chauncy

I know that living things in general react to their environment. This might be a silly question but I will ask it just in case it isn't.

I live in a windy area with many large trees, and trees occasionally come down, causing damage to houses and other property. Would the wind cause the trees to develop greater resistance to being blown down, e.g. by growing stronger or deeper roots? I think the trees are eucalyptus regnans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans

I would be interested to know the answer either for that species specifically or for trees in general. Thanks.

The oldest ever driver I can find is Fred Hale Snr. of the US who drove until he was 108. The oldest person I can find who is still driving is Giovanni Rozzo of the UK who was still driving in January 2016 aged 103. Does anyone reading this know of anyone older?

I hope I am wrong but it seems to me that we will unfortunately never eliminate performance-enhancing drugs from sport because there would be people working for both sides. For example, officials in the testing organisations might secretly be in contact with those making the drugs or even doing it themselves. What do people think?

Here in Australia, the police can stop any motorist at any time and require that person to be tested for alcohol or drugs. They can also use a device that reads the number plates (licence plates) of passing cars and alerts them immediately if the owner has unpaid fines or outstanding warrants, and the vehicle is then intercepted.

Don't they have to have "probable cause" to do all this? And what exactly is their "probable cause"? Or if they don't need it, why not?

I am asking specifically about the situation here in Australia.

The media have been telling us that bad weather would affect the turnout in this vote. But I haven't heard anything about its effect on the outcome. People in rural areas would be more affected by bad weather than city dwellers and therefore less likely to vote. I'm guessing that rural people are also more likely to have voted LEAVE than urban people. Am I right?

Are exit polls held in Britain? (Where people coming out of polling places are asked how they voted.)

You can learn to drive a truck in 2 months. Is driving a train that much harder? In case it makes a difference to the answer, I am in Melbourne, Australia.

It has been reported that Patty Duke has died. She played the "identical cousins" in The Patty Duke Show on TV many years ago.

So my question is: Are identical cousins possible? It seems to me that the only way this could happen is if 2 male identical twins married 2 female identical twins. Has this ever happened? For their offspring to be "identical cousins" they would have to have formed from the fusion of identical sperm cells from their fathers and identical ova from their mothers. I think this would be theoretically possible but very unlikely to happen in practice.

I have two cricket questions:

(1) There is a "West Indies" cricket team but the West Indies is not a country. Which countries can team members be from? How does this work?

(2) Sorry, this might be a silly question. I noticed a ball hit out of the ground recently was caught by a spectator on the full. I take it this makes no difference to the score? The ball is simply out, right?

Another answerer has 3 times copied my answer to a mathematics question. One of their answers was even awarded "best answer" by the asker! Presumably the asker didn't notice that it had been copied.

I have reported this answerer 3 times now to Yahoo Answers for breaching their Community Guidelines (cheating) but as far as I can tell, nothing has been done.

Are reports to Yahoo Answers read by an actual person? Are they acted on?

I have some tapering screws but I am not sure what thickness of bit to use to drill their holes. On the screw packet it says "For use with Phillips bit No. 2" but it doesn't say what thickness that is (what fraction of an inch or how many millimetres). My bits are not Phillips ones. Does anyone out there know? Obviously I can guess but a definitive answer would be good. Thank you very much.

Can anyone suggest a way of hanging a Christmas star from a high tree branch? I estimate it is about 10 metres (30 feet) above the ground. It is the lowest branch in the tree, so there is no way I could climb up. I could pull the star up if I got a rope around the branch. I thought of the following ways of doing that:

(1) Hire a cherry picker. (I have already made inquiries. It's very expensive.)

(2) Helium balloons might work but it would be tricky.

(3) A drone could pull the rope up, and I bought one and have tried it out, but I don't think I can control it precisely enough.

(4) A very long pole might do it.

Can anyone suggest some other way?

Note: This is not a question about taxis.

Taxicab(k, j, n) is defined as the smallest positive integer which can be expressed as the sum of j kth powers of positive integers in n different ways. For example, Taxicab(3, 2, 2) = 1,729 = 1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3.

Apparently Taxicab numbers are known for k = 2, 3 or 4. I m wondering whether anyone reading this knows whether any Taxicab numbers are known where k = 5. For example, a^5 + b^5 = c^5 + d^5 where a, b, c and d are positive integers.

Could someone please explain the following paradox? I have studied some physics at university level, so feel free to use physics in your answer.

How many characters are allowed here?

I was already aware that the "centre" of a triangle can be defined in a number of ways, e.g. the incentre (the centre of the inscribed circle), circumcentre (the centre of the circle that passes through the vertices) and the centroid (the "centre of mass" or balance point). But what about the point from which the sum of the distances to the vertices is minimised? I'm not even sure whether there is always a unique point which has this property.

I am trying to remember the address of a website I visited a few years ago. It is the website of a professor in Ireland who makes many extraordinary claims about the connectedness of the human race. For example, he says things like "Everyone in Britain is descended from Alfred the Great" or "Everyone in Europe is descended from Hammurabi." (I have made these up; I don't remember the exact claims he made.) He backs up his claims with mathematical analysis.

Has anyone here used a podiatrist? I saw one last week for a toenail fungus. He sold me all this stuff I have to use (for $300) and booked 4 laser sessions @ $300 each. I can't help thinking this is overkill and that he is just a slick salesman. What do people think?

(I will try to add a photo.)

I am a member of a bushwalking group in which there has recently been some discussion about getting lifts to bushwalking venues and whether people who get a lift should give the driver some money. So the question arises, can someone out there tell me an approximate formula for the fuel consumption of a car as a function of its unladen fuel consumption and the amount of additional weight? I'm guessing that the consumption is approximately proportional to the total weight, i.e. if an extra passenger increases the total weight by 1/20 then the fuel consumption is also increased by 1/20.