Supergrunch

Happy Pheeday.

Happy birthday! I would post a photo of a cat, but alas, I have none, so this will have to do:

It'd be so hilarious (for me) if I banned you right now.

Don't we kill everyone who we ban?

Wait, you mean people pay you to write journal articles? Clearly your field is very different to mine... Anyway, congrats on getting published!

Following up from this, I remember hearing that 75% of the world population have lactose intolerance. Those who aren't have a mutation allowing them to retain lactase into adulthood (I'm sure Shiekah knows this already, but it's kind of cool).

I think evolutionary/biological arguments do have some merit, although of course they have to be assessed with scepticism. But they're not clearly in favour of meat, and lead to a bit of a (moral) paradox - it's fairly widely accepted that it was Homo erectus's starting to eat meat that gave the Homo line sufficient protein to develop the brains we have now, suggesting we're as we are because of meat-eating. But then current research also shows that higher animals are far more cognitively similar to us than we previously thought, which arguably makes meat eating worse. (interesting consideration: could people in the future view meat-eaters in the same way we view slave-traders?) That aside, of course, we've reached a stage of civilisation where we can exist without meat for food (other applications aside), but it's still kind of controversial whether this is better or worse for you. I think the jury's still out on vegetarianism v.s. omnivery, but it's clear that if you do eat meat, you should restrict the amount you consume, especially if it's red meat. And I'm pretty sure that veganism (as opposed to vegetarianism) is fairly indefensible in terms of being healthier, as so many aspects of a balanced diet have to be cut out and replaced. And while (potentially meaty) supplements can go some of the way to redressing these problems, they're not absorbed nearly as efficiently when they're not in food, so it's still kind of problematic. That's not surprising, as going above your RDA (especially by 10 times) isn't always a good thing - e.g. for Vitamin A (in forms other that beta-carotene) and selenium. Not everything's like portions of fruit and vegetables, where it appears to be a case of the more the better (though still within reason).

I'd love to work for Google, but I don't know how likely that'll be... I'd need to get better at maths/coding first.

It's still perfectly logical to believe that there are a number of people who would be "perfect" for (practically) every person, and you've got to try and find one of them.

Actually, this is pretty awesome. I always thought Luigi's mansion was a bit underrated, and several mansions gets around the problems of the overly short original.

It's like that guy is your son/a younger you.

My graduation had no speeches, I just had to pull on someone's finger and bow.

It's just a load of terms that have agreed definitions - once you know what they mean, it isn't complex. Just like using made-up words or something.

I did a little for further maths A-level. My other maths training is in biomathematics and mathematical linguistics, the latter of which touches on group theory but doesn't go into much detail.

Ah, fair enough. I wish I could have done more maths... I half count as an applied mathematician, but too applied for anything too cool. I think chair just put that in for the lols, it's a Korean character (which might as well be in a set, as they can contain anything). Unless it has some mathematical meaning I don't know. On a different but funny note, lolthing in my supervisor's latest monograph: I'm not sure if he's trying to insult them or not.

Sorry, I keep writing R when I mean Z - replace R for Z in the previous post. I know about the Z/N thing, what I really mean is isn't the first assumption here unnecessary because the numbers involved are in Z/N anyway, and even if we're in something "bigger" like C, the behaviour will be defined for these numbers as it would be if we were just in Z/N?

Yeah sorry, my terminology is probably kind of wrong anyway. What I mean is so long as "x" and "+" are defined, then they'll be defined for N, right? So it doesn't matter if the system we're working in is larger than N, because the numbers are all in N (or R) anyway. Although of course the definitions of "x" and "+" do matter.

Yeah, but presumably the numbers in question are also in Z (or N), and however you define binary functions in other systems, you should want them to align with Z and N when only integers/natural numbers are involved... right? Or not right? (and what's H? should probably take this out of this thread...) Oh yeah, I guess so. That's cool.

What could it be other than Z? (I mean this non-rhetorically)

Graduations only seem important at the time, they're really rather meaningless. Then again, they are primarily for the parents/relatives, so it makes it a bit more pointless if your mum isn't going.

Like Mad Monkey says, custard powder is basically cornflour with flavourings, so the right kind of custard will behave in the same way. Ketchup won't, however - that becomes less viscous as pressure is applied, so putting it on a speaker will result in a pool of goo.

Just so we're clear: the first life (on Earth at least) was around 3.5 billion years ago. The Big Bang was 13.7 billion years ago. The Earth wasn't even formed until 4.5 billion years ago. So yes, I guess you could say there was no warring before life, but that's a fairly meaningless statement.

It's probably mostly just cornflour mixed with water, which has really crazy properties (becomes more solid if you apply pressure). I don't think anything ultrasonic is making it do that - it's just the normal vibration of the speaker, which you can hear as a low buzz.

The skittles advert is just black comedy, which always divides people. Personally I think it's sufficiently absurd to be funny, but I guess you could think otherwise. I'm partial to lightish black comedy, anyway - these are two of my favourite comics:

Feel free to PM me or whatever if you're trying to find something, I've lived there for four years now. Cambridge is pretty easy to get to grips with, it's basically just one big road with a few little offshoots.