The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXIII

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Yay!

(There's a serious lack of humour in the Chamber. I've given up with it for the time being.)

Anyway.

A triangle drawn on a plane has 180 degrees (internal angle-wise), or technically, π.

Imagine a triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere with one corner at the north pole and the other two on the equator. This has internal angles adding up to π + the angle at the north pole.

Increase this angle at the north pole to 360 degrees (or 2π). So that the internal angles now add up to 3π.

Now extend the lines from the north pole to the south pole. So the internal angles now make 4π. Yes?

So that a triangle is topologically equivalent to the surface of a sphere.

What happens if you do the same thing with a square?
 
Shan't.

Given enough time, the most improbable of events (assuming a non-zero probability) must eventually (or even immediately) take place.

Is this universally true?

So that, for example, any particular human body (composed as it is, in my case, of its peculiar arrangement of molecules, atoms, electrons and waveforms) should surely, after an indeterminate (possibly approaching an infinite) length of time, spontaneously reconstitute itself. After my demise, that is.

Is my hope* forlorn? Or am I doomed to reconstitute my being for evermore?

*my hope (if hope it is) is of terminal disintegration.
 
Borachio said:
I've had an idea for a new website.

I thought I'd call it "Twatter".

As you'll have guessed, it's a bit like Twitter, but instead of "tweets" being restricted to 170 characters, "" * are restricted to obscenities, swear words, and general scatological-ness.

(Any other words would be automatically deleted. (Prizes would be awarded for subverting this.) This is certainly doable through a simple look-up table. And judging by the amount of cussing that I see on the internet, it wouldn't be that much of change for many users anyway.)

What do you think? Is a lexicon of only 170,000 a bit too restrictive, though?

edit: * Ha! It got deleted! For some reason, I wasn't expecting that. Maybe "twots" is acceptable?
Click to expand...
Excelent idea! Do you know any programmers? You could make bank off this.


* is slang for vagina. Twot, if pronounced the same, is probably just as bad. I think either of the words work excellently for said service. Were you aware of the slang use of *? Not sure if that's an American thing.
 
* is a pregnant camel - I have been told.

But, afaik, it's a fairly standard English slang word for the bodily part you refer to. Extended to include people of the male persuasion (by some strange linguistic mechanism, the workings of which I'm not sure about). Similar to a few other words I could mention that would be deleted here but would be obligatory on Twatter.
 
That's how we use * here. Score one for internationalism!

I was dead serious though, I think Twotter is an excellent idea and easily monetizable.
 
^Yeah, right. (As if!)


Female spiders lay up to 3,000 eggs in one or more silk egg sacs (which maintain a fairly constant humidity level).

Baby spiders pass all their larval stages inside the egg and hatch as spiderlings.

Whereupon they run hither and thither, largely at random, but still mostly in the vicinity of the silk egg sac, amongst quite short threads of spiderling silk.

After a little while, and in the absence of suitably sized insects caught in the silk upon which they can feed, the spiderlings naturally become hungry: all this running about means that they bump haphazardly one into the other, and cannibalism inevitably ensues.

At first, the slightly larger consume the slightly smaller. But after a short period, one or maybe two moderately-sized spiders remain, which go on to the wider world and maturity.

And the cycle repeats.

My question not worth its own thread is: Is this an adequate model of international corporatism?


Newly hatched spiderlings:

images
 
This genuinely actually happened. Our Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen, during a radio interview: (He didn't realise that * was considered offensive by some people.)


Link to video.
 
I can't claim this as an original idea of mine, but it is intriguing.

The thinking goes like this: A person on foot can run at about 15 mph; on a bicycle they can do 45 mph.

A horse, meantime, can run at about 45 mph.

So, on a bicycle, a horse should be able to do 135 mph.

Now, there's likely to some overheads. For example, a riderless horse doing 135 mph might be a bit of liability, and to be honest, a straight linear relationship between pedal power and speed is not likely to be in effect.

Nevertheless, in view of the looming oil-crisis, I can't help feeling cycling horses shouldn't be overlooked.

The only real difficulty I can foresee is getting the horses' hooves strapped to the pedals.

I should perhaps point out that a tandem already has four pedals: two sets of two. See?

Plus, I think stabilizers might be useful, at least in the early stages of training.

What are your thoughts?

You may well have doubts, but just imagine being overtaken on the motorway by a horse on a bike.

I suspect this horse just can't wait to get fitted out with his new bicycle:

images
 
Borachio said:
Shan't.

Given enough time, the most improbable of events (assuming a non-zero probability) must eventually (or even immediately) take place.

Is this universally true?

So that, for example, any particular human body (composed as it is, in my case, of its peculiar arrangement of molecules, atoms, electrons and waveforms) should surely, after an indeterminate (possibly approaching an infinite) length of time, spontaneously reconstitute itself. After my demise, that is.

Is my hope* forlorn? Or am I doomed to reconstitute my being for evermore?

*my hope (if hope it is) is of terminal disintegration.
Click to expand...

Seems to me, you can either cremate it and then freeze the remains, or freeze the whole thing before cremation. There is no guarantee that what is frozen will remain frozen for any given period of time. Perhaps dumping it into a volcano will at least give you a sense that it may take millions of years for the cycle to take place?
 
