Musicman

This is a strange question but my brother is very different than I am and is a totally different consciousness. He is dead now, the result of a very difficult life. Everything he was once comes down to a different sperm impregnating a different egg from our same parents.

I am lucky that he wasn't him because he was an addict and struggled with things I never had problems with. Why am I me? What if a different sperm had been first to enpregnate my mom's egg, would I be me but with just different characteristics or would I not be me at all...sort of like how I am not my brother at all?

I have a legal question. In California, if a landlord denies you access to your unit for 3 weeks to perform construction, can a tenant request reimbursement of some of the rent? I work and live from home and can't easily work elsewhere so am impacted financially by their construction kicking me out of my unit. What are my legal rights to get reimbursed?

What would happen if I told her I think I am in love with her? Will it cause her more stress and depression? What to do?

Please respect the sensitivity of my question and situation. My brother died two weeks ago and my family would like to access his iPad and iPhone. Has anyone ever had luck getting such detailed information from a medium like the four digit passcode of a phone? I called Apple and they tried to help but said these devices only allow ten attempts before becoming permanently disabled and I fear losing this link to him.

I will need to do some conducting for high school orchestra and have always suffered from stage fright and had a few past nightmares with musicians who objected to me. Needless to say, I stopped conducting but now need to resume with kids. Any tips on how to keep a steady beat if you aren't that experienced?

I live in a large city and frequently encounter homeless people and this one person always seems to be like a deranged lunatic who s picking a fight with everybody or anyone. Is this a mental illness or drugs? What s the best way to handle someone like this? He almost attacked a friend of mine and I wasn t sure if the proper response was to antagonize him further, ignore him which also seems to irritate him, punch him, etc. I had no idea how to handle this situation.

There is a language barrier so I am not even clear what they are asking of me and have never been asked for this before. Can someone please explain what they are asking for and what are my obligations? They are not a US citizen and cannot work here but I can't hire them either.

I know the Greeks felt there was an inability for any mortal or immortal to change prescribed fate. Most of these stories are epics or classic tragedies like the Aeneid for example. Any short stories or famous examples that are not so grand of the idea that fate deals its hand no matter how well you try to resist it. I like the concept and want more. Thank you.

I'm excited by the recent gravitational waves discovery announced this week but don't understand it. What is it that we learned or is it a confirmation of what we already thought? What are the implications of this discovery?

I have a question for atheists...please bear with me because this is asked in all sincerity and I'm very much curious about this.

I caught a squirrel in a cage. Poor thing was absolutely terrified. After it calmed down, I looked into its eye as it focused on me. It chirped in panic and I let opened the door of the trap. It left in a hurry to the tries probably grateful to live another day.

My strange and sincere question - I let the animal go because I felt sympathy for it and felt how desperate it was to live and rejoin its family. I sympathized thinking if I were this animal how desperate I would be to want to live and not understand why I was trapped. So this made me wonder, do I, as a non religious person have a soul that happens to inhabit this body of mine and out of the trillions of living things - how did it come that I am me and not this captive animal? Was it just as likely that I could have been this caged animal desperately needing someone else/something else to sympathize with he plight I've been placed into and have sympathy on my stress, so I could be free and live the life I was born in to? As I type this, I do realize it's a strange question - but how would someone who does not believe in a "soul" interpret my life as compared to a random life of another creature? I really want to understand this.

I lie somewhere between agnostic and theist - I'm a searcher. Please honor the sincerity of this question.

I am very confused about the Higgs Boson that's been in the news lately. I don't know if there are even answers for my series of questions but I thought I'd ask.

Why does the LHC generate energy? I thought it consumed tremendous energy to execute the experiments but here, the article says: “It requires a super-powerful particle smasher such as the Large Hadron Collider to produce energies high enough to knock a Higgs boson into existence under controlled conditions.”

Since everything we can touch has mass – I would assume the higgs field is very common, yet to detect it, they had to do multiple quadrillion collisions. Why is it so extremely rare yet evidence of its existence is all over the universe? This doesn’t make sense to me.

Does the higgs field still interact with particles now or was this only at the beginning of the universe for 1 billion, trillionth of a second? If it still affects particles today why aren’t particles more massive now than in the past? Basically, shouldn’t they still be collecting higgs boson mass?

Why are some particles (photons) immune to the mass generating effect of the higgs boson and therefore remain massless?

Why did they need to re-create the conditions immediately after the Big Bang to find the Higgs Boson if it still exists today? The connection to the big bang isn’t explained.

I understand that the knowledge of "dark matter" is from the gravitational effect it produces on light from behind it. Basically those galaxies are distorted into a lens like image resulting in the belief that there is a significant amount of gravity in front of the image. My question is why would we assume this gravitational affect is the result of some unknown gravity rather than a super massive black hole or some other type of very strong gravitational force that exists within our current understanding of physics?

I own a property and my tenant appears to have caused damage to another unit. The plummer discovered they put a lot of paper towells in the toilet that then sprung a leak). Who is liable to the other unit's damage?

How is it that gravity is considered the weak elemental force but yet nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole, not even light?

I need to purchase something in Europe. Last time I did this, my US bank charged lots of hidden fees in addition to a markup on the exchange rate so I don't want to go that route again. Are there any suggestions on how to best purchase something in Euros from US dollars?

Since the most direct connection of Mahler was the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern) and they seem to not have much in common with Mahler after their initial foray into composition before they pursued atonality, what would you argue is the lasting influence of Mahler’s compositional approach?

I am not married, and never experienced a divorce in my family - but I am very curious, what is it like as a young person as they are starting to form themselves and be aware of their own unique person such as a 10 or 11 year old for someone who has experience in that?

In this very rare and amazing recording from 1889, we hear Brahms himself make a short introduction to the newly invented phonograph: "Haus von Doctor Felinger, I am Doctor Brahms, Johannes Brahms." and then proceeds to play his "Hungarian Dance No.1".

What comes to your mind when you hear this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXL3I7GPCY&NR=1

I love Holst's Planets. I have performed the bass trombone part in performance as well and the more I listen to it, the more I love it. But of all the recordings of it I have heard (or own), none seem perfect. I have just realized it is imposible to have a single recording that gets all the movements just right. I am curious what would make the perfect recording of the Planets? Perhaps one shouldn't look for a single recording of the entire work but rather a collection of pieces from various recordings.

My question is - for each movement - what is the very finest recording/performance and what makes it so special?