; which way would the sprinkler rotate? The same direction, or the opposite?