Eh? I don't understand.

I think you've not understood me. (Or maybe you have. I dunno.)

It's a curious thing that early Christians thought it necessary to take good care of corpses with a view to them being resurrected at the final trump. (Or so I believe that's what they thought. It's probably entirely wrong.) Any God worth his salt could surely reconstitute their bodies no matter how dispersed their atoms were. Still...

That's besides the point.

I was just relying on probabilities (my understanding of which is naturally woefully inadequate). All these atoms (and just stuff) are whizzing around pretty randomly all the time, as far as I can make out. So given enough time, my particular atoms (and of course this is simplifying the matter grossly: no doubt there's a lot of other stuff that would need rearranging and sorting out too), would, by themselves, arrange themselves into a "me" once again. At some time. In the future.

The point is: given enough time, virtually all non-zero probable events must eventually come true. Or is there some reason to think this isn't so?

Then again, this "me" I'm talking about wouldn't be an exact replica of the one that had "just" died. Since, if it were, it would just die again immediately. I suppose it would have to be "me", but subtly different in some as yet unspecified way. Well...in order to have anything other than a rather trivial result.

It could be a rather spanking brand new shiny "me". Or maybe a decidedly crappier version. Who knows?
 
Borachio said:
Eh? I don't understand.

I think you've not understood me.

It's a curious thing that early Christians thought it necessary to take good care of corpses with a view to them being resurrected at the final trump. (Or so I believe that's what they thought. It's probably entirely wrong.) Any God worth his salt could surely reconstitute their bodies no matter how dispersed their atoms were. Still...

That's besides the point.
Click to expand...

Should I take off my science cap and put on my religious one?

Are we escaping God, or reality as we perceive it?
 
Borachio said:
I can't claim this as an original idea of mine, but it is intriguing.

The thinking goes like this: A person on foot can run at about 15 mph; on a bicycle they can do 45 mph.

A horse, meantime, can run at about 45 mph.

So, on a bicycle, a horse should be able to do 135 mph.

Now, there's likely to some overheads. For example, a riderless horse doing 135 mph might be a bit of liability, and to be honest, a straight linear relationship between pedal power and speed is not likely to be in effect.
Click to expand...
Yeah, here's the problem. Air resistance becomes a major drag on the velocity, as it increases in proportion to the square of the cross sectional area. BUT!! A boat's speed in linearly proportional to wetted waterline length, so you're better off going with sea horses - the longer the better.

Nevertheless, in view of the looming oil-crisis, I can't help feeling cycling horses shouldn't be overlooked.
Click to expand...
And of course, if you stick a sunfish on the seahorsebike, you can harness solar energy directly. Add on a sailfish, and you've got a bike that's as green as algae!

The only real difficulty I can foresee is getting the horses' hooves strapped to the pedals.
Click to expand...
Sea horses have all those little spikey-bits, so just use the loop side of Velcro. Saturday's I hand out pro-tips for free. You're welcome. ;)
 
peter grimes said:
Yeah, here's the problem. Air resistance becomes a major drag on the velocity, as it increases in proportion to the square of the cross sectional area.
Click to expand...
Well, it's said to do that yes.

Actually at low speeds drag is proportional to the velocity, at medium speeds to the square of the velocity, and at higher speeds to the cube. But this is only a rule of thumb.

Not sure what the cross-sectional area has to do with it. I'd have thought it had a lot to do with the configuration of the body. Some are more streamlined than others.


edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

Yup, the cross-section's in there. But so is the drag coefficient which crucially depends on the shape of the body.
BUT!! A boat's speed in linearly proportional to wetted waterline length, so you're better off going with sea horses - the longer the better.


And of course, if you stick a sunfish on the seahorsebike, you can harness solar energy directly. Add on a sailfish, and you've got a bike that's as green as algae!


Sea horses have all those little spikey-bits, so just use the loop side of Velcro. Saturday's I hand out pro-tips for free. You're welcome. ;)
Click to expand...

Top tip:

Set a trap for burglars and the like.

Buy a hundred empty milk bottles. Paint them white and place on the doorstep.

Buy, borrow, beg, steal, or just accumulate a load of junk mail place just inside the door and leave a hand-full protruding from the letter box.

Open an upstairs window and let the curtains dangle out.

Set the front door ajar.

Wait, quiet and motionless, in a back room. Shotgun on your lap.

Score: 10 for a burglar, 20 for a kindly old lady, 25 for a concerned postman, 35 for a policeman.

Intruders escaping without a scratch give you a zero score.

Score double for fatalities.

Crack addicts, wounded fatally or not: 2 points. (Honestly, you're going to have a heap of these at the end.)
 
Canada disallows more than 90 days worth of dietary supplements to be shipped into the country, and also restrict certain chemicals that are found in health products.

Is rhodiola (liquid extract) considered a dietary supplement, and is it permitted to be shipped into the country? Google gives me no answers.
 
Why is chicken meat white and cow meat red?
(Obviously, this applies to all forms of meat. Why are they different colors?)
 
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