Supergrunch

Yeah, the job thing is more to stop people from getting one and going crazy through lack of time or something. Cambridge have a rule that nobody should be unable to study there for financial reasons, and there are various bursaries etc. to deal with this. But it might be difficult to get hold of one if your parents are loaded - I'd guess you'd have to prove how mean they are...

Well being at Oxford is pretty much like being at Cambridge (only it's 200 years older and in an actual city rather than a town masquerading as one), and yeah, the whole rich/posh thing is mostly a misconception - ability at your subject is what matters, rather than other arbitrary factors. Sure, you get a few absurdly posh people, but they tend to hang around together and are usually nice enough, and when not, easily avoidable. And my day was a bit nothingy. I'm trying to get an essay done on Old Japanese, but it's like trying to pin down an octupus.

Happy birthday!

Wow, that's pretty crazy, and much as it's extremely unpleasant to play loud music the whole time (I had fun last year living under a guy who played the same song at 3am every night), I'm not sure that's the appropriate punishment. Surely it's only the case at some universities?

Clearly, as Ashley says, it should be pronounced like apostrophe.

Hmm, I guess so, although you don't need to be an evolutionist to understand evolution. Plus ultimately everything works based on faith - you have to have faith in your bank having sufficient money for you to take some out, faith that you're not living in a Truman show scenario, and faith (by flawed induction) that the sun will continue to rise every morning. Compared to this, faith in scientists correctly reporting data isn't really that significant, especially once you realise that unlike with creationists, there's no apparent ulterior motive involved. However, scientists should make clear the differences between "proven" theories such as evolution and unproven hypotheses like various ideas in generative grammar, which isn't always done because scientists of the latter group are trying to push their pet theory.

Really no. Faith is a necessary part of scientific inquiry, but only when you need to chose among unproven alternative theories. As a proven theory, you don't need faith for evolution - it's an accurate model, in so much as that can be the case for any model. And personally, I think it has very little to do with the existence of God aside from the fact it disproves a literal interpretation of the Genesis myth, and similar literal interpretations of other creation myths. Evolution does not deal with the origin of life; this is termed abiogenesis and pretty much dealt with separately, but also, in my opinion, shouldn't have much bearing on religious belief. Furthermore, it's entirely possible for there to be a God without there being a creator. Disclaimer: I'm an agnostic with atheistic tendencies.

Yep, it was quite cool to wander around otherwise, especially the old bit of the city. Not quite as chocolate-shoppy as I'd been led to believe however. Cards plus 240 Swiss Francs, stolen right after I got there. Should be able to get it back on insurance though. Thankfully I was with my girlfirend who was kind enough to lend me some money - if I'd been there on my own I'd have been totally stuck.

So I had a fairly unlucky holiday to Geneva. I was only there for a day and a half, and managed to get my wallet stolen, then got food poisoning which kicked in just in time for the journey home...

For only £10.49. I'm happy now, though I have no time to play it.

Happy birthdayness.

The latter is good but only about 5 minutes long if I recall correctly.

Lol, I wonder whether you can explain how the emphasis is syntactic(al). (I'd say it's prosodic ) Anyway, this thread should remain locked. Infraction issued to King_V for generally being insulting, even if half-jokingly. I suggest Stoicism as an alternative to anger.

Bah humbug. Or... Merry Christmas!

Happy birthday chaps!

It's just a different dialectal form of the verb borrow which has a wider range of uses than its equivalent in standard English, but people tend to get annoyed if you use it. (more techically, it is a different lexical item and so does have different argument structure and syntax, but syntax can't really be "bad" if you're a native speaker, though use of written conventions can be) Anyway, as I've said previously on irc, I pretty much met my girlfriend playing hide and seek.

I'd say concentrate on tones, grammar and hanzi, and the rest should hopefully follow.

Walk It starts with a crunch. My feet collide with gravel and my journey has begun step by step I tumble into a once forgotten world. The ice pours in and with an endless effort it tries to seep below my skin but I'm prepared for that. I check my armour pulling it close around my skull it keeps them out and so I can go on. And by now I'm far away the mists surround me and the cars go on their noisy way screaming past me with an anger that I know is not for me. Outside draws in and I grow cold continuing forwards I still check the load upon my back. It would not do for me to lose the message to my blacksmith. Though tiredness rides upon my face my progress doesn't falter a pendulum along the road driven by somehow unclear traces of contentment. But now my telos nears and I am glad for I can last no more the sensation in my fingertips seems somehow anticipatory but for what?

They didn't change it for the film - I think (no source sadly) the director stated this, and it explains the

Skies of Arcadia 2, but it's not going to happen.

This may be a delayed response, but absolutely no, Cheeky V sounds horrible. I only tend to mix vodka with stuff really, and whisky and coke is an abomination. And yeah, its quality varies greatly - it's a pity Bell's is no good, as it's cheap and everywhere. Hmm, had a walk to the post office today, and got some chips, so fun times. I'm currently pouring most of my energy into an discussion about Japanese theoretical phonology on the xkcd forums.

Yeah, and I even get annoyed by simple things like "move it to the other side of the equation and the sign changes." Sure, it's descriptively accurate, but it's just confusing and doesn't give people any sensical foundations to build on.

Without the actual question and/or example, that's totally meaningless to anyone, but it doesn't seem to make much sense as it stands. If you post the question I might be able to help out though. Edit: Having googled for the quote you gave, it seems you're following this (or something very similar), with page 7 being the relevant bit. If this is the case, then you've misterpreted what they mean - "bottom number" refers not to part of a fraction but to the lowest number in the inverted pyramid. For instance, the example they give is formed from y = 3x^2 - 2x + 5. You substitute in x = 0, 1, 2, put these in the top row and write the differences below, giving (ignore the colours for now, they're there so I can refer to the numbers in a bit): 5_6_13 _1_7 __6 This allows you to work out the coefficients, which is useful when you have the y values but not the equation, such as when you're trying to find the (quadratic) equation underlying a pattern. The x^2 coefficient is the bottom number (6, in blue above) halved (i.e. 3), the x coefficient is the bottom number (the blue one again) divided by two (giving you 3) and subtracted from the first number of the middle row (1, in red above), i.e. 1 - 3 which is -2. And the constant is just the first number in the top row (in green above), which is 5. Hope that helps - if not or I'm addressing the wrong problem entirely try elaborating on yours. Edit 2: I think this problem is perhaps really a language one. In colloquial English, we sometimes say "taking away" instead of "subtracting" - for instance, "5 take away 3 is 2," meaning "5 - 3 = 2." This gets further shortened to "take," e.g. "take a from b" means "b - a." Hence "taking half the bottom number from the first number of the middle row" means "((bottom number)/2) - (first number of the middle row)," with "bottom number" referring to the number in the lowest row. It is a slightly confusing way of phrasing things - I didn't interpret it correctly out of context. This is all the more reason for the use of formal notation as opposed to natural language. Final (unimportant) aside: It annoys me how these things get taught to people as a kind of process they have to follow without knowing why it works, which is what the book I linked to seems to be doing. Maths is what it is because it make sense, and therefore any maths done should make sense to the people doing it.

I think this classes as how your day was. :wink: