Janet712inEngland

I recently saw Les Miserables performed at a large stadium in London and followed that by attending a performance of a new opera, The Importance of Being Earnest. Neither of these performances was actually "staged" in that there were no sets although the actors were in costume. It was just the principals singing at microphones with the orchestra and/or choruses in the background. Does this sort of "staging" have a name?

I understand that Venus transits the Sun today (Tuesday, 12th of June, 2012) and that this has happened "only 7 times since the invention of the telescope". The next transit is going to be in 2116. I really don't understand this, because Venus is between us and the Sun. Surely, from our point of view, Venus transits the Sun a lot! Can you fix my misunderstanding?

I'm curious. As a girl who has seen more than one episode of House, I'm wondering if there actually are a few diseases that can cause or -- more likely, mimic -- mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or delusional behavior or something like bipolar disorder or anxiety disorders?

Are any of these especially rare? Are any quite common?

Thank you!

A friend of mine was duped into a marriage with a Chinese prostitute. After her arrival in the US, she stayed 3 months and then moved to New York City where she has been arrested 3 times for prostitution. She and her daughter, who is around 25, run a ring where they dupe naive US men into marriage. They're very smart and very, very dangerous.

I have considered reporting the situation to ICE, however, I am concerned that my friend will be hurt. Also, if his wife is removed from the US, will it not be easier to just kill him rather than get a divorce? Bear in mind that I strongly suspect Chinese mafia. However, we live a long long way from NY. What is the usual procedure for mafia members when something like this comes up?

Bottom line: how easy would it be for my friend to finally obtain a divorce from this person? Or, if she is back in China, will it even be possible for him?

I realize it's a bit of a long shot in receiving an knowledgeable answer to this question. However, I will appreciate all opinions!

My brother's company is about to be sold. He is an assembly line worker in North Carolina. He was told he must train his replacements, the people who will be doing his job in the new company, which is going to be in Michigan.

If he refuses to train his replacements on the assembly line, can he be fired, and therefore denied unemployment?

By insisting that he train his replacements, is the new company (or the current company) breaking the law? Does he have any sort of legal employment case? If it's not illegal, it certainly feels immoral to me!

I'm confused by all the Internet info on Shingles. My BF recently had a bad outbreak and now a person at his office has shingles, too. Seems unlikely, given what I've read!

I already understand that shingles comes from reactivated herpes zoster, post chicken pox. I already understand than shingles can cause chicken pox in those who have not yet had it. That's all pretty clear and easy to understand.

What I don't get is how in the world an adult with shingles can "cause" another adult to get shingles. Is it the power of suggestion? Or is it actually really shingles?

A very dear friend of mine is complaining of symptoms that don't seem to match up to anything pertaining to his "main" condition. Here's hoping a real life Dr. House can offer an explanation.

"Sweetie" is 61 and drinks way too much. It's obvious to me and others that he's an alcoholic. He is finally seeking treatment for a "mysterious illness" with many cirrhosis-like symptoms: edema, ascites, hypertension and general weakness to name the most obvious ones. He also looks like he's about 4 stone overweight.

Not a good start, eh?

What confuses me are the symptoms he's actually "really" complaining about. He seems to catch a cold every two days. Every so often (yearly?) he goes down with something that I can only describe as being like meningitis -- severe headaches and neck stiffness, grogginess, and he's out of it for a week or 10 days.

The cold-like symptoms could be allergies, but he recently went to California and came back with even worse symptoms. The environment there was totally different, so I'm leaning towards ruling out allergies. He is also complaining of some upper chest pain and, oddly, painful knees (which could be a result of his weight or....could be TB?).

Sounds like I've lost my mind -- that I should care about "little" symptoms with a person who so obviously is killing himself with alcohol, but I reckon if I understood the whole picture I could conduct one of those "Interventions" more effectively and help his friends and family get him into one of those fancy month long dry-out centres and treatment programmes.

So I MUST understand what the problems are, so as not to de-rail his primary consultant's plans for him. (Of course, I am not privy to his consultant's diagnosis or treatment plans. I'm truly operating in the dark.)

