qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
29,925 | Given [how easy it is to register to vote](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/29879/is-anything-preventing-non-us-citizens-from-registering-to-vote-in-non-voter-id) in the US as a non-US citizen, it seems plausible that a non-zero number of such persons are on the electoral rolls in the US. There [are statistics](https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth) which show a very low number of reported voter fraud cases, but at the same time such statistics are useless unless the voting officials are focused on catching immigrants voting illegally. This therefore raises the following question...
Did any US state ever conduct a wide scale attempt to verify what percentage of voters on its electoral rolls are actually US citizens? I know that [there isn't a comprehensive database](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/29893/does-the-us-have-a-central-database-listing-every-us-citizen) of every US citizen available anywhere, but at the same time it should be possible to verify if a given voter is an American citizen given enough effort. | 2018/03/27 | [
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/29925",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/users/7434/"
] | See [Nation Council of State Legislatures](http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-list-accuracy.aspx), almost all states take efforts to purge voter registration rolls of ineligible persons, including those persons who are ineligible because of citizenship.
The reason for NOT expending effort tp "conduct a wide scale attempt" by targeting the subset of non-citizens is that it has been determined time and again that the number of non-citizens that attempt to vote is exceedingly low (but admittedly greater than zero).
BTW, voting officials are **always** on the lookout for people attempting to vote illegally, not just non-citizens. | [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ki7wx.png)
There is good information on the foreign born population of every county in the United States (and for that matter, every census tract), which is broken down by age as well.
There is good information on the number of persons naturalized in each state going back more or less indefinitely, which when compared to the number of foreign born people in each state can be used to determine the percentage of foreign born adults in each state who are not U.S. citizens, and extrapolated to the county level foreign born statistics to get a good approximation of the number of adult non-citizens in each county in the U.S. [Just under half](http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2017/08/who_are_the_13_percent_of_us_r.html) of foreign born persons are naturalized U.S. citizens. About 7% of the U.S. population consists of foreign born non-citizens, while 6% of the U.S. population consists of naturalized citizens of the United States.
As the map indicates, for the vast majority of counties in the United States, the foreign born population is very low. [Only one in twenty of non-citizens in the U.S.](http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2017/08/who_are_the_13_percent_of_us_r.html) live outside major metropolitan areas, while one in six native born citizens do.
And, one can use survey data and more isolated efforts to determine these figures to estimate a credible percentage of non-citizens who are registered to vote or do vote.
"As of 2015, the five counties with the largest foreign-born populations (Los Angeles County, Calif.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Cook County, Ill.; Harris County, Texas and Queens County, N.Y) account for 19% of the national immigrant population in the U.S." [Source](http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/05/03/facts-on-u-s-immigrants-county-maps/) (citizen and non-citizen alike). Outside greater DC, greater NYC, Detroit, Florida, Texas, Nevada and the Pacific States, and a few other states in the Southwest, the maximum number of non-citizen voters even if an absurdly high (relative to reality) 5% adult non-citizens were voters, is negligible.
Also, since most of the concern about non-citizen voters is ultimately driven by the concern of conservatives that non-citizen voters will flip elections for Democrats, it is worth noting that most counties with lots of non-citizen adults are also overwhelmingly Democratic by margins that far exceed the highest imaginable percentage of non-citizen voters in any reality based analysis, and another significant percentage of those counties are very safe Republican leaning counties, where again, non-citizen voters wouldn't make a difference in outcomes.
The number of counties where non-citizen voting could conceivably make a difference so as to justify a comprehensive study of the type suggested in the original post, is very small, and predominantly limited to Florida. So, part of the reason that such studies are rare is because the justification for them is so weak. |
9,062,209 | My question is why does python use both reference counting and mark-and-sweep for gc? Why not only mark-and-sweep?
My initial guess is that using reference counting can easily remove non-cyclic referenced objects, this may somewhat speed up mark-and-sweep and gain memory immediately. Don't know if my guess is right?
Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot. | 2012/01/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/9062209",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/383482/"
] | Python (the language) doesn't say which form of garbage collection it uses. The main implementation (often known as CPython) acts as you describe. Other versions such as Jython or IronPython use a purely garbage collected system.
Yes, there is a benefit of earlier collection with reference counting, but the main reason CPython uses it is historical. Originally there was no garbage collection for cyclic objects so cycles led to memory leaks. The C APIs and data structures are based heavily around the principle of reference counting. When real garbage collection was added it wasn't an option to break the existing binary APIs and all the libraries that depended on them so the reference counting had to remain. | **Reference counting deallocates objects sooner than garbage collection.**
But as reference counting can't handle reference cycles between unreachable objects, Python uses a garbage collector (really just a cycle collector) to collect those cycles when they exist. |
9,062,209 | My question is why does python use both reference counting and mark-and-sweep for gc? Why not only mark-and-sweep?
My initial guess is that using reference counting can easily remove non-cyclic referenced objects, this may somewhat speed up mark-and-sweep and gain memory immediately. Don't know if my guess is right?
Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot. | 2012/01/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/9062209",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/383482/"
] | **Reference counting deallocates objects sooner than garbage collection.**
But as reference counting can't handle reference cycles between unreachable objects, Python uses a garbage collector (really just a cycle collector) to collect those cycles when they exist. | >
> My initial guess is that using reference counting can easily remove non-cyclic referenced objects, this may somewhat speed up mark-and-sweep and gain memory immediately. Don't know if my guess is right?
>
>
>
Yes. As soon as the refcount goes to zero and object can be removed. This won't happen in a cyclic referenced object. AFAIK, mark and sweep is a costly operation and the simplest way to implement it requires you to "stop the world" while objects are marked. When all of the objects are traversed, andy object not marked (as reachable) is released. |
9,062,209 | My question is why does python use both reference counting and mark-and-sweep for gc? Why not only mark-and-sweep?
My initial guess is that using reference counting can easily remove non-cyclic referenced objects, this may somewhat speed up mark-and-sweep and gain memory immediately. Don't know if my guess is right?
Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot. | 2012/01/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/9062209",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/383482/"
] | Python (the language) doesn't say which form of garbage collection it uses. The main implementation (often known as CPython) acts as you describe. Other versions such as Jython or IronPython use a purely garbage collected system.
Yes, there is a benefit of earlier collection with reference counting, but the main reason CPython uses it is historical. Originally there was no garbage collection for cyclic objects so cycles led to memory leaks. The C APIs and data structures are based heavily around the principle of reference counting. When real garbage collection was added it wasn't an option to break the existing binary APIs and all the libraries that depended on them so the reference counting had to remain. | >
> My initial guess is that using reference counting can easily remove non-cyclic referenced objects, this may somewhat speed up mark-and-sweep and gain memory immediately. Don't know if my guess is right?
>
>
>
Yes. As soon as the refcount goes to zero and object can be removed. This won't happen in a cyclic referenced object. AFAIK, mark and sweep is a costly operation and the simplest way to implement it requires you to "stop the world" while objects are marked. When all of the objects are traversed, andy object not marked (as reachable) is released. |
214,687 | This is the first in what I plan to be a series of questions on how cats with a human level intelligence would be able to work things out.
I was inspired by an artist called [Neytirix](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix) and the [world](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix/art/Passing-through-834355010) she drew for her cat, so I decided that I want to make a world of my own for my cats. In her drawings the cats carry tools, weapons, and storage much like a human or their pack animal would. I think the cats in my world would also use these items, but it would make more sense if the cats had tools and weapons tailored to their bodies and not as if a human put them on a cat. Nothing about their anatomy will be different then a normal domestic cat, but they will have human level intelligence.
I plan to ask more questions to get some ideas of how there tools and weapons could look, but for now I'll start with how they could carry supplies on them. They should be able to put on whatever they would use without necessarily having help.
If anything needs to be clarified please tell me and I will make changes as needed. Thanks! | 2021/10/03 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/214687",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/86570/"
] | While cats are certainly individuals. as a general observation from having owned five cats as pets, they don’t like wearing things, especially tight things.
Harnesses can restrict a cat's movement, they can get their claws caught in them and the experience of putting them on can cause them distress.
I imagine cats might carry handbags that they can quickly drop or leave for later return in case their whims at any given moment carry them elsewhere from needing the bag or its contents at that given point in time. | **One thing at a time.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGpmP.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUA03xCO2eo>
This cat carries a sock. So too most cats in your world: a sock. Some of them might sometimes carry a pipe cleaner, or a raw piece of sphagetti, or Barbie's pants. Occasionally the most boss cats carry dead chipmunks and they will assert they killed the chipmunks even though the chipmunks are usually dried up and sometimes flattened by cars. Best not to argue.
But cats carry only one thing at a time, because they are cats, and they only have one mouth. |
214,687 | This is the first in what I plan to be a series of questions on how cats with a human level intelligence would be able to work things out.
I was inspired by an artist called [Neytirix](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix) and the [world](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix/art/Passing-through-834355010) she drew for her cat, so I decided that I want to make a world of my own for my cats. In her drawings the cats carry tools, weapons, and storage much like a human or their pack animal would. I think the cats in my world would also use these items, but it would make more sense if the cats had tools and weapons tailored to their bodies and not as if a human put them on a cat. Nothing about their anatomy will be different then a normal domestic cat, but they will have human level intelligence.
I plan to ask more questions to get some ideas of how there tools and weapons could look, but for now I'll start with how they could carry supplies on them. They should be able to put on whatever they would use without necessarily having help.
If anything needs to be clarified please tell me and I will make changes as needed. Thanks! | 2021/10/03 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/214687",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/86570/"
] | With no changes in their anatomy, cats can mostly use their mouth to handles something: either by holding and lifting it, if not to big, or by pulling it on the ground.
In other words, the first way would resemble how they carry their kittens or small preys like mice and birds. The second way would resemble how they move bigger catches, like rabbits.
The remaining way is by means of their paws, like they do when they are playing with something, kicking it around, or trying to open a door, by pushing it to the side. | While cats are certainly individuals. as a general observation from having owned five cats as pets, they don’t like wearing things, especially tight things.
Harnesses can restrict a cat's movement, they can get their claws caught in them and the experience of putting them on can cause them distress.
I imagine cats might carry handbags that they can quickly drop or leave for later return in case their whims at any given moment carry them elsewhere from needing the bag or its contents at that given point in time. |
214,687 | This is the first in what I plan to be a series of questions on how cats with a human level intelligence would be able to work things out.
I was inspired by an artist called [Neytirix](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix) and the [world](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix/art/Passing-through-834355010) she drew for her cat, so I decided that I want to make a world of my own for my cats. In her drawings the cats carry tools, weapons, and storage much like a human or their pack animal would. I think the cats in my world would also use these items, but it would make more sense if the cats had tools and weapons tailored to their bodies and not as if a human put them on a cat. Nothing about their anatomy will be different then a normal domestic cat, but they will have human level intelligence.
I plan to ask more questions to get some ideas of how there tools and weapons could look, but for now I'll start with how they could carry supplies on them. They should be able to put on whatever they would use without necessarily having help.
If anything needs to be clarified please tell me and I will make changes as needed. Thanks! | 2021/10/03 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/214687",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/86570/"
] | With no changes in their anatomy, cats can mostly use their mouth to handles something: either by holding and lifting it, if not to big, or by pulling it on the ground.
In other words, the first way would resemble how they carry their kittens or small preys like mice and birds. The second way would resemble how they move bigger catches, like rabbits.
The remaining way is by means of their paws, like they do when they are playing with something, kicking it around, or trying to open a door, by pushing it to the side. | **One thing at a time.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGpmP.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUA03xCO2eo>
This cat carries a sock. So too most cats in your world: a sock. Some of them might sometimes carry a pipe cleaner, or a raw piece of sphagetti, or Barbie's pants. Occasionally the most boss cats carry dead chipmunks and they will assert they killed the chipmunks even though the chipmunks are usually dried up and sometimes flattened by cars. Best not to argue.
But cats carry only one thing at a time, because they are cats, and they only have one mouth. |
214,687 | This is the first in what I plan to be a series of questions on how cats with a human level intelligence would be able to work things out.
I was inspired by an artist called [Neytirix](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix) and the [world](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix/art/Passing-through-834355010) she drew for her cat, so I decided that I want to make a world of my own for my cats. In her drawings the cats carry tools, weapons, and storage much like a human or their pack animal would. I think the cats in my world would also use these items, but it would make more sense if the cats had tools and weapons tailored to their bodies and not as if a human put them on a cat. Nothing about their anatomy will be different then a normal domestic cat, but they will have human level intelligence.
I plan to ask more questions to get some ideas of how there tools and weapons could look, but for now I'll start with how they could carry supplies on them. They should be able to put on whatever they would use without necessarily having help.
If anything needs to be clarified please tell me and I will make changes as needed. Thanks! | 2021/10/03 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/214687",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/86570/"
] | With human level intellegince then the answer is they get another animal to do the heavy moving. So you just need your cats to train horses for the heavy goods. Maybe they would also train something like a small dog for day-to-day carrying of small items. | **One thing at a time.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGpmP.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUA03xCO2eo>
This cat carries a sock. So too most cats in your world: a sock. Some of them might sometimes carry a pipe cleaner, or a raw piece of sphagetti, or Barbie's pants. Occasionally the most boss cats carry dead chipmunks and they will assert they killed the chipmunks even though the chipmunks are usually dried up and sometimes flattened by cars. Best not to argue.
But cats carry only one thing at a time, because they are cats, and they only have one mouth. |
214,687 | This is the first in what I plan to be a series of questions on how cats with a human level intelligence would be able to work things out.
I was inspired by an artist called [Neytirix](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix) and the [world](https://www.deviantart.com/neytirix/art/Passing-through-834355010) she drew for her cat, so I decided that I want to make a world of my own for my cats. In her drawings the cats carry tools, weapons, and storage much like a human or their pack animal would. I think the cats in my world would also use these items, but it would make more sense if the cats had tools and weapons tailored to their bodies and not as if a human put them on a cat. Nothing about their anatomy will be different then a normal domestic cat, but they will have human level intelligence.
I plan to ask more questions to get some ideas of how there tools and weapons could look, but for now I'll start with how they could carry supplies on them. They should be able to put on whatever they would use without necessarily having help.
If anything needs to be clarified please tell me and I will make changes as needed. Thanks! | 2021/10/03 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/214687",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/86570/"
] | With no changes in their anatomy, cats can mostly use their mouth to handles something: either by holding and lifting it, if not to big, or by pulling it on the ground.
In other words, the first way would resemble how they carry their kittens or small preys like mice and birds. The second way would resemble how they move bigger catches, like rabbits.
The remaining way is by means of their paws, like they do when they are playing with something, kicking it around, or trying to open a door, by pushing it to the side. | With human level intellegince then the answer is they get another animal to do the heavy moving. So you just need your cats to train horses for the heavy goods. Maybe they would also train something like a small dog for day-to-day carrying of small items. |
41,696,268 | Both RevitPythonShell scripts and Revit Python Macros are relying on Iron Python. In both cases, at least in Revit 15, neither require the installation of IronPython. I believe RevitPythonShell installs with the capacity to process the ironPython script (rpsruntime.dll). Revit must install with the same capacity.
Therefore, I assume the two programming environments are being executed from separate sources. Is this accurate?
How would I be able to install an external module as I would typically use pip for? Another words, if I wanted to use the docx, pypdf2, tika, or other library - is this possible? | 2017/01/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/41696268",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3614570/"
] | I agree with your assumption that these two environments are probably completely separate and independent of each other.
Since the Python code that you write within them is pure .NET, it is easy to reference other .NET modules, assemblies, libraries, whatever you want to call them. They would reside in .NET assembly DLLs.
Using `pip` to add external Python libraries is a completely different matter, however, and rather removed from the end user environment offered by these two.
To research that, you will have to dive into the IronPython documentation and see how that can be extended 'from within' so to speak. | For pure-python modules, it could be as easy as having a CPython installation (e.g. Anaconda) and pip installing to that, then adding the site-packages of that installation to the search path in RPS.
For modules that include native code (numpy and many others), this gets more tricky and you should google how to install those for IronPython. In the end, adding the installed module to your search path will give you access in RPS. |
16,985,311 | I've populated a listview with names using Icon View.
The listview isn't full, and when you accidently catch a blank area of the listview it actually registers a click on the first item in the listview, which is triggering an event that hasn't actually happened.
Is there a way of catching a "non-click"
Thanks
John
 | 2013/06/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/16985311",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2385197/"
] | I seem to recall needing to use the HitTest method to validate the ListItem that was just clicked. I captured the X/Y coords in the MouseDown then in the Click I validated that the click actually landed on a ListItem. | The *HitTest* method mentioned by tcarvin is sound. If you don't need the generic Click event though, it would be easier to opt for the *ItemClick* event instead. This should only fire when actually clicking on an item. |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | Yes, it's always possible to be polite, and what you are running into isn't uncommon. Peoples' lives change.
Two Things to Do, One (Optional) Thing to Try
=============================================
1. **Address friendship first.**
From your problem statement, these are your friends. This
consideration trumps games. As friends, you can do a lot of things
together that aren't D&D. Keep doing those things together.
For those who you think play now and again out of a sense of obligation:
* First ask them if you have perceived that correctly, (if yes)
* Then let them know that it's not worth forcing themselves to "have fun" if it isn't fun.
2. **Flexible roles**
For D&D nights, invite those who can only occasionally play to be that evenings' NPC role player(s). It's a varietal challenge that some will like and others not. Keep your core group happy if you want to keep the game going. With each person not in your "core group" the polite thing is to have a friend-to-friend conversation. *Focus on the positive* of how much you still enjoy the game, and how much the core group still enjoys the game.
Your message for those who have lost interest is that you are still into the game, and if the game doesn't do it for them anymore, cool: go back to point 1 on friendship being important.
3. **An Option Depending on Space Available**
If game night is a big social occasion, is there enough room for two tables?
If *not*, then this won't work.
If *yes*, set up two tables.
* One with the D&D game, and one with something else.
* That way friends are still congregating, but folks don't feel guilted into
doing something when they'd rather do something else.
As to high drama individual ... that is beyond game advice. That's interpersonal relationships, and best wishes. | I had this issue with a large D&D group back when I was living in an apartment in Memphis, same kind of setup you had. There was a core of folks looking for more consistent, "serious" roleplay and there were the folks who, either out of interest or out of conflicts, couldn't participate much. And one guy who was a goon.
Eleven people, by the way, is a crazy insane untenable group size even if they were all present and on time and super on task every single game session. So you have several layers of issues to fix:
1. Group just plain too big
2. Casual vs committed members
3. Specifically disruptive member
What I did to solve #1 and #2 at the same time was, after talking with all my players to figure out what they could do and what they wanted, was to "split the group." I ran a Sunday game for the super committed folks. Then I had a Wednesday night game for the casuals. The Sunday game had group expectations, including "you need to make 3/4 weeks or this isn't for you." I didn't drive this, the players who wanted that kind of RP experience did. The Wednesday game was casual, board games if not enough people showed up, more about getting dinner and talking. I didn't even run it all the time, we rotated GMs (after some prompting by me, because running two games even if one is casual is a lot of work, and I had a job and stuff myself).
Both kinds are OK. RPGs are a lot like any recreational sport. We don't think of it that way because we're geeks, but you might want to read my blog post [RPGs as Sports: League vs Pick-Up Games](http://geek-related.com/2010/10/26/rpgs-as-sports-league-vs-pickup-games/) for more. In recreational sports, everyone understands the difference between the various levels of commitment, ranging from "super serious these guys act like it's a pro team" to "pickup games on the local court." In RPG-land, due to [Geek Social Fallacies](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) we have issues setting these basic expectations, but we shouldn't.
I will note that I moved away from Memphis 13 years ago now, and that casual group is still meeting to this day! It's not "lesser," it's a different fit that works better for certain folks and their situations.
Now, you shouldn't mix your problem player in with the rest of this. That's a separate issue that has to be dealt with separately. There are other questions on this SE about how to handle that, and since I already mentioned my RPGs as Sports blog series I'll mention [RPGs as Sports: Getting Cut](http://geek-related.com/2010/11/06/rpgs-as-sports-getting-cut/) which covers the topic.
For both situations - size and problem player - it is always possible to be polite. There's never any reason not to be polite. But politeness is about expressing yourself kindly, it doesn't mean you don't take action to make changes that need to be made. Making the hard decisions isn't "mean" and that's a bit of a psychological/social issue you will need to push through. Make changes to make things better while showing compassion to all involved. |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | Yes, it's always possible to be polite, and what you are running into isn't uncommon. Peoples' lives change.
Two Things to Do, One (Optional) Thing to Try
=============================================
1. **Address friendship first.**
From your problem statement, these are your friends. This
consideration trumps games. As friends, you can do a lot of things
together that aren't D&D. Keep doing those things together.
For those who you think play now and again out of a sense of obligation:
* First ask them if you have perceived that correctly, (if yes)
* Then let them know that it's not worth forcing themselves to "have fun" if it isn't fun.
2. **Flexible roles**
For D&D nights, invite those who can only occasionally play to be that evenings' NPC role player(s). It's a varietal challenge that some will like and others not. Keep your core group happy if you want to keep the game going. With each person not in your "core group" the polite thing is to have a friend-to-friend conversation. *Focus on the positive* of how much you still enjoy the game, and how much the core group still enjoys the game.
Your message for those who have lost interest is that you are still into the game, and if the game doesn't do it for them anymore, cool: go back to point 1 on friendship being important.
3. **An Option Depending on Space Available**
If game night is a big social occasion, is there enough room for two tables?
If *not*, then this won't work.
If *yes*, set up two tables.
* One with the D&D game, and one with something else.
* That way friends are still congregating, but folks don't feel guilted into
doing something when they'd rather do something else.
As to high drama individual ... that is beyond game advice. That's interpersonal relationships, and best wishes. | I used to have eight players in my campaign and I found that as the PCs got higher level it became harder and harder to keep the flow going. The multiple attacks per round and more complicated actions caused the rounds to become very long. Two have dropped out and I am now down to my original six and I intend on it staying at six. The two dropped PCs are now NPCs in the world and the party runs into them from time to time. Now of the remaining six, if someone can't show, I either run their PC as a NPC or come up with something in the story line that keeps them out of the encounters. I typically don't like players playing two PCs, I like them to focus on role playing one PC. I also have two alternate players who will take on the PC of the player that didn't show up. The rest of the players and I do a good job making sure the alternates stay in character. The absent players don't mind having someone else play their PC and I usually write a recap of the session so they absent players know what happened. Do you have alternate players to take over the PCs? Can you come up with a story line to reduce the number of players? |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | Yes, it's always possible to be polite, and what you are running into isn't uncommon. Peoples' lives change.
