The many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XIX

[SS-18 ICBM]

You don't stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.

Unless your work keeps you so busy your just keep getting less and less time for video games.

 

[Farm Boy]

Unless your work keeps you so busy your just keep getting less and less time for video games.

Children, mixed with work and a spouse and some semblance of community involvement have a habit of shorting your vidya game time too. That's ok though, the spouse and community involvement are rewarding and the kiddos help keep you younger than computer time will. Now if only you can constructively minimize that work part...

To answer the original question though, people go through phases. Sometimes they just burn out on gaming for a while and come back. Other times people add other social aspects to their lives that they find more engaging than gaming. They may or may not come back to the screen depending on how things develop. Even if they do, they may not have the desire to spend as much time on it as before. I was a huge EverQuest fan in its day. I still nostalgically wish for "hardcore RP MMOs" to make a return to popularity. But if I'm honest with myself, there is close to zero chance that I would have the patience to dive into a game that almost required a 2 hour uninterrupted block of time to accomplish anything.

 

[Mango Elephant]

The imperfect tense is used to signify something that used to happen sometime in the past, but doesn't happen anymore. So for example, "I used to take the bus to work" is imperfect implies you did take the bus before, but not now. "I did take the bus to work" simply means you took the bus at one point, be it this morning or last year. There is no indication of not doing it now.

Does that make sense? Tenses are a pain to learn, I know.

Thanks! Tenses do suck. In English they're so simple (usually). Well, I guess after French any language will seem easy to learn.

It's subtly different. I learned French back when we learned grammar properly, so hark, young ones, to the Old Ways:

The perfect tense (la passé composéé) is used to signify that an action happened, then it stopped, then the next thing happened. For example: 'I woke up and walked the dog' would translate to 'je me suis reveillé et j'ai promené le chien', because you woke up - and then that was done - and then you walked the dog.

The imperfect is also known as the past continuous because it signifies that an action happened and then carried on happening. This means that it can translate to 'I used to...', for example 'j'habitais en France' would mean 'I used to live in France', while 'j'ai habité en France' would mean 'I [have] lived in France'. It is also used when something happened as a backdrop to another event, in which case it translates to 'I was ...ing' - 'je promenais le chien quand j'ai vu un policier' would mean 'I was walking the dog when I saw a policeman'. At the time of seeing the policeman, the walking of the dog had not yet finished; the action was continuous. It doesn't neccessarily mean that you no longer walk the dog - 'j'habitais ici en Angleterre il y a trois ans' means 'I was living here in England three years ago', and clearly allows for you to still live in England.

Thank you very much. This makes a lot of sense and I think I do get it. The book I'm reading is rushed and doesn't make sense in many parts, the part about the past tenses being one of them. Well, thanks a lot again!

 

[Samson]

I have a maths question, anyone know?

Given we have Mendelian inheritance, so that 25% are Homozygous positive, 50% heterozygous and 25% Homozygous negative. The homozygous positive are obvious, and so can be identified. Given that a child comes from such a mating, what is the probability of a child being homozygous negative given that it is not homozygous positive? I feel it should be 33 1/3%, but I am not sure as maths has a habit of catching you out.

The answer, if anyone is interested, is 33 1/3%. This is based on Conditional probability in that p(A|B)=p(A union B) / p(B) = 0.25/0.75 = 1/3.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Sometimes, in crime or conspiracy movies and TV shows, you'll see one of the characters in a hospital bed or something, and someone sneaks in and injects whatever evil chemical they may have into the patient's IV and then the patient dies.

How often does that happen in real life, for whatever reason the killer has in his mind?

 

[salty mud]

Extraordinarily rare, though it did happen recently in Britain

 

[Farm Boy]

Much easier for a nurse to be just a little late and a little heavy with a painkiller one hour then a little early and a little heavy with the next dose. Done. Hard to trace.

 

[Flying Pig]

Quite a lot heavy; at least heavy enough to be grounds for 'what on earth did you think you were doing?'

 

[Farm Boy]

Depends on what their base dosage is really. The amount can't fluctuate "too" much, but if you lie about when the doses are administered you can artificially increase the dose a lot. If there is a question about how much you injected, most of the hard stuff is rather carefully controlled so you can point to the remainder in the bottle and go "I only gave so much!"

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Why are there mens and womens competitions for sailing in the Olympics? Likewise chess?

 

[Flying Pig]

I can only suppose that since men are institutionally advantaged in those far more often than women are (for example, there are many countries in which it is difficult for a woman to pursue a high-level sailing career, but few in which that would be difficult for a man... stand fast Austria before someone points it out), the IOC judges that mixed competitions would be male-dominated.

 

[Cutlass]

But is sailing a sport that requires that differential in strength?

 

[Civciv5]

Would it be possible to build a building that hangs upside-down on a cliff without that it falls down?
Like the Western Air Temple in Avatar The Last Airbender...

Spoiler :

 

[Cutlass]

Sure. But you would need a cliff with a hell of a lot of structural integrity and it would be really expensive to do.

 

[Flying Pig]

Depends how strong those joints are, but if you can make a screw that can stand the force of 9.81 times the weight of a temple, can I have some?

 

[cardgame]

Well... it probably wouldn't just be a screw. Huge tunnels/braces deep into the main body of the cliff would be my guess.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think you would probably get farther carving your structure out of the cliff to begin with, but you would be fairly constrained on final form of the structure so as to not have it collapse.

 

[DroopyTofu]

Would it be possible to build a building that hangs upside-down on a cliff without that it falls down?
Like the Western Air Temple in Avatar The Last Airbender...

Spoiler :

Just call in some Earthbender budies!

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I still haven't got a satisfactory answer in other threads as to why Ron Paul is still a 60 to 1 shot with bookmakers to be the next President? Don't just tell me he has no chance cause clearly people with a financial stake in the outcome disagree.

Is this as an independent? Can he steal the GOP nomination? I just don't get why it is still considered a possibility (60 to 1 clearly suggests it's possible)

 

[Kraznaya]

Obviously it's to lure suckers to bet 1 to win 60 - he can't actually win, so they're hoping to lure Paultards with loose wallets.

The opposite bet, betting 60 to win 1 (if Paul doesn't become President) wouldn't exist because the rake/transaction fee would be higher than the money you would win.