So ---- "Sweetie" is currently undergoing a series of tests with a consultant here in the UK. His heart and blood seem to be "okay". Now they're moving on to check urine to see if kidneys are okay. Presumably this consultant's approach is to rule out "everything else" to explain his major symptoms and therefore land squarely on "It's your liver, stupid." A Consultant MUST say it or otherwise, a smart guy like this ain't gonna' believe NOTHIN' that comes from NOBODY about his extreme affection for and dependence on alcohol. Hopefully the threat of actually dying will shake him up enough to be willing to enter your UK equivalent of a Betty Ford Center.

Leading me to the "auxiliary" symptoms. I need to know what's really going on before dragging someone off to get dried out. About these symptoms:

1) Do they support a diagnosis of alcoholism and/or cirrhosis? (For example, could the meningitis-like symptoms be hypatic encephalopathy? Sorry, I have NO exposure to this so can't do an amateur diagnosis on this one, unfortunately.)

2) Do they support a "stranger" diagnosis such as TB? (He did work a long while in Africa many years ago.)

3) Should I forget the "little" symptoms and just rush this dude to an alcoholic abuse centre and steam roll over "everything else"?

THANKS for your advice. I've been worried about this for so long!

I need 3GB to download a free trial of Adobe Captivate (plus additional free space for the install) and 1GB RAM (2GB recommended) to use it.

I've not quite found everything in Windows7 yet. Where do I go to find out how much free space I have on a particular drive? And, silly me, how do I check if I have 1-2gig to run the application once installed?

Thank you!

The sort of person I'm looking for is a Managing Director type who has exited a company enough times to understand the business cycle well.

The problem I am having is this type of person is rarely in public network organisations because he or she has already made their money and knows the game. They tend to be "non-searchable" when doing, say, a Google Search for "serial entrepreneurs"!

This person knows how to do deals and they usually rely on personal references rather than being hooked into larger investment companies.

(These larger investment companies tend to want big equity. We'd rather give away "correctly sized" equity than big equity. Money is not an issue at this point. It's the PERSON, the right business leader, that we're looking for. Needs to be Health Care. Size of business is 1-5 million turnover at this point, with UK presence and worldwide potential.)

Sorry for going on like this. To some people, this is too detailed! Maybe Yahoo Answers is not a good place for this!!!???

Anyway, I'm just having trouble making the right connections with a good MD, familiar with business deals, not involved in an investment house or not "tied" to some other businesses that keep his loyalty.

Thought you'd be able to help, Community!

ANY referrals?

I've got a dozen or so Visio documents on A0 paper -- all with tiny, little writing. When these documents are printed or poster or larger size paper, you can read everything.

I don't want to invest in buying a plotter myself but would rather just take these somewhere and have them printed.

Any advice? I'm in the South, about an hour outside London.

Thank you!

A tiler has given me an estimate to re-tile the exterior wall of my bathtub. These tiles were originally removed to access the tub.

I have all the tiles required for this job. There are about a dozen 12"X12" tiles and only two were cut to fit. So all he needs to do is glue them back on. (There is a little grout left on most of the tiles which will need a bit of scraping, I imagine.)

He wants to charge me 150 pounds for the job. That sounds too high! Any thoughts, Answers Community? I'm in Oxfordshire.

When the child of divorced parents completes an emancipation (age 17), are the parents still required to contribute to the child's college payments, as per divorce agreements?

I have an 85-year-old friend with asthma and diabetes. Her knee has given out on her completely and she falls frequently. Doctors in the UK tell her she needs knee replacement surgery, but she doesn't believe they will do the surgery with a general anaesthetic considering her asthma. I have suggested (without much evidence to support it!) that she have the knee replacement done with local anaesthetic alone. Is this possible? Or should she pursue having it done with a general anaesthetic? (A new knee would improve her life SO much!) Thank you!

My boyfriend and I are having an argument, so we thought we would ask the Answers community: which young male actor would look great (would "make up well") as a female? And would he be willing to take a part like that? Thanks for your opinions!