Two Things to Do, One (Optional) Thing to Try
=============================================
1. **Address friendship first.**
From your problem statement, these are your friends. This
consideration trumps games. As friends, you can do a lot of things
together that aren't D&D. Keep doing those things together.
For those who you think play now and again out of a sense of obligation:
* First ask them if you have perceived that correctly, (if yes)
* Then let them know that it's not worth forcing themselves to "have fun" if it isn't fun.
2. **Flexible roles**
For D&D nights, invite those who can only occasionally play to be that evenings' NPC role player(s). It's a varietal challenge that some will like and others not. Keep your core group happy if you want to keep the game going. With each person not in your "core group" the polite thing is to have a friend-to-friend conversation. *Focus on the positive* of how much you still enjoy the game, and how much the core group still enjoys the game.
Your message for those who have lost interest is that you are still into the game, and if the game doesn't do it for them anymore, cool: go back to point 1 on friendship being important.
3. **An Option Depending on Space Available**
If game night is a big social occasion, is there enough room for two tables?
If *not*, then this won't work.
If *yes*, set up two tables.
* One with the D&D game, and one with something else.
* That way friends are still congregating, but folks don't feel guilted into
doing something when they'd rather do something else.
As to high drama individual ... that is beyond game advice. That's interpersonal relationships, and best wishes. | I run short campaigns (~2 months), and when I start a new campaign I send a new round of invites. Anyone I didn't enjoy playing with in the previous campaign, just doesn't get invited to the new one. Nobody has ever given me any grief about this -- I think it's mutually understood that when I run a game I can invite who I want. :)
Your question uses the phrase "...over the last campaign", so it sounds like you have a similar structure. Can you end your campaign and then start a new one with just your core group invited? That seems like a nice low-drama approach where you don't have to specifically uninvite people.
("Have a frank and open conversation with your less-frequent players about the problems you're seeing and the best way to solve them" might still be the best approach, but I don't always feel comfortable doing that in my group, so I thought I would share what works for me.) |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | I had this issue with a large D&D group back when I was living in an apartment in Memphis, same kind of setup you had. There was a core of folks looking for more consistent, "serious" roleplay and there were the folks who, either out of interest or out of conflicts, couldn't participate much. And one guy who was a goon.
Eleven people, by the way, is a crazy insane untenable group size even if they were all present and on time and super on task every single game session. So you have several layers of issues to fix:
1. Group just plain too big
2. Casual vs committed members
3. Specifically disruptive member
What I did to solve #1 and #2 at the same time was, after talking with all my players to figure out what they could do and what they wanted, was to "split the group." I ran a Sunday game for the super committed folks. Then I had a Wednesday night game for the casuals. The Sunday game had group expectations, including "you need to make 3/4 weeks or this isn't for you." I didn't drive this, the players who wanted that kind of RP experience did. The Wednesday game was casual, board games if not enough people showed up, more about getting dinner and talking. I didn't even run it all the time, we rotated GMs (after some prompting by me, because running two games even if one is casual is a lot of work, and I had a job and stuff myself).
Both kinds are OK. RPGs are a lot like any recreational sport. We don't think of it that way because we're geeks, but you might want to read my blog post [RPGs as Sports: League vs Pick-Up Games](http://geek-related.com/2010/10/26/rpgs-as-sports-league-vs-pickup-games/) for more. In recreational sports, everyone understands the difference between the various levels of commitment, ranging from "super serious these guys act like it's a pro team" to "pickup games on the local court." In RPG-land, due to [Geek Social Fallacies](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) we have issues setting these basic expectations, but we shouldn't.
I will note that I moved away from Memphis 13 years ago now, and that casual group is still meeting to this day! It's not "lesser," it's a different fit that works better for certain folks and their situations.
Now, you shouldn't mix your problem player in with the rest of this. That's a separate issue that has to be dealt with separately. There are other questions on this SE about how to handle that, and since I already mentioned my RPGs as Sports blog series I'll mention [RPGs as Sports: Getting Cut](http://geek-related.com/2010/11/06/rpgs-as-sports-getting-cut/) which covers the topic.
For both situations - size and problem player - it is always possible to be polite. There's never any reason not to be polite. But politeness is about expressing yourself kindly, it doesn't mean you don't take action to make changes that need to be made. Making the hard decisions isn't "mean" and that's a bit of a psychological/social issue you will need to push through. Make changes to make things better while showing compassion to all involved. | I used to have eight players in my campaign and I found that as the PCs got higher level it became harder and harder to keep the flow going. The multiple attacks per round and more complicated actions caused the rounds to become very long. Two have dropped out and I am now down to my original six and I intend on it staying at six. The two dropped PCs are now NPCs in the world and the party runs into them from time to time. Now of the remaining six, if someone can't show, I either run their PC as a NPC or come up with something in the story line that keeps them out of the encounters. I typically don't like players playing two PCs, I like them to focus on role playing one PC. I also have two alternate players who will take on the PC of the player that didn't show up. The rest of the players and I do a good job making sure the alternates stay in character. The absent players don't mind having someone else play their PC and I usually write a recap of the session so they absent players know what happened. Do you have alternate players to take over the PCs? Can you come up with a story line to reduce the number of players? |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | I had this issue with a large D&D group back when I was living in an apartment in Memphis, same kind of setup you had. There was a core of folks looking for more consistent, "serious" roleplay and there were the folks who, either out of interest or out of conflicts, couldn't participate much. And one guy who was a goon.
Eleven people, by the way, is a crazy insane untenable group size even if they were all present and on time and super on task every single game session. So you have several layers of issues to fix:
1. Group just plain too big
2. Casual vs committed members
3. Specifically disruptive member
What I did to solve #1 and #2 at the same time was, after talking with all my players to figure out what they could do and what they wanted, was to "split the group." I ran a Sunday game for the super committed folks. Then I had a Wednesday night game for the casuals. The Sunday game had group expectations, including "you need to make 3/4 weeks or this isn't for you." I didn't drive this, the players who wanted that kind of RP experience did. The Wednesday game was casual, board games if not enough people showed up, more about getting dinner and talking. I didn't even run it all the time, we rotated GMs (after some prompting by me, because running two games even if one is casual is a lot of work, and I had a job and stuff myself).
Both kinds are OK. RPGs are a lot like any recreational sport. We don't think of it that way because we're geeks, but you might want to read my blog post [RPGs as Sports: League vs Pick-Up Games](http://geek-related.com/2010/10/26/rpgs-as-sports-league-vs-pickup-games/) for more. In recreational sports, everyone understands the difference between the various levels of commitment, ranging from "super serious these guys act like it's a pro team" to "pickup games on the local court." In RPG-land, due to [Geek Social Fallacies](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) we have issues setting these basic expectations, but we shouldn't.
I will note that I moved away from Memphis 13 years ago now, and that casual group is still meeting to this day! It's not "lesser," it's a different fit that works better for certain folks and their situations.
Now, you shouldn't mix your problem player in with the rest of this. That's a separate issue that has to be dealt with separately. There are other questions on this SE about how to handle that, and since I already mentioned my RPGs as Sports blog series I'll mention [RPGs as Sports: Getting Cut](http://geek-related.com/2010/11/06/rpgs-as-sports-getting-cut/) which covers the topic.
For both situations - size and problem player - it is always possible to be polite. There's never any reason not to be polite. But politeness is about expressing yourself kindly, it doesn't mean you don't take action to make changes that need to be made. Making the hard decisions isn't "mean" and that's a bit of a psychological/social issue you will need to push through. Make changes to make things better while showing compassion to all involved. | I run short campaigns (~2 months), and when I start a new campaign I send a new round of invites. Anyone I didn't enjoy playing with in the previous campaign, just doesn't get invited to the new one. Nobody has ever given me any grief about this -- I think it's mutually understood that when I run a game I can invite who I want. :)
Your question uses the phrase "...over the last campaign", so it sounds like you have a similar structure. Can you end your campaign and then start a new one with just your core group invited? That seems like a nice low-drama approach where you don't have to specifically uninvite people.
("Have a frank and open conversation with your less-frequent players about the problems you're seeing and the best way to solve them" might still be the best approach, but I don't always feel comfortable doing that in my group, so I thought I would share what works for me.) |
68,247 | We have a Pathfinder group that consists of 11 people, and has been like that for a few years now. In the beginning we had a great time with such a large group and didn't mind the number, but something in the dynamics has shifted over the last campaign.
Four of them almost never show up (which we can excuse because they never show up due to work/school), but when they do they barely pay attention and end up leaving early anyways, which disrupts the flow of the game. Two of them just... don't seem to be into it anymore, and their non-enthusiasm tends to ruin the mood of everyone else. Plus a *ton* of personal problems most of the party has with one of them in particular that getting into in detail would take far too long.
The DM wants to reduce the group down to those that show up regularly and actually want to participate in the storyline, which is about five people; the average D&D party size. One of the people who doesn't show up due to work is alright with this due to his becoming disenchanted with roleplaying in general, but we're not sure about the others in the group.
So what I'm trying to figure out is how to politely tell the rest of them that we want to reduce our group? Is it even possible to be polite in this kind of situation? | 2015/09/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68247",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/24783/"
] | I run short campaigns (~2 months), and when I start a new campaign I send a new round of invites. Anyone I didn't enjoy playing with in the previous campaign, just doesn't get invited to the new one. Nobody has ever given me any grief about this -- I think it's mutually understood that when I run a game I can invite who I want. :)
Your question uses the phrase "...over the last campaign", so it sounds like you have a similar structure. Can you end your campaign and then start a new one with just your core group invited? That seems like a nice low-drama approach where you don't have to specifically uninvite people.
("Have a frank and open conversation with your less-frequent players about the problems you're seeing and the best way to solve them" might still be the best approach, but I don't always feel comfortable doing that in my group, so I thought I would share what works for me.) | I used to have eight players in my campaign and I found that as the PCs got higher level it became harder and harder to keep the flow going. The multiple attacks per round and more complicated actions caused the rounds to become very long. Two have dropped out and I am now down to my original six and I intend on it staying at six. The two dropped PCs are now NPCs in the world and the party runs into them from time to time. Now of the remaining six, if someone can't show, I either run their PC as a NPC or come up with something in the story line that keeps them out of the encounters. I typically don't like players playing two PCs, I like them to focus on role playing one PC. I also have two alternate players who will take on the PC of the player that didn't show up. The rest of the players and I do a good job making sure the alternates stay in character. The absent players don't mind having someone else play their PC and I usually write a recap of the session so they absent players know what happened. Do you have alternate players to take over the PCs? Can you come up with a story line to reduce the number of players? |
30,224 | This is not just gnome terminal, but pretty much all gnome windows: When you hold the "alt" key, you can press the first letter of one of the menu items. This will let you scroll that menu without clicking on it directly.
This is okay on any other window, like say Firefox, but on gnome terminal, it steals the keys I use for emacs!! There is very little chance of me learning a new set key combinations if I can avoid.
If I can't isolate this just to gnome terminal, I'm fine with that. | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/30224",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/12316/"
] | Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts..., and uncheck "Enable menu access keys". | If you want to do it globally, you can try this method ([source](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1735533)):
>
> To disable mnemonics you should create (if it doesn't already exist) ~/.gtkrc-2.0.
> This file should contain the line gtk-enable-mnemonics = 0 (you can
> add other GTK settings if you'd like). Then, restart for the changes
> to take effect (you may be able to log out then log in instead).
>
>
> The alt key will still make menus appear in some cases, but the
> mnemonics are now disabled. Hoorah!
>
>
>
EDIT: this method no longer works. I filed a [bug report](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1113420) regarding the OP's question so we'll see how it evolves. |
30,224 | This is not just gnome terminal, but pretty much all gnome windows: When you hold the "alt" key, you can press the first letter of one of the menu items. This will let you scroll that menu without clicking on it directly.
This is okay on any other window, like say Firefox, but on gnome terminal, it steals the keys I use for emacs!! There is very little chance of me learning a new set key combinations if I can avoid.
If I can't isolate this just to gnome terminal, I'm fine with that. | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/30224",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/12316/"
] | Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts..., and uncheck "Enable menu access keys". | This is really driving me crazy too. I'd like to use Alt-V for paste as it is much more ergonomic than using CTRL but this doesn't seem possible because of the View menu option.
Overall this seems like a bug because when I disable the hotkeys in Preferences I am no longer able to use Alt-V for accessing the View menu but I am also not able to use that combination for other things.
I was able to get Alt-Z to work because there is no menu beginning with Z. |
30,224 | This is not just gnome terminal, but pretty much all gnome windows: When you hold the "alt" key, you can press the first letter of one of the menu items. This will let you scroll that menu without clicking on it directly.
This is okay on any other window, like say Firefox, but on gnome terminal, it steals the keys I use for emacs!! There is very little chance of me learning a new set key combinations if I can avoid.
If I can't isolate this just to gnome terminal, I'm fine with that. | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/30224",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/12316/"
] | Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts..., and uncheck "Enable menu access keys". | For Gnome terminal 3.14.1: Click Edit (on menu bar) > Preferences > At last on "General" tab, Un-check "enable mnemonics..." . |
30,224 | This is not just gnome terminal, but pretty much all gnome windows: When you hold the "alt" key, you can press the first letter of one of the menu items. This will let you scroll that menu without clicking on it directly.
This is okay on any other window, like say Firefox, but on gnome terminal, it steals the keys I use for emacs!! There is very little chance of me learning a new set key combinations if I can avoid.
If I can't isolate this just to gnome terminal, I'm fine with that. | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/30224",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/12316/"
] | Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts..., and uncheck "Enable menu access keys". | In Ubuntu 16.04, go to System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Launchers, and clear the *Key to show the HUD* (or change it to another key) |
3,490 | My biggest challenge is about synonyms. It is hard to differentiate differences of meanings of synonym words. Even after I consult various dictionaries, some times it is hard to get clarity. In such cases
1. May I ask questions about word differences to the community?
2. If not, what other sources are there to help me?
3. As a non-native English speaker, I can have trouble grasping the meaning. At such times, may I ask the ELU community for more elaboration for any meaning?
4. I’ve noticed that some of users are very good at answering and explaining such questions, but that other users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, may I directly ask the specific user about this question without polluting the site and then give them credit for it once I got answer? | 2012/12/25 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3490",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30645/"
] | This is an important question, and one I am glad to see raised.
I agree with every word of the responses so far — Inglish Teeture’s, J.R.'s and Bill Franke’s answers, and Edwin Ashworth’s comment.
I would like to add a word about **tools** for exploring synonyms. First, dictionaries. It is essential to consult multiple good dictionaries; for different dictionaries offer different perspectives. [**Here**](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2573/list-of-general-references) is a handy list of good dictionaries and similar references. And it is not enough merely to scan a dictionary entry; as I commented on your recent question, “The people who write dictionaries take great pains to ‘pack’ their meaning into a very few words, and it is often necessary for you to expend equal effort in ‘unpacking’ the meaning.”
Second, in line with Inglish Teeture’s advice to examine synonyms *in context*, I should like to recommend [**corpus.byu.edu**](http://corpus.byu.edu/), where there are several large *corpora*—searchable databases of language. By registering there (it’s free) you will be able to search those databases for occurrences of words in actual contexts, not made-up examples such as you find in textbooks and dictionaries. The sources of these uses are identified and classified—Fiction, Magazine, Newspaper, Academic, Spoken, and so forth—so you may get a sense not only of *how* but also *when* and *where* words are used. Each citation is twenty or thirty words long, and you may consult a longer passage from which it is extracted. And the number of citations is staggering; for instance, with respect to your own recent question, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reports almost 500 instances of *derision* and more than 3500 instances of *contempt*.
These won't solve all your problems, for there are subtleties they do not point out explicitly. And keep in mind that corpora do not distinguish between good use and bad. “Native speaker” does not mean “accomplished speaker”, and it is not true that whatever is said or written by a native speaker is *de jure* ‘correct’. Every native speaker gets one vote—no less, no more—on what constitutes ‘correct use’, and you will see a variety of opinions displayed in corpora and dictionaries. When those opinions appear contradictory, bring them here; I can assure you that if you fortify your questions with appropriate citations they will be not only accepted but applauded. (But be prepared to encounter a similar diversity of opinion here, too!) | Words have contextual meanings and that is how they need to be studied – contextually. While *correct* is a synonym of *right* in one sense, it is not in other senses of the word.
If you observe and study words according to their contextual meanings, learning synonyms won't be a big challenge. You need to do a lot of reading and listen to people speak in English. Unless you do that, what you pick up from dictionaries won't be of much help. Try building your own sentences with the new words you have learnt. And of course, communities like English.StackExchange.Com are great places to ask questions and clarify your doubts.
So, yes, you can ask questions here and get your doubts clarified. But please search the site and make sure your questions are not duplicates. |
3,490 | My biggest challenge is about synonyms. It is hard to differentiate differences of meanings of synonym words. Even after I consult various dictionaries, some times it is hard to get clarity. In such cases
1. May I ask questions about word differences to the community?
2. If not, what other sources are there to help me?
3. As a non-native English speaker, I can have trouble grasping the meaning. At such times, may I ask the ELU community for more elaboration for any meaning?
4. I’ve noticed that some of users are very good at answering and explaining such questions, but that other users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, may I directly ask the specific user about this question without polluting the site and then give them credit for it once I got answer? | 2012/12/25 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3490",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30645/"
] | Words have contextual meanings and that is how they need to be studied – contextually. While *correct* is a synonym of *right* in one sense, it is not in other senses of the word.
If you observe and study words according to their contextual meanings, learning synonyms won't be a big challenge. You need to do a lot of reading and listen to people speak in English. Unless you do that, what you pick up from dictionaries won't be of much help. Try building your own sentences with the new words you have learnt. And of course, communities like English.StackExchange.Com are great places to ask questions and clarify your doubts.
So, yes, you can ask questions here and get your doubts clarified. But please search the site and make sure your questions are not duplicates. | I find that questions about synonym differences are very much on-topic here at ELU and not at all General Reference.
Most dictionaries will give definitions which an educated native speaker can check for correctness of the correct nuance (by the succinct choice of words in the definition), but on the whole **dictionaries do not give a early learners the subtle, or even not so subtle, nuances that are obvious as learned by long time users of the language from prior contexts**.
That said, your specific main-site questions tend to ask about too many synonyms at once. I think that it is simply a problem with scale; the larger the number of synonyms, the more likely a single answer will be able to answer well, giving rise to legitimate closing by Not Constructive.
Now to answer directly your questions here:
* 1 - Can I ask questions about word differences to the community?
Yes. try to keep the complexity down to 2 or 3 words being compared.
* 2 - If I can not what are the other sources which helps me?
A thesaurus, multiple dictionary lookups (ya gotta do research at some point), and *looking at examples and context to get the nuance*.
* 3 - As a non native English speaker I can have difficulty to grasp the meaning. Such times can I ask community for more elaboration for any meaning?
Yes. Also chat is good for back and forth discussion for elaboration. Also, I find the multi-way conversations there to be very helpful for extricating nuances because people see different sides of the differences.
* 4 - I have experienced some of users are very good in explaining such questions and some users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, can I directly ask the specific user about this question with polluting site and give the credit them once I got answer?
If they answer your question on the Q&A part, SE is already set up to give credit. You can't really give SE upvotes to someone without them already giving an official answer. If you ask otherwise (say in chat), then just thank them, that's credit enough. |
3,490 | My biggest challenge is about synonyms. It is hard to differentiate differences of meanings of synonym words. Even after I consult various dictionaries, some times it is hard to get clarity. In such cases
1. May I ask questions about word differences to the community?
2. If not, what other sources are there to help me?
3. As a non-native English speaker, I can have trouble grasping the meaning. At such times, may I ask the ELU community for more elaboration for any meaning?
4. I’ve noticed that some of users are very good at answering and explaining such questions, but that other users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, may I directly ask the specific user about this question without polluting the site and then give them credit for it once I got answer? | 2012/12/25 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3490",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30645/"
] | This is an important question, and one I am glad to see raised.
I agree with every word of the responses so far — Inglish Teeture’s, J.R.'s and Bill Franke’s answers, and Edwin Ashworth’s comment.
I would like to add a word about **tools** for exploring synonyms. First, dictionaries. It is essential to consult multiple good dictionaries; for different dictionaries offer different perspectives. [**Here**](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2573/list-of-general-references) is a handy list of good dictionaries and similar references. And it is not enough merely to scan a dictionary entry; as I commented on your recent question, “The people who write dictionaries take great pains to ‘pack’ their meaning into a very few words, and it is often necessary for you to expend equal effort in ‘unpacking’ the meaning.”
Second, in line with Inglish Teeture’s advice to examine synonyms *in context*, I should like to recommend [**corpus.byu.edu**](http://corpus.byu.edu/), where there are several large *corpora*—searchable databases of language. By registering there (it’s free) you will be able to search those databases for occurrences of words in actual contexts, not made-up examples such as you find in textbooks and dictionaries. The sources of these uses are identified and classified—Fiction, Magazine, Newspaper, Academic, Spoken, and so forth—so you may get a sense not only of *how* but also *when* and *where* words are used. Each citation is twenty or thirty words long, and you may consult a longer passage from which it is extracted. And the number of citations is staggering; for instance, with respect to your own recent question, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reports almost 500 instances of *derision* and more than 3500 instances of *contempt*.
These won't solve all your problems, for there are subtleties they do not point out explicitly. And keep in mind that corpora do not distinguish between good use and bad. “Native speaker” does not mean “accomplished speaker”, and it is not true that whatever is said or written by a native speaker is *de jure* ‘correct’. Every native speaker gets one vote—no less, no more—on what constitutes ‘correct use’, and you will see a variety of opinions displayed in corpora and dictionaries. When those opinions appear contradictory, bring them here; I can assure you that if you fortify your questions with appropriate citations they will be not only accepted but applauded. (But be prepared to encounter a similar diversity of opinion here, too!) | One of these days, now that ELL has more than 160 commitments, the English Language Learners site will go into beta and that should (I hope it does) provide a friendlier atmosphere for asking questions about which synonyms are best in specific contexts and what the differences between putative synonyms are. Until then, I agree with Inglish Teeture's advice to "please search the site and make sure your questions are not duplicates". Also, provide specific and sufficiently complete contexts to allow us enough information to answer your questions. That means complete sentences and maybe even a brief paragraph for the sentence. |
3,490 | My biggest challenge is about synonyms. It is hard to differentiate differences of meanings of synonym words. Even after I consult various dictionaries, some times it is hard to get clarity. In such cases
1. May I ask questions about word differences to the community?
2. If not, what other sources are there to help me?
3. As a non-native English speaker, I can have trouble grasping the meaning. At such times, may I ask the ELU community for more elaboration for any meaning?
