AstroKath

Earplugs are slightly less useful when it's the cranky four year old who keeps waking up because of the noise. Through closed windows and double glazing, no less. We now have a delightful day of sleep-deprived tantrums to look forward to, so thanks a ****ing bunch, ravers. I hope karma sends you all insomniac kids in your turn.

You think Sheffield got its postal votes out that quickly? Mine only arrived on Tuesday this week. Week to respond my arse!!

I'm going to second FertilityFriend, and Toni Weschler's book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. If there's nothing wrong with you, just have sex 3 times a week and you should get there eventually - but don't be surprised if it takes as long as a year. You only get about a one-in-four chance every cycle, even when the sex is timed perfectly. But if there IS something else going on, charting will not only help you maximise your chances during your most fertile times, but it can help pinpoint a number of medical problems.

It's a waste of time doing that calculation to 5dp anyway! If you've only measured r to an accuracy of 2sf, there's no need for the answer to be any more precise than that. Use pi=3.142 out of habit, and round up to an area out of 12500 units^2 - and that's being generous with the number of significant figures. Any student quoting ten sig figs to me in an answer would very quickly get the standard lecture on the difference between precision and accuracy. If you're in a position where you DO need to do scientific calculations regularly, chances are you may not need a calculator at all. Either it's something straightforward that you can do in your head, or it's a generic problem that you'll want to keep in terms of symbols anyway. [Okay, time for me to admit my personal bias - us astronomers always round everything up to the nearest order of magnitude anyway!]

I've got it - but I was lucky enough to get it when I was only a year old, and thanks to that it really doesn't bother me at all. Physical and mental stress always makes mine worse, and it's actually been getting better in some areas since I got married! [Of course, it's getting worse in other areas - my pregnant nipples are rapidly de-pigmenting, but at least they're not visible in public!!]

When it works as it's meant to, it does prevent ovulation - it's a progesterone only pill, after all, and acts just like anything with a high level of progesterone by fooling your body into thinking it's pregnant already. Just because it doesn't interfere with the post-ovulation and pre-implantation phases shouldn't rule it out of being classed as a 'contraceptive'. It's certainly closer to being one than an IUD is. Given mother nature's excessive wastage of fertilised eggs anyway (the vast majority fail to implant naturally), a pill which makes ovulation exceedingly unlikely in the first place really ought not to be a huge ethical problem in comparison. Especially when the hormonal alternatives for someone who needs to be on the minipill are very limited indeed.

Because that grandson will be venerating his paternal grandparents, and heir to them, not the couple in question - as far as this couple are concerned, without a son of their own, they're shafted in the afterlife. I don't agree with what they've done, but they do have a warped and messed-up religious reason for doing it, and no alternative options (short of waking up to the real world and the genuine value of daughters, which doesn't seem likely, sadly).

Because it's the 'fabric' of the universe that expands, and only the stuff inside it that has to keep to the speed-limit of c.

Hayle is another half hour further than Perranporth. I'll second (or third) 5 1/2-6 hours in good conditions, but please bear in mind that (unless you leave at some ungodly hour) you never get good conditions on a Saturday, because everyone else is doing the same journey! Allow yourself another couple of hours for delays in peak season.

Yes - it's the non-stellar matter (gas, dust etc.) that dissipates momentum/slows things down and lets the two galaxies merge. You don't really get any stellar collisions at all. Eventually - the whole process takes a very long time indeed, and the resulting galaxy is generally a massive elliptical.

Chances are, we won't. Strangely enough, the stellar mass of galaxies who've been through this kind of process are still dominated by the older, pre-existing stars (though many new stars do indeed form during the various stages of the merger). 'Most' of ten billion stars going nova unexpectedly isn't really the kind of thing we'd fail to notice, either...

I've heard that as well - or, you can cover all the bases by just varying positions through the week!

Normal. You don't need to stick a pillow under your hips to aid conception - if it worked that well, people would have sex standing up as a contraceptive! Orgasm does help though, as previous posters have mentioned. What pillows ARE good for is avoiding a sticky patch - give yourself twenty minutes to an hour for things to settle down in there and the good sperm to get a move on, then pop to the loo and do a few kegels to clear out the leftovers.

I used it for my old cat Chesney a few years back, when we had three last-minute dogs arriving for christmas. He seemed to get on okay there. Normally we used the Meers Cattery, who are super.

I gave my notice earlier this year (I've just moved to germany) - it's currently 3 months, but it depends on your contract - as I'd been a member for several years I only had to give one months notice. BUT - it has to be received in writing, either way. Don't just ring up and expect the wheels to move into action regardless... Oh, and they do have notices in the reception/lobby area (or at least they did in the spring) that tell you exactly what the notice period and requirements are, so there's no reason for any confusion unless you've not set foot in the place in a while.