English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

12:08 AM

Sven deserves a badge.

5

46 of our 100 longest answers are his.

SmokeDetector

12:40 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: What does the phrase “You're out of your element” mean? by overmann on english.stackexchange.com

Robusto

2:04 AM

@crl I know. I was indulging in levity.

Rigor

4:32 AM

Hi @rogermue

Welcome

rogermue

4:50 AM

Hi, just looking and listening. I'm not yet used to this chat room.

Rigor

It's pretty quite around here at this time.

rogermue

Don't understand pretty quite ... ah sorry, you mean pretty quiet. Yeas, it is. I see.

I've seldom read your name, Rigor. Are yo American?

Too quiet. I'm leaving. Bye, Rigor.

Rigor

Later pal :-)

Sorry about the typo: ~~quite~~ quiet.

RegDwigнt

9:06 AM

@Robusto stuff and nonsense. Why would it bring RegDwight in here yesterday? It clearly says he will save your life tonight. Yesterday, you could only expect the Beatles.

@tchrist length does not matter.

Check out that other query, most upvotes per character. Now that is efficiency.

data.stackexchange.com/english/query/4407/…

Hm, turns out I'm on par with Barrie. Whodathunk.

And now for some Russian architecture of the day @Cerberus:

Robusto

10:52 AM

@RegDwigнt That's loser talk.

@RegDwigнt Hey, who says Russkis don't have safety features on their playground equipment?

Robusto

11:18 AM

Looks like Google is into editorializing on their feed page. (Actual clip from page, no Photoshop.)

skill patrol

The National Enquirer has moved to the internet :(

Robusto

I believe you mean "Enquirer" . . .

skill patrol

thanks

terdon

@tchrist given a file, what's a simple way to see the unicode characters in it? I passed it through od -c and got number codes, is there a simple trick to get the unicode names instead?

Never mind, cobbled something up.

skill patrol

cobble?

Robusto

11:29 AM

Usually people say "cobbled something together."

terdon

@skillpatrol : to make or put together roughly or hastily —often used with together or up <cobble together an agreement> <cobble up a temporary solution>

Robusto

But "up" is not wrong.

terdon

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cobble

Robusto

I rest my case.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Very efficient. Such a sturdy fence will stop children in mid slide.

terdon

11:30 AM

Might be more British but both cobble smt up and cobble smt together sound fine to me.

skill patrol

@terdon interesting...thanks

Cerberus

@Robusto Hilarious...but who is the ape, Obama or the Republicans? Or Fiorina?

Robusto

@terdon Yes. My point was only that I hear the latter more often.

@Cerberus Ask Google.

Cerberus

Google says no.

^ Little Britain joke

skill patrol

lmgtfy

^dumb joke

lmg "lmgtfy" fy
^dumber joke

lmg "lmg 'lmgtfy' fy" fy
^dumbest joke

Cerberus

11:38 AM

Heh.

How about the 4th power?

skill patrol

no known solution

Cerberus

How sad.

No brackets?

skill patrol

I prefer quotation marks

for words

Cerberus

How about French quotation marks?

« »

skill patrol

too much work

terdon

11:41 AM

@Cerberus I believe you mean Greek.

:P

Hmm. Did ancient Greek have quotes?

Cerberus

Err that's what I meant, Greek.

No.

terdon

And were they those?

Ah. OK

So modern Greek likely took them from the French then.

Cerberus

@terdon They only spoke their own words.

@terdon Or we all took them from Mediaeval traditions.

terdon

Still, it's strange that some languages have << >> and some have ""

Cerberus

Stranger than other split conventions?

terdon

11:44 AM

Did Latin have quotes?

Robusto

@terdon Of course Latin had quotes.

skill patrol

marks

Robusto

Joke marks?

Cerberus

@terdon Nope.

Classical Latin had little punctuation.

Like classical Greek.

Matt E. Эллен

how dd it distinguish between use and mention?

or were all words useful?

terdon

11:53 AM

So when did quotes appear?

Robusto

> All words are useful, but some words are more useful than others.