4. I’ve noticed that some of users are very good at answering and explaining such questions, but that other users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, may I directly ask the specific user about this question without polluting the site and then give them credit for it once I got answer? | 2012/12/25 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3490",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30645/"
] | One of these days, now that ELL has more than 160 commitments, the English Language Learners site will go into beta and that should (I hope it does) provide a friendlier atmosphere for asking questions about which synonyms are best in specific contexts and what the differences between putative synonyms are. Until then, I agree with Inglish Teeture's advice to "please search the site and make sure your questions are not duplicates". Also, provide specific and sufficiently complete contexts to allow us enough information to answer your questions. That means complete sentences and maybe even a brief paragraph for the sentence. | I find that questions about synonym differences are very much on-topic here at ELU and not at all General Reference.
Most dictionaries will give definitions which an educated native speaker can check for correctness of the correct nuance (by the succinct choice of words in the definition), but on the whole **dictionaries do not give a early learners the subtle, or even not so subtle, nuances that are obvious as learned by long time users of the language from prior contexts**.
That said, your specific main-site questions tend to ask about too many synonyms at once. I think that it is simply a problem with scale; the larger the number of synonyms, the more likely a single answer will be able to answer well, giving rise to legitimate closing by Not Constructive.
Now to answer directly your questions here:
* 1 - Can I ask questions about word differences to the community?
Yes. try to keep the complexity down to 2 or 3 words being compared.
* 2 - If I can not what are the other sources which helps me?
A thesaurus, multiple dictionary lookups (ya gotta do research at some point), and *looking at examples and context to get the nuance*.
* 3 - As a non native English speaker I can have difficulty to grasp the meaning. Such times can I ask community for more elaboration for any meaning?
Yes. Also chat is good for back and forth discussion for elaboration. Also, I find the multi-way conversations there to be very helpful for extricating nuances because people see different sides of the differences.
* 4 - I have experienced some of users are very good in explaining such questions and some users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, can I directly ask the specific user about this question with polluting site and give the credit them once I got answer?
If they answer your question on the Q&A part, SE is already set up to give credit. You can't really give SE upvotes to someone without them already giving an official answer. If you ask otherwise (say in chat), then just thank them, that's credit enough. |
3,490 | My biggest challenge is about synonyms. It is hard to differentiate differences of meanings of synonym words. Even after I consult various dictionaries, some times it is hard to get clarity. In such cases
1. May I ask questions about word differences to the community?
2. If not, what other sources are there to help me?
3. As a non-native English speaker, I can have trouble grasping the meaning. At such times, may I ask the ELU community for more elaboration for any meaning?
4. I’ve noticed that some of users are very good at answering and explaining such questions, but that other users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, may I directly ask the specific user about this question without polluting the site and then give them credit for it once I got answer? | 2012/12/25 | [
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3490",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30645/"
] | This is an important question, and one I am glad to see raised.
I agree with every word of the responses so far — Inglish Teeture’s, J.R.'s and Bill Franke’s answers, and Edwin Ashworth’s comment.
I would like to add a word about **tools** for exploring synonyms. First, dictionaries. It is essential to consult multiple good dictionaries; for different dictionaries offer different perspectives. [**Here**](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2573/list-of-general-references) is a handy list of good dictionaries and similar references. And it is not enough merely to scan a dictionary entry; as I commented on your recent question, “The people who write dictionaries take great pains to ‘pack’ their meaning into a very few words, and it is often necessary for you to expend equal effort in ‘unpacking’ the meaning.”
Second, in line with Inglish Teeture’s advice to examine synonyms *in context*, I should like to recommend [**corpus.byu.edu**](http://corpus.byu.edu/), where there are several large *corpora*—searchable databases of language. By registering there (it’s free) you will be able to search those databases for occurrences of words in actual contexts, not made-up examples such as you find in textbooks and dictionaries. The sources of these uses are identified and classified—Fiction, Magazine, Newspaper, Academic, Spoken, and so forth—so you may get a sense not only of *how* but also *when* and *where* words are used. Each citation is twenty or thirty words long, and you may consult a longer passage from which it is extracted. And the number of citations is staggering; for instance, with respect to your own recent question, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reports almost 500 instances of *derision* and more than 3500 instances of *contempt*.
These won't solve all your problems, for there are subtleties they do not point out explicitly. And keep in mind that corpora do not distinguish between good use and bad. “Native speaker” does not mean “accomplished speaker”, and it is not true that whatever is said or written by a native speaker is *de jure* ‘correct’. Every native speaker gets one vote—no less, no more—on what constitutes ‘correct use’, and you will see a variety of opinions displayed in corpora and dictionaries. When those opinions appear contradictory, bring them here; I can assure you that if you fortify your questions with appropriate citations they will be not only accepted but applauded. (But be prepared to encounter a similar diversity of opinion here, too!) | I find that questions about synonym differences are very much on-topic here at ELU and not at all General Reference.
Most dictionaries will give definitions which an educated native speaker can check for correctness of the correct nuance (by the succinct choice of words in the definition), but on the whole **dictionaries do not give a early learners the subtle, or even not so subtle, nuances that are obvious as learned by long time users of the language from prior contexts**.
That said, your specific main-site questions tend to ask about too many synonyms at once. I think that it is simply a problem with scale; the larger the number of synonyms, the more likely a single answer will be able to answer well, giving rise to legitimate closing by Not Constructive.
Now to answer directly your questions here:
* 1 - Can I ask questions about word differences to the community?
Yes. try to keep the complexity down to 2 or 3 words being compared.
* 2 - If I can not what are the other sources which helps me?
A thesaurus, multiple dictionary lookups (ya gotta do research at some point), and *looking at examples and context to get the nuance*.
* 3 - As a non native English speaker I can have difficulty to grasp the meaning. Such times can I ask community for more elaboration for any meaning?
Yes. Also chat is good for back and forth discussion for elaboration. Also, I find the multi-way conversations there to be very helpful for extricating nuances because people see different sides of the differences.
* 4 - I have experienced some of users are very good in explaining such questions and some users feel these are not good questions. In such situations, can I directly ask the specific user about this question with polluting site and give the credit them once I got answer?
If they answer your question on the Q&A part, SE is already set up to give credit. You can't really give SE upvotes to someone without them already giving an official answer. If you ask otherwise (say in chat), then just thank them, that's credit enough. |
14,416 | As science must be reproducible, by definition, there is increasing recognition that data and code are an essential component of the reproduciblity, as discussed by the [Yale Roundtable for data and code sharing](http://reproducible-research.googlegroups.com/web/CISE-12-5-News.pdf).
In reviewing a manuscript for a journal that does not require data and code sharing, can I request that the data and code be made available
1. to me at the time of review
2. publicly at time of publication (the journal supports supplements)
also, how might I phrase such a request?
---
*update*: although I am interested in the general case, this particular case consists of a meta-analysis with all previously published data, and the code is simple linear models in SAS
*side note* the ability to make cross-study inference (as is the goal of meta-analysis) would be greatly enhanced if more studies provided raw data
*update 2*:
I requested the data and code from the editor for purposes of review, the editor considered the request reasonable, and I have received the requested material (sufficient but with cryptic variable names, no metadata, and few inline comments) within a day. | 2011/08/17 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1381/"
] | Addressing the two situations seperately:
As a reviewer: Yes, I think you'd have grounds to ask to see the data or the code. But if I were you, I'd prepare to see things like pared down code, or a subsample of the data. People implement future research not being reported in this paper in their code all the time, and you've no entitlement to said code. Since I do mostly biomedical research, I'd also be prepared to have to deal with some fairly restrictive data use agreements.
In the journal itself: No. If a researcher wants to reproduce my results, they can approach me themselves to ask for code - that's why we have corresponding authors. For data, absolutely not, under no circumstances. My data is governed by IRB and confidentiality agreements - it's not just going to be made public. If I *want* a public-ish data set, I might simulate a dataset with similar properties (i.e. the "Faux-Mesa" network data available in one of the network packages for R), but as a reviewer, you've got no call to force that. If its a journal-wide requirement, then the authors knew their data/code would be public when submitting it, but if its not then no. Your role is to evaluate the quality of the paper itself (hence my being alright with it for the purposes of the review), not use your ability to contribute to the acceptance/rejection of the paper to push what is essentially a philosophical/political point outside the scope of the journal.
At best, I'd put a "I would strongly urge the authors to make their code and data available, where possible" in your comments, but I wouldn't phrase it any stronger than that, and I wouldn't put it in the formal list of "Things I think need fixing before this sees the light of day". | I don't have any experience with this, but it seems to me that you might be able to insist on #1 as a part of your own due diligence in reviewing their results. I don't see how you can insist on #2, though. |
14,416 | As science must be reproducible, by definition, there is increasing recognition that data and code are an essential component of the reproduciblity, as discussed by the [Yale Roundtable for data and code sharing](http://reproducible-research.googlegroups.com/web/CISE-12-5-News.pdf).
In reviewing a manuscript for a journal that does not require data and code sharing, can I request that the data and code be made available
1. to me at the time of review
2. publicly at time of publication (the journal supports supplements)
also, how might I phrase such a request?
---
*update*: although I am interested in the general case, this particular case consists of a meta-analysis with all previously published data, and the code is simple linear models in SAS
*side note* the ability to make cross-study inference (as is the goal of meta-analysis) would be greatly enhanced if more studies provided raw data
*update 2*:
I requested the data and code from the editor for purposes of review, the editor considered the request reasonable, and I have received the requested material (sufficient but with cryptic variable names, no metadata, and few inline comments) within a day. | 2011/08/17 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1381/"
] | As far as getting data as a reviewer goes, you're entitled to it if you need it to complete your review properly. More reviewers should be asking for data and assessing it. Lots of journals have policies that they may require the data and analysis code for review purposes.
Availability at the time of publication isn't clear to me. It seems that you're saying that you want to force the issue that the data be made publicly available as a condition of publication. That's a bad idea if it's not journal policy already. You're making publication an unfair moving target. They submitted expecting that not to be a requirement and you, nor the editor, ought to be changing the game.
Unbeknownst to many researchers publicly funded researchers, they are required to make their data publicly available. For example, most NIH grants have clauses where the researcher must be forthcoming with their data. Most government granting agencies have data sharing clauses that force the researcher to share what they find (perhaps force is a bit strong given that it's very hard to lose a grant over that... perhaps lose renewal though). The public paid for the data, therefore the public is entitled to it---in the case of human research, entitled to it anonymized.
Some of the most expensive and sensitive data to collect, human FMRI data, is also some of the most commonly made publicly available. Not just PLoS, but major journals of the field require the submission of the data and maintain a publicly available data bank. I think this says a lot to people who object for reasons of cost (it's very expensive), and privacy (it's human data from small studies and sometimes unique clinical populations that could be very sensitive). Those are reasons that make that data more valuable to the public. Researchers who withhold such data are doing a disservice to the people who bought it (everyone), and need a lesson in what their responsibilities are outside of their little lab and publication competition.
If the research was privately funded, genuinely privately funded, then best of luck. | Addressing the two situations seperately:
As a reviewer: Yes, I think you'd have grounds to ask to see the data or the code. But if I were you, I'd prepare to see things like pared down code, or a subsample of the data. People implement future research not being reported in this paper in their code all the time, and you've no entitlement to said code. Since I do mostly biomedical research, I'd also be prepared to have to deal with some fairly restrictive data use agreements.
In the journal itself: No. If a researcher wants to reproduce my results, they can approach me themselves to ask for code - that's why we have corresponding authors. For data, absolutely not, under no circumstances. My data is governed by IRB and confidentiality agreements - it's not just going to be made public. If I *want* a public-ish data set, I might simulate a dataset with similar properties (i.e. the "Faux-Mesa" network data available in one of the network packages for R), but as a reviewer, you've got no call to force that. If its a journal-wide requirement, then the authors knew their data/code would be public when submitting it, but if its not then no. Your role is to evaluate the quality of the paper itself (hence my being alright with it for the purposes of the review), not use your ability to contribute to the acceptance/rejection of the paper to push what is essentially a philosophical/political point outside the scope of the journal.
At best, I'd put a "I would strongly urge the authors to make their code and data available, where possible" in your comments, but I wouldn't phrase it any stronger than that, and I wouldn't put it in the formal list of "Things I think need fixing before this sees the light of day". |
14,416 | As science must be reproducible, by definition, there is increasing recognition that data and code are an essential component of the reproduciblity, as discussed by the [Yale Roundtable for data and code sharing](http://reproducible-research.googlegroups.com/web/CISE-12-5-News.pdf).
In reviewing a manuscript for a journal that does not require data and code sharing, can I request that the data and code be made available
1. to me at the time of review
2. publicly at time of publication (the journal supports supplements)
also, how might I phrase such a request?
---
*update*: although I am interested in the general case, this particular case consists of a meta-analysis with all previously published data, and the code is simple linear models in SAS
*side note* the ability to make cross-study inference (as is the goal of meta-analysis) would be greatly enhanced if more studies provided raw data
*update 2*:
I requested the data and code from the editor for purposes of review, the editor considered the request reasonable, and I have received the requested material (sufficient but with cryptic variable names, no metadata, and few inline comments) within a day. | 2011/08/17 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1381/"
] | As far as getting data as a reviewer goes, you're entitled to it if you need it to complete your review properly. More reviewers should be asking for data and assessing it. Lots of journals have policies that they may require the data and analysis code for review purposes.
Availability at the time of publication isn't clear to me. It seems that you're saying that you want to force the issue that the data be made publicly available as a condition of publication. That's a bad idea if it's not journal policy already. You're making publication an unfair moving target. They submitted expecting that not to be a requirement and you, nor the editor, ought to be changing the game.
Unbeknownst to many researchers publicly funded researchers, they are required to make their data publicly available. For example, most NIH grants have clauses where the researcher must be forthcoming with their data. Most government granting agencies have data sharing clauses that force the researcher to share what they find (perhaps force is a bit strong given that it's very hard to lose a grant over that... perhaps lose renewal though). The public paid for the data, therefore the public is entitled to it---in the case of human research, entitled to it anonymized.
Some of the most expensive and sensitive data to collect, human FMRI data, is also some of the most commonly made publicly available. Not just PLoS, but major journals of the field require the submission of the data and maintain a publicly available data bank. I think this says a lot to people who object for reasons of cost (it's very expensive), and privacy (it's human data from small studies and sometimes unique clinical populations that could be very sensitive). Those are reasons that make that data more valuable to the public. Researchers who withhold such data are doing a disservice to the people who bought it (everyone), and need a lesson in what their responsibilities are outside of their little lab and publication competition.
If the research was privately funded, genuinely privately funded, then best of luck. | I don't have any experience with this, but it seems to me that you might be able to insist on #1 as a part of your own due diligence in reviewing their results. I don't see how you can insist on #2, though. |
14,416 | As science must be reproducible, by definition, there is increasing recognition that data and code are an essential component of the reproduciblity, as discussed by the [Yale Roundtable for data and code sharing](http://reproducible-research.googlegroups.com/web/CISE-12-5-News.pdf).
In reviewing a manuscript for a journal that does not require data and code sharing, can I request that the data and code be made available
1. to me at the time of review
2. publicly at time of publication (the journal supports supplements)
also, how might I phrase such a request?
---
*update*: although I am interested in the general case, this particular case consists of a meta-analysis with all previously published data, and the code is simple linear models in SAS
*side note* the ability to make cross-study inference (as is the goal of meta-analysis) would be greatly enhanced if more studies provided raw data
*update 2*:
I requested the data and code from the editor for purposes of review, the editor considered the request reasonable, and I have received the requested material (sufficient but with cryptic variable names, no metadata, and few inline comments) within a day. | 2011/08/17 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1381/"
] | As [John says](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416/as-a-reviewer-can-i-justify-requesting-data-and-code-be-made-available-even-if-t/14424#14424) availability of data to reviewers should be a no-brainer; careful review should include replicating the analysis and as such necessitates access to the data.
With regards to public availability of the data following publication, I'd say that battle should be fought with the journal generally rather than with regards to a specific submission.
On a more general note, funding agencies and IRBs are becoming increasingly aware that data sharing is both scientifically and ethically necessary component of research. By increasing the availability for re-analysis that could yield new results of correct erroneous reports, data sharing increases the potential benefits to research, thereby modifying the cost/benefit tradeoff to the advantage of the participants of the research. Certainly it is necessary to inform participants of the possibility that their data will be shared, and it is also necessary to set up safeguards to prevent increased risk of identification to participants, but these can be achieved in most circumstances. In my own research, I assure participants (and my IRB) that (1) data will be stored in a strong encrypted format (updated as decryption technology advances), (2) data will be shared with qualified researchers upon request, but only if they agree (3) to similarly store the data in a strong encrypted format (updated as decryption technology advances), (4) refrain from sharing the data (instead referring requests to me), and (5) refrain from connecting the data with data from any other sources unless (6) the data connection is explicitly permitted by an IRB, who would determine whether the connection would unacceptably (relative to the potential benefits of the project) increase the risk of identifiability. | I don't have any experience with this, but it seems to me that you might be able to insist on #1 as a part of your own due diligence in reviewing their results. I don't see how you can insist on #2, though. |
14,416 | As science must be reproducible, by definition, there is increasing recognition that data and code are an essential component of the reproduciblity, as discussed by the [Yale Roundtable for data and code sharing](http://reproducible-research.googlegroups.com/web/CISE-12-5-News.pdf).
In reviewing a manuscript for a journal that does not require data and code sharing, can I request that the data and code be made available
1. to me at the time of review
2. publicly at time of publication (the journal supports supplements)
also, how might I phrase such a request?
---
*update*: although I am interested in the general case, this particular case consists of a meta-analysis with all previously published data, and the code is simple linear models in SAS
*side note* the ability to make cross-study inference (as is the goal of meta-analysis) would be greatly enhanced if more studies provided raw data
*update 2*:
I requested the data and code from the editor for purposes of review, the editor considered the request reasonable, and I have received the requested material (sufficient but with cryptic variable names, no metadata, and few inline comments) within a day. | 2011/08/17 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1381/"
] | As far as getting data as a reviewer goes, you're entitled to it if you need it to complete your review properly. More reviewers should be asking for data and assessing it. Lots of journals have policies that they may require the data and analysis code for review purposes.
Availability at the time of publication isn't clear to me. It seems that you're saying that you want to force the issue that the data be made publicly available as a condition of publication. That's a bad idea if it's not journal policy already. You're making publication an unfair moving target. They submitted expecting that not to be a requirement and you, nor the editor, ought to be changing the game.
Unbeknownst to many researchers publicly funded researchers, they are required to make their data publicly available. For example, most NIH grants have clauses where the researcher must be forthcoming with their data. Most government granting agencies have data sharing clauses that force the researcher to share what they find (perhaps force is a bit strong given that it's very hard to lose a grant over that... perhaps lose renewal though). The public paid for the data, therefore the public is entitled to it---in the case of human research, entitled to it anonymized.
Some of the most expensive and sensitive data to collect, human FMRI data, is also some of the most commonly made publicly available. Not just PLoS, but major journals of the field require the submission of the data and maintain a publicly available data bank. I think this says a lot to people who object for reasons of cost (it's very expensive), and privacy (it's human data from small studies and sometimes unique clinical populations that could be very sensitive). Those are reasons that make that data more valuable to the public. Researchers who withhold such data are doing a disservice to the people who bought it (everyone), and need a lesson in what their responsibilities are outside of their little lab and publication competition.
If the research was privately funded, genuinely privately funded, then best of luck. | As [John says](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416/as-a-reviewer-can-i-justify-requesting-data-and-code-be-made-available-even-if-t/14424#14424) availability of data to reviewers should be a no-brainer; careful review should include replicating the analysis and as such necessitates access to the data.
With regards to public availability of the data following publication, I'd say that battle should be fought with the journal generally rather than with regards to a specific submission.
On a more general note, funding agencies and IRBs are becoming increasingly aware that data sharing is both scientifically and ethically necessary component of research. By increasing the availability for re-analysis that could yield new results of correct erroneous reports, data sharing increases the potential benefits to research, thereby modifying the cost/benefit tradeoff to the advantage of the participants of the research. Certainly it is necessary to inform participants of the possibility that their data will be shared, and it is also necessary to set up safeguards to prevent increased risk of identification to participants, but these can be achieved in most circumstances. In my own research, I assure participants (and my IRB) that (1) data will be stored in a strong encrypted format (updated as decryption technology advances), (2) data will be shared with qualified researchers upon request, but only if they agree (3) to similarly store the data in a strong encrypted format (updated as decryption technology advances), (4) refrain from sharing the data (instead referring requests to me), and (5) refrain from connecting the data with data from any other sources unless (6) the data connection is explicitly permitted by an IRB, who would determine whether the connection would unacceptably (relative to the potential benefits of the project) increase the risk of identifiability. |
19,332 | I have an old wireless router, and I mean stone age old (5 years). There is nothing wrong technically with the router, it serves my wireless needs at home but it is really darn old. A search on Belkin's site for F5D7230-4 actually turns up a different old model so I scrounged up this old review for you to get a sense of what I'm running: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1572451,00.asp>.
Is there a valid security reason to replace this router in 2009? Google searches have turned up a few security threats to it and Belkin hasn't released new firmeware in years for it. I am starting to think I should replace it mainly because its NAT is about the only thing protecting me from the outside world.
Buying a new wireless router is a boring way to spend money since it just sits on a shelf doing its job. Thoughts? | 2009/08/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/19332",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/3427/"
] | I completely agree with [**@cwrea**](https://superuser.com/questions/19332/should-i-upgrade-my-old-wireless-router/19334#19334) - if it only supports older, less secure protocols, it's time to upgrade.
You mention you're using WPA-PSK, which is version 1. The only reason not to upgrade to WPA2 is if some of your devices can't connect to it (e.g., My old Dell Axim PDA can't do past WPA).
If you aren't going to upgrade to an N router, I would recommend the [Linksys WRT54GL router](http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT54GL). I have one and they're a solid performer, and if you're into customization, you can load the [Tomato Firmware](http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) or [DD-WRT firmware](http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php) onto the router and enable all kinds of super-advanced options like antenna power, etc. One of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, provided guides for using [Tomato](http://lifehacker.com/344765/turn-your-60-router-into-a-user+friendly-super+router-with-tomato) and [DD-WRT](http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router).
