Alex

Ok, so someone asked this on Facebook and it got me wondering what the answer would be.

If someone donates hair to Locks of Love (or other hair-to-wig for cancer patients charity) and the recipient commits a crime and leaves hair traces...will the donor's DNA be flagged?

Kind of a silly question, but it makes for an interesting discussion

Someone asked how long modern humans have been on the planet. my answer contained the words "h o m o sapiens" which is the scientific name for humans.

They're filtering "h o m o". I can understand that it's also an offensive word describing homosexuals...but it's also a scientific term (from Greek meaning "Same") for the genius that our species belongs to...along side H. erectus, H. floresiensis, H. habilis, H. heidelbergensis, H. naledi, and H. neanderthalensis.

Is there someone I can contact to point this out? Or is it going to be as pointless as attacking a mental facility with a rubber chicken to even try?

So I have a hard drive from an Acer laptop. The laptop is dead but the hard drive is fine.

However, I can t read it when it s connected to the external hard drive chassis. It comes up as lost or corrupted partitions.

If I install it into my Acer laptop...I can read the drive. Why is this and what (short of formatting the drive) can I do to get it to be read via the USB so I can recover data from it.

The old drive was using Windows 7.

I'm using Chrome as my browser and I keep running into this problem.

I go to a page thinking it's something interesting and it instead turns into a ranty video. Say for example I click on a link for solar power since I'm looking at a solar kit for my teardrop camper I'm building. Turns out that it's a video for someone ranting on how evil the power companies are and how I should go off the grid and it's narrated by a person who could bore for his country.

I go to close the page tab and I get a notification saying "do I really want to leave this page?" and usually has a blurb (sometimes very lengthy)and won't let me close the tab, won't let me click on another tab, won't let me close the browser until I either click on "leave this page" or hit the task manager and kill Chrome totally.

Normally I'd just hit "Leave Page", and have done but that annoying thing happens more and more frequently and I literally once had a dozen pages open and EVERYONE of them required me to "Leave Page" to close them down.

Is there a setting or an extension that can disable that crap and allow me to shut off a page tab when and where I want?

I used to have a Raleigh SC30. Actually I still have it but it was damaged when a fallen tree from Hurricane Sandy took out my shed last year.

Now that my knee has recovered I need to take up biking again. I really liked the SC30 but Raleigh no longer makes the SC30. Does anyone know what bike Raleigh makes that's similar to the SC30?

I've been noticing this for a while. When the car is off the interior lights flicker a bit. Especially if the car is shaking a little bit such as when people are getting in or getting out.

When the engine is running and the alternator is powering everything, nothing flickers (even if you shake the car).

I cleaned the battery terminals and posts with a wire brush until I got shiny metal on both the posts and the connectors and made sure that everything was tightened.

The battery itself is 4 years old but still cranks and starts the engine. It did recently get drained down pretty far (didn't even have enough juice to power the interior lights) but it did take a full night on my trickle charger and fired up again in the morning with no straining and has worked since.

Could the flickering lights be a sign of a weakening battery that should be replaced soon...or a sign of something else and if so, what?

2003 Hyundai Accent

I answered a question the other day and now I'm getting some nasty emails sent through the Y!A system from this person. I know how to block the person, I know how I can turn off the feature to send me email but I don't want to do either. I'd rather be able to have people send me a private email for clarification or further help in the case of one and I just really want to report this jerk as he's harassing me (11 messages so far and the mildest of his insults are not allowable by the Community Guidelines to post here) and I really want to see the ban-hammer come down.

So is there a way to report to the Yahoo Staff a person who is being a harassing butt head?

I'm writing a blog entry about something and I'm putting in a bit where I'm describing my children doing something that I once did when I was their age.

I'm putting in a joke to my mother (who reads my blog) telling her to stop laughing (because one of my children is doing exactly what I used to do to annoy the heck out of her) and that I'm aware of the...[blank]...of the situation.

I know irony is not the correct word as irony is the defined as incongruity of an expected outcome and the actual one. For example it would be ironic to be in a park bend over to pick up the traditional good luck charm of a four-leafed clover only to stand up and have the misfortune of a mis-aimed frisbee breaking your nose.

So if irony is not the correct word...what would be a better and more correct choice?

Many times you hear about how much neutron star matter would weigh by volume. Comparisons like "a sphere no larger that Brooklyn would weigh 500,000 times the size of the Earth", "one teaspoon would weigh as much as 900 Pyramids of Giza", and so forth and so on.

