Three Follow-up Questions
for a class assignment
Q1: Your administration's policy on the Iraq war is to "stay the course". When I'm driving and I get to an intersection with a yellow light, is it illegal for my car to be in the intersection when the light turns red, even if it was yellow when I entered the intersection?
A1: So many people are unclear as to what a yellow light really means.
By law, a yellow light is simply a warning that the light is about to change to red. Technically, since no other direction can have a green while you have a yellow, a yellow still indicates that you have the right-of-way, and is essentially an extension of the green (but puts you on notice that the green is expiring.) As such, you are allowed to enter the intersection when the light is yellow, and as long as you have entered the intersection before the light turns red, you have not violated the law.
Q2: You've stated that one of the keys to winning the war on terrorism is to spread democracy to the nations of the Middle East. Someone told me a long time ago that love bugs were chemically man-made by scientists at the University of Florida. Is this true?
A2: Love bugs
are not the result of a genetic cloning experiment gone wrong, nor were they unwittingly loosed from a research facility charged with studying exotic insects. They also weren't bio-engineered as a natural solution to the mosquito problem. (Love bugs do not eat mosquitos: the adults do not eat at all, and larvae feed on decaying plant material.) These overly amorous critters are native to Central America; the best guess as to how they came to these United States places them as undiscovered stowaways who arrived by ship in Galveston or New Orleans around 1920. They migrated into Florida in 1947 from Louisiana, looked around, liked what they saw, and decided to stay. Their natural capacity for reproduction took care of the rest.
Q3: Reducing our dependency on foreign oil is an issue all Americans are concerned about. Can you tell me which dinosaurs populated the state of Texas in prehistoric times?
A3: People have discovered the fossils of 21 different dinosaurs in Texas. These dinosaurs fall into three groups or "batches" in terms of geologic time: the Triassic, the Early Cretaceous, and the Upper Cretaceous. Some of these dinosaurs include the
Iguanodon, the
Alamosaurus, the
Torosaurus, and the terrible
Tyrannosaurus Rex!
Thank you for your questions, and God bless America.