If you're ready to go the N route (haha, route... router... get it?), Linksys has a multitude of sexy, fancy routers. I personally fancy the [WRT160NL with StorageLink](http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT160NL) (a USB port for easy-as-pie network storage). | If your router uses only [WPA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access) (Wi-Fi Protected Access) version 1, or worse [WEP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equivalent_Privacy) (Wired Equivalent Privacy), then yes, **it is time to upgrade your wireless router** to something that can do WPA2. Both of the earlier encryption protocols have [known](http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1814) [vulnerabilities](http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3784251). WEP can reportedly be *cracked in 60 seconds* (maybe less!) |
19,332 | I have an old wireless router, and I mean stone age old (5 years). There is nothing wrong technically with the router, it serves my wireless needs at home but it is really darn old. A search on Belkin's site for F5D7230-4 actually turns up a different old model so I scrounged up this old review for you to get a sense of what I'm running: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1572451,00.asp>.
Is there a valid security reason to replace this router in 2009? Google searches have turned up a few security threats to it and Belkin hasn't released new firmeware in years for it. I am starting to think I should replace it mainly because its NAT is about the only thing protecting me from the outside world.
Buying a new wireless router is a boring way to spend money since it just sits on a shelf doing its job. Thoughts? | 2009/08/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/19332",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/3427/"
] | If your router uses only [WPA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access) (Wi-Fi Protected Access) version 1, or worse [WEP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equivalent_Privacy) (Wired Equivalent Privacy), then yes, **it is time to upgrade your wireless router** to something that can do WPA2. Both of the earlier encryption protocols have [known](http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1814) [vulnerabilities](http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3784251). WEP can reportedly be *cracked in 60 seconds* (maybe less!) | Don't know why people insist on "wireless security". While this wireless technology is broadcasting (rather than some future wireless technology which might be point to point curved in space - picture a ether-cable if you will), there is no real secure way to do it. Plus what's to worry about?
If you really want to secure your data, do it so on your machines. Use passwords there. And backups. Tho I still vow for the best way for securing data is hiding it under your nose, at open.
But if you insist in upgrading, which isn't a bad idea, I'd suggest to get [Fonera](http://www.fon.com/en/)! I can never get tired of promoting it even though I haven't tried it myself! :P
The idea is it sets up two networks. One is open and free internet for anyone, which you can configure to be wide open or pay to use. The second is your local network, which can also be open, but its default is WPA2 or whatever you want to put a key on. Now this is what every router should do! |
19,332 | I have an old wireless router, and I mean stone age old (5 years). There is nothing wrong technically with the router, it serves my wireless needs at home but it is really darn old. A search on Belkin's site for F5D7230-4 actually turns up a different old model so I scrounged up this old review for you to get a sense of what I'm running: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1572451,00.asp>.
Is there a valid security reason to replace this router in 2009? Google searches have turned up a few security threats to it and Belkin hasn't released new firmeware in years for it. I am starting to think I should replace it mainly because its NAT is about the only thing protecting me from the outside world.
Buying a new wireless router is a boring way to spend money since it just sits on a shelf doing its job. Thoughts? | 2009/08/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/19332",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/3427/"
] | I completely agree with [**@cwrea**](https://superuser.com/questions/19332/should-i-upgrade-my-old-wireless-router/19334#19334) - if it only supports older, less secure protocols, it's time to upgrade.
You mention you're using WPA-PSK, which is version 1. The only reason not to upgrade to WPA2 is if some of your devices can't connect to it (e.g., My old Dell Axim PDA can't do past WPA).
If you aren't going to upgrade to an N router, I would recommend the [Linksys WRT54GL router](http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT54GL). I have one and they're a solid performer, and if you're into customization, you can load the [Tomato Firmware](http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) or [DD-WRT firmware](http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php) onto the router and enable all kinds of super-advanced options like antenna power, etc. One of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, provided guides for using [Tomato](http://lifehacker.com/344765/turn-your-60-router-into-a-user+friendly-super+router-with-tomato) and [DD-WRT](http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router).
If you're ready to go the N route (haha, route... router... get it?), Linksys has a multitude of sexy, fancy routers. I personally fancy the [WRT160NL with StorageLink](http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT160NL) (a USB port for easy-as-pie network storage). | Don't know why people insist on "wireless security". While this wireless technology is broadcasting (rather than some future wireless technology which might be point to point curved in space - picture a ether-cable if you will), there is no real secure way to do it. Plus what's to worry about?
If you really want to secure your data, do it so on your machines. Use passwords there. And backups. Tho I still vow for the best way for securing data is hiding it under your nose, at open.
But if you insist in upgrading, which isn't a bad idea, I'd suggest to get [Fonera](http://www.fon.com/en/)! I can never get tired of promoting it even though I haven't tried it myself! :P
The idea is it sets up two networks. One is open and free internet for anyone, which you can configure to be wide open or pay to use. The second is your local network, which can also be open, but its default is WPA2 or whatever you want to put a key on. Now this is what every router should do! |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | Use the most powerful spell in the history of Pathfinder!
[**Prestidigitation!**](http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/spells/prestidigitation.html)
That spell allows you to chill 1 pound of non-living material.
If your GM allows it, using the custom magic item rules, you could make a box which would be permanently affected by the prestidigitation spell for as much as 1000 GP!
Prestidigitation would then be a permanent effect chilling the inner part of the "fridge" allowing it to chill all of the box's contents! | Similar to Léon's answer, though without requiring knowledge of the Prestidigitation spell, you can simply have your players encounter a merchant selling a "bag of colding" (or have them be given one by the quest giver).
I first heard of this concept while watching the Critical Role 5E (née Pathfinder) series of D&D on YouTube/Twitch. During one episode, the party was given a container that acted as a moderate refrigerator by a quest giver, in order to go kill a beast and harvest certain organs, in order to return said organs in exchange for a bounty, with the critical proviso that the organs still had to be fresh (the beast was many days' travel away in each direction).
You could have the questgiver require the container be returned after the quest into the Fire Plane, or have it last only long enough for them to complete their quest before the enchantment wears out. Any combination of criteria that result in 'limited effectiveness' are available to you as DM. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | Use the most powerful spell in the history of Pathfinder!
[**Prestidigitation!**](http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/spells/prestidigitation.html)
That spell allows you to chill 1 pound of non-living material.
If your GM allows it, using the custom magic item rules, you could make a box which would be permanently affected by the prestidigitation spell for as much as 1000 GP!
Prestidigitation would then be a permanent effect chilling the inner part of the "fridge" allowing it to chill all of the box's contents! | A box of sawdust.
"the ice was covered with sawdust. Ice was delivered to as far away as India"
<https://insulation.org/io/articles/a-history-of-refrigeration/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)> |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | Use the most powerful spell in the history of Pathfinder!
[**Prestidigitation!**](http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/spells/prestidigitation.html)
That spell allows you to chill 1 pound of non-living material.
If your GM allows it, using the custom magic item rules, you could make a box which would be permanently affected by the prestidigitation spell for as much as 1000 GP!
Prestidigitation would then be a permanent effect chilling the inner part of the "fridge" allowing it to chill all of the box's contents! | **Brown mold in an unbreakable container**
[Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) removes heat, so use it to shield your ice cream.
Your only challenge is to put it in a container that won't rupture when the mold tries to grow uncontrollably on the elemental plane of fire. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | Use the most powerful spell in the history of Pathfinder!
[**Prestidigitation!**](http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/spells/prestidigitation.html)
That spell allows you to chill 1 pound of non-living material.
If your GM allows it, using the custom magic item rules, you could make a box which would be permanently affected by the prestidigitation spell for as much as 1000 GP!
Prestidigitation would then be a permanent effect chilling the inner part of the "fridge" allowing it to chill all of the box's contents! | Seal some [Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) in a container and put that container inside a larger, insulated container for your ice cream. The cost is the cost of the containers plus the cost of the brown mold (free if you can find it and harvest it).
That's a trick I've been using since 2ndE (the walk in freezers had a ring of warmth on a hook outside it). In this case, the freezer was double walled with the mold sandwiched between. When a friend wanted their own freezer, I had him build a similar room, took some mold from mine, put it in between the walls of his and launched a couple of fireballs into it. It was chilly in no time. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | A box of sawdust.
"the ice was covered with sawdust. Ice was delivered to as far away as India"
<https://insulation.org/io/articles/a-history-of-refrigeration/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)> | Similar to Léon's answer, though without requiring knowledge of the Prestidigitation spell, you can simply have your players encounter a merchant selling a "bag of colding" (or have them be given one by the quest giver).
I first heard of this concept while watching the Critical Role 5E (née Pathfinder) series of D&D on YouTube/Twitch. During one episode, the party was given a container that acted as a moderate refrigerator by a quest giver, in order to go kill a beast and harvest certain organs, in order to return said organs in exchange for a bounty, with the critical proviso that the organs still had to be fresh (the beast was many days' travel away in each direction).
You could have the questgiver require the container be returned after the quest into the Fire Plane, or have it last only long enough for them to complete their quest before the enchantment wears out. Any combination of criteria that result in 'limited effectiveness' are available to you as DM. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | **Brown mold in an unbreakable container**
[Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) removes heat, so use it to shield your ice cream.
Your only challenge is to put it in a container that won't rupture when the mold tries to grow uncontrollably on the elemental plane of fire. | Similar to Léon's answer, though without requiring knowledge of the Prestidigitation spell, you can simply have your players encounter a merchant selling a "bag of colding" (or have them be given one by the quest giver).
I first heard of this concept while watching the Critical Role 5E (née Pathfinder) series of D&D on YouTube/Twitch. During one episode, the party was given a container that acted as a moderate refrigerator by a quest giver, in order to go kill a beast and harvest certain organs, in order to return said organs in exchange for a bounty, with the critical proviso that the organs still had to be fresh (the beast was many days' travel away in each direction).
You could have the questgiver require the container be returned after the quest into the Fire Plane, or have it last only long enough for them to complete their quest before the enchantment wears out. Any combination of criteria that result in 'limited effectiveness' are available to you as DM. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | Seal some [Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) in a container and put that container inside a larger, insulated container for your ice cream. The cost is the cost of the containers plus the cost of the brown mold (free if you can find it and harvest it).
That's a trick I've been using since 2ndE (the walk in freezers had a ring of warmth on a hook outside it). In this case, the freezer was double walled with the mold sandwiched between. When a friend wanted their own freezer, I had him build a similar room, took some mold from mine, put it in between the walls of his and launched a couple of fireballs into it. It was chilly in no time. | Similar to Léon's answer, though without requiring knowledge of the Prestidigitation spell, you can simply have your players encounter a merchant selling a "bag of colding" (or have them be given one by the quest giver).
I first heard of this concept while watching the Critical Role 5E (née Pathfinder) series of D&D on YouTube/Twitch. During one episode, the party was given a container that acted as a moderate refrigerator by a quest giver, in order to go kill a beast and harvest certain organs, in order to return said organs in exchange for a bounty, with the critical proviso that the organs still had to be fresh (the beast was many days' travel away in each direction).
You could have the questgiver require the container be returned after the quest into the Fire Plane, or have it last only long enough for them to complete their quest before the enchantment wears out. Any combination of criteria that result in 'limited effectiveness' are available to you as DM. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | A box of sawdust.
"the ice was covered with sawdust. Ice was delivered to as far away as India"
<https://insulation.org/io/articles/a-history-of-refrigeration/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)> | Seal some [Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) in a container and put that container inside a larger, insulated container for your ice cream. The cost is the cost of the containers plus the cost of the brown mold (free if you can find it and harvest it).
That's a trick I've been using since 2ndE (the walk in freezers had a ring of warmth on a hook outside it). In this case, the freezer was double walled with the mold sandwiched between. When a friend wanted their own freezer, I had him build a similar room, took some mold from mine, put it in between the walls of his and launched a couple of fireballs into it. It was chilly in no time. |
104,980 | I'm going to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and I don't want my ice cream to melt. What's the least expensive and most portable method to keep my ice cream consistently intact? | 2017/08/09 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/104980",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/38710/"
] | **Brown mold in an unbreakable container**
[Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) removes heat, so use it to shield your ice cream.
Your only challenge is to put it in a container that won't rupture when the mold tries to grow uncontrollably on the elemental plane of fire. | Seal some [Brown Mold](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/hazards/special-hazards/brown-mold-cr-2/) in a container and put that container inside a larger, insulated container for your ice cream. The cost is the cost of the containers plus the cost of the brown mold (free if you can find it and harvest it).
That's a trick I've been using since 2ndE (the walk in freezers had a ring of warmth on a hook outside it). In this case, the freezer was double walled with the mold sandwiched between. When a friend wanted their own freezer, I had him build a similar room, took some mold from mine, put it in between the walls of his and launched a couple of fireballs into it. It was chilly in no time. |
8,872,203 | I need to decide whether I should use GL\_UNSIGNED\_SHORT or GL\_FLOAT for my (static) VBO for vertices. Shorts use 2 times less memory but does it also reduce rendering speed (because the GPU has to convert them to floats)? Same thing for texture coordinates, I could use GL\_UNSIGNED\_BYTE for smaller textures and GL\_UNSIGNED\_SHORT for larger ones (using a texture matrix to map to 0-1), but I am worried it might reduce rendering speed. | 2012/01/15 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8872203",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/704907/"
] | For any modern hardware (DX10-capable or better), you can assume that attribute reading performance is always dominated by the memory access, not by the transformation from integer to float. Essentially it is *free*.
This is mostly true of DX9-class hardware too, but some hardware has certain vertex formats that it doesn't work well with.
That being said, I wouldn't be so sure about being able to use unsigned bytes for texture coordinates. You usually need greater precision than per-texel for texture coordinates in most models. Unsigned shorts are usually fine, but there just isn't enough precision in bytes to make it work. | Converting a short to a float should be a pretty cheap operation. I would *think* that the savings in memory bandwidth would outweigh the extra processing cost.
But without actually testing it, this remains nothing but a wild guess. |
118,187 | So [this question](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/89124/what-is-the-difference-between-yell-and-scream/89159?s=1|0.3474#89159) gives an answer to the difference between *yell* and *scream*, but I'd also like clarification about *shout* and *cry*, which have to be linked with the other two. Whatever the case when I use one of them I feel like I used the wrong one.
Also, the top answer used "to cry" in the definition of "to scream" and "to shout" in the definition of "to yell". Most dictionaries also give other words as definitions, which doesn't help.
I have a bunch of related question which I think makes sense to be asked and answer together. When I ask for difference about words, it's mostly for edge cases.
---
Of course, I mean *cry* in other ways that "to shed tears". I would think that it implies that you're in danger (i.e. "cry for help") and it's not directed to anyone, but what about "battle cry" ? Are there other uses that don't imply you're in danger ?
What's the word for when a metal vocalist "sings" very loudly in the mic ? Is it yelling if it's not directed to someone in particular ? And if a rapper raps increasingly louder, is he screaming or yelling at the end ? IMO yelling can never be non-annoying, am I correct ?
To describe someone cursing really loud, what do you use ? Is it different words depending on if the insults are directed to someone or just interjections like "SHIT!" ? | 2017/02/03 | [
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/118187",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/users/42888/"
] | "Shout" and "yell" are more or less synonymous. Other than style or poetry ([and a few idiomatic expressions](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/shout)), I can't think of any reason why you couldn't use one in place of the other.
A "scream" includes a shrill note that indicates extreme emotion. [This is the infamous "Wilhelm Scream'.](https://youtu.be/cdbYsoEasio?t=8)
These are also screams: [American girls screaming at the Beatles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOcYTOBA0CI)
A "cry" is a loud exclamation, often *sounding* like someone (or something) in distress. There is also the additional nuance that a "cry" is meant to be heard over some distance.
As you mentioned, you can "cry" for help, but so can animals: [Bear cub crying for its mom.](https://youtu.be/4tDyhmJ6N8Q?t=23). We can describe the [sound wildcats make as "cries"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs9L0s0Xz8c) (or "screams") even though these are not from distress, because it *sounds* like something that needs help.
(Edit) We would most likely say that a heavy metal vocalist *screams* into the microphone. Apparently this (along with *growling*) is the [actual term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_(music)) for this style. As a scream, by definition, includes higher-pitched elements, a rapper who is "singing" loudly into the mike could be said to be either *shouting* or *yelling*.
Be aware that, in current slang, to "shout out" means to "favorably acknowledge" as in "a public expression of thanks".
>
> I want to **give a shout out** to all of my fans, without whom I wouldn't be here on this stage.
>
>
> | *yell* - You *yell* typically when you want attention or are trying to be heard over noise or a distance. *Yelling* is typically directed at or for someone/something specific. You can *yell for* someone to try to get someone's attention or them to come to you.
*shout* - You *shout* at someone when you want them to hear you or are trying to be heard over noise or a distance. This will of course draw attention to you but is sometimes a secondary fact with shouting. Sometimes *shouting* is not directed at anyone specific but to a group of people or just to communicate the loudness of one's voice.
*scream* - You *scream* typically when scared or in pain. Screams also happen with emotional extremes. A scream is stronger/more startling than a yell or a shout.
*cry* - You *cry* typically when sad or in pain. *Crying out* is equivalent to *shout* with an added connotation of needing help. *Cry* can describe what a baby or young child does but isn't necessarily loud if describing an adult. |
6,832 | I'm looking for a storage solution for small files that would be moved into a small sensor running arduino-like processor.
Ideally the single memory unit would be cheap (in 1-10 cents range), but the memory can be very limited (several megabytes).
The closest I've got so far is small SD Memory card, but the smallest 4GB ones cost several dollars (at least bought in quantities < 100). Anything else I should be looking at? | 2015/01/03 | [
"https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/6832",
"https://arduino.stackexchange.com",
"https://arduino.stackexchange.com/users/6519/"
] | I assume that, if this is a cost sensitive item, you need a reliable supply of multiples (so looking for small SD cards on e-bay isn't a viable solution).
Does it need to be non-volatile storage? If it does't you may be able to find small 8-bit wide RAM chips at a pretty good price. If it needs to be non-volatile, you might look at individual flash chips. I found [this one](http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/flash-memory-chips/8228473P/), an 8-bit by 512 KB Serial-SPI flash chip for £0.19 (about $0.28 US) in single units and £0.176 if you can by 100 at a time. I would expect DRAM chips and chips with a simpler interface to be less expensive (but you might end up spending more on interfacing the chips so it might end up as a wash).
If you're able to consider a variety of processor chips it might be worth looking for something that has adequate storage on chip. That might be the most cost effective way to get the space. | On ebay you can buy 2nd hand Nokia SD cards from old mobile phones which are 128MB or so and very cheap. |
123,336 | How can I see a video loaded in the background at any angle?
not only in the view of the camera or left right up down | 2018/11/23 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/123336",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/57088/"
] | Without using additional geometry or compositing, you can use the image as background for the world. Set the Texture coordinates to Window.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/blzHI.png) | The question isn't very clear, but if you are looking to view your object at different angles, press down on your scroll wheel and you should be able to see at all different angles. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | There are things that are discovered, and things that are invented. The boundary is put at different places by different people. I put myself on the list and I believe that my position is objectively justifiable, and others are not.
### Definitely discovered: finite stuff
By probabilistic considerations, I am sure that nobody in the history of the Earth has ever done the following multiplication:
>
> 9306781264114085423 x 39204667242145673 = ?
>
>
>
Then if I compute it, am I inventing its value, or discovering the value? The meaning of the word "invent" and "discover" are a little unclear, but usually one says discover when there are certain properties: does the value have independent unique qualities that we know ahead of time (like being odd)? Is it possible to get two different answers and consider both correct? etc.
In this case, everyone would agree the value is discovered, since we actually can do the computation--- and not a single (sane) person thinks that the answer is made up nonsense, or that it wouldn't be the number of boxes in the rectangle with appropriate sides, etc.
There are many unsolved problems in this finite category, so it isn't trivial:
* Is chess won for white, won for black, or a draw, in perfect play?
* What are the longest possible Piraha sentences with no proper names?
* What is the length of the shortest proof in ZF of the Prime Number Theorem? Approximately?
* What is the list of 50 crossing knots?
You can go on forever, as most interesting mathematical problems are interesting in the finite domain too.
### Discovered: asymptotic computation
Consider now an arbitrary computer program, and whether it halts or does not halt. This is the problem of what are called "Pi-0-1 arithmetic sentences" in first order logic, but I prefer the entirely equivalent formulation in terms of halting computer programs, as logic jargon is less accessible than programming jargon.
Given a definite computer program P written in C (or some other Turing complete language) suitably modified to allow arbitrarily large memory. Does this program return an answer in finite time, or run forever? This includes a hefty chunk of the most famous mathematical conjectures, I list a few:
* The Riemann hypothesis (in suitable formulation)
* The Goldbach conjecture.
* The Odd perfect number conjecture
* Diophantine equations (like Fermat's last theorem)
* consistency of ZF (or any other first order set of axioms)
* Kneser-Poulsen conjecture on sphere-rearrangement
You can believe one of the two
* "Does P halt" is *absolutely meaningful*, so that one can know that it is true or false without knowing which.
* "Does P halt" only becomes meaningful upon the halting of P, or a proof that it doesn't halt in a suitable formal system, so that it is useful to introduce a category of "unknown" for this question, and the "unknown" category might not eventually become empty, as it does in the finite problem case.
Here is where the intuitionists stop. The famous name here is
* L.E.J. Brouwer
Intuitionistic logic is developed to deal with cases where there are questions whose answer is not determined as true or false, so that one cannot decide the law of excluded middle. This position leaves open the possibility that some computer programs that don't halt are just too hard to prove halt, and there is no mechanism for doing so.
While intuitionism is useful for situations of imperfect knowledge (like us, always), this is not the place where most mathematicians stop. There is a firm belief that the questions at this level are either true or false, we just don't know which. I agree with this position, but I don't think it is trivial to argue against the intuitionist perspective.
### Most believe discovered: Arithmetic hierarchy
There are questions in mathematics which cannot be phrased as the non-halting of a computer program, at least not without modification of the concept of "program". These include
* The twin prime conjecture
* The transcendence of e+pi.
To check these questions, you need to run through cases, where at each point you have to check where a computer program halts. This means you need to know infinitely many programs halt. For example, to know there are infinitely many twin primes, you need to show that the program that looks for twin primes starting at each found pair will halt on the next found pair. For the transcendence question, you have to run through all polynomials, calculate the roots, and show that eventually they are different from e+pi.
These questions are at the next level of the arithmetic hierarchy. Their computational formulation is again more intuitive--- they correspond to the halting problem for a computer which has access to the solution of the ordinary halting problem.
You can go up the arithmetic hierarchy, and the sentences which express the conjectures on the arithmetic hierarchy at any finite level are those of Peano Arithmetic.
There are those who believe that Peano Arithmetic is the proper foundation, and these arithmetically minded people will stop at the end of the arithmetic hierarchy. I suppose one could place Kronecker here:
* Leopold Kronecker: "God created the natural numbers, all else is the work of man."
