> Q: What kind of maps should you take with you on car trips? A: Automorphisms.
I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how automorphisms were supposed to be useful on car trips. After all, it doesn't really help to show that the landscape outside your window is non-trivially equivalent to itself; what you're really interested in is showing that it's equivalent to some smaller object you have within your vehicle. Then I realized it's a pun. — Tanner SwettJan 12 '11 at 13:05
It states that if the answer is "Only one, he just waits for the world to revolve around him", that will only accomplish half of the required process to chane a lightbulb
> I went to visit him while he was lying ill at the hospital. I had come in taxi cab number 14 and remarked that it was a rather dull number. "No" he replied, "it is a very interesting number. It's the smallest number expressible as the product of 7 and 2 in two different ways."
@Slereah Unfortunately for you, I am not the retarded form of fairy-tale djinni which, for some insane reason, feels compelled to follow the letter of my spoken offer to the fullest extent imaginable by you.
However, in my capacity as djinn I demand certain compensations. In particular, I require that you sap the mana energy from one island-type property under your control and at least one other property of your choosing, and direct that energy for my personal consumption. Failure to do this will result in me passing to the service of a new human. See here for details.
Zack: To be clear: before a will-o-wisp turns into a ball of energy it is a shape changer that poses as the creepy naked guy who follows you around trying to sell your girlfriend a friendship bracelet at Burning Man.
Steve: Hairy butt man is just one of many forms. He could be a goblin or a kobold or even a man with no hair at all.
I have now decided that, if I am ever to give a course or series of lectures, I'll show up early for the first one and write a joke on the board, then leave again and come back at the time the lecture is supposed to start, to get my student to relax a bit :)
@Danu I still remember random quotes from my mechanics prof: "You can't leave the cheese!" or "Imagine a ball, or a banana, or - ah I have it - a porcupine flying through space!"
In my profile page, there is a section below "bio","visit","stats" named "private". This part contains 2 things:
Real name
My Email
For other users, I find that there is no such private when I view their profiles.
So mainly for privacy, I tried to erase my real name and also my email via "edi...
I never really understood the point of having a course with lectures when the course has a textbook. Sometimes the subject is so high-level or specialized or so modern that the contents are changing rapidly that there is no textbook (for example at the graduate level). But more often the textbook...
Can I generate electricity in complete vacuum without using any conventional sources?
Using Casimir theory, according to him, he kept two plates nanometers apart in a vacuum. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. But in this case curren...
@JohnDuffield First of all, the question is very easy to understand. It's written clearly and even has a clear, relevant diagram.
It's also a "paradox" type question. People love that sort of thing.
The question can be understood by anyone from a high school level upwards, meaning that many readers could comprehend and vote on the question. This is not the case with most of the questions on the site.
It's possible that having a well written answer also helped the question get votes. My own experience is that if I read a question I don't understand I tend to not vote up or down. However, if I understand the question I'm more likely to vote. Having a good answer helps understand the original question.
This is all speculation, of course.
@JohnDuffield My best guess is that it got upvotes because it's written well.
@Danu yeah, we did, I think it really depends. Purcell's electricity and magnetism taught me more things than anything else. On the other hand, I also had quite an impressive intellectual gains in attending some talks as well as some online course ware. If the kind of lecture is about discussion, students prepared at their home, and come to class to discuss, probe deeper into nature, then surely it will be great.
Speaking of evidence, I found it would be difficult, Mostly I observed myself during process of learning.
and did some little experiments and see which ways works better. The results were quite surpising,
and I believe there is a divergence among people.
though there are patterns work for everyone probably.
@ChrisWhite
I mean diversity among people. sorry for my lousy english
@DanielSank : if it had been fresh question, I wouldn't have answered it. IMHO it starts off as a glorified refrigerator, then degenerates into some guy pushing some over-unity idea. Maybe it attracted a lot of attention because hyperlinks to it appeared on a couple of other websites?
@JohnDuffield What do you mean "if it had been a fresh question, I wouldn't have answered it"?
You didn't answer it.
@JohnDuffield Your language is rather disparaging. "glorified refrigerator" and "degenerates into..." are usually construed as indications of scorn toward the question in question and its author.
@DanielSank : I'm more inclined to answer a newer question than an older one. Especially if the question owner has flagged one answer as the best. As for disparaging, I was just telling you my thoughts as I read the question. It's cold inside my refrigerator, and warm round the back.
@JohnDuffield Surely you can see how someone unfamiliar with Johnson noise would be perplexed by the gedankenapparatus described in that question, yes?
Also, I'm now even more confused by your comment about the freshness of the question. You said > "If it had been a fresh question I wouldn't have answered it."
1) It was a fresh question. It's 17 hours old. 2) You did not answer it. 3) Your statement "...I wouldn't have answered it" suggests that you did in fact answer it, which you did not.
I'm really confused, but that's probably because it's hard to convey subjunctive and conditional statements over the internet.
@DanielSank : sorry, no, I don't see how anybody would be perplexed by the heat pump scenario. As for what I said about answering the question, you just missed some nuance, that's all. Like I wouldn't have felt motivated to try to answer it.
In this recent question (and following comments) the problem is identified that
"some in the community are bugged [or] annoyed by" the particular appearance or choice of display names of some users
Indeed, for any particular alphanumeric string there may some reason be found for it being im...
@JohnDuffield "sorry, no, I don't see how anybody would be perplexed by the heat pump scenario." Respectfully, then you've forgotten what it's like to not be an expert :-)
@Danu Yeah, I agree. I almost didn't put it there, but I thought I'd allow myself a rare "superfluousity" since I almost never do that on this site.
I moved the platitude to the end as a P.S.
@Danu It is important to note that even if you're right in the sense that we'd all be better off doing things your way, you can't expect to effect change if you put everyone off.
In order to get everyone to do something right, you have to first adjust your communication system such that information can be exchanged. In other words, you have to change first in order to help others change themselves.
Have a good joke? Share.
I know this is subjective, but the principle "should be of interest to mathematicians" trumps. (I hope.)
In my profile page, there is a section below "bio","visit","stats" named "private". This part contains 2 things:
Real name
My Email
For other users, I find that there is no such private when I view their profiles.
So mainly for privacy, I tried to erase my real name and also my email via "edi...
Can I generate electricity in complete vacuum without using any conventional sources?
Using Casimir theory, according to him, he kept two plates nanometers apart in a vacuum. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. But in this case curren...
In this recent question (and following comments) the problem is identified that
"some in the community are bugged [or] annoyed by" the particular appearance or choice of display names of some users
Indeed, for any particular alphanumeric string there may some reason be found for it being im...
