@rm-rf I'd go with what JM says

Yes, I'm strongly for opting out too.

Reminds me of that "question battle" nonsense...

Oh, yes... I'm still surprised they didn't see FAIL written all over it.

Well, that was a terrible idea to begin with, but unfortunately, they have some data to back up their stupid hats thingy... apparently it was a hit last yr with arqade

Probably the only relevant hat for us is a toupee that perfectly fits Wolfram's bald patch =)

Is it kosher to be talking about Wolfram's Rogaine deficiency? :D

The gloves came off when the lawyers got involved :D

@rm-rf uh.... really?? Who thought this up? From the reactions so far it looks like we're in no danger of seeing this on our site, but just for the record, I'm not interested either. I can honestly say I've never thought, "oh, let's all adorn our icons with clothing! That would make our site look professional and not at all as if we're a bunch of cretins"

Heh, that would probably be the clueless folks at CHAOS... I was not sure if it was just me being oblivious to some cultural appreciation for hats.

@rm-rf Well, hats are nice and all, but one would think a teaching site would have something a tad more dignified... :)

I'm only interested in making fun of the Brits' hats =)

But hat parties are common around the US, especially in winter time, which is why it had appeal in gaming.se (and probably will in other similar "fun" sites)

@rm-rf I thought we were the funnest site?

@acl That's a lie we spread in order to graduate =)

@acl Well, you know how advertisements stretch things a bit...

(On that note: someday, I'd like to see a cosmetics commercial where they start out with somebody homely-looking and actually manage to make her prettier.)

@belisarius nasty reptile

@acl toads ain't reptiles...

@acl That msg was directed to @rm-rf, wasn't it?

@J.M. still nasty though

@belisarius no, to that unpleasant @yoda character

of which we seem to be rid

@acl Poor yoda. So far from happiness

@acl I keep wondering where that little green guy went. Probably enjoying his new deal with Disney...

@belisarius I don't know, some entities don't deserve happiness

@rm-rf I'm in favor of putting it before Meta. Unlike some I don't think this bit of levity would be destructive to the site (though I'm not excited about it) and I like getting the community opinion on record.

@J.M. Heh, acl calls everything a reptile... Probably even vim :D

@Mr.Wizard Be my guest (in other words, write up the meta post :D)

@Mr.Wizard It's not destructive, I think... but I think it's extremely distracting, like "flashing lights" distracting.

@J.M. You can turn it off (there's an "I hate hats link" that disables it)

@rm-rf I guess the courteousness is small consolation.

@J.M. so a crocodile is a reptile, but a frog isn't? strange. I guess I should have paid more attention at school

@acl Frogs are amphibians

I suppose the guy fleeing in terror at the sight of any of the two won't have time for taxonomical distinctions... :)

@rm-rf indeed. I just find it strange that there's such a distinction between crocodiles and frogs. guess I need to adjust my thinking

@J.M. I'm partly disappointed it wasn't sold to DreamWorks... Oh man, Yoda (and others) with the standard dreamworks face would've been HILARIOUS!

(who owns DreamWorks btw?)

@J.M. come on, mice and elephants are both mammals

@acl Oh, sure. One will give you plague-carrying fleas, and the other will just step on you. But, yes, both mammals...

@acl so are platypus... and they lay eggs! :)

@rm-rf there you go. biologists don't know anything

@rm-rf I remembered it was Viacom, but apparently not anymore... (good thing I checked)

Well, the biggest difference between them is that (most) amphibians need a water body to reproduce, whereas reptiles don't

@acl Crocodiles are very clever, that is the key point

@belisarius but not that @yoda thing

thick as a brick, it was

@acl Well, monotremes (i.e. the echidna and the platypus) are rather... exceptional. (Some biologists call them "primitive", but I think it's insulting to those two.)

funny, "primitive" is how I think of the platypus. I wonder where the "prejudice" came from

in my case, I mean

@J.M. Are eggs related to primitivism?

@belisarius It's more the cloaca than the eggs, actually...

@J.M. You couldn't stand a Victorian reception

*shrug*

@J.M. Gentlemen, you can smoke

Since you brought up smoking...

@J.M. You're broadening the meanings

Sheesh, fine, if you want a different sort of smoking...

@J.M. I like smoked food. Salmon, cheese, anything

@belisarius Me too. Very expensive, tho.

Back when I could afford it, I go though a small roll of smoked cheese every week.

@J.M. yep. But not everywhere. And you can but "hot" or "cold" smoked goods. "Cold" ones are expensive

@rm-rf You're never going to let him live it down, no...

:D

@rm-rf Hats don't do much for me. Now wrapping people's avatars in various functions might be interesting... (Gamma, Zeta, Factorial2, #^#&, etc...)

@BrettChampion Don't dare! :)

Or perhaps ...

Hey, I'm occasionally running into the following with the Projection method of NDSolve: LinearSolve::herm: The matrix {{big matrix here}} is not Hermitian or real and symmetric.

Anyone seen that before? It's only happening one time out of a few thousand runs for a monte carlo, hard to track down exactly what's going on...

@Guillochon Isn't it possible to use for instance Check with this explicit message and when it is raised, you output all used parameters at this moment and investigate in the situation?

How on earth did this get two upvotes? Are people just being generous to a new user?

@OleksandrR. I have been observing a lot of "pity votes" lately...

@J.M. I've been sorely tempted to downvote some of the recent questions into oblivion. Alas it is not very fair on the users to do so, but I certainly wouldn't consider upvoting them

I've been rather sparing on upvotes myself lately. The lack of effort is appalling at times...

@J.M. @OleksandrR. Please, pretty please write your solutions as answers. I want to upvote them!

@halirutan Unfortunately, since NMinimize[] is the only function written in high-level Mathematica, the diagnostic methods won't apply to FindMinimum[]/FindRoot[]...

...so, an incomplete solution at best. :)

@J.M. I was interested in NMinimize only, but I thought maybe there is a general way for all such functions. Anyway, even an incomplete solution can be upvoted highly ;-)

Okay, maybe in a little while. I'm currently running something else in Mathematica...

@J.M. Regarding this here: I know we talked about and your Steffen-interpolation works great even periodic, when I pad the data. But I had to write this up for further reference.

@halirutan I'll post the periodicized Fritsch-Carlson and Steffen routines later; I still owe you an answer for the NMinimize[] diagnostics... :)

So, a second IOU...

Anyway, I'm glad to hear Steffen works splendidly. The method deserves to be better-known.

It seems to be a pretty dry month, rep wise... and in terms of "interesting" questions.

Not drought-level, but... yeah.

@J.M. I've bought the thiosulphate. I hope no S smell in my future barbecues

@belisarius It shouldn't taint meat in the oven if applied properly...

@J.M. "properly" is a sound word ... What does it mean here?

@belisarius "Don't put it on the meat" would be a decent way to interpret it :P

Well, that, and high heat decomposes thiosulfate nicely...

@J.M. "decomposes" in highly toxic cancerigens

:)

@belisarius Heh. It won't. Any carcinogens are more likely to come from the meat than from the thiosulfate... >:)

@J.M. well, four thio kilos are waiting to test that

What's a sane method I should look at to handle this efficiently?

n/m, was still using MapIndexed even though I don't need it anymory, will just use Array and see how it goes

Hi guys! I'm having a problem using NDSolve. its returning "NDSolve::icfail: Unable to find initial conditions that satisfy the residual function within specified tolerances" and I know what's causing the error, but I dont know how to overcome it..

I guess no one is around.. :c

@Sosi You could ask at main...

Anyone got a resource that explains how to make plot legends without the mess that is <<PlotLegends`