To assume that the sentences on the arithmetic hierarchy are absolute, but no others, is a possible position. If you include axioms of induction on these statements, you get the theory of Peano Arithmetic, which has an ordinal complexity which is completely understood since Gentzen, and it is described by the ordinal epsilon-naught. Epsilon-naught is very concrete, but I have seen recent arguments that it might not be well founded! This is completely ridiculous to anyone who knows epsilon-naught, and the idea might strike future generations as equally silly as the idea that the number of sand grains in a sphere the size of Earth's orbit is infinite--- an idea explicitly refuted in "The Sand Reckoner" by Archimedes.
### Most believe discovered: Hyperarithmetic hierarchy
The hyperarithmetic hierarchy is often phrased in terms of second order arithmetic, but I prefer to state it computationally.
Suppose I give you all the solution to the halting problem at all levels of the arithmetic hierarchy, and you concatenate them into one infinite CD-ROM which contains the solution to all of these simultaneously. Then the halting problem with this CD-ROM (the complete arithmetic-hierarchy halting oracle) defines a new halting problem--- the omega-th jump of 0 in recursion theory jargon, or just the omega-oracle.
You can iterate the oracles up the ordinal list, and produce ever more complex halting problems. You might believe this is meaningful for any ordinals which produce a tape.
There are various stopping points along the hyperarithmetic hierarchy, which are usually labelled by their second-order arithmetic version (which I don't know how to translate). These positions are not natural stopping points for anybody.
### Church Kleene ordinal
I am here. Everything less than this, I accept, everything beyond this, I consider objectively invented. The reason is that the Church-Kleene ordinal is the limit of all countable computable ordinals. This is the position of the computational foundations, and it was essentially the position of the Soviet school. People I would put here include
* Yuri Manin
* Paul Cohen
In the case of Paul Cohen, I am not sure. The ordinals below Church Kleene are all those that we can definitely represent on a computer, and work with, and any higher conception is suspect.
### First uncountable ordinal
If you make an axiomatic set theory with power set, you can define the union of all countable ordinals, and this is the first uncountable ordinal. Some people stop here, rejecting uncountable sets, like the set of real numbers, as inventions.
This is a very similar position to mine, held by people at the turn of the 20th century, who accepted countable infinity, but not uncountable infinity. Those who were here include many famous mathematicians
* Thorvald Skolem
Skolem's theorem was an attempt to convince mathematicians that mathematics was countable.
I should point out that the Church Kleene ordinal was not defined until the 1940s, so this was the closest position to the computational one available in the early half of the 20th century.
### Continuum
Most practically minded mathematicians stop here. They become wary of constructions like the set of all functions on the real line, since these spaces are too large for intuition to comfortably handle. There is no formal foundation school that stops at the continuum, it is just a place where people stop being comfortable in the absoluteness of mathematical truth.
The continuum has questions which are known to be undecidable by methods which are persuasive that it is a vagueness in the set concept at this point, not in the axiom system.
### First Inaccessible Cardinal
This place is where most Platonists stop. Everything below this is described by ZFC. I think the most famous person here is:
* Saharon Shelah
I assume this is his platonic universe, since he says so explicitly in an intro to one of his more famous early papers. He might have changed his mind since.
### Infinitely many Woodin Cardinals
This is the place where people who like projective determinacy stop.
It is likely that determinacy advocates believe in the consistency of determinacy, and this gives them evidence for the consistency of Woodin Cardinals (although their argument is somewhat theological sounding without the proper computational justification in terms of an impossibly sophisticated countable computable ordinal which serves as the proof theory for this)
This includes
* Hugh Woodin
### Possibly invented: Rank-into-Rank axioms
I copied this from the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_cardinal_properties), these are the largest large cardinals mathematicians have considered to date. This is probably where most logicians stop, but they are wary of possible contradiction.
These axioms are reflection axioms, they make the set-theoretic model self-similar in complicated ways at large places. The structure of the models is enormously rich, and I have no intuition at all, as I barely know the definition (I just read it on Wiki).
### Invented: Reinhard Cardinal
This is the limit of nearly all practicing mathematicians, since these have been shown to be inconsistent, at least using the axiom of choice. Since most of the structure of set theory is made very elegant with choice, and the anti-choice arguments are not usually related to the Godel-style large-cardinal assumptions, people assume Reinhardt Cardinals are inconsistent.
I assume that nearly all working mathematicians consider Reinhardt Cardinals as imaginary entities, that they are inventions, and inconsistent at that.
### Definitely invented: Set of all sets
This level is the highest of all, in the traditional ordering, and this is where people started at the end of the 19th century. The intuitive set
* The set of all sets
* The ordinal limit of all ordinals
These ideas were shown to be inconsistent by Cantor, using a simple argument (consider the ordinal limit plus one, or the power set of the set of all sets). The paradoxes were popularized and sharpened by Russell, then resolved by Whitehead and Russell, Hilbert, Godel, and Zermelo, using axiomatic approaches that denied this object.
Everyone agrees this stuff is invented. | I think the words "invention" and "discovery" are a bit poor to describe the birth of mathematic if there is one. It makes no sense to me to say mathematic has appeared as when Christophe Colomb discovered America or was invented as the boomerang.
The word mathematics might have been invented, the language in which the mathematics are written might have been invented but the abstraction movement from the real word, the structured synthesis that it undertakes, all that give thickness to mathematics themselves (it depends what you call mathematics) are part of mankind. You don't ask if beauty has been discovered or invented ?
My personnal point of view is that the question "what is mathematics" would be more serious, I would found even more interesting "why do we do mathematics". |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | I'm going to posit, admittedly without any research whatsoever about those who've preceded these thoughts, that **an "invention" is a *kind* of "discovery,"** and that whether a thing qualifies as an invention is—yup, you saw it coming—*subjective*.
For example, we might say that the wheel was "invented" on grounds of (1) **non-naturality** (**originality**), and (2) **intention**. That is, prior to the wheel, circle-and-axle forms did not exist in nature, and so of course no one could apply it to the facilitation of movement. Furthermore, it's hard(er) to imagine someone carving a circle with a hole, then carving a spoke, then putting the two together, without having the *intention of rolling* the circle on the spoke, in mind. These circumstances give us cause to say that the wheel was "invented."
But, it's not impossible to imagine, either, that someone might have carved a circle with a hole for absolutely no reason to do with the concept of rolling, then happened to stick a stick in the hole (again, for no premeditated or relevant reason), and only *then* (or sometime later) realized its property of rolling. Note how in this case, we're more inclined to call the wheel a "discovery!"
**I think we tend to call novel discoveries with premeditated results, "inventions."**
So, I would say mathematics, as a general notational/deductive system, was mostly invented. But its concepts were discovered. (And even some notations were indeed discovered, while striving for convenience, concision, and pictorialization!) | My view on it is that Mathematics is a system invented by humans to represent things we otherwise can or cannot perceive. For example, we can perceive an object through vision and know it's a triangle, however, our vision alone does not tell us the length of the legs of the triangle. We need math to represent that for us.
JUst to further my point, consider Calculus. Two people who were on completely different sides of Europe, Leibniz and Newton, created a system that that both do the same thing. For Newton, f'(x) is the same as Leibniz' df/dx. Both of them yield a function that represents the slope at any given point on the original function, f(x). They invented a system to represent something we otherwise couldn't perceive (which was pre existing - The shape of a mountain should be enough to prove that the slope exists naturally), the only difference was their notation. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | My elementary math lecturer likes to say
>
> God created the number 0, and the [successor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Successor_function). The rest was invented by mankind.
>
>
>
I think there is some truth in this quote, even if you don't believe in God. So to answer your question: I'd say that the very basis of math was discovered, but most of the sophisticated math was invented. | From a Neo-Intuitionist perspective, to the degree mathematics is invented, it is still discovered.
Did we invent, or discover the consonant 't'? We discovered that our mouths reasonably make that sound, across a wide swath of our species. But we decided that this was an important thing, and in so doing, we invented the idea of 't'. We invented a consonant by discovering a fact about ourselves.
From this perspective, mathematics is a set of ideas to which humans are naturally attracted in a given way. But those ideas themselves are a product of the human mind, the way the consonant 't' is a natural product of the human vocal apparatus. Those ideas arise out of individual humans, who can be considered to invent them. (Someone first uttered the sound of t. Someone first asked if -1 has a square root, or whether infinity comes in various sizes.)
But mathematics chooses out the ones that feel a given way and isolates those that appeal broadly to a given emotional reaction. In that sense it is a branch of psychology which discovers things about human thought.
It elaborates those ideas to a degree that makes it seem like it is creating things, but really, it is exploring our shared fund of ideas for ones that seem purely symbolic and not worthy of questioning, and sees how their consequences fit together. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | My personal point of view is that mathematicians *invented* the axioms and the rules of operation, the rest are *discovered*. Mathematicians *invented* the notations for writing down the concepts which are *discovered* within the universe of an axiom.
The concept of numbers exists, but we invent the notation that the glyph '1' and the sound /wʌn/ refers to the concept of singular object that we discovered. We invented the rules of matrix multiplication, but the consequences of the way we do matrix multiplications are discovered.
Most of the time, we deliberately invent a set of axioms that will lead us to discover a set of facts we want to be true. This is certainly true with imaginary numbers, we invented them so that we can discover the solutions to problems we previously were unable or difficult to solve. | Mathematics is normative. That is clear when one reads Euclid and Lobachevsky in juxtaposition, or Euclid and Descartes, or Euclid and Leibniz or Newton, or Leibniz and Newton and Dedekind, or Dedekind and Canton, or Canton and Godel, etc., etc.. Geometry is clearly normative, as we have different geometries (although one might claim, "yes, but they can all be transformed into one another"). But the argument goes like this: there is no other arithmetic; and thus, in counting (and its extensions), we are discovering something fundamental to the universe. Of course, such an answer supposes that Euclid and Dedekind are talking about the *same* arithmetic. Is that even possible? No. There's no room, in Euclid's conception of number (think of Books V and VI of the *Elements*), for Dedekind's cuts, and thus, no room for a whole host of numbers that are incompatible with Euclid's concept of number. And if you think that the concept of number is fundamental to a conception of arithmetic, then it would seem that every time we "add" new "sorts" of numbers (which are invented by new sorts of functions), we create a new arithmetic. But, someone might say, "that's all well and good, but we really just subsume those other arithmetics under what we call arithmetic--there's really just one arithmetic." But that would be like saying "wave-mechanics really just subsumed ordinary mechanics...." Such a statement doesn't make any sense. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | Mathematics is a lot of things: there are basic/complex entities/structures, proof strategies, algorithms, formal manipulations... in order to try to answer your question I think we should make some distinctions between different matematical entities/activities where the "creative" part of the thought is more or less relevant. Moreover some parts of mathematics seems to be neither discovered nor created, they seem to be just "given" embedded in our natural language grammar.
Some examples of math entities/activities that:
* *seem embedded in our grammar*: classical logical operators, classical deduction rules, tautologies, natural numbers
* *seem more discovered*: non-trivial general fact in a given structure (ex. fermat's last theorem), finding general patterns, classifications, finding counterexamples
* *seem more invented*: definition of new non-trivial structures (ex. complex numbers, quaternions), finding new non-trivial proof strategies. | My view on it is that Mathematics is a system invented by humans to represent things we otherwise can or cannot perceive. For example, we can perceive an object through vision and know it's a triangle, however, our vision alone does not tell us the length of the legs of the triangle. We need math to represent that for us.
JUst to further my point, consider Calculus. Two people who were on completely different sides of Europe, Leibniz and Newton, created a system that that both do the same thing. For Newton, f'(x) is the same as Leibniz' df/dx. Both of them yield a function that represents the slope at any given point on the original function, f(x). They invented a system to represent something we otherwise couldn't perceive (which was pre existing - The shape of a mountain should be enough to prove that the slope exists naturally), the only difference was their notation. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | I'm going to posit, admittedly without any research whatsoever about those who've preceded these thoughts, that **an "invention" is a *kind* of "discovery,"** and that whether a thing qualifies as an invention is—yup, you saw it coming—*subjective*.
For example, we might say that the wheel was "invented" on grounds of (1) **non-naturality** (**originality**), and (2) **intention**. That is, prior to the wheel, circle-and-axle forms did not exist in nature, and so of course no one could apply it to the facilitation of movement. Furthermore, it's hard(er) to imagine someone carving a circle with a hole, then carving a spoke, then putting the two together, without having the *intention of rolling* the circle on the spoke, in mind. These circumstances give us cause to say that the wheel was "invented."
But, it's not impossible to imagine, either, that someone might have carved a circle with a hole for absolutely no reason to do with the concept of rolling, then happened to stick a stick in the hole (again, for no premeditated or relevant reason), and only *then* (or sometime later) realized its property of rolling. Note how in this case, we're more inclined to call the wheel a "discovery!"
**I think we tend to call novel discoveries with premeditated results, "inventions."**
So, I would say mathematics, as a general notational/deductive system, was mostly invented. But its concepts were discovered. (And even some notations were indeed discovered, while striving for convenience, concision, and pictorialization!) | I consider an answer too simple if it just affirms one of the alternatives and negates the other.
Naming just a few eminent contributions to mathematics: Complex numbers, set theory, theory of schemes. E.g., the concept of a set has been invented by Cantor, it did not exists before. After the basic concepts like set, power set, cardinality etc. had been invented, the Continuum Problem was discovered, hidden deep in these concepts.
Therefore I compare mathematics to a game like chess: Inventing new mathematical concepts is like creating new rules of the game. Playing a match means to discover the consequences of the rules and to solve the problems posed by the rules.
My conclusion: The rules of the game of mathematics have been **invented**. Following the rules mathematicians then **discover** some challenging matches. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | This is a serious question and it is the same as saying: is the knowledge in mathematics universal or a human construct?
Pi (the number, regardless of its base) and many other things are universals, mathematics are discovered to that extent. Then they can be used to formalise inventions that may prove to be wrong, right or paradoxical, in the same way the knowledge (discovered) about horses and rhinos can be used to (invent and) speak about unicorns (that were never discovered).
Can we say (as many answers point here) that biology was invented because of unicorns? | Mathematics is normative. That is clear when one reads Euclid and Lobachevsky in juxtaposition, or Euclid and Descartes, or Euclid and Leibniz or Newton, or Leibniz and Newton and Dedekind, or Dedekind and Canton, or Canton and Godel, etc., etc.. Geometry is clearly normative, as we have different geometries (although one might claim, "yes, but they can all be transformed into one another"). But the argument goes like this: there is no other arithmetic; and thus, in counting (and its extensions), we are discovering something fundamental to the universe. Of course, such an answer supposes that Euclid and Dedekind are talking about the *same* arithmetic. Is that even possible? No. There's no room, in Euclid's conception of number (think of Books V and VI of the *Elements*), for Dedekind's cuts, and thus, no room for a whole host of numbers that are incompatible with Euclid's concept of number. And if you think that the concept of number is fundamental to a conception of arithmetic, then it would seem that every time we "add" new "sorts" of numbers (which are invented by new sorts of functions), we create a new arithmetic. But, someone might say, "that's all well and good, but we really just subsume those other arithmetics under what we call arithmetic--there's really just one arithmetic." But that would be like saying "wave-mechanics really just subsumed ordinary mechanics...." Such a statement doesn't make any sense. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | First, Quine:
"..[If externally true] the definitions [of mathematical laws] would generate all the concepts from clear and distinct ideas, and the proofs would generate all the theorems from self-evident truths."
"...the truths of logic are all obvious or at least potentially obvious..[but] mathematics reduces only to set theory and not to logic proper."
-Epistemology Naturalized; Chapter 39.
The implications are bleak for the ontological objectivity of mathematics. For a fact to reduce to certainty one must present sensory evidence (to be "self evident"). Consider, I see that things fall to earth and stay there. I explain this to myself with physics. What I see is not physics. Physics is a framework invented to generalize what I am perceiving.
A 1 and a 1 on a sheet of paper are not the same as a 2 on a sheet of paper. 1 is the smallest prime#, for example, while 2 is the smallest even prime, among myriad other differences.
An apple on a table and an apple on a table is not the same as two apples on a table, as the set of two apples could be different apples. I cannot cube two apples, except to make pie. But I cannot make pi with an apple.
The value of a dollar is measured mathematically. But if humans disappear, the piece of paper remains, while the value disappears with humans. Things stick to the earth regardless of our existence, but the theory describing our perception of gravity does not.
The epistemic objectivity of Mathematics is ontologically subjective. It exists only in our minds. Something that exists only in our minds can only have come into existence within our minds. Something that does that is invented. | If only we would get the question right, we may be able to get the right answer. The problem is, is invention discovery or creation? As a seven times patented inventor, I will tell you that invention is, at least to a great extent, discovery. As my patent agent explained, what is invented is a "method", a way of getting a job done. During the process of invention, one tries on a gazillion methods of getting the job done that don't work. When one does discover a method that does work, well, one has an invention.
The proof of discovery verses creation, is the proof of reproduction. When a person who has never seen a wheel before tries to solve the problem of causing heavy objects to move, he may very well re-invent the wheel. This happens all of the time with inventions. One comes up with a method of solving a problem, only to discover that someone else has patented that invention before him. Creativity is not like this at all. If two people truly independently come up with the same creative product, then their creative product is, well, simple. In fact programs are used to analyze college papers for plagiarization. They seek matches in a 7 word sequence because it is unlikely that two people independently come up with seven little words strung together the same way.
So let the question be, "is mathematics discovery or creation?" Ask the anthropologist to seek out the mathematical methods of other cultures. Surely these methods would be extreme subsets of our math. However, they still have some simple consistencies. Two plus two (though represented with different words) equals four. The fact that two cultures independently come up with the same logic sets establishes that mathematics is discovery, not creation. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | I consider an answer too simple if it just affirms one of the alternatives and negates the other.
Naming just a few eminent contributions to mathematics: Complex numbers, set theory, theory of schemes. E.g., the concept of a set has been invented by Cantor, it did not exists before. After the basic concepts like set, power set, cardinality etc. had been invented, the Continuum Problem was discovered, hidden deep in these concepts.
Therefore I compare mathematics to a game like chess: Inventing new mathematical concepts is like creating new rules of the game. Playing a match means to discover the consequences of the rules and to solve the problems posed by the rules.
My conclusion: The rules of the game of mathematics have been **invented**. Following the rules mathematicians then **discover** some challenging matches. | Every mathematician can only discover mathematics.
Yet, mathematics is an invention.
And this is no contradiction.
Mathematics is fundamentally dependent on the human mind, and more particularly on human deductive logic and on the human perception of the real world, so it is a sort of invention of the homo sapiens species, not one of individual mathematicians. Human mathematicians are unable to invent anything logical which does not follow logically from human nature.
Thus, every mathematician can only discover what is already there, implicit in human nature, and since the mathematicians we know of are all humans, they will discover or rediscover the same things.
This is why mathematicians come to believe that it is a given, hence the Platonist view.
The Platonist view is wrong because while mathematics is given to every mathematician, it is not given to the human species. It comes with, or is part of, its own nature, so to speak. Human mathematics does not exist outside the human mind.
The human species is itself implicit in nature, so human mathematics is implicit in nature, but it is set out according to human logic and human perception of the real world. So, at best, the Platonist world is nature itself. This is clearly not what mathematicians mean by "Platonist", but this is the only reasonable option. |
1 | What would it mean to say that mathematics was invented and how would this be different from saying mathematics was discovered?
Is this even a serious philosophical question or just a meaningless/tautological linguistic ambiguity? | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/7/"
] | First, Quine:
"..[If externally true] the definitions [of mathematical laws] would generate all the concepts from clear and distinct ideas, and the proofs would generate all the theorems from self-evident truths."
"...the truths of logic are all obvious or at least potentially obvious..[but] mathematics reduces only to set theory and not to logic proper."
-Epistemology Naturalized; Chapter 39.
The implications are bleak for the ontological objectivity of mathematics. For a fact to reduce to certainty one must present sensory evidence (to be "self evident"). Consider, I see that things fall to earth and stay there. I explain this to myself with physics. What I see is not physics. Physics is a framework invented to generalize what I am perceiving.
A 1 and a 1 on a sheet of paper are not the same as a 2 on a sheet of paper. 1 is the smallest prime#, for example, while 2 is the smallest even prime, among myriad other differences.
An apple on a table and an apple on a table is not the same as two apples on a table, as the set of two apples could be different apples. I cannot cube two apples, except to make pie. But I cannot make pi with an apple.
The value of a dollar is measured mathematically. But if humans disappear, the piece of paper remains, while the value disappears with humans. Things stick to the earth regardless of our existence, but the theory describing our perception of gravity does not.
The epistemic objectivity of Mathematics is ontologically subjective. It exists only in our minds. Something that exists only in our minds can only have come into existence within our minds. Something that does that is invented. | I think it's hard to say. If you believe that mathematics has been discovered, you must assume that "something" is out there, something we can interact with, of which we have been unable to prove existence so far.
However, even assuming that there are ideas out there, I believe that there is no reason to think that humans should be, in any way, able to understand them. As David Deutsch famously said, the fact that we understand the laws of Nature, is pretty much like saying that you land on another planet, and find aliens completely able to speak to you in english.
Last but not least, it is possible that our models of how the Universe works are completely wrong. Hence, we are talking about ideas derived from our models that may be, ultimately, way off the truth. |
878 | Recently I invited one of my colleagues to CS.SE to improve her ideas while doing cognitive neuroscience research in the graduate school. I usually use **StackOverFlow** website more and get answers very quickly there. I also used Stats.SE and get good results. But I feel that the community here is not as lively as them. Of course it's not a reasonable expectation that this new *beta* website work as the other more established do and the comparison with SO is not fair at all. But this issue led me to think about a probable cause that I want to share so that it could help this community grow and flourish:
I myself was introduced to CS.SE through familiarity with SO. I haven't noticed it til I looked at why my colleague doesn't know about the website. Then I looked around and saw that this seems to be the rule instead of an exception. Like many others in the field of cognitive science, I have a programming/engineering background. I was a **'programmer kind of kid'**. After working with several programming language, I finally find SO a place I can speed up building my programming skills, seek advice from the experts of the field, and resolve bugs and problems without costing myself an arm and a leg. But in graduate school I become interested in psychology and cognitive science and this has led me here.
I took a look at the profile of some of the reputed people here and I've found a similar pattern. I mean it seems **'it is more likely'** for people who have or had familiarity with programming (through SO) to come here in CS.SE. Of course these people are experts of the field of cognitive science **right now** but they have more or less programming background and surely the presence of these people (including myself) is of enormous value and I don't want to belittle their effect or presence at all. But there are many other professionals who are more medically or psychologically oriented but have expertise in CS and can make this community more vital and yet we miss them. But it sees it is less likely for them to be attracted to CS.SE.