Matt E. Эллен

four words good, two words bad

skill patrol

and what about spoken quotations?

nobody said anything worth quoting :P

Matt E. Эллен

or maybe everything had already been said, so quoting was redundant

either someone had said it before or you're quoting yourself from the present

Robusto

That didn't stop people like Cicero and Cato from talking.

>Experientia docet stultos

Cerberus

12:03 PM

@MattE.Эллен Context.

Matt E. Эллен

> Musa acuminata dulce fructum

skill patrol

False advertising: "Latin quotation marks"

Cerberus

If you remove q. marks from an English text, you will still be able to get almost all of it.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus I suppose. I'll stick to italics, though

Cerberus

You might need to add a few "she said:"s and "yes, Socrates, that is correct"s.

As you wish!

Now I must run.

Ciao!

skill patrol

12:05 PM

later pal

Matt E. Эллен

CU

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in title: Packers and Movers Chennai by Kanika Jaiswal on english.stackexchange.com

Robusto

@smci: I'm not a New Yorker, just someone who observes and reflects. Your mileage may vary. — Robusto 1 min ago

Question for science: if we can see light from the Big Bang, wouldn't that mean that we somehow traveled faster than light at some point?

Danu

12:26 PM

@Robusto What? No.

We can't see light from the Big Bang anyways. Also, you're falling into the trap of thinking the Big Bang was located somewhere in space. It wasn't.

It was a moment in time.

127

A: Did the Big Bang happen at a point?

The simple answer is that no, the Big Bang did not happen at a point. Instead it happened everywhere in the universe at the same time. Consequences of this include: The universe doesn't have a centre: the Big Bang didn't happen at a point so there is no central point in the inverse that it is e...

skill patrol

Answer from science^

:P

Robusto

@Danu OK, but if the universe was and still is infinite, how do you account for prior and continuing inflation? ∞ + ∞ = ∞, right?

terdon

I believe the idea is that it was not infinite before the BB. That said, you know perfectly well that there are larger and smaller infinities, in a sense.

Danu

@Robusto That sentence does not make much sense.

@terdon Inflationary theory refrains from making any predictions/statements about the earliest moments of time. The theory concerns what happens at about $t=10^{-34}$ seconds after the Big Bang.

Robusto

@Danu Your sentence does not provide much enlightenment, if any.

Danu

12:38 PM

@Robusto That's also true. In any case, accelerated expansion of the universe is in no way at tension with the infinitude of the universe.

It's all a lot clearer when put in to the mathematical language that physicists typically use to discuss this.

terdon

Yeah, but that one's hard for laymen to get.

Robusto

> The total size of the universe is then 0×∞, which is undefined. You probably think this doesn't make sense, and actually most physicists agree with you.

Is that the kind of "not making sense" you were talking about?

Danu

@Robusto Who said that? That is pretty much total nonsense, AFAIK.

Robusto

@Danu It's from the same fucking link you posted.

Did you not read it before linking it here?

Danu

@Robusto Nope.

That's not very good. I'll bring it up with John.

terdon

12:40 PM

@Robusto that refers to the size of the universe at the moment of the BB, not now.

Danu

The sentence is misleading at best. I think what he was trying to get at is that physicists currently are not sure what happens at the earliest moments in time, because classical relativity does not really help in this regime.

terdon

> So at the Big Bang we have the very odd situation where the spacing between every point in the universe is zero, but the universe is still infinite. The total size of the universe is then 0×∞, which is undefined. You probably think this doesn't make sense, and actually most physicists agree with you. The Big Bang is a singularity, and most of us don't think singularities actually occur in the real universe.

Robusto

@Danu But you see now why I said what I said, right?

Danu

@Robusto What you said where

Robusto

Never mind.

Danu

12:42 PM

@terdon The last sentence in that quote is a lot better than the rest.

Robusto

@terdon But the whole post is conflating universe sizes as always being infinite.

terdon

Not my field at all, but I read that as basically saying "we're not entirely sure what this means in anything but the most abstract mathematical terms"

Robusto

Then why are we even talking about this at all?

terdon

@Robusto I've always had trouble getting the idea of different sized infinities.

Mitch

@tchrist Seven dwarves a badger.

