DrKrettin

In the previous post, it was shown that because of the first condition, the angle at the top must be less than 90 degrees. This rules out triangle 2

Fine, but I meant political intervention, not just humanitarian aid, and not wishing to belittle that. Is the USA humanitarian aid budget significantly higher than that of other countries, pro capita?

OK, going off-topic, but it is obvious to me that SA takes this action to achieve some kind of top authority in Africa. Any way, as for America, can you think of a single foreign involvement of theirs which is not initiated because of American interests? Something purely altruistic?

There must be a special branch of maths - Squashiness Theory. Although I managed to fit 15 into the bowl, some kind of squashiness was involved, but no brute force.

... but only in Holland. That's a miracle in itself.

But SA would not have done that if it had not been in SA's interest to have peace in neighbouring states.

Just give me one example of one country intervening in the affairs of other countries where their own interest is not the driving force.

I would have assumed that the dissolution is proportional to the surface area and not very related to drag forces.

...icle

Animal behaviour is the product of a long period of evolution, not the act of an animal working something out scientifically.

Wow - a wife with an "OFF" button. Dream on.

That rather depends on their view of history. I can imagine it: "Hey, guys, these morons went extinct, so let's not make the same mistake, and let's ignore Newton's Laws...."

I suppose it depends to some extent on why our species dies out. Assuming it is innate stupidity such as a nuclear war, rather than the planet becoming totally and irreversibly uninhabitable, there is no reason to see why another species can't be just as capable of science. They would have a head start if they could work out how to read all the knowledge we have recorded somewhere - archaeology would be even more interesting than it is today.

So please explain with maths - some of us might be able to deal with it.

I stress that I was only following orders, and if there is one thing I've learned in life, that is that you don't question the cook on Christmas Day morning, especially when she's holding a rather large knife. In fact, these things come roasted together with the turkey, and are delicious, adding flavour to the turkey meat which can be a bit bland. Anyway, I fitted 15 into the bowl, which led to disapproval because it meant that it was impossible to divide them equally. But I survived. (Edit: Well, I could have shot one guest or invited another, giving us 5 or 3 each, but that seems a little drastic.) You are quite right, I've just been informed that they are devils on horseback. There is just one left out of the 15 - that's all I'll need today.

Have you ever noticed that real-life situations rarely conform to maths learned at school and university? So here I am, Christmas morning, and instructed to do something useful. So I get the task of rolling lengths of bacon round dates, each one forming a cylinder length 4 cm and diameter 2.5 cms. I am told to put them all into a baking dish which is elliptical, a=10cm, b=6cm (half-major axes) and get as many as possible in, on their sides. So the mathematical task is to fit rectangles 4 x 2.5 into that ellipse, and get the maximum number in. There of course is the inevitable "discussion" that a different way of arranging them would fit more in, but I claim there is no analytical way of doing it. Any idea what the maximum number is?

Can you explain what on Earth the thread title means?

I don't want to understand it, because I already understand it.

I think the fastest birds are the dead ones fired by a pneumatic cannon to test aircraft engines, but your argument still holds.

I give up here - what does the verb "to bumb" mean?

I think it very appropriate that somebody with the username Janus takes part in this thread.

Surely the probability of landing on an edge is in fact 1 because it can't spin and fall and land on a face. When that edge hits the floor, the coin falls over onto a face. Probably.

My view is that it's not worth it. In a party situation, there are about 20 people you don't want to kiss to every one that you would like to kiss. On balance, it's better to avoid it altogether.

Sounds like a good idea.

I have no idea. But the suggestion was that because the puzzle was not in the chess section, I should have known that it was not just a straight chess problem. That sort of suggests that there is a chess section.