The last 'sad thing' is that many of people who ask 'bad' questions here (e.g. not enough researched, not scientifically answerable) are people who are just 'interested' to know more about 'the mysteries of human mind', but they are not familiar with the scientific discipline related to these matters. Some of them just want to do some 'psychological things' in their spare time after they are finished with resolving their bugs or having tough time in the huge SO. So we end up in a bunch of closed or on hold questions everyday and even many of those that are not closed are more related to 'pop psychology' than to serious cognitive science, but again this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we would get better results if we focus on the cause rather on fierce moderation. If there are more professional people here, there will be more professional questions.
So after this long statement of the problem, Do you agree with me upon these things or you see things differently from mine ? And after all, what could we do about it to improve the situation if we should. | 2014/05/02 | [
"https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/878",
"https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4075/"
] | "Bad" is a relative term.
Duplicates should be ammended with a link to the supposed duplicates. I have often asked questions (here and especially on SO), that were rated to be duplicates, where the supposed duplicate had a decisively different angle and the answers did not help me, or where I simply did not find the duplicates because not knowing the answer I did not know what terms to search for.
This lack of knowledge is often also the reason for poorly worded questions. It think it is part of the duty of experienced / knowledgeable members so ammend "ignorant" questions, because a certain level of knowledge is necessary to chose the right terms and the appropriate frame of reference.
Generally, I feel that as long as everybody and their grandmother are encouraged and allowed to become a member of this site, we cannot be elitist. | I have minimum rep and so have little "right" to respond here. But I do like and care about cognitive sciences and was excited to see that there was a SE site for it.
On English Language and Usage, the site is what I consider appropriately moderated. Questions showing no research are down voted and bad questions closed either by the community or the mods. On that site, even when I close vote, I still usually provide an answer (in comments), because, well, it's easy.
On this site, answers are not easy; they require an investment of time.
If people are willing to answer poor questions, I don't believe they should be punished for it, however, I think bad answers should be down voted. |
7,227,962 | I read about NEsper a lot & I tried the example code.
I have some questions :
1. it is an event proccessor engine, how it gets the events?
2. Where it saves the data?
3. when it polls it?
4. Who polls it?
5. I downloaded a project for example, big project, If I want to use NEsper I have to use the project? I have to build another project? How can I use it? | 2011/08/29 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7227962",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/917461/"
] | I worked with the Java implementation of Esper last year. Nesper is the implementation for .NET of the same product. Basically,
1. It is in brief, a library for event processing, I would not call it engine though. Events can be passed to your implementation from any source you want, generally you encapsulate data (as POJOs) and pass it into the processing runtime, it will then execute your queries as soon as "patterns" are found.
2. The event processing model doesn't imply data storage. Events move through the engine and based on your queries some elements are cached in order to match conditions. No database or repository needed.
3. When a pattern is found and can trigger composite ("complex") events.
4. Information itself. In contrast to DB queries (where you pull information), data is pushed into the engine and a set of operations is performed on the data stream. You can set timers and similar stuff if your project requires it.
5. Begin with something simple. Like this [tutorial](http://coffeeonesugar.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/getting-started-with-esper-in-5-minutes/)
This is written in Java but I guess it would't be so hard to implement using a .NET language.
Best luck. | extending above answer.
>
> Where it saves the data?
>
>
>
based on pattern (window) you use, Esper will keep some data in memory.
What will happen if your machine/application will restart? Esper will lose state (in memory cache data). For that Esper provides license [EsperHA](http://www.espertech.com/esperha/), so you can manage state outside of your machine (like redis cache) |
17,752,907 | **What is the workflow on devices when the Play Store updates an app? What happens if the user is using the app at the same time?**
I ask because we have some crashes where a String ID cannot be found, and when we looked at the APKs the String resource is available in both versions - but the hex ID reported in the crashes is found in the OLD apk and not in the NEW one. This is strange.
This leads us to think that the Play Store may have updated the app's files and resources while the app was running, and then when it looked up the string resource to load something it used the old ID from memory and of course didn't find it in the newly updated files.. leading to the ResourceNotFound exception.
*How is that possible? Is it even possible?* I'd think not, except we looked in the APKs and the ID that was in the crash matched the old resource id and not the new one that we just pushed. | 2013/07/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/17752907",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/497400/"
] | From what I could find in researching this, it seems as though the App *needs* to be closed in order for the files to be reachable for update. Once closed, Google Play updates only the changed pieces of the apk to save time and cost.
There are several forum posts I have found that teach you how to rollback app options from flashed ROM (which happens all the time with rooted devices). Perhaps the user attempted to rollback after receiving the update. Either that, or the ID that was in the crash is referenced in part of your apk that was not updated.
Sources:
[Notification of Update](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9849889/how-to-notifiy-users-about-an-android-app-update)
[What Happens When You Update an App](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16087714/what-happens-when-you-update-an-android-app)
[Google Play Saves Cost & Time](http://www.techhive.com/article/261004/google_play_smart_updates_save_data_costs_and_time.html) | If the user is using the app at the same time it's updating the app the linux filesystem allows for the behavior described above. A process holding a file open (think the app executable while the app is running) will keep the executable image in memory even if the executable on disk has been updated. What this allows is the new apk to be put in place and unpacked with the old exe image still in memory.
Resource files tend to be lazily loaded, so navigating the old image in memory will look for resources and potentially load a resource from the newly unpacked app. The resource may not be compatible with the old app and cause a crash. |
17,752,907 | **What is the workflow on devices when the Play Store updates an app? What happens if the user is using the app at the same time?**
I ask because we have some crashes where a String ID cannot be found, and when we looked at the APKs the String resource is available in both versions - but the hex ID reported in the crashes is found in the OLD apk and not in the NEW one. This is strange.
This leads us to think that the Play Store may have updated the app's files and resources while the app was running, and then when it looked up the string resource to load something it used the old ID from memory and of course didn't find it in the newly updated files.. leading to the ResourceNotFound exception.
*How is that possible? Is it even possible?* I'd think not, except we looked in the APKs and the ID that was in the crash matched the old resource id and not the new one that we just pushed. | 2013/07/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/17752907",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/497400/"
] | From what I could find in researching this, it seems as though the App *needs* to be closed in order for the files to be reachable for update. Once closed, Google Play updates only the changed pieces of the apk to save time and cost.
There are several forum posts I have found that teach you how to rollback app options from flashed ROM (which happens all the time with rooted devices). Perhaps the user attempted to rollback after receiving the update. Either that, or the ID that was in the crash is referenced in part of your apk that was not updated.
Sources:
[Notification of Update](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9849889/how-to-notifiy-users-about-an-android-app-update)
[What Happens When You Update an App](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16087714/what-happens-when-you-update-an-android-app)
[Google Play Saves Cost & Time](http://www.techhive.com/article/261004/google_play_smart_updates_save_data_costs_and_time.html) | I remember encountering an issue like this one - the issue in my situation was that we were storing resource ids (and even serialized enumerated values) via user preferences. Once our app was updated (new enumerated values, new resources), old values were loaded from user preferences and passed into code, resulting in crashes.
Perhaps this is not your issue, but its worth checking to see that you aren't storing / loading IDs for resources which no longer exist. |
35,126 | I am just getting started with adobe illustrator CS5 bulding logos. I often see people presenting it as mockups on walls, business cards or more than one logo which can be navigated through.
How do it do that using Adobe illustrator or I need Photoshop ?
Regards
Vishy | 2014/06/27 | [
"https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/35126",
"https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com",
"https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users/26456/"
] | They have pre made photoshop templates to create these super realistic mockups you see. Some you have to purchase but many are available for free. You will need both photoshop and illustrator.
A great resource is www.graphicburger.com
These are a great idea because it gives the client an idea of what the final product will look like, and it really helps sell certain ideas. | its great that you are starting to use adobe Illustrator!
for creating logos, you are already on the right track. If you want to use your logos to create business cards or mockup designs using your logos, it is best using Photoshop if you have it.
You can first save you logo from illustrator either in an eps or pdf format and transfer it to Photoshop. the beauty of it is that your eps file will adapt to any size in Photoshop depending on the size of your file.
sample:
as you can see the logo are both crisp even if placed in documents with a great size difference.
Photoshop is just a better program to create mockups in general since all elements such as images and fonts can be easily edited.
I hope this answers your question, have fun! |
17,204 | I have read about convergence in terms of MC simulation for derivative pricing, but I am not clear on what it exactly means.
Let us suppose I price an option 100,000 paths twice and both result in the same option price. Does that mean 100,000 paths has resulted in convergence?
Also, in determining the number of paths to use for pricing, is getting the same option price with 2 different runs a factor? (Assumption is I am not reseeding the Random Number. So the sequence of Random Numbers between the two runs is different). | 2015/04/01 | [
"https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/17204",
"https://quant.stackexchange.com",
"https://quant.stackexchange.com/users/13648/"
] | To keep things simple let's assume you have a perfect random number generator (i.e. I will discuss only the statistics not the numerics of the problem). I will also focus on the practical matter and gloss over some mathematical details.
From a practical perspective "convergence" means that you will never get an exact answer from Monte-Carlo but increasingly good approximations. Try out your 100'000 paths example. The two values for the price of your option will be slightly different everytime you use a fresh, i.e. independent, sample.
Two mathematical theorems are relevant to describe convergence: First, the [law of large numbers,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers) which says that the average of independent samples converges to the expected value (i.e. price) and the [central limit theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem), which tells you that the distribution of the error converges to a properly scaled normal distribution. This justifies what Mark Joshi is alluding to in his post.
You mention a typical and very relevant question: What size samples do I need to achieve a certain prescribed accuracy? If you assume normal distribution of errors you can calculate a [confidence interval](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval) and solve this expression for the sample size. You will often hear people say that Monte-Carlo "converges very slowly" or "converges with $\sqrt{n}$". This is because to achieve a tenfold increase in accuracy you need a hundredfold increase in number of paths. For a serious study of this important topic I recommend the book by [Paul Glasserman](http://www.amazon.de/Financial-Engineering-Stochastic-Modelling-Probability/dp/0387004513/ref=la_B001KHD64E_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427972303&sr=1-1) | "Monte Carlo convergence" means that you've sampled enough individuals to represent (and understand) a general population. If the probability models behind your Monte Carlo simulation are accurate, then your results will match reality as you increase your sampling size.
Monte Carlo convergence becomes difficult when you try to study a low-probability sub-population. As you sample the general population and only count those outcome that match your low-probability tally, you find convergence to be slow. Very few individuals arrive to your desire outcome. So, you sample and sample, but converge never comes. |
17,204 | I have read about convergence in terms of MC simulation for derivative pricing, but I am not clear on what it exactly means.
Let us suppose I price an option 100,000 paths twice and both result in the same option price. Does that mean 100,000 paths has resulted in convergence?
Also, in determining the number of paths to use for pricing, is getting the same option price with 2 different runs a factor? (Assumption is I am not reseeding the Random Number. So the sequence of Random Numbers between the two runs is different). | 2015/04/01 | [
"https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/17204",
"https://quant.stackexchange.com",
"https://quant.stackexchange.com/users/13648/"
] | To keep things simple let's assume you have a perfect random number generator (i.e. I will discuss only the statistics not the numerics of the problem). I will also focus on the practical matter and gloss over some mathematical details.
From a practical perspective "convergence" means that you will never get an exact answer from Monte-Carlo but increasingly good approximations. Try out your 100'000 paths example. The two values for the price of your option will be slightly different everytime you use a fresh, i.e. independent, sample.
Two mathematical theorems are relevant to describe convergence: First, the [law of large numbers,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers) which says that the average of independent samples converges to the expected value (i.e. price) and the [central limit theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem), which tells you that the distribution of the error converges to a properly scaled normal distribution. This justifies what Mark Joshi is alluding to in his post.
You mention a typical and very relevant question: What size samples do I need to achieve a certain prescribed accuracy? If you assume normal distribution of errors you can calculate a [confidence interval](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval) and solve this expression for the sample size. You will often hear people say that Monte-Carlo "converges very slowly" or "converges with $\sqrt{n}$". This is because to achieve a tenfold increase in accuracy you need a hundredfold increase in number of paths. For a serious study of this important topic I recommend the book by [Paul Glasserman](http://www.amazon.de/Financial-Engineering-Stochastic-Modelling-Probability/dp/0387004513/ref=la_B001KHD64E_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427972303&sr=1-1) | With Monte Carlo, which is nothing more than a numerical method to approximate a definite integral, convergence to K significant digits using N samples means that you will obtain the same K significant digits regardless of the random number sequence used for the N samples.
When you say that you obtained the same option price from two Monte Carlo runs using 100,000 samples, I am presuming that you are truncating or rounding your Monte Carlo result to cents, or possibly dollars. Using 100,000 samples for a Monte Carlo, you can have numerical method errors ranging from at least +/- 6% of the answer you get. So, if you truncate your MC answers to 10% or more precision (to deciles), then it is very possible that you could get the same answers every time you run your MC using 100,000 samples. If you truncated your MC answers to less than a 10% precision (to say percentiles), you got lucky. It will be just a fluke that you got the same answers twice in a row. |
367,970 | I am trying to make a circuit that slowly discharges a multi cell lithium battery to storage voltage. I already have a comparator circuit that can turn on or off discharging. I want to support 2s to 6s batteries so we are talking about voltages ranging anywhere from 7.6v to 25.2v. I am shooting for 500mw of power dissipation so I can achieve my form factor requirements for the PCB (11mm x 15mm). Ideally, the same circuit can discharge any cell voltage with constant power. So far I have tried/considered:
* PTC Thermistor load. This will essentially run the PTC perpetually in its "tripped" state. I have an NTC thermistor in series to handle the inrush current until the PTC heats up and protects the circuit. This best captures what I want. However, I contacted a support engineer and they say the use case is not specified and could negatively impact the life of the device.
<https://www.murata.com/en-us/products/thermistor/ptc/prg>
* BJT with an NTC thermistor switching a resistive load on or off. I would preferentially avoid this due to extra components necessary.
* I would like to stay away from MCU controlled constant heaters for simplicity sake.
* Buck or Boost converter is not practical for form factor and cost.
Any help will be appreciated.
More context:
* I am creating a battery discharge circuit small enough that can be integrated into a battery connector (like an XT60 adaptor).
* Users may inadvertently connect a higher cell count than selected or thermally insulate the device so I want overtemperature and overcurrent protection.
* Users can choose cell count with a DIP switch so I want a constant power load.
* I also want to decrease the BOM cost of course, so one device that does it all would be wonderful :). So far a PTC thermistor fits the bill but I am wary of leaving it in a tripped state for extended periods.
Edit:
One last requirement that I overlooked (I apologize). The device will be "plug in and forget" so it needs to have a very low quiescent current so it can be left on the battery for months or even years without over discharging the battery (which will damage it). The solution I have right now has a leakage current in the microamp range.
* Current Schematic:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vWXw.png) | 2018/04/11 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/367970",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/185435/"
] | The type of PTC you need is a ceramic one, I don't think the polymer "polyfuse" type are suitable. PTC ceramics [were commonly used](http://www.extra.research.philips.com/hera/people/aarts/_Philips%20Bound%20Archive/PTechReview/PTechReview-30-1969-170.pdf) as fairly constant temperature heaters, and probably still are in hair-tongs etc, where they use a PTC thick film resistor printed on a ceramic plate.
However these are commonl;y used today for pretty high temperatures, which might be more than you would want inside a soft plastic connector.
If you use overcurrent protectors, you will also find that these are high temperature devices - they will have to idle at (say) 120C. If you use an SMD device. this means the soldered joints and pcb have to take that, which they might not like long term. Against that, this is not really a very high value or very long term device so it might not matter. Leaded disc types transfer much less power to the pcb and solder, so would be a more reliable choice. There are PTCs for sensing with s lower slope, and which have a much more constant slope rising from lower temperatures.
Motor [protection PTC's](https://en.tdk.eu/inf/55/db/PTC/PTC_Motor_protection_M1100.pdf) have much more that range you are looking for. When you look at the lower sense temps (50-90C e.g. B59100M1070A070) you will see that the don't have the nasty NTC part at the start of the curve.
---
FYI, here is a constant power, constant current circuit. This also meets your objective using very cheap components, and without requiring a very specific thermistor.
The constant current emitter follower Q2, has its reference voltage subtracted by the current mirror Q1Q3 in proportion to the supply voltage. The result is a linear dropping current i.e. constant power when the slopes are balanced. R3 is the primary slope adjuster.
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2f5GfTym.png) – Schematic created using [CircuitLab](https://www.circuitlab.com/)
We can simplify this using Q4 to replace the zener (Q3 cancels Q2 VBE, so Q4 provides the constant reference voltage). This gives an NTC, but this is what we want. 2 dual-npn and 3 resistors is about as cheap as you can get.
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2fLcnda.png)
Flipping the circuit around we can gate it with a TL431 to control stop voltage, and give near zero off current
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2fEFVvMm.png) | I'd use a LM239 or any other cheap dual comparator with open collector outputs.
Comparator #1 with a cheap voltage reference/LDO and a resistor divider to set the discharge voltage.
Comparator #2 with a thermistor as temperature sensor makes a thermostat.
Open collector outputs are joined together, creating a logic AND to only draw current when temperature is below a certain value, and voltage is above the threshold.
You'll need a transistor as a switch, and a SMD resistor to dissipate the heat. Make sure to place the temperature sensor next to the resistor and that their ground pads are connected with lots of copper. If you want to use the PCB as a heat sink you'll need a copper pour anyway. |
8,603,063 | I need an advice from someone who already faced my problem.
I have an over 10 mil. records \*.txt file to import into a new table. First, I was looking to find some "expert advices" regarding the best choice for the table Engine.
Unfortunately I've found 50% opinions for InnoDB and 50% opinions for MyISAM. From your experience, keeping in mind the volume of information, and the fact that I will use LOAD DATA INFILE, which is the best choice for my table engine ?
And please give me some strong arguments :) not just an advice to use one or other !
Second : After I'll decide which engine to choose, let's say MyISAM, if in the future I'll need to use the table in a transaction, I'ts a good practice to "temporary" change the engine of the table to InnoDB in order to execute the transaction, and after to come back to the first selected choice ? | 2011/12/22 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8603063",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1076504/"
] | Go SQlite, and investigate Apple's [CoreData](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/coredata/cdprogrammingguide.html) as an option as it's backed by sqlite and a very complete package for database storage within an iOS app.
If you want to interact with the sqlite database directly checkout [FMDB](https://github.com/ccgus/fmdb) as a good objective c abstraction layer.
A comercial option could be a package I've seen called [Locayta Search Mobile](http://www.locayta.com/iOS-search-engine/locayta-search-mobile/) - they have some good demo code | Without a doubt, use SQLite. Its performance will always beat simple JSON reading. |
44,910,906 | There is an error handling procedure that I need to write up in a module that will be called from other programs bound to the module when there is a program error. This needs to include the statement to take a DUMP. My question is suppose the call to this procedure goes from program A to Module B (to which A is bound through a service program also the Module has the error handler procedure with a Sumo statement), will the Dump work as expected?Should the dump be included in the caller program to get the dump of the correct process? Or would it work if included in the Called procedure? | 2017/07/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/44910906",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | The DUMP opcode dumps the values for the variables in automatic storage for all the procedures in the module, but the values listed in the dump are only valid if the procedure is active.
So if you want the dump to show the correct values for the automatic variables in the called procedure, you should do the DUMP from the called procedure. | From [the manual](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_72/rzasd/zzdump.htm)
>
> The DUMP operation provides a dump (all fields, all files, indicators, data structures, arrays, and tables
> defined) of the module.
>
>
>
So you'd want the DUMP op-code and related error handling in each module involved.
You can't have an error in A and call a procedure in B with the dump op-code. |
880,087 | I know target="\_blank" is supposed to make the thing open in a new window, and for some browsers, like FF3, it will actually make it open in a new tab. Is there a way to exercise more control over this behavior as a developer? | 2009/05/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/880087",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/83898/"
] | According to <https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Window.open>, """
**How do I open a referenced resource of a link in a new tab? or in a specific tab?**
Currently, you can not. Only the user can set his advanced preferences to do that. K-meleon 1.1, a Mozilla-based browser, gives complete control and power to the user regarding how links are opened. Some advanced extensions also give Mozilla and Firefox a lot of power over how referenced resources are loaded.
In a few years, the target property of the CSS3 hyperlink module may be implemented (if CSS3 Hyperlink module as it is right now is approved). And even if and when this happens, you can expect developers of browsers with tab-browsing to give the user entire veto power and full control over how links can open web pages. How to open a link should always be entirely under the control of the user.
""" | Whether something targeted to "\_blank" opens to a new tab or window is a browser/user specific option settable in most new tab supported browsers. There is no way to target a tab yet. |
880,087 | I know target="\_blank" is supposed to make the thing open in a new window, and for some browsers, like FF3, it will actually make it open in a new tab. Is there a way to exercise more control over this behavior as a developer? | 2009/05/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/880087",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/83898/"
] | According to <https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Window.open>, """
**How do I open a referenced resource of a link in a new tab? or in a specific tab?**
Currently, you can not. Only the user can set his advanced preferences to do that. K-meleon 1.1, a Mozilla-based browser, gives complete control and power to the user regarding how links are opened. Some advanced extensions also give Mozilla and Firefox a lot of power over how referenced resources are loaded.
In a few years, the target property of the CSS3 hyperlink module may be implemented (if CSS3 Hyperlink module as it is right now is approved). And even if and when this happens, you can expect developers of browsers with tab-browsing to give the user entire veto power and full control over how links can open web pages. How to open a link should always be entirely under the control of the user.
""" | Currently the final decision on how to open a link is in the hands of the user and their browser.
Also, I wouldn't be too happy if a developer overrode my choice in the way that you are describing. I only ever want one browser window open at a time, and do not want child windows to appear. Other people feel much the opposite. We should try to respect that as developers. |
880,087 | I know target="\_blank" is supposed to make the thing open in a new window, and for some browsers, like FF3, it will actually make it open in a new tab. Is there a way to exercise more control over this behavior as a developer? | 2009/05/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/880087",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/83898/"
] | Currently the final decision on how to open a link is in the hands of the user and their browser.