Now since a neutron star is stellar matter compressed under it's own gravitational pull into a quantum degenerative state where the neutrons are jammed together against their own nature and not wanting to be that close together...

The question is "What would happen to that Quantum Degenerative matter if it were no longer part of the gravitational pull of the rest of the neutron star? Would it remain compressed into Neutron Star Matter, or once free of the intense gravitational forces would it spring out and decompress?"

I know that zombies are not real (with the possible exception of the ones that are created by someone poisoning a victim with Tetrodotoxin putting them into a near lifeless coma and further using drugs and other mind altering agents to keep them in an somnambulistic state once they're dug up from their graves - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvius_Narcisse ).

But the topic has been coming up quite a bit lately and it got me wondering. Would you rather face...

Risen Dead zombies - The type where you are dealing with lifeless yet mysteriously re-animated corpses

-or-

Virus Zombies - Still alive yet placed into a mindless and adrenaline overdriven rage thanks to some sort of virus.

Which would you rather face and why?

I've been looking for a resin case replica of the Modified LeMat revolver that Jayne Cobb uses from the Firefly Television Series. I keep finding tons of sites where people showcase the finished works of the Wilco Resin Kits but can not find the website that they order them from.

Anyone have an idea where I can to to find them?

Failing that, another source where I can order a replica?

After a rash of car battery questions tonight it got me wondering. I know that the average life span of a lead-acid battery is 2-4 years depending on the quality of the battery (at Advance Auto Parts we used to say that after three years, replace at the first sign of trouble).

But I have no idea the average life of the AGM batteries. Are they longer than Lead Acid?

I want to get a copy of Horrible Histories from Amazon.com UK and I want to be able to watch it here in the US. I have software that can play any DVD Region out there (AnyDVD) but I'm concerned about the fact that it's PAL Formatted and not NTSC.

Is there any software that can convert this, or what is suggested to be able to play the PAL formatted disk?

Recently I've seen something new in the answers. People are taking the answers of others and are cutting and pasting it (either in whole or in part) as their answer.

Is there something in the Community Guidelines that forbids this or does it fit under the heading of "Cheating" in the guidelines since it seems to be a way of cheating to get the quick 2 points for answering the question.

After watching the History Chanel series "The Universe", it got me thinking. In stellar formation, the largest stars start fusing Hydrogen into Helium, and then fusing the Helium and so forth and so on as the fuel is spent.

Now when it gets to Iron, it is doomed. Iron takes more energy to fuse than is released by the fusing process. So when you get an iron core formed in a star, it goes supernova.

So if the cycle of life in a star ends at iron, how and where do the rest of elements get formed? What are the process that form them?

I've never been sure of the answer. Is the event horizon different for different things with different speeds? For example, the event horizon for an object with 5 G's of acceleration is closer in than an object with only 2 G's of acceleration.

Or is the event horizon a fixed point (depending on the mass of the Black Hole) that is the true point of no return from which even light cannot escape?

None of the science documentaries ever says for certain.

This is not a disparagement for either the US or the UK and is just a honest point of curiosity.

Lieutenant is spelled the same in both US English and UK English. Yet in the US it is pronounced "lew-ten-ant" and in the UK it is "left-ten-ant".

Does anyone know the reasons why?

Now, it is known that combustion needs to take place in the presence of Oxygen. So this is why some shows like Firefly ("Our Mrs. Reynolds" Episode) stated that some guns have to be fitted with a vacuum case that allows a propellant-based slugthrower to be fired in hard vacuum, or it will not fire.

But, the reaction of the propellant going all the way back to basic black powder supplies its own Oxygen. In the case of Black Powder it's from Potassium Nitrate (KNO3).

So, which is accurate? Can it fire in a vacuum or can't it?

You've all seen them here in Y!A over and over again. People who post a question that asks "Who is against animal cruelty" and usually thumbs down anyone who says the slightest thing against their little rant. Someone who wants animal abusers to be punished with life in prison for kicking a puppy for instance, who then hears how someone doesn't like animal cruelty but still eats meat.

You know the posts...we've all seen them.

Well I'm actually putting it on the line. I want people to put their money where their mouths are. Who out there is against animal cruelty and actually does more than sitting at the computer at O-dark-thirty typing about how meat is murder, fur is murder and how someone who leaves a dog outside in the rain (regardless of whether or not the dog has shelter) needs to be in jail becoming someones best friend in that "special" way.

For example, I go to the animal shelter and I offer my time and lend the shelter some free assistance. Does anyone else out there do something similar?