DrKrettin

Poets have been remarkably quiet about cheese. Why is that?

I confess to not thinking clearly, anyway. The key is in the approach. If you assume the blind prisoner C is wearing a red hat, then if A says he doesn't know it is because B must be wearing a black hat. When B says he doesn't know, it creates a logical inconsistency because he must know. So the blind prisoner can't be wearing a red hat. Except that he could be, and prisoner A or B or both are not particularly intelligent, or one or both are colourblind and see red as black. I can't actually see where my original logic falls down, so I find it quite interesting.

I don't understand the spoiler - even if that were the case, there are the others I listed above which were possible

I'm obviously missing something - I don't see how he could possibly know. If we call the prisoners A,B and C and the hats R and B, then the possible combinations are A-B-C 1) B,B,B 2) B,R,R 3) B,R,B 4) B,B,R 5) R,B,B 6) R,B,R 7) R,R,B The eight variation R,R,R is impossible because there are only 2 red hats. If A says don't know, it excludes 2), and if B says don't know, it excludes 6), but it still leaves 1),3),4),5) and 7). Four of these has him with a black hat, but the fifth with a red one. Given that there are more black than red, the probability of 4) being the case is quite small so perhaps C is taking a fairly safe bet.

A guy and a girl meet at a bar. They get along so well that they decide to go to the girl’s place. A few drinks later, the guy takes off his shirt and then washes his hands. He then takes off his trousers and again washes his hands. The girl has been watching him and says: "You must be a dentist." "Yes .... How did you figure that out?" "Easy.." she replies, "you keep washing your hands." One thing leads to another and they make love. After it's over the girl says: "You must be a good dentist." The guy, now with an inflated ego, says: "Sure - I'm a good dentist. How did you figure that out?" The girl replies:.... "Didn't feel a thing."

Why do you think it ridiculous? That is exactly what Wiles did. It took him about 4 years, so why not try it yourself?

That had me fooled for a while - I thought I had to learn a new word.

Is that generally true? I live on a small island surrounded by the Atlantic ocean, very near the Tropic of Cancer. The humidity is constantly extremely low, except for when it rains, which is hardly ever.

Nice theory, but there is an alternative one, that "goat" was a prison slang for "anger".

Well, others would say that you are the deformity. It depends on the point of view.

You lucky sod

Recently, in a group of friends where there was a couple of gay guys, I was amazed to see one of them make a discrete pass at another friend, who is presumably heterosexual because he was there with his wife (and was also very suprised and unresponsive). After the event, I asked the gay friend what was going on, and his reply astonished me: his view is that homosexuality is totally normal, and that heterosexuality was a kind of deviant. Basically, every male is fundamentally homosexual (according to him), so that he considered any male as a potential partner even when they were displaying overtly heterosexual behaviour. (He also suggested that gays were more promiscuous, and that it was quite normal for him to have a fling and his partner did not mind at all, but that is a different issue). He also claimed that this was the view of a lot of his gay friends. As a heterosexual male totally unaware of any homosexual urges, this was totally new to me and rather difficult to digest. But I mention it here because it illustrates the point that normality is something very subjective.

I imagine that you are pulling an object along a horizontal surface with a spring balance which is showing some kind of measurement. That has to be the frictional force. As to the direction of that force, it has to be acting along the line of force of whatever is pulling the object, but acting in the opposite direction. If the frictional force were not acting along that line, then the object would start moving in a different direction to compensate. Perhaps we need a physics teacher here with the experience of explaining this in a clear manner.

Without wishing to devalue the previous post, I give the same answers in a different form: 1) Hooke's Law for a spring says that the extension or compression of the spring is proportional to the force applied. So the linear movement of the spring is a direct measurement of the force, once it is calibrated. 2) If a body is not experiencing an acceleration, then the forces on the body are in equilibrium. That means that you can resolve all the forces in any direction and the sum must be zero. If they are non-zero, then there is an acceleration in that direction. It follows then that the frictional force must be equal to and in the opposite direction to the movement. If it were in any other direction, the sum total of the forces would not be zero.

Today I learned that a tyrannosaurus rex called Sue (although I doubt that was her name whilst alive) probably suffered from gout.

I read recently that a fly's reaction to being swotted is not actually a brain reaction in the first instance, but hard-wired somewhere else. Equally, a cockroaches reaction to when you switch a light on is hard-wired, not a brain decision. I suppose with a cat it is not the case, but with a smaller brain you might expect the reactions to be faster.

Interesting - that explains why they don't appreciate our music - it must all sound like a terrible dirge.

I've known enough vegans for several lifetimes. Certainly not all are like the ones I knew. Living in beautiful farmland surroundings which is mostly permanent pasture, living on state benefits and getting vitamin B12 on free prescriptions, criticising others for not being vegan, just too stupid to realise the hypocrisy.

It's not this, but I think the OP would strongly approve of When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.

The attached file has been drained into a black hole

Oddly, it just happened to be the one speech which we had to memorize (other than the obligatory "quality of mercy"). It would be even more difficult to recite on topic.... 6455, 46766, 3455, ......

Um - that's what I was referring to.

*cough* I just wanted to be included in the thread.

Today I learned that male cockatoos try to impress females by using tools to make Phil Collins-style drum solos (link to Grauniad article) Today I also learned that using a two-word name as an adjective leads to insoluble hyphen problems. Today I also learned who Phil Collins is. He's a drummer who imitates cockatoos.

Cicero's forensic speeches are indeed called thus with the meaning you state. The word was originally an adjective "pertaining to the forum" so its meaning had already moved on from that. Then it was purloined by modern science to take on the meaning which most people would recognise.