Obviously

Danu

12:44 PM

@terdon Close enough. The proper interpretation is: We're not entirely sure what this means. In our most powerful current mathematical model (general relativity), things go wrong at this point, so we're trying to come up with a better theory that may possibly deal with this stuff better.

Mitch

@terdon Oh. That's easy. one's just bigger than the other.

terdon

Sounds fair enough.

Robusto

@terdon There is an infinity of positive numbers and an infinity of numbers. They are the same size, even though one would appear to be twice as big as the other.

terdon

@Mitch But no, what if it's smaller?

Danu

@Robusto But that's not so hard to deal with if one is rigorous enough.

Mitch

12:45 PM

Oh I see the confusion. It's never smaller

Danu

One just needs the notion of a bijection.

terdon

@Robusto Yeah. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Different sized infinities that are still identical sized.

Danu

@terdon No. In a precise sense, the reals and half of the reals are exactly the same size.

The naive way of thinking about it simply fails.

Mitch

TO be serious, it is a misunderstanding between what normal people mean by size and what mathematicians have stipulated to be the new definition.

Danu

@Mitch Right. One has to formalize a lot before being able to discuss these things in a manner that is precise enough to leave no room for doubt.

(and this means losing a lot of intuition along the way)

Mitch

12:46 PM

one could define size to be ... or rather bigger size to be X is a proper subset of Y, then Y is bigger than X.

terdon

@Danu Which is the only way I have, unfortunately.

Mitch

But it's more interesting to use bijection.

Robusto

The proof of this, IIRC from high-school, involves mapping sets.

Danu

@Mitch And it really seems the only right way, once one knows it.

terdon

I don't get how you can consider two sets one of which is a subset of the other, as having the same cardinality.

That's one of the, many, reasons I ended up in biology and not mathematics.

Danu

12:48 PM

@terdon Because there exists a bijection between them.

You can make a map that maps precisely one element of the first set to one of the second set and vice versa.

tchrist

@terdon uniquote -v

terdon

@tchrist Ah, much nicer, thanks.

@Danu That can't be true! Consider the numbers between 1 and 2 and those between 1 and 3. Both are infinite but there can't be a bijection between them.

Right?

Robusto

> If X and Y are finite sets, then there exists a bijection between the two sets X and Y if and only if X and Y have the same number of elements. Indeed, in axiomatic set theory, this is taken as the definition of "same number of elements" (equinumerosity), and generalising this definition to infinite sets leads to the concept of cardinal number, a way to distinguish the various sizes of infinite sets.

Wikipedia.

Danu

@terdon There is one.

There is even a bijection between the line and the plane.

(which is much weirder!)

terdon

@Robusto Yeah, just looked it up so I could sound less clueless.

Robusto

12:50 PM

The Wikipedia article does refer to a way to distinguish the various sizes of infinite sets.

Danu

It all has to do with the subtleties of infinities.

Robusto

Now I'm even more confused.

terdon

@Danu Umm. Every single number from set A is also present in set B but the latter has a whole slew of extras. How can there be a bijection?

Danu

@Robusto Of course, there are many types of infinities.

(infinitely many, of course!)

terdon

To be, for example.

Danu

12:51 PM

@terdon Because of the subtleties of the continuum that the real numbers form.

Robusto

I thought I was happy just living my life. Now I have to deal with infinities that may or may not be different sizes.

terdon

"Because subtleties" is pure evasion, not an answer :P

Danu

@Robusto There is a very famous and beautiful proof that there are more real numbers than rational numbers (fractions)

@terdon It really isn't.

RegDwigнt

Join the Army!

terdon

@Danu I'm sure it's not if you know these subtleties. It just sounds like one :)

Danu

12:52 PM

But I can't explain the elements of set theory to you in this chatroom. Feel free to read a textbook on the matter if you feel so inclined ;)

tchrist

Hello soldier!

Robusto

@RegDwigнt That's so gay, I'm surprised Putin didn't ban it.

terdon

@Danu Fair enough and no thanks. That's why I collaborate with mathematicians. They can deal with all of this crap.

Danu

@terdon This crap is very beautiful!

terdon

@Danu To each their own

And yes, I know it is. Once you actually get it. It isn't if you don't though.