Also, I wouldn't be too happy if a developer overrode my choice in the way that you are describing. I only ever want one browser window open at a time, and do not want child windows to appear. Other people feel much the opposite. We should try to respect that as developers. | Whether something targeted to "\_blank" opens to a new tab or window is a browser/user specific option settable in most new tab supported browsers. There is no way to target a tab yet. |
24,838 | In episode one, when Baltar is seduced by what turns out to be a Cylon in the form of a human, the Cylon's spine glows red and shines through her skin. Was this just a special effect for the benefit of the TV audience? Do any or all of the other human looking Cylons in the 2004 series suffer from this give away indicator? | 2012/10/17 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24838",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/4356/"
] | I don't believe this is ever specifically given a reason. However there are two occurrences as far as I can recall:
The first is with Baltar and number 6, who are apparently deeply in love.
The next is with Boomer and Helo, who again are both apparently deeply in love.
Since the human Cylons were designed to not be detectable to humans, it seems unlikely that it is in their design for their spines to glow during sex. Potentially the fact that these Cylons were expressing love to *humans* cause this abnormal appearance to manifest itself.
The most likely explanation is probably as you put it "just a special effect", which is backed up by the [wiki](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Miniseries,_Analysis), though without reference:
>
> Note: Comments from **members of the production crew have since suggested that the only reason the glowing spine was included was that it "looked cool" at the time**, and in retrospect, may have been a mistake. According to the novelization, the spines glow in the infrared spectrum, which would mean it would require special optical equipment for it to become visual.
>
>
> | I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that it wasn't a literal depiction so much as a story-telling device meant for the audience. This show was very serious throughout its run, even grim... they weren't doing goofy stuff and breaking the 4th wall or anything like that, and so I know that it might be difficult for some to accept this as an explanation. However, there is no other explanation here. Even if the glow was biological in origin (some sort of bioluminescence), there would be abnormal tissues detectable by a first year med student and a cursory examination.
I'd like everyone to consider how the scene would be viewed if they hadn't included this special effect: is this woman merely human but a traitor? Perhaps everyone understands that she's a cylon, but they take away some other impression such as that these two are in love/lust or the like. There is alot of room for misinterpretation if they do not emphasize her bizarre nature. If it were a novel, the author has many tools to do this, but with film that simply isn't the case, and sometimes it is necessary to depict something that would not actually be happening if they were describing a factual account of the story. |
24,838 | In episode one, when Baltar is seduced by what turns out to be a Cylon in the form of a human, the Cylon's spine glows red and shines through her skin. Was this just a special effect for the benefit of the TV audience? Do any or all of the other human looking Cylons in the 2004 series suffer from this give away indicator? | 2012/10/17 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24838",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/4356/"
] | I don't believe this is ever specifically given a reason. However there are two occurrences as far as I can recall:
The first is with Baltar and number 6, who are apparently deeply in love.
The next is with Boomer and Helo, who again are both apparently deeply in love.
Since the human Cylons were designed to not be detectable to humans, it seems unlikely that it is in their design for their spines to glow during sex. Potentially the fact that these Cylons were expressing love to *humans* cause this abnormal appearance to manifest itself.
The most likely explanation is probably as you put it "just a special effect", which is backed up by the [wiki](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Miniseries,_Analysis), though without reference:
>
> Note: Comments from **members of the production crew have since suggested that the only reason the glowing spine was included was that it "looked cool" at the time**, and in retrospect, may have been a mistake. According to the novelization, the spines glow in the infrared spectrum, which would mean it would require special optical equipment for it to become visual.
>
>
> | According to the [official novelisation](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2005_Novel)), the glow was into various spectra that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. There's no special indication *why* her spine was glowing, other than it grew with her "sexual fervor", suggesting a physiological response akin to orgasm.
>
> As their lovemaking mounted toward a climax, the wall behind her was
> warmed slightly by a peculiar, nearly invisible light. The doctor
> never saw it—and wouldn’t have, even if he had been less distracted.
> The light was mostly infrared, with just a hint of gamma radiation. If
> his eyes could have seen it, they would have seen the glow of fiery
> embers, the glow of heating coils. It was a soft glow, but growing in
> intensity, growing with the woman’s sexual fervor. Indeed, it came
> from, and illuminated, the spine of the gorgeous, naked being who was
> rocking and bobbing as she made love to Gaius Baltar.
>
>
> [Battlestar Galactica: The Series](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2005_Novel))
>
>
>
The *canonicity* of this event was addressed by Showrunner Ron Moore in an interview to coincide with the series finale. In short, the "*glowing spine*" thing wasn't retconned, it just wasn't something that came up again (much).
>
> **Q:** *The glowing red spine (during sex) in the first season. Was it just
> abandoned?*
>
>
> **Ron Moore:** ***It wasn't really abandoned;** we just didn't do a lot more Cylon sex
> scenes.*
>
>
> ['Battlestar Galactica' finale: interview](http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/20/entertainment/et-burning-questions20)
>
>
> |
24,838 | In episode one, when Baltar is seduced by what turns out to be a Cylon in the form of a human, the Cylon's spine glows red and shines through her skin. Was this just a special effect for the benefit of the TV audience? Do any or all of the other human looking Cylons in the 2004 series suffer from this give away indicator? | 2012/10/17 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24838",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/4356/"
] | I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that it wasn't a literal depiction so much as a story-telling device meant for the audience. This show was very serious throughout its run, even grim... they weren't doing goofy stuff and breaking the 4th wall or anything like that, and so I know that it might be difficult for some to accept this as an explanation. However, there is no other explanation here. Even if the glow was biological in origin (some sort of bioluminescence), there would be abnormal tissues detectable by a first year med student and a cursory examination.
I'd like everyone to consider how the scene would be viewed if they hadn't included this special effect: is this woman merely human but a traitor? Perhaps everyone understands that she's a cylon, but they take away some other impression such as that these two are in love/lust or the like. There is alot of room for misinterpretation if they do not emphasize her bizarre nature. If it were a novel, the author has many tools to do this, but with film that simply isn't the case, and sometimes it is necessary to depict something that would not actually be happening if they were describing a factual account of the story. | According to the [official novelisation](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2005_Novel)), the glow was into various spectra that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. There's no special indication *why* her spine was glowing, other than it grew with her "sexual fervor", suggesting a physiological response akin to orgasm.
>
> As their lovemaking mounted toward a climax, the wall behind her was
> warmed slightly by a peculiar, nearly invisible light. The doctor
> never saw it—and wouldn’t have, even if he had been less distracted.
> The light was mostly infrared, with just a hint of gamma radiation. If
> his eyes could have seen it, they would have seen the glow of fiery
> embers, the glow of heating coils. It was a soft glow, but growing in
> intensity, growing with the woman’s sexual fervor. Indeed, it came
> from, and illuminated, the spine of the gorgeous, naked being who was
> rocking and bobbing as she made love to Gaius Baltar.
>
>
> [Battlestar Galactica: The Series](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2005_Novel))
>
>
>
The *canonicity* of this event was addressed by Showrunner Ron Moore in an interview to coincide with the series finale. In short, the "*glowing spine*" thing wasn't retconned, it just wasn't something that came up again (much).
>
> **Q:** *The glowing red spine (during sex) in the first season. Was it just
> abandoned?*
>
>
> **Ron Moore:** ***It wasn't really abandoned;** we just didn't do a lot more Cylon sex
> scenes.*
>
>
> ['Battlestar Galactica' finale: interview](http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/20/entertainment/et-burning-questions20)
>
>
> |
5,333 | I am a TA for complexity theory course. I want to explain the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) to undergraduate students. They have done algorithm and theory of computation course. They know about SAT problem, with brute force algorithms to solve SAT. I have explained the ETH hypothesis in less than half hour.
One way is like this [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_time_hypothesis)
>
> "The hypothesis states that $3$-SAT (or any of several related NP-complete problems) cannot be solved in subexponential time in the worst case". The exponential time hypothesis, if true, would imply that P ≠ NP, but it is a stronger statement. It can be used to show that many computational problems are equivalent in complexity,in the sense that if one of them has a subexponential time algorithm then they all do.
>
>
>
I then try to explain the each important point of the of definition. I don't this will be the right way. I want to convey the significance of the ETH.
**Question :** How to explain ETH to undergraduate students? | 2018/12/30 | [
"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/5333",
"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com",
"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/users/6393/"
] | It seems that you are aiming to convey the significance of disproving ETH? If you're looking to leave some impression, it's always better to show rather than tell.
I think your students need to see some examples of practical areas and difficult problems that efficiently reduce to SAT. If you can demonstrate to them that SAT is a "funnel" of sorts for many other kinds of problems, your students can piece together for themselves why solving SAT in sub-exponential time would be game-changing.
Some example problems could include task scheduling, the traveling salesman problem (and by extension, pretty much any sort of path-finding problem), register-allocation in code compilation, general propositional logic inference, etc. You can also discuss industries that use SAT-solving already, like circuit design and e-commerce.
This would take a fair bit of work, but you could even demo using a SAT-Solver; Sudoku is a popular and relatively easy example problem, and it never fails to amaze me how quickly it solves even the hardest of puzzles. If you need one, CryptoMiniSat is a great off-the-shelf SAT-Solver <https://github.com/msoos/cryptominisat/releases>. | I'm not sure I understand your dilemma, especially for the students you describe. Many computational problems can be shown to be "reducible" to others using a sub exponential (usually polynomial) run time algorithm. That is to say, a solution to one of these problems can be transformed into a solution of a different problem in polynomial time. The most interesting cases are those in which the transformation can be done in either direction using (say) polynomial time. Thus, if any of these *equivalent* problems can be solved in general in sub exponential time, then all of them can, since the transformation is sub exponential.
You can still get a doctorate for showing such equivalence of problems, in fact.
The significance is, of course, that a very large set of questions will be answered if someone can show that any of these "equivalent problems" are sub exponential and similarly if one can show that exponential time is *required* for any of them.
While *time* is the usual measure of such things, *space* can also be used for a similar sort of analysis. Some problems can be quickly solved using a lot of space.
I'll note that if your specific need is to show why the ETH isn't *equivalent* to the statement $P ≠ NP$ then I haven't said enough. |
192,820 | Is something wrong with StackOverflow's spam filter? Recently there have been huge numbers of spam topics related to football streaming. They have all been spam flagged and deleted but there are more getting posted all the time, I just flagged another 6 or so a few minutes ago. This has been going on for around 3 days now with these topics getting constantly posted over and over again in the [nfl](/questions/tagged/nfl "show questions tagged 'nfl'") tag.
 | 2013/08/11 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/192820",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/226630/"
] | We're trying to get better at keeping this at bay. The problem affects all sites that see any kind of traffic, some more than others. I can't go into very much detail because frankly, there isn't a whole lot of detail that belongs to an agreed implementation at this point.
However ....
A big mistake we have made in the past is not fully utilizing the signal that we get from moderators and the community when destructive actions are taken. We know when moderators destroy or delete accounts, but we don't know *why* they did it, at least not programmatically. A change working its way through implementation now tracks this by doing something remarkable, we actually *ask them* to indicate a reason for the action.
When this is implemented, we have a *much* easier time querying across the network to better visualize these fools as they move from site to site, occasionally changing origin. This makes the data that they inadvertently leave behind much more valuable when it comes to automatically reacting to, and subduing these sorts of spam floods.
It's a bit of a trick, we don't want to prevent anyone from *reading* our sites, and even poorly written perl bots *deserve* a fighting chance in life. Still, we *can* be a little more picky about content we accept, especially when we have a much clearer picture about the recent behavior of the remote host. I'm not going to go into specifics that I don't yet have to offer, but it is a problem we're taking seriously.
Phase one of this (collecting reasons) should be out soon, then we need some time with the data we get.
That's not the *only* reason we implemented this, playing chat tag with moderators to get context when someone writes in asking why they were removed is sub optimal. But this is going to give us a much clearer picture of what we're dealing with.
***Update***
The feature that requires a reason for account destruction is being pushed now, and will be live shortly. For transparency sake, here's the interface (click image for full resolution):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TQyw6.png)
As you can see, certain reasons are much more interesting than others when it comes to tracking repeat abuse, since the extra signal is now being captured. Given the volume of crap that some sites see, it won't be too long before we have enough data to confirm / discover patterns. | The spam is not new. Drupal Answers was hit **really** hard with it starting in Dec/Jan. Other sites have had it bad, too (Ask Ubuntu was one). The SE team has done a fantastic job with the automatic filters, but the spam evolves rather often, so automatic blocking isn't effective for long.
The proper course of action is to [flag the post as spam](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/how-does-the-spam-flag-work). Three spam flags will remove it from the front page, six will delete it. [Don't edit it](http://meta.superuser.com/questions/3574/should-we-replace-the-content-of-spam-posts-so-that-they-say-they-are-spam), [don't downvote it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193916/why-shouldnt-i-downvote-spam-that-ive-already-flagged), don't use another flag. Flag as spam and move on.
If a mod sees it before the autodeletion, they can destroy the account, which will take all spam from that account with it. |
128,261 | Sometimes when I read I notice that some authors say **"the first time"** while others say **"for the first time"**. Of course mostly in different situations but is there a difference? What does the preposition change?
1. I have done it the first time in my life.
2. I have done it for the first time in my life.
Or
1. That's the first time I've heard this song.
2. For the first time in my life I have heard this song.
Or
1. It will be the first time when I am going there.
2. It will be for the first time when I am going there.
Edit: The sentences (examples) aren't from books. | 2017/05/02 | [
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/128261",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/users/44134/"
] | You cannot use the present perfect with a time phrase that excludes the present, which *the first time* does, unlike *for the first time*.
"The first time" requires the past tense.
>
> I drove a car the first time at age 16.
>
>
> I drove a car for the first time at age 16.
>
>
> WooHoo! I have driven a car for the first time!
>
>
> WooHoo! I have driven a car the first time! ungrammatical
>
>
>
P.S. **the first time** refers to the first *of several* or of many, whereas **for the first time** refers to the first *as first*, as something *new*.
>
> The first time I read that poem, it made little sense to me, but after rereading it several times, it began to make sense to me.
>
>
> I had never understood the poem, but after my strange experience in the noonday sun, it made sense to me for the first time.
>
>
> For the first time, I understand what you were going through.
>
>
> The first time, I understand what you were going through. ungrammatical
>
>
> | This question has confused me for a long time. In my opinion (I am not a native speaker of English):
**the first time** can be used as conjunction, while **for the first time** can only be used as adverse:
>
> The first time *I saw him*, he was wearing a black coat.
>
>
> For the first time I *saw* him wearing a black coat.
>
>
>
Also, **the first time** emphasizes "time point", while **for the first time** emphasizes "time line" (from past to the time the incidence happened). When we put "for the first time" inside a "when clause", it enphasizes "time point" as well, for example:
>
> The first I saw him, he was wearing a black coat. (time point)
>
>
> For the first time, I saw him wearing a black coat. (time line)
>
>
> When I saw him for the first time, he was wearing a black coat. (time point again)
>
>
> |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | scofflaw : –noun
1.
a person who flouts the law, especially one who fails to pay fines owed.
2.
a person who flouts rules, conventions, or accepted practices.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scofflaw> | How about *Rebel*? Rebels resist convention. |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | For one-worders, I like @Robusto's "self-important" and @Nick's "presumptuous."
I'll add "inconsiderate," since I don't see that it's been added yet.
I've also described people with similar tendencies as "having an unjustified sense of entitlement," though I usually leave out "unjustified."
"scofflaw" is a fine word, but it's almost an archaic usage. I just haven't heard it in non-facetious, non-ironic usage in USAmerican language.
"bumptious" falls into this category as well. Nothing wrong with the word, but not used much. It can be used. Maybe you'll use it and start a trend. Of course then it might become a cliché .
"sociopath" is probably the correct diagnosis, and so has the advantage of being literally correct. Probably a bit inflammatory (unless you mean to be inflammatory, in which case, have at it).
I don't feel "loose cannon" is correct here, unless the OP has a different sense of the person in question than I'm getting. Usually a loose cannon is someone who is institutionally entrenched and whose character is endangering either the institution or those it comes it contact with. | He's a *loose cannon*:
>
> an unpredictable or uncontrolled
> person who is likely to cause
> unintentional damage.
>
>
>
-New Oxford American
>
> a person whose reckless behavior
> endangers the efforts or welfare of
> others.
>
>
>
-Dictionary.com
(My initial answer was going to be *[maverick](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maverick)*, but this led me to *loose cannon* and I liked it better.) |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | He's a *loose cannon*:
>
> an unpredictable or uncontrolled
> person who is likely to cause
> unintentional damage.
>
>
>
-New Oxford American
>
> a person whose reckless behavior
> endangers the efforts or welfare of
> others.
>
>
>
-Dictionary.com
(My initial answer was going to be *[maverick](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maverick)*, but this led me to *loose cannon* and I liked it better.) | May be a bit extreme but: *psychopath* or *megalomaniac* |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | What—nobody thought of "pompous"? [From Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pompous):
>
> pompous - having or exhibiting self-importance : arrogant
>
>
> | May be a bit extreme but: *psychopath* or *megalomaniac* |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | For one-worders, I like @Robusto's "self-important" and @Nick's "presumptuous."
I'll add "inconsiderate," since I don't see that it's been added yet.
I've also described people with similar tendencies as "having an unjustified sense of entitlement," though I usually leave out "unjustified."
"scofflaw" is a fine word, but it's almost an archaic usage. I just haven't heard it in non-facetious, non-ironic usage in USAmerican language.
"bumptious" falls into this category as well. Nothing wrong with the word, but not used much. It can be used. Maybe you'll use it and start a trend. Of course then it might become a cliché .
"sociopath" is probably the correct diagnosis, and so has the advantage of being literally correct. Probably a bit inflammatory (unless you mean to be inflammatory, in which case, have at it).
I don't feel "loose cannon" is correct here, unless the OP has a different sense of the person in question than I'm getting. Usually a loose cannon is someone who is institutionally entrenched and whose character is endangering either the institution or those it comes it contact with. | Perhaps **solipsist** might work here? |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | Insensitive? Insensible? Callous, as in "callous disregard"? | What about just *selfish*? He certainly seems so. |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | What about *misfit* since you said 'rules doesn't apply to him'? | I kind of like "self-important gadfly", but that's just me. "Gadfly" can have positive connotations when not qualified. |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | You can use *egocentric*, or *egocentristic*. | What about just *selfish*? He certainly seems so. |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | He's a *loose cannon*:
>
> an unpredictable or uncontrolled
> person who is likely to cause
> unintentional damage.
>
>
>
-New Oxford American
>
> a person whose reckless behavior
> endangers the efforts or welfare of
> others.
>
>
>
-Dictionary.com
(My initial answer was going to be *[maverick](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maverick)*, but this led me to *loose cannon* and I liked it better.) | How about *prima donna*, one who thinks the rules apply to others and not them. |
16,850 | I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed. | 2011/03/18 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16850",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/3546/"
] | Deluded, entitled, overgrown spoilt brat. | Perhaps **solipsist** might work here? |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Han dynasty was an empire that was founded in 25 A.D. and can be considered as a recreation of the Western Han dynasty. The founder of the Eastern Han dynasty: Emperor Guangwu was a descendant of Emperor Jin of the Western Han dynasty. The Western Han dynasty was dissolved by Wang Mang who created the Xin dynasty after deposing the last Western Han Emperor. Emperor Guangwu led an uprising and restored the Han dynasty.
Western Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XnjUd.png)
Eastern Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/21ake.png) | The state Qin conquered and unified all the warring states of China, and formed the first Chinese Empire in 221 BC befoe falling in about 207 BC. The Qin statea nd governmentwas totally destoryed, and various rebel groups ruled different parts of China.
One could claim that Han Dyanasty China from 202 BC to 220 AD was either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin Dynasty, or else a sort of recreation of the Qin Empire by a rebel group.
Rebels revolted and China was divided into three major powers, each claiming to be the rightful governmentof all China, by the time the last Han dynasty emperor was deposed in 220. The rebel state of Wei eventually conquered the others, ending the Three kingdoms era and beginning the rule of the Jin Dynasty over China in 280.
The Chinese Empire during the Jin Dynasty can be considered either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin and Han, or as else a sort of a recreation of the Qin and Han empires by a rebel group.
The Jin Dynasty ruled from 266 to 420, but only ruled a united China for a few decades after 280. The series of civil wars called The War of the Eight Princes
(or Eight Kings) from 291 to 306 AD broke the Jin State into several more or less independent states, especially since the conflicts encouraged the barbarian invasions callled The Uprising of the Five Barbarians from 304-316.
The Jin Dynsty government fled to south China, along with millions of Chinese refugees, and the period of unified China was followed by the Sixteen Kingdoms from 304-4439, and the Nothern and Southern Dynasties from 42-589. One stte did not conquer all of Chaina until 589.
And this type of events went on for century after century of Chinese history.
So some people can claim that the Chinese Communists seized power in a country which had existed continuously since 221 BC. And some people can claim that unified Chinese states only existed for about two thirds or three fouths o fhe period from 221 BC tot he present, and there was no Chinese state in the intervals between, but instead several warring states whose wars often resulted in millions of deaths. Thus those people can claim that the various unified Chinese states in history were each a seperate empire, republic, or people's republic with no connection to previous states.
So the Chinese communists could be considered to be successful rebels against successful rebels against successful rebels against succesfull rebels aginst...an so on back to successful rebels agains the Qin Dynasty. But some of the Chinese rulers that were overthrown, leading to periods of division in China, were foreign conquerors of all China, so foreign conquerors have to be inserted into a few places in the otherwis euninterrupted succession of successful rebels.
So it is a mattet of opinion, interpretation, and speculation whether the Chinese Empire fell and was totally dissolved and then after a time and many bloody wars recreated several times, or whether there were a number of totally different and totally new Chinese empires each of which rose and then fell completely and were never recreated.
The city stateof Rome expanded under the RomanREpublic to rule the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, and expanded to be evenlarger durng the Roman Empire. In 395 there was an admiinstative division between two Emperors, one with authority in the East, and one in the west, but it remained a single empire.
The western section fell apart rapidly in barbarian invasions and revolts, and the last western emperos were deposed and assinate din476 and 480. People in the west who were still loyal to the empire, or claimed to be, acknowledged the eastern emperor as their rightful overlord. In the 530s under Justinian the empire struck back, reconquering about half of the former territory of the western Roman Empire.
A terrible plague, more barbarian invasions, the terrible Roman-Persan War in 602-628, and the following Arab invasions halted that Roman reconquest. But someone could consider Justinian's reconquests a recreateion of half of the western section of the Roman Empire.
This was not the first time, nor the last, that the Roman empire fell apart at least partially and then was at least partially reconstructed.
There were many Roman civil wars from the late Republic and then in the Empire were rival claimants had control of diferent sections of the Empire starting with the Year of the Four Empeors in AD 69, and repeating at various times.
