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

[Borachio]

Go on, take the braver argument. Tell me brains aren't equipped to manage it, then justify the rather peculiar belief set that I imagine that Husky's friends hold.

I wish I could!

Frankly I can't imagine what torturous logic Mr Husky's friends must follow.

I'm just too much of a materialist. And simple-minded.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Frankly I can't imagine what torturous logic Mr Husky's friends must follow.

I think it's something like "science shouldn't bother to explain things, as the only explanation is God did it".

 

[The_J]

That is not a very good explanation though.

What about the animals that do go alone?

mmhh...can't think of an example.

Cutlass has a point, but doesn't explain where the food goes.

But then again, it doesn't have to "defeat logic".
Most animals go to sleep at night. I'm pretty sure also the animals who've never seen that from another animal do that. Explanation? Not sure. Does anyone say this is BS? I doubt it.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

mmhh...can't think of an example.

They gave one example. It was of a bird that lays eggs in burrows in England. When the young are hatched, the bird leaves the young alone then flies to South America. Once the young birds are old enough to fly, they then fly to South America.

 

[Arakhor]

I think it's something like "science shouldn't bother to explain things, as the only explanation is God did it".

It's better than "science only explains things when it somehow arrives at the same answer as the Bible".

 

[Farm Boy]

I think it's something like "science shouldn't bother to explain things, as the only explanation is God did it".

So if my son understands he gets to eat when his daddy gives him food, does that mean that he shouldn't bother to sort out in his head that daddy gives him food by getting it from the fridge, cooking it, then putting it on a plate and giving him a spoon to eat it with? It would be more sensible for him to forever exclaim "DaDa!" and wonder at the magical appearance of food, rather than understand the work that goes into attempting to be a loving father?

They do seem to inhabit an interesting mental realm, if my understanding of your presentation of them is correct.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

It's better than "science only explains things when it somehow arrives at the same answer as the Bible".

They also follow that. I think one problem is that they see science as something that people made up to try and destroy the good, Christian way of life, and is one of the tools of communism.

Oddly, they also complain that science hasn't met their expectations, saying things like "why aren't we on Mars now?" and "why don't we have lightsabres?"

 

[Borachio]

mmhh...can't think of an example.

The classic example is the ****oo*. Raised by alien parents, it then migrates, alone, to south of the sahara.

How does it know to do this?

Instinct. Or in other words, nobody knows.

It seems likely that decreasing temperature, and/or light levels, and/or food supplies, stimulates the bird to travel south. To where it's a bit warmer, and brighter, and there's more food.

It's a subject that still being studied. And fitting small radios on individuals seems to be providing some answers as to the bare facts of migration patterns. For example, a lot of ****oos get lost, and get blown off course by storms, and the like.

*Not all ****oos migrate.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oh dear lord, I just realized where "****olded" comes from.

 

[Borachio]

****old. Wittol(d).

 

[Kennigit]

How bad is floating underflow?

 

[_random_]

So today I began another possibly-futile attempt to get in shape, and as I've been reading up on various exercises I might want to do, I see suggestions of numbers of reps and sets. "Reps" seems like a fairly self-explanatory term, but "set" is a bit more nebulous. What exactly happens in between sets? Does stopping doing an exercise at any point (say, losing the grip on a weight) always constitute ending a set? Or does there need to be a more formally defined break? Do you need to start a different exercise?

 

[Lord Baal]

delete

 

[Borachio]

How bad is floating underflow?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_underflow

Well, that kind of depends on what's at stake.

In terms of badness, it could range from not bad in the slightest, to actually catastrophic.

 

[Farm Boy]

It's common, for example, to do one set of flat bench presses, one set of incline bench presses, one set of decline bench presses, then go back to flat bench presses to begin the cycle again. I personally find that kind of stupid and time-consuming, but to each their own.

Depends on fitness level, like you said. If somebody just maxed out what they can do in a set, but they want to get in 3 or 5 sets in the evening, it's probably faster for them to go work a different muscle group while the first one rests.

 

[Kennigit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_underflow

Well, that kind of depends on what's at stake.

In terms of badness, it could range from not bad in the slightest, to actually catastrophic.

yeah I read the wiki article but I don't think it explains my situation anyways since I am not dealing with numbers on that scale.

anyways, related question:

Spoiler you can ignore this :

I am writing a large matrix (10000 x 10000, or whatever size I wish) to a .txt file to read into to plot.

but it annoyingly is cutting up my data when writing to the .txt file like so:
eg
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8

as
1 2 3
4
5 6 7
8

since it for some reason is arbitrarily cutting it off at 85 numbers into a row
(i.e. it is printing 85*117 lines, then 55 into the 118th line = 10000 in a row; instead of 1 row of 10000 numbers, it is across 118 rows)

I want it to print out exactly like the row, I see no reference to any limit in notepad (default for .txt files) having any limitation on space

is there a simple fix? literally all I am doing is printing out the matrix row by row, my output writing statement is not wrong so do not suggest that. I do not know of a way to specify "print all one row" becaus that is what my code says; the error is on notepad's side.

I do not see a way to specify it easily on the read statements I want (reading the matrix into MATLAB for plotting) and since I already did the indexing in my code I don't want to just write out every value line by line then reassemble it into a matrix in matlab, though that is an easy fix.

For reference I just want to simply textread('filename.txt') in matlab

edit: the solution to the above problem has been found. It's that people on the internet are wrong about text editors, and notepad (.txt) and wordpad (.rtf) have 1024 character limits (for win 7 at least; it seems to vary for older versions); fwrap in registry for notepad is already set to 0, nothing I can do about it.

 

[Borachio]

Well, I don't know.

Sounds most likely you've got Wordwrap switched on in Notepad.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@_random_ Re: Exercising

Neil Armstrong had a good theory about that: he thought that you are born with a set number of heartbeats so why waste them doing laps if you don't want to ?

 

[The_J]

I have some 300 ml of light yoghurt left over.
a) when will it go bad and
b) what shall I do with it? (preferably something edible, which doesn't involve much more)

 

[Borachio]

Is it natural yoghurt?

I'd make some more yoghurt with a spoonful, and eat the rest immediately.