Danu

12:54 PM

@terdon I'm sure that, as a biologist, you can sympathize with beautiful crap :D

Robusto

I would rather listen to music.

terdon

Absolutely!

RegDwigнt

Danu

@Robusto Por que no las dos?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I'm sorry, you were saying?..

tchrist

12:54 PM

frags

terdon

@Danu Porque nadie quiere escuchar música de mierda tío!

Mitch

@terdon Here's the getting part: THere's nothing to get, they're are different things. Related, similar, yes. But different. They're identical on finite sets, but cardinality and subset are not the same on infinite sets.

terdon

@Mitch See? That looks like it should make perfect sense and yet...

Robusto

@Danu Porque cuando escucho música no puedo hacer nada más.

Mitch

Also, there are infinite ordinal numbers strictly between aleph_0 and aleph_1 (in case you were wondering)

Danu

12:56 PM

Space-filling curve

In mathematical analysis, a space-filling curve is a curve whose range contains the entire 2-dimensional unit square (or more generally an n-dimensional hypercube). Because Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) was the first to discover one, space-filling curves in the 2-dimensional plane are sometimes called Peano curves, but that phrase also refers to the Peano curve, the specific example of a space-filling curve found by Peano. == Definition == Intuitively, a continuous curve in 2 or 3 (or higher) dimensions can be thought of as the path of a continuously moving point. To eliminate the inherent vagueness...

Time to go! Bye, everyone.

Robusto

At some point one wonders whether ~~certain~~ some mathematical proofs are only semantic tricks.

tchrist

"certain"?

skill patrol

later pal

Danu

@Robusto They're not; Once one agrees on a logical system, there is nothing to complain about.

Mitch

@terdon for finite sets yes that is impossible. but infitie sets can have lots of things inbetween.

Robusto

12:58 PM

@Danu But it is not inconceivable that what seems to be a proof at one point may later be deemed wrong.

Danu

@Robusto Not once it is completely worked out.

Mitch

size is defined by bijection, not by counting one by one (but for finite sets bijection and counting happen to coincide)

Danu

Sometimes, mathematicians don't fill in all the details---that's dangerous. But in principle, everything can be checked.

terdon

@Mitch Apparently. So, if I understand correctly, the existence of bijection between the sets of numbers 1-2 and 1-3, means that I could theoretically draw a line between all elements of both sets. Despite the fact that there are more elements in the latter.

Danu

In fact, there are people who do this professionally (proof-checking). One very famous theorem was completely checked by computer because it was too difficult/long to be checked by humans.

terdon

12:59 PM

Or, I guess, you will tell me that there aren't more elements in the latter.

Danu

Four color theorem

In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that, given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, producing a figure called a map, no more than four colors are required to color the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Two regions are called adjacent if they share a common boundary that is not a corner, where corners are the points shared by three or more regions. For example, in the map of the United States of America, Utah and Arizona are adjacent, but Utah and New Mexico, which only share a point that also belongs...

@terdon Exactly.

terdon

@Danu what's your field? Mathematics? Physics?

tchrist

@Danu Infamously.

terdon

@Danu But there are! Waaaah!

Danu

@terdon Check out my profile ;) Mathematical physics.

terdon

1:01 PM

Damn, worst of both worlds! :P

Danu

@terdon I'll pretend I didn't hear that.

skill patrol

There is no Physical mathematics :P

Danu

@skillpatrol Some would disagree with that:

terdon

@Danu :)

Danu

amazon.com/Physical-Mathematics-Kevin-Cahill/dp/1107005213

terdon

1:03 PM

Physical mathematics is not the same as mathematical physics.

skill patrol

touche

terdon

Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

Danu

@terdon That's true.

I'd count mathematical gauge theory as "physical mathematics"

The inspiration/techniques come from physics

Some of the most famous contributors are mainly physicists (notably Ed Witten)

skill patrol

The mathematics of physics is not the same as the physics of mathematics?

Danu

@skillpatrol Exactly

terdon

1:08 PM

Just like the wool of sheep is not the same as the sheep of wool.

skill patrol

The physics of mathematics just doesn't sound right...

