QUES: Tropical climates are found around the equator. These climates have warm temperatures year round. Tropical climates may be very wet or wet and dry. Tropical wet climates occur at or very near the equator. They have high rainfall year round. Tropical rainforests grow in this type of climate. Tropical wet and dry climates also occur near the equator. They receive less rainfall. Most of the rain falls in a single season. The rest of the year is dry. Few trees can withstand the long dry season. The main plants are grasses. Dry climates receive very little rainfall. They also have high rates of evaporation. This makes them even drier. Deserts can get less than 25 centimeters of rain per year. Thats less than 10 inches per year. How much rain do you get at your house?
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What are two factors contributing to the dryness of deserts?

QUES: The old vaulted church was stripped down: there was no cloth on the altar, just a DJ's toolkit and his beer. Through the dark, I could see three bolts left in the wall from where they'd taken down the crucifix. A confessional too beaten-up to have been sold was shaking in a way that suggested activity inside, and where the pews had been taken out, a couple hundred people were testifying to the DJ's moving sermon. Rachel stepped forward into the crowd while I took a moment to drink in the ceiling's blue-lit, shadowed vault and the light-catching haze from who-knows-what rising between the DJ and the crowd. There was a terrific echo, each beat reverberating inside of the next, and the old stained-glass windows rattled in their frames. On the dance floor, people moved with their eyes closed and their hands in the air. I danced with Rachel for a while, but then something by the bar seemed to be pulling her eyes. She told me that she was heading for a drink and slipped out of the crowd. When she hadn't come back halfway through the next song, I glanced over at the bar. It was just a little set-up where someone had stacked a few crates and brought something alcoholic to share, mostly beer. Rachel was standing with a plastic cup, looking like she was having a conversation, but I couldn't see anyone else there. The next time the crowd split, I saw him. He stood in front of a blue light, so I couldn't see him clearly, but what I saw was memorable. He wore a jacket of what might have been blue velvet, and his hair gleamed black against his white skin. The blue haze seemed to stop just shy of his pallor, setting off his striking face without illuminating its details, and his wrists flashed white in the darkness. He didn't move, just stared and held his drink. The next time I saw them, his mouth was moving. She nodded and he took her arm. I watched them through the crush of dancers as they squeezed along the wall, and the feeling came to me that something was very wrong. Saturday morning, I woke up and saw that she still hadn't come home.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What was the man standing in front of when the crowd split?

QUES: Hundreds of thousands of years before China was to become the world's longest-running civilization, the prologue was enacted by means of the flicker of a carefully tended fire. Peking Man, a forebear of Homo sapiens, achieved a mastery of fire. We might call it the first Chinese invention. Not that he devised flint and steel, matches, or any other way of creating fire. Peking Man simply learned how to capture flame, perhaps from a forest fire, and keep it alight. He thus enjoyed two revolutionary luxuries: light and heat. Technologically and sociologically, it was a phenomenal breakthrough: with fire, communities could live year 'round in one cave, in which cooking and even smelting could be pursued. And so, by 600,000 b.c., about 50 km (31 miles) southwest of present-day Beijing, the ancestors of mankind were ready to settle down. Several hundred thousand years later, when Marco Polo reached the capital of China, he was astonished by a further development in fire technology. The Chinese, he announced, used black stones dug out of mountains as fuel. Europeans did not yet have a word for "coal," nor had they discovered a use for it. The First Dynasty The confluence of mythology and history in China took place around 4,000 years ago during what is referred to as the Xia (Hsia) Dynasty. This was still the Stone Age, but the people are thought to have made silk from thread produced by the worms they cultivated on the leaves of their mulberry trees. And written language (which evolved as early as 4,500 to 5,000 years ago) was already in use, originally by oracles and then by official scribesChina's first scholars. During the second of the quasi-legendary dynasties, the Shang (from about the 16th to 11th centuries b.c.), the Chinese developed an interest in art. Careful geometric designs as well as dragon and bird motifs adorned bowls and implements. And with the arrival of the Bronze Age, the Chinese created bronze vessels of such beauty and originality that, until modern times, archaeologists refused to believe they were cast 3,000 years ago. The Shang Dynasty gave rise to the concept of one Chinese nation under one government.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: When the Xia Dynasty came about was written language already in place?

QUES: With a budget of $329 million, LSC provides civil legal assistance to low-income people in every county in America, Kleiman said. NLAP was created in 1968. A decade later, the agency used a $50,000 LSC grant to buy a building at 438 King St. in Charleston and $33,000 to buy a building at 201 King St. in Georgetown, according to Erlenborn's letter to Kaynard. In 1980, NLAP used $63,000 in LSC funds to buy property at 607 Main St. in Conway, the letter said. On Nov. 14, 2001, NLAP transferred title of the King Street building in Charleston to the Charleston County Bar Association, according to county property records. The local bar paid $5 for the building, which sits between a redeveloped office building and an antique shop. The local bar said it would maintain the building for "legal services to indigent residents of Charleston County and coastal South Carolina," the records said. The King Street building appears to be vacant. Notices at the entrance direct visitors to the equal justice center on West Montague Avenue in North Charleston. E. Douglas Pratt-Thomas, president of the local bar, was not available for comment. Charleston County has not appraised the King Street property because it is tax-exempt. But Randall Goldman, managing partner of Patrick Properties, which owns buildings from 440 to 456 King St., said he estimates 438 King St. would sell for between $700,000 and $900,000. "That building, which was purchased solely with federal legal aid dollars, should be used to provide legal services for poor people in South Carolina," Kleiman said. LSC wants the title to go to the equal justice center in Charleston or "we want 100 percent of the proceeds from the sale of the building to stay in Charleston. We are not contemplating taking that money out of South Carolina," he said. Kleiman said if the neighborhood legal program in Charleston "had honored their obligation, this would not be an issue."
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
The local bar in Charleston County maintained which building of the NLAP in exchange for "legal services" to certain residences?