Pete_the_Viscous

Actually it's right there in the postulates of special relativity: It's from these two (and lots of thought experiments) that the all rest of it springs up, not the other way round.

As soon as you notice you're not taking anything in, take a short break and do something else you feel like doing. There's no point staring at something hoping you'll remember it later. Do past papers and re-do homeworks. Especially useful if you have answers to them already. Typically, knowing the course isn't enough, as the questions always ask more of you than simply that -- and doing lots of questions is just... good. If the sorts of questions you'll be asked are such that you typically can't answer at least one, then having more than one person working on it is always a good thing, because typically one of you can. I wouldn't, you know, dismantle your computer, remove your TV and / or anything like that. I tend to take myself off to the library -- anywhere that isn't at home, and is significantly far a walk away that I end up thinking "well... I could stop now, but... then I'd have to walk for half an hour", and suddenly doing 5 mins more work doesn't seem like the worst choice.

Seriously, though -- why would they bother asking the English example in a university test at all? Anyway, from my experience of entrance exams for universities, that's not a hard question. And I didn't even apply for Maths. (Nor did I, aha, get in :) ). ... not that I've made an effort to actually do the Chinese one, or anything. It could be a trick question for all I know (or care); I'm just saying, if it's all legit, it's not exactly that bad.

Yeah... which university is that? That's a SATs question -- not even a GCSE one. I remember doing some diagnostic maths tests at university* and fair enough they were much easier than the rest of the work but they were all still harder than A-level questions. Besides which, pre-entry questions are meant to be thought provoking, and diagnostic tests are meant to show up areas where a student might have forgotten something vital for their course. On top of that, the question at the top is only an (nasty) A-level question anyway. *recently; what I say is up-to-date, and not the views of someone who remembers the school system "in the good old days".

(This was in response to "What instrument do you play").

Ooohh, probably about 6/10 here. I'm at university studying maths and physics, which is all very nice and interesting and all that. I'm very happy with the place, the people and the subject matter. My plan is to switch to plain maths, however (I'm just more interested in it than the physics). This is where things begin to go awry. My director of studies (the guy who handles the administrative side of my courses) told me that I could switch to maths at the end of this year... which turns out not to be quite true. See, because I did direct entry into the second year (because it's a Scottish university and I'm English) I had to take a catch-up maths course for the physics side of things so that everything would make sense. As it happens, that limited the number of courses I could take... though he didn't notice this, I think. I wasn't aware of it myself at the time. Anyway, to cut what would be quite a long story short, unbeknownst to both of us I didn't do 1 out of the 4 maths courses required for the third year of maths. Wonderful. So now I have to retake the second year. It's not so bad... it's not as if I'm losing any time, really: it'll just be as if I didn't do direct entry (though confusingly did two different second years instead of a first). I'm hoping something good can come of this. I mean, with any luck they'll let me take something interesting in the meantime -- after all, if they don't I'll have one two-and-a-half hour per week course... which only runs in the second term. So yeah -- I imagine they will. (They'd better!) Another concern is that all my (course) friends are in the (current) second year. Not that I got to socialize a whole lot during the lectures and so on, but I did have a lot of spare time that coincided with theirs... But then, I suppose I can make a few new friends, too. Anyway, now the people I'm going to be living with next year are going to finish university a year earlier than me, and (at some point) I'm going to have to find new people to live with, which will be a hassle. ...and the worst thing is that I still have to do all the admin stuff to sort all this out. So while I'm generally enjoying my time there, this is a bit of a pain. So much determined by one small mistake.

Mummy says it's because they're envious.

Floss regularly! Floss meaningfully! Floss athletically! And above all, never forget: who is the Boss of you? Me! I am the Boss of you!

Yeah. Weeiirrrd. ...Though not quite as weird as it will be when the people born in years 2000+ are properly self-aware (doesn't happen until one's about 18, I'd say).

I thought Nineteen Eighty-Four was very interesting. Some of it was funny, but on the whole I didn't enjoy reading it, what with it being so sad. My advice to people would be to read it, if only to properly understand what people are talking about when they reference it; just don't expect to necessarily enjoy reading it.

Why would the Iranians take them captive? Because they were mistaken about their position. That would also explain why they released them - when they realised their mistake and they wanted to stop it becoming more embarrassing. So when a British Naval ship is in waters that might be Iranian but also might not be - their first instinct is to kidnap them, strip off their clothes, and isolate them? That's mistaken as in "incorrect", rather than mistaken as in "unsure".

I have, multiple times. They all admitted to it straight away.

I think santor is probably right about that. Anyway, the level of maths that people have previously asked about for help with homework suggests that there are plenty of people for whom this would be a good thing.

Kissing is like any other social action; animals have lots of parallels like rubbing noses, grooming, mating dances and so on.

I don't see why that would be true.

Exactly. What you need is a big pane of glass! Then, on top of their mistakenly running into something, there's bits of glass everywhere too.

Those are all rhyming epithets. I don't actually know a word for that sort of thing in general -- I'm not entirely sure there is one. They do rhyme, and they have assonance, but these are not names for the things themselves.

Actually, 23 is a pretty good number...

Suppose n is your given positive whole number. You could either write "3/3 + 3/3 + 3/3" n times, or if you had to use both 3 and 4, "(3+4)/(3+4) + (3+4)/(3+4) ...". I don't offhand think there's anything particularly special about 3 and 4 in that sense. On the other hand, any natural number greater than 1 can be written as a unique product of one or more prime numbers (the fundamental theorem of arithmetic)-- this is where finding a number's prime factors comes in.

In which case of course it won't matter that you won't see them, as they're obviously bad people anyway.

White rabbits! Bah --- I've not seen them in years.

Definitely do NOT kill all the non believers. Really don't do it. I don't want you to kill all non believers. It would seem more sensible to me to simply not mention it if it weren't intended in that way. Regardless, that it might have been written otherwise, but changed since implies that the whole body of the text is suspect.

I'd probably pay for someone to teach me privately on top of ... whatever it is I do now. I don't need a better computer at the moment, or many new books, or anything like that (those are the things I used to think I'd get). I might buy some guitars... Actually, I might get some lessons, too.

Yes, though living away from home has stopped me doing so for a while (too apathetic to look for local centres). It's never done me any harm -- or hurt, for that matter. Once, when completing the form to check whether I'm eligible to donate, I got a bit previous, and just ticked "no" on all the answers, knowing that nothing had changed since the last time I gave. ...however, I didn't realize that one of the questions started "to be filled in by women donors only". I got a bit of a funny look from the guy who checked over the form, and he had to get someone to come and write something on it, then I had to initial it and date it. That was rather embarrassing. Other than that, though, I've had no negative experiences giving blood. In fact, it's great: they're all really kind when I go, and they almost FORCE me to eat biscuits and drink tea.

I miss my ignorance. I'm not saying I'm particularly smart or knowledgeable, but there are some things that are simply less enjoyable once the illusion is gone. I wouldn't go back to not knowing things, but I do miss it somewhat.