Robusto

@terdon And bad grammar is not the same as grammar bad.

terdon

@Robusto Hey, if you have 3 sheep, one made of stone, one of wood and one of wool, it is perfectly reasonable to refer to the sheep of wool.

Or maybe you have a friend, Wool, and he has many sheep.

skill patrol

that's just a play on words pal

Robusto

@terdon The Greeks had a word for this: sophistry. (They spoke in English much of the time, especially when they wanted to be understood by us.)

terdon

1:11 PM

:)

Hey, @RegDwigнt @MattE.Эллен, what do you guys think about finally opening a migration path to ELL?

0

Q: Should we have a migration path to ELL?

I know that this has been discussed before but, at the time, it was not possible since ELL was still in beta. Now that it has graduated and has had its first mod elections and everything, it might be time to reconsider the question. So, should we have a migration path opened to ELL? I believe t...

Robusto

@terdon I'm going to turn this into a poll by posting a Yes answer and a No answer. Take the temperature of the community.

Cool.

Warm.

Tepid?

Intrepid!

1:30 PM

New Stravinsky score discovered!. Well, actually an old one. But it was previously thought lost.

tchrist

@terdon I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, but do understand that they won't like it.

terdon

@tchrist The dumping ground problem?

Yes, I should add something about that.

Robusto

@tchrist They being . . . ?

terdon

OK, question edited to clarify that we don't plan to dump our crap on them.

They being the ELL folks.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon "crap" is subjective, though.

tchrist

1:39 PM

in ELL's Cabin, 37 mins ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Considering that sometimes some guys send us crap, I think that's not gonna happen.

@skillpatrol sighs

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, yes and no. Just like with any migration path, we should only migrate questions that are 1) good questions; 2) on topic on the target site.

tchrist

Do they get a reverse-migration path?

skill patrol

nvm

terdon

Dunno, would that make sense? I know we get many Qs here that would be a better fit for ELL, I have no idea if the inverse is true.

tchrist

Check the migration stats.

terdon

1:43 PM

@tchrist Only one from there to here and 79 from here to there.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon yes, we should do that. My concern is that people might not know the difference between crappy questions for ELU that'd be fine on ELL vs questions that would be considered crappy there too.

Robusto

Can the target site reject migration?

terdon

@Robusto Yes

Well, a mod on the target site can.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, that is always a danger with migration paths.

Robusto

I feel we've endured years of dealing with questions that should rightly have been asked on ELL. Maybe now it's their turn to deal with the shit.

terdon

I do think that the ELU -> ELL path is one of the clearest we're likely to find network-wide though.

@Robusto Not the shit! Only those we find boring but are of interest ton people learning/teaching the language.

Robusto

1:47 PM

@terdon Call it what you like.

terdon

A turd by any other name...?

Robusto

Something like that.

tchrist

Notice that there are no ELL migrations that don't have ELU as one end-point.

But that the other way around it is (slightly) different.

Robusto

It's not a perfect system, true. It could be spoofed. Are you saying that if the system is not perfect then you should be allowed to violate its rules merely because you can find ways around them? — Robusto 9 secs ago

terdon

@tchrist What do you mean? You're only showing the ELU migrations so of course it's always going to be an endpoint.

tchrist

1:52 PM

@terdon No sir.

There simply are no others.

terdon

Ah, OK, but there's also linguistics there. And their meta, of course.

I don't think any other site would make sense.

Robusto

Rivers flow downhill. It's a law of nature.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Reversing Falls

The Reversing Falls are a series of rapids on the Saint John River located in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, where the river runs through a narrow gorge before emptying into the Bay of Fundy. The semidiurnal tides of the bay force the flow of water to reverse against the prevailing current at this location when the tide is high, although in the spring freshet, this is frequently surpassed by the downstream volume of water. The rapids, or "falls", are created by a series of underwater ledges which roil the water in either direction, causing a significant navigation hazard, despite the depth...

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And during the New Madrid quakes in the early 19th century, the Mississippi was made to flow backwards. But that is still unnatural. And your reversing falls would not be noteworthy at all if a trick of hydraulics did not cause them to do the unnatural thing.

skill patrol

Hi @MετάEd how are you doing pal?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:07 PM

@Robusto Well, it's in nature, thus natural.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Then let's call it rare and unusual and contrary to the normal flow.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yes, sure.