I accidentally opened a bottle of rare wine that my boyfriend had left in my fridge. I didn't even notice that he'd snuck in there this 1983 half bottle of Jurancon. I called him up and told him I'd had a bottle of very sweet wine with my fish for dinner and I had thought that was strange as I didn't know we had any sweet wines in the fridge.

Well, he nearly came unglued. Didn't I even notice the label, he demanded? Didn't I just KNOW it was a rare (read "expensive") wine? I nearly burst into tears. I just wasn't expecting it! So now --- I feel I must somehow either replace this wine or find something else exclusive and delicious for his collection. (He's an avid collector. Knows everything.)

I've found many exclusive wine dealers on the Internet. But most dealers seem to only deal in full cases.

What I need is a single bottle of wine, delivered before Christmas, and it's gotta' be nice --- but not TOO nice, e.g. up to about £100 for the bottle.

Can you help?

I hate to be such a dork, but I can never remember how much a first class British postage stamp goes for these days and it's not printed on the stamp itself, of course. Can someone please tell me the cost of sending a "normal" letter to the US from England under the new postal rules ("plain envelope, nothing special")? And how many 1st class stamps does that come to, then, as that's all I've got in my wallet? (I'm from the US and keep going back and forth across the Pond, so --- just can't keep up with the simple price of a postage stamp on either continent these days. (Sheesh!)) THANKS for your help!

My cousin married a girl in China and brought her to the US. They met on the Internet. They "fell in love" (through an interpreter (she speaks no English at all)) and he got a passport and took his very first flight ever --- to China. He wore his wedding suit on the plane because he didn't know any better, spent a month with her, and they got married. He came back, re-mortgaged his house and sold his car and borrowed money to bring her to the US. We all thought he was going to go bankrupt! She seemed nice enough when she arrived, but I knew my poor, innocent (naive) cousin had been duped. Three or four months or so after she arrived, they went down to Charlotte to get her green card. Within 5 days, she'd left ("for New York"). Now she's come back demanding a divorce AND she wants alimony. Isn't this kind of thing illegal? What agency does my cousin complain to? It's one thing for her to use him -- but to take his last dime thru alimony seems unbelievably heartless. Help!!!

After 30 years, I ran into an old high school boyfriend. Our children are now older than we were when we dated! Yet it's shocking how little has changed about us. That said, I was disturbed by my friend's eyes. They seem to, as I said above, operate independently. Sometimes both eyes are looking right at me. At other times, I had to decide which eye was focusing on me while the other one looked at different things, apparently. He apologised for not being able to "focus on things for long" and I said I hadn't noticed. I Googled this and all I could find was Strabismus (being cross-eyed or wall-eyed). This is definitely not that. Can it be fixed?

My carpenter was building a small wardrobe behind my ensuite in my newly constructed apartment in the UK. He discovered a five inch drain pipe for the shower just sitting inside the main sewer drain pipe, which was around 6 inches in diameter. The five-inch pipe and the six-inch pipe were wedged together with a piece of styrofoam rather than being glued or "properly joined". He discovered this when he accidentally dislodged the pipes and the next morning I took a shower and water went everywhere, even going through the floor to my kitchen below! (It was a mess. My electricity was shorted out for a day until everything dried out.)

My question: is there a Plumbing Code in the UK that I can go back to my original builder with, or is this just "sloppy pumbing"? That is, do I get the original builder to come fix it or do I just get my current carpenter to stick the pipes together and get on with my remodeling? (No code, no complaint, as far as I'm concerned.)

THANKS for your advice!

My mother is visiting from the States and we have very different theatre tastes. I thought Stones in His Pockets was one of the funniest shows I'd ever seen about six years ago. She didn't like it because they "didn't have any sets". (Argh!) I've seen The Produces three times already, so -- can you think of something else? I'd love to see Moon, but I have a feeling she wouldn't understand it. May be too dark for her as well. Something light with music and dancing? I LOVED Contact and anything What'sHerName coreographs (e.g. The Producers). THANK YOU!