John Cuthber

Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_timing#Setting_the_ignition_timing By all means deprecate it as a description of people, but don't ban the word.

Generally a function like "length of the day" changes most slowly at maxima and minima. In this case that means the solstices. A hand-waving "it seems reasonable" argument indicates that the function changes most quickly when it's as far from the maxima and minima as possible. And for this function, that idea suggests that the equinoxes are where the day length changes most quickly. A slightly more sophisticated argument looking at sine waves + such confirms this.

LOL

This rather misses the point. There are lots of rude things you can call me, without upsetting another group of people with whom you have no disagreement. Why choose the one that upsets them? I accept it's not obvious why one word troubles them, but another doesn't. I have given my guess as to why it might be. (The use of a quasi medical term is "too close for comfort").

I'm not sure you need to have logic. If people find it insulting, don't do it. TBH, I'd possibly use some deliberately insulting term to question your intellectual capacity. I'd like to think I know better than that but...

You have a good point. Why is it (more or less) OK to call people an idiot, but not retarded? I think the reason might be that "retarded" still has connotations of being a technical (or euphemistic) term and therefore more likely to be associated with those unfortunate enough to have genuine medical problems. Everybody gets called a fool, twit, idiot or moron from time to time- unless they actually are. "Retarded" until recently was a quasi medical term used politely by schools, lawyers and doctors. It stopped being acceptable in that context when it became a slang term. How long will it be before "intellectually disabled" comes to be regarded as outdated and insulting? It's a long standing problem- the acceptable nomenclature evolves quite rapidly. When I was at school there was a department set up specially for pupils who didn't learn as fast as their contemporaries. The official term was the "educationally subnormal teaching unit" it was (universally) referred to as "the Unit". Kids who studied there were taunted by other kids walking behind the chanting "unit unit". (aren't we a delightful species) I was told a story by one of the teachers there. On some occasion some bunch of visitors- I guess they were inspectors- were looking for that bit of the school and they asked some of the pupils for directions. They started with " Can you tell me where the special needs children are taught?" This was greeted with blank expressions. They tried "Where do they teach the educationally subnormal kids" . Again- no recognition from the kids they asked. They tried a few more euphemisms with the same lack of response. Finally they realised what the problem was and asked "Where do they teach the divvies". They got the directions they needed. The problem was that the "official" euphemisms had changed since the school was built (and the signposts and labels produced), so none of the kids they asked recognised the "nice ways of putting it", but they knew the slang term just fine.

I'm just wondering about the suggestion that Americans don't understand irony. The fact is that none of the posters here are idiots in the technical sense, but most of us are (from time to time) in the colloquial sense. iNow's use of the word was deliberately (a bit ) offensive to people who can't be truly offended by the description- because it's plainly not true. However people use the word "retarded" as both an insult and a euphemism. 20 years ago that was legitimate, but the language has changed (as it always does) and now it is linguistically correct* to use "retarded" as an insult, but not correct to use it as a genuine description of an individual. It's a bit like calling someone a w*nker- it doesn't mean what it actually means. Most people understand the intention- that it's an insult- even though, in most cases, it's a technically perfectly accurate descriptor. The issue of "calling people names" gets even more stupid when absurd when people use the word "bastard" as an insult. Either you are, or you aren't- and if you are, it's your parent's responsibility, and nothing to do with you. * that doesn't mean it's OK to do it.

That question was this, and as far as I can see we have several answers. I particularly like the one about "if 0.9999... isn't 1 then what's the number in between them?" idea. (Thanks Bignose) It has the interesting merit of needing even less mathematical "work" than the proof I put forward. The "rebuttal" of that proof seemed to rest on the problems of "infinite numbers", but whether 0.999... and 1 are the same or not, they are clearly between 0 and 2 and thus obviously finite. If you introduce the (slightly odd) concept of "the smallest number that isn't zero" and call it h, that doesn't really help. The number half way between 0.999... and 1 is 1-(h/2). But that's a contradiction because h/2 is smaller than "the smallest number" because dividing a number by two makes it smaller- unless the number is zero- and h isn't zero by definition.

You need to distinguish between mass and weight. On the moon, you weigh less, but your mass is the same.

As a medical term, strictly speaking, Cretin meant someone who suffered from congenital hypothyroidism. They had other symptoms alongside learning difficulties. The word is derived from "Christianus". The other words have also been used to describe particular degrees of impairment.

The monkey would run out of paper.

Vanadium pentoxide is red and not very soluble in water.

OK; why is division by zero forbidden? The usual answer is that if you try to allow it, you get inconsistencies. We all know this sort of thing... x=2/0 thus 0 times x =2 thus 2 = zero. OK, by the same argument " 1/(10)^Infinity" is forbidden because, as you point out, trying to do ordinary arithmetic with infinities gives silly results

Probably. Try it and find out.

I think that's one of the dumbest ideas I have heard in ages.

But the point is that the string of nines is definitively infinite- so one digit fewer is still infinite and the subtraction works just fine.

What I don't understand is why everyone thinks it's somehow complicated, or controversial.

Multiply 0.9999... by 10 Subtract 0.999999... to get 9 but 10X -X =9X so 9 times 0.999999.... is 9 so 0.999........ =1 I hope you are now happy that you can prove it with elementary school maths.

How else?

It will work for some things, but not others. Here's the interesting question: how do you know if it worked?

For special purposes (In aviation) the range also includes about 400 Hz

It doesn't seem that way. The mass killers always seem to have hatfulls of guns.

It's nice that you will come back. It's nicer to know that you are going to the doctor.

Yes, and when people use the word "evolution" in this context it's the evolution of life. You don't start life by evolving life.

Because they are different. For example, evolution is still clearly happening today- antibiotic resistance, dog breeding and so on prove this. It's not clear that abiogenesis is still going on (it might be, but there's no evidence).