Gigili

Hello everybody

Which one is correct? (Is the first one incorrect?)
1- "This page was not recently updated.. I am planning an update soon.."
2- "This page has not been recently updated.. I am planning an update soon.."

MετάEd

@skillpatrol I'll do.

skill patrol

@MετάEd one day at a time pal

I've been there...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:19 PM

Where did you find these words? Generally when people ask "Is there a word" they mean an established word that others will recognize or understand. I can't find even a single Google hit for these words. — Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 16 secs ago

Robusto

@Gigili Why are there double periods after the first sentences?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

s/first//

skill patrol

^

Robusto

I see pineapples using double periods a lot. Is there some language in which that works?

Gigili

@Robusto It's not my formatting. I copied it from a website.

Robusto

2:21 PM

@Gigili Link?

Gigili

@Robusto pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fatemeh/#fatemeh_awards

tchrist

I still think this is unconstructively primarily opinion based; just look at the hundreds of comments and answers it has generated:

32

Q: Is "act like a mensch" too localized for ELU readers (U.S. and/or British English)?

This question was motivated by an interesting comment that was made at http://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/comments/123681?noredirect=1 Part of Answer: I don't think that particular research team would be a healthy place for you. The guy behaved badly. You need an advisor you can trust ...

american-english british-english dialects loan-words yiddish

The OP wants a discussion and a poll.

Robusto

@Gigili Yes, I see. Perhaps the double period means something in Hindi, then. Or Farsi. Whatever.

Gigili

@Robusto Is the sentence correct?

Robusto

@Gigili Which one?

Gigili

2:24 PM

@Robusto No special meaning or usage in Farsi, AFAIA

> Note: This page was not recently updated.. I am planning an update soon..

Robusto

I see nothing wrong with that other than double periods. I would prefer the present perfect there, though.

Gigili

@Robusto OK, thank you

terdon

@Gigili it's correct but clumsy. A better way would be this page hasn't been updated recently or similar constructions.

Or just change the structure: this page hasn't been updated for a while. I wouldn't use recently at all, really.

Gigili

@terdon Got it. Thank you

Mitch

@terdon well you can't do that for {1,2} and {1,2,3}. But you can for the two infinite sets X:[1,2] and [Y:1,3] by the bijection y = 3/2 x. for every item in X there's exactly one corresponding item in Y, and by the mathematical definition of cardinality (not one's informal idea of it) X and Y have the same cardinality. Informally we say they have the same size but that's unfortunate because it brings all the connotations we have with the word 'size' and those connotations are misleading.

So don't use 'size' for comparing infinities.

terdon

2:34 PM

Huh, sea silk: bbc.com/news/magazine-33691781

@Mitch Fair enough. They have the same cardinality by definition. But only, as you said, in a strict mathematical sense. That's well put.

skill patrol

Yes, "size" is a finite concept.

It has a beginning and an end.

We can "measure" size.

Robusto

So we can measure the size of the universe?

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That sounds like a quote from Alice in Wonderland. :Generally when I say something, I mean people to understand it" or something like that. But Humpty Dumpty said something eles

skill patrol

@Robusto how?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch Well, Humpty Dumpty was right, but also, totally unhelpful.

skill patrol

2:43 PM

3 mins ago, by skill patrol

It has a beginning and an end.

Robusto

@skillpatrol I'm asking you. Are you saying the universe doesn't have a size?

skill patrol

Without a way to measure it there is no way to tell.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto Isn't that an open question?

Mitch

@terdon right. It is totally messed up to think that the evens are as big as all integers. That's probably why so many people had difficulty with the infinities that Cantor produced because he used every words to describe them (and also it does correspond to size for finite things).

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "You are in a balloon"

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm asking. @skill is making pronouncements and I'm trying to understand the implications.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:45 PM

@Mitch quickly puts pins away Good thing you told me

@Robusto I guess he's saying that, strictly speaking, "infinite" is not a thing when it comes to "size".

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You can put a pin into a ballon and not have it pop by putting tape on first and poking through the tape.

In case the need came up.

tchrist

@Mitch That's how you measure the universe.