In the Crisis of the Third Century from 235 to 284, The population and economy of the Empire declined, Barbarians tribes invaded, there were Persian Wars, and the soliders in various regions kept revolting and nominating willing or unwilling generals as emperors.
Men classed as legitimate RomanEmpeors are usually those who ruled the entire Roman Empire, and/or were recognzied by the Roman Senate, and/or were accepted as collegues by other and more or less legitimate emperors.
There were 27 more or less legitimate Roman Emperors in the 49 years from 235 to 284 in the list in Wikipedia, may of them began as Romanurusprers agaisnt previus emperors.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors#Crisis_of_the_Third_Century_(235%E2%80%93284)>
If each emperor ruled alone the average reign before dying or being killed would have been about 1.074 years, but since their were many joint reigns the average survival time was a little better.
And if you think that was bad, there were 27 less successfull claimants, classified as Roman usurpers, in that period according to Wikipedia's list of Roman usurpers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_usurpers>
This omitts several doubtfull cases, and also the 5 emperors of the Gallic Empire and the 1 or 2 emperors of the Palmyrene Empire.
And a few of the many rebellious regions in this era lasted long enough to be considered to be sort of separate states and offshoots of the Roman Empire.
For example, the so called "Gallic Empire" lasted from 260 to 274, and included Gaul, Hisbania, and Roman Britain at its height. The Palmyrene empire lasted form 270 to 273.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Empire>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire>
So someone could claim that the Roman Empire dissolved and was later recreated. But that would be like saying that the USA dissoved in 1560 and was recreated in 1865. Most of the USA remained loyal to the Federal government under Lincoln, and fought a long war to reconquer the rebellios region. Similarly most of the Roman Empire remained under the control of the central government, and eventually Emperor Aurelian reconquered the Palmyrene and Gallic Empires.
Similalry the "Brittanic Empire" was founded in RomanBritain and northern Gaul in 286 and listed until 296 until being reconquered.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carausian_revolt>
>
> The Tetrarchy was the system instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293 to govern the ancient Roman Empire by dividing it between two senior emperors, the augusti, and their juniors and designated successors, the caesars. This marked the end of the Crisis of the Third Century.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy>
Each of the four emperors in the Tetrarchy was assigned a region to defend against rebels and invaders. The two caesars were surbordinate to the two Augusti, and each e caesar was considered to be heir and succesor of his Augusutus.
Unfortunately, the Tetrarchy broke down as rival emperors battlde for power, until one, Constantine I, defeated his rivals and made himself solde emperor in 324. The imperial role was divided and reunited several moe times, until in 395 two emperors gained authority in the eastern and western sections of the Roman Empire.
The western section was soon taken over by barbarian groups, but the eastern section later struck back and reconquered much of the west.
The Roman Republic had an area of 1,950,000 square kilometers in 50 BC.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic>
By 25 BC the Roman Empire ruled 2,750,000 square kilometers; in 117 it reached its brief peak of 5,000,000 square kilometers, and in 390 it ruled 4,400,000 square kilometers, still as much as 0.88 of its maximum size 273 years earlier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire>
By 518 the eastern section of the Roman Empire, the so called "Byzantine Empire", was down to 2,300,000 square kikometers, 0.46 of it's maximum size.
This rose to 3,600,000, 0.72 of its maximum size, by 565, but was down to 2,900,000, 0.58 of its maximum size, in 600.
By 668, the Roman Empire was down to 1,300,000 square kiometers, 0.26 of its maximum size, due to the Arab invasions.
By 775 the size was down to 800,000 squae kilometers, only 0.16 of its maximum size.
By 1025 the Roman Empire was back up to 1,675,000 square kilometers, 0.335 of its brief maximum size 908 years earier.
555,000 After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 the empire rapidly shrank, and was down to square kilometers, 0.111 of its maximum size, in 1097.
This rose to 1,000,000 square kilometers, 0.2 of its maximum area, by 1143, and then fell to 610,000 square kilometers, 0.122 of its maximum area, by 1204.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_the_Byzantine_Empire>
In all that tiem where the empire lost and regained territory, nobody could claim that the empire had been dissolved and then recreated. The central government had always retained a lot of territory and had always managed to reconquere a lot of lands taken from it.
The Empie did dissolve in 1204 The westerners who captured the Capital, Constantniople, in 1204 established the so called "Latin Empire of Constantinople", a group of rebels established the co called Trapezuntine Empire, and more loyal Romans established the so called Despotate of Epirus with is short life "Empire of Thessalonika", and the so called "Empire of Nicae.
The Nicaen Empireeventually reconquered most of the Latin Empire and more or less recreated the previous "Byzantine" Empire. By 1282 it ruled 550,00 squae kilometers, about 0.90 of the size in 1204, though only 0.11 of the maximum size of the Roman Empire in 117.
The empire of Charlemagne is often considered to be a partial reconstruction of the dissolved former western Roman Empire. By 843 it became divided into several kingdoms whose kings gave little obedience to the emperor, and the last emperor was assassinated in 924.
In 962, Otto I the Great, mighty king of Germany and Italy, was crown emperor. Otto's realm later became known as the Holy Roman Empire, and lasted until 1806.
Sometimes the Holy Roman Empire is considered to be the continuation of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, and sometimes it is considered to be a totally new Empire. And a sort of midway positon could be to claim that the Carolingian Empire was dissolved and recreated several times before being dissolved in 924 and then being recrated in 962 as the Holy Roman Empire.
The ideology of the Holy Roman Empire was that the Emperors were the successors of the Carolingian Emperors. It was also claimed that when "Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was depsoed in7987, and his mother ruled the Roman Empire, the emperorship was vacent sinc eit was wrong for a woman to rulethe RomanEmire. Thus it was claimed that Charlemagne in 800 ws the rightful successor of Constantine VI in 797 and of all the "Byzantine" emperors back to Arcadius in 395, and of all the earlier Roman Emperors back to Augustus in 27 BC.
So the Holy Roman Empire never claimed that the RomanEmpire had been dissolved and reconstructed, but instead claimed that it had always existed in varius forms since 27 BC.
So in the case of Chine and Rome there is considerable uncertainty whether it is acurate to say that their empires dissolved and were recreated or existed continuously. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Han dynasty was an empire that was founded in 25 A.D. and can be considered as a recreation of the Western Han dynasty. The founder of the Eastern Han dynasty: Emperor Guangwu was a descendant of Emperor Jin of the Western Han dynasty. The Western Han dynasty was dissolved by Wang Mang who created the Xin dynasty after deposing the last Western Han Emperor. Emperor Guangwu led an uprising and restored the Han dynasty.
Western Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XnjUd.png)
Eastern Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/21ake.png) | The [Second Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Turkic_Khaganate) was founded in 682 CE, about 50 years after the end of the [First (Eastern) Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate).
The [German Reich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich)
was founded in 1871, about 65 years after the end of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire).
Plus there are of lots of current nation states that trace their roots to some previous kingdoms (or similar) and that at some point were incorporated into other states. E.g. Poland, Portugal, Korea, Egypt, Israel etc etc. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Han dynasty was an empire that was founded in 25 A.D. and can be considered as a recreation of the Western Han dynasty. The founder of the Eastern Han dynasty: Emperor Guangwu was a descendant of Emperor Jin of the Western Han dynasty. The Western Han dynasty was dissolved by Wang Mang who created the Xin dynasty after deposing the last Western Han Emperor. Emperor Guangwu led an uprising and restored the Han dynasty.
Western Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XnjUd.png)
Eastern Han dynasty map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/21ake.png) | The **[Ottoman Sultanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire)** was established sometime around 1300-1330 (the periodization is complicated because it evolved out of an existing, expanding beylik under [Osman I Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_I); it's not clear when exactly they first started claiming the status of *sultan*, but this certainly was the case by the time of his son [Orhan Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan).) They grew steadily throughout the 1300s in western Anatolia and then, increasingly rapidly, into the Balkans and Greece; by the end of the century they had grown to completely encircle Constantinople, and were the dominant power throughout southeastern Europe (below the Danube) and the western half of Anatolia.
**Conquest, Partition and Interregnum (1402-1413).** In 1402 the empire was conquered and shattered after a catastrophic defeat at the hands of [Timur's (Tamerlane's) army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur) at the [Battle of Ankara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ankara). The Ottoman's military forces were devastated and the [Sultan Bayezid I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_I) taken prisoner and held in captivity until his death. Timur held one of Bayezid's sons ([Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi)) captive in Samarkand, and placed another, [Mehmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I) as his vassal in the territories he conquered in Anatolia. The remaining Ottoman territory was divided among Bayezid's sons [Süleyman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCleyman_%C3%87elebi) (who declared himself an Emir and took control of the European territory of the empire, known as Rumeli), [İsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0sa_%C3%87elebi) (who controlled Bursa and its environs in Anatolia), and [Musa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_%C3%87elebi) (who at first allied with Mehmed in Anatolia, then took control of European Thrace after the defeat of Süleyman). They began fighting for control more or less immediately; after Timur died in 1405, the Anatolian territories became effectively independent again, but the four brothers remained locked in a four-way civil war which lasted until 1413, now often known as the [Ottoman Interregnum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Interregnum) (1403-1413).
**Recapture, reunification and restoration (1413 onward).** Mehmed ultimately killed off his brothers, won the civil war, and re-established unified control over the empire's old territories in July 1413. After he defeated his last rival, Musa, he had himself re-crowned as Sultan in [Edirne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edirne), making him [Sultan Mehmed I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I). He then had to fight off his last surviving older brother [Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi) (who demanded a partition of the empire and then led an unsuccessful rebellion when he was rebuffed). In the course of the civil war, the warring brothers had bargained some of the formerly Ottoman-controlled territories away (most importantly, the city of [Salonica / Thessaloniki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessaloniki) in return for temporary alliances with the Byzantine Emperors, who often served as power-brokers or mediators during the conflict; these territories were besieged and recaptured over the course of the next couple decades. The reunified and restored Sultanate resumed its military expansion into eastern Europe and central Anatolia, ultimately leading to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 (by Mehmed's grandson, [Mehmed II Fatih](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror) and then of Egypt and most of the Middle East in 1516-1517 (by Mehmed I's great-great grandson, [Selim I Yavuz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_I)), leading into the peak of Ottoman imperial power in the 16th and 17th centuries. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) fractured into several states after the Fourth Crusade.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1UWkV.jpg)
Map of the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEmpire2.png), around 1204.
Later, in 1261, the Empire of Nicaea succeeded in recapturing Constantinople from the Latins, and both claimed, and was generally recognised as a return of the Eastern Roman Empire.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dOvwo.png)
A map of the Eastern Roman Empire around 1263 also from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1263_Mediterranean_Sea.svg). The green line shows the expansion of the Ottomans by the 1326.
The territory is certainly vastly less than the Eastern Roman Empire occupied at its peak, but is pretty close to the territory held prior to the fourth crusade, so may still be of interest. | The state Qin conquered and unified all the warring states of China, and formed the first Chinese Empire in 221 BC befoe falling in about 207 BC. The Qin statea nd governmentwas totally destoryed, and various rebel groups ruled different parts of China.
One could claim that Han Dyanasty China from 202 BC to 220 AD was either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin Dynasty, or else a sort of recreation of the Qin Empire by a rebel group.
Rebels revolted and China was divided into three major powers, each claiming to be the rightful governmentof all China, by the time the last Han dynasty emperor was deposed in 220. The rebel state of Wei eventually conquered the others, ending the Three kingdoms era and beginning the rule of the Jin Dynasty over China in 280.
The Chinese Empire during the Jin Dynasty can be considered either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin and Han, or as else a sort of a recreation of the Qin and Han empires by a rebel group.
The Jin Dynasty ruled from 266 to 420, but only ruled a united China for a few decades after 280. The series of civil wars called The War of the Eight Princes
(or Eight Kings) from 291 to 306 AD broke the Jin State into several more or less independent states, especially since the conflicts encouraged the barbarian invasions callled The Uprising of the Five Barbarians from 304-316.
The Jin Dynsty government fled to south China, along with millions of Chinese refugees, and the period of unified China was followed by the Sixteen Kingdoms from 304-4439, and the Nothern and Southern Dynasties from 42-589. One stte did not conquer all of Chaina until 589.
And this type of events went on for century after century of Chinese history.
So some people can claim that the Chinese Communists seized power in a country which had existed continuously since 221 BC. And some people can claim that unified Chinese states only existed for about two thirds or three fouths o fhe period from 221 BC tot he present, and there was no Chinese state in the intervals between, but instead several warring states whose wars often resulted in millions of deaths. Thus those people can claim that the various unified Chinese states in history were each a seperate empire, republic, or people's republic with no connection to previous states.
So the Chinese communists could be considered to be successful rebels against successful rebels against successful rebels against succesfull rebels aginst...an so on back to successful rebels agains the Qin Dynasty. But some of the Chinese rulers that were overthrown, leading to periods of division in China, were foreign conquerors of all China, so foreign conquerors have to be inserted into a few places in the otherwis euninterrupted succession of successful rebels.
So it is a mattet of opinion, interpretation, and speculation whether the Chinese Empire fell and was totally dissolved and then after a time and many bloody wars recreated several times, or whether there were a number of totally different and totally new Chinese empires each of which rose and then fell completely and were never recreated.
The city stateof Rome expanded under the RomanREpublic to rule the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, and expanded to be evenlarger durng the Roman Empire. In 395 there was an admiinstative division between two Emperors, one with authority in the East, and one in the west, but it remained a single empire.
The western section fell apart rapidly in barbarian invasions and revolts, and the last western emperos were deposed and assinate din476 and 480. People in the west who were still loyal to the empire, or claimed to be, acknowledged the eastern emperor as their rightful overlord. In the 530s under Justinian the empire struck back, reconquering about half of the former territory of the western Roman Empire.
A terrible plague, more barbarian invasions, the terrible Roman-Persan War in 602-628, and the following Arab invasions halted that Roman reconquest. But someone could consider Justinian's reconquests a recreateion of half of the western section of the Roman Empire.
This was not the first time, nor the last, that the Roman empire fell apart at least partially and then was at least partially reconstructed.
There were many Roman civil wars from the late Republic and then in the Empire were rival claimants had control of diferent sections of the Empire starting with the Year of the Four Empeors in AD 69, and repeating at various times.
In the Crisis of the Third Century from 235 to 284, The population and economy of the Empire declined, Barbarians tribes invaded, there were Persian Wars, and the soliders in various regions kept revolting and nominating willing or unwilling generals as emperors.
Men classed as legitimate RomanEmpeors are usually those who ruled the entire Roman Empire, and/or were recognzied by the Roman Senate, and/or were accepted as collegues by other and more or less legitimate emperors.
There were 27 more or less legitimate Roman Emperors in the 49 years from 235 to 284 in the list in Wikipedia, may of them began as Romanurusprers agaisnt previus emperors.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors#Crisis_of_the_Third_Century_(235%E2%80%93284)>
If each emperor ruled alone the average reign before dying or being killed would have been about 1.074 years, but since their were many joint reigns the average survival time was a little better.
And if you think that was bad, there were 27 less successfull claimants, classified as Roman usurpers, in that period according to Wikipedia's list of Roman usurpers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_usurpers>
This omitts several doubtfull cases, and also the 5 emperors of the Gallic Empire and the 1 or 2 emperors of the Palmyrene Empire.
And a few of the many rebellious regions in this era lasted long enough to be considered to be sort of separate states and offshoots of the Roman Empire.
For example, the so called "Gallic Empire" lasted from 260 to 274, and included Gaul, Hisbania, and Roman Britain at its height. The Palmyrene empire lasted form 270 to 273.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Empire>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire>
So someone could claim that the Roman Empire dissolved and was later recreated. But that would be like saying that the USA dissoved in 1560 and was recreated in 1865. Most of the USA remained loyal to the Federal government under Lincoln, and fought a long war to reconquer the rebellios region. Similarly most of the Roman Empire remained under the control of the central government, and eventually Emperor Aurelian reconquered the Palmyrene and Gallic Empires.
Similalry the "Brittanic Empire" was founded in RomanBritain and northern Gaul in 286 and listed until 296 until being reconquered.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carausian_revolt>
>
> The Tetrarchy was the system instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293 to govern the ancient Roman Empire by dividing it between two senior emperors, the augusti, and their juniors and designated successors, the caesars. This marked the end of the Crisis of the Third Century.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy>
Each of the four emperors in the Tetrarchy was assigned a region to defend against rebels and invaders. The two caesars were surbordinate to the two Augusti, and each e caesar was considered to be heir and succesor of his Augusutus.
Unfortunately, the Tetrarchy broke down as rival emperors battlde for power, until one, Constantine I, defeated his rivals and made himself solde emperor in 324. The imperial role was divided and reunited several moe times, until in 395 two emperors gained authority in the eastern and western sections of the Roman Empire.
The western section was soon taken over by barbarian groups, but the eastern section later struck back and reconquered much of the west.
The Roman Republic had an area of 1,950,000 square kilometers in 50 BC.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic>
By 25 BC the Roman Empire ruled 2,750,000 square kilometers; in 117 it reached its brief peak of 5,000,000 square kilometers, and in 390 it ruled 4,400,000 square kilometers, still as much as 0.88 of its maximum size 273 years earlier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire>
By 518 the eastern section of the Roman Empire, the so called "Byzantine Empire", was down to 2,300,000 square kikometers, 0.46 of it's maximum size.
This rose to 3,600,000, 0.72 of its maximum size, by 565, but was down to 2,900,000, 0.58 of its maximum size, in 600.
By 668, the Roman Empire was down to 1,300,000 square kiometers, 0.26 of its maximum size, due to the Arab invasions.
By 775 the size was down to 800,000 squae kilometers, only 0.16 of its maximum size.
By 1025 the Roman Empire was back up to 1,675,000 square kilometers, 0.335 of its brief maximum size 908 years earier.
555,000 After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 the empire rapidly shrank, and was down to square kilometers, 0.111 of its maximum size, in 1097.
This rose to 1,000,000 square kilometers, 0.2 of its maximum area, by 1143, and then fell to 610,000 square kilometers, 0.122 of its maximum area, by 1204.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_the_Byzantine_Empire>
In all that tiem where the empire lost and regained territory, nobody could claim that the empire had been dissolved and then recreated. The central government had always retained a lot of territory and had always managed to reconquere a lot of lands taken from it.
The Empie did dissolve in 1204 The westerners who captured the Capital, Constantniople, in 1204 established the so called "Latin Empire of Constantinople", a group of rebels established the co called Trapezuntine Empire, and more loyal Romans established the so called Despotate of Epirus with is short life "Empire of Thessalonika", and the so called "Empire of Nicae.
The Nicaen Empireeventually reconquered most of the Latin Empire and more or less recreated the previous "Byzantine" Empire. By 1282 it ruled 550,00 squae kilometers, about 0.90 of the size in 1204, though only 0.11 of the maximum size of the Roman Empire in 117.
The empire of Charlemagne is often considered to be a partial reconstruction of the dissolved former western Roman Empire. By 843 it became divided into several kingdoms whose kings gave little obedience to the emperor, and the last emperor was assassinated in 924.
In 962, Otto I the Great, mighty king of Germany and Italy, was crown emperor. Otto's realm later became known as the Holy Roman Empire, and lasted until 1806.
Sometimes the Holy Roman Empire is considered to be the continuation of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, and sometimes it is considered to be a totally new Empire. And a sort of midway positon could be to claim that the Carolingian Empire was dissolved and recreated several times before being dissolved in 924 and then being recrated in 962 as the Holy Roman Empire.
The ideology of the Holy Roman Empire was that the Emperors were the successors of the Carolingian Emperors. It was also claimed that when "Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was depsoed in7987, and his mother ruled the Roman Empire, the emperorship was vacent sinc eit was wrong for a woman to rulethe RomanEmire. Thus it was claimed that Charlemagne in 800 ws the rightful successor of Constantine VI in 797 and of all the "Byzantine" emperors back to Arcadius in 395, and of all the earlier Roman Emperors back to Augustus in 27 BC.
So the Holy Roman Empire never claimed that the RomanEmpire had been dissolved and reconstructed, but instead claimed that it had always existed in varius forms since 27 BC.
So in the case of Chine and Rome there is considerable uncertainty whether it is acurate to say that their empires dissolved and were recreated or existed continuously. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) fractured into several states after the Fourth Crusade.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1UWkV.jpg)
Map of the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEmpire2.png), around 1204.
Later, in 1261, the Empire of Nicaea succeeded in recapturing Constantinople from the Latins, and both claimed, and was generally recognised as a return of the Eastern Roman Empire.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dOvwo.png)
A map of the Eastern Roman Empire around 1263 also from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1263_Mediterranean_Sea.svg). The green line shows the expansion of the Ottomans by the 1326.
The territory is certainly vastly less than the Eastern Roman Empire occupied at its peak, but is pretty close to the territory held prior to the fourth crusade, so may still be of interest. | The [Second Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Turkic_Khaganate) was founded in 682 CE, about 50 years after the end of the [First (Eastern) Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate).
The [German Reich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich)
was founded in 1871, about 65 years after the end of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire).
Plus there are of lots of current nation states that trace their roots to some previous kingdoms (or similar) and that at some point were incorporated into other states. E.g. Poland, Portugal, Korea, Egypt, Israel etc etc. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) fractured into several states after the Fourth Crusade.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1UWkV.jpg)
Map of the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEmpire2.png), around 1204.
Later, in 1261, the Empire of Nicaea succeeded in recapturing Constantinople from the Latins, and both claimed, and was generally recognised as a return of the Eastern Roman Empire.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dOvwo.png)
A map of the Eastern Roman Empire around 1263 also from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1263_Mediterranean_Sea.svg). The green line shows the expansion of the Ottomans by the 1326.
The territory is certainly vastly less than the Eastern Roman Empire occupied at its peak, but is pretty close to the territory held prior to the fourth crusade, so may still be of interest. | The **[Ottoman Sultanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire)** was established sometime around 1300-1330 (the periodization is complicated because it evolved out of an existing, expanding beylik under [Osman I Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_I); it's not clear when exactly they first started claiming the status of *sultan*, but this certainly was the case by the time of his son [Orhan Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan).) They grew steadily throughout the 1300s in western Anatolia and then, increasingly rapidly, into the Balkans and Greece; by the end of the century they had grown to completely encircle Constantinople, and were the dominant power throughout southeastern Europe (below the Danube) and the western half of Anatolia.
**Conquest, Partition and Interregnum (1402-1413).** In 1402 the empire was conquered and shattered after a catastrophic defeat at the hands of [Timur's (Tamerlane's) army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur) at the [Battle of Ankara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ankara). The Ottoman's military forces were devastated and the [Sultan Bayezid I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_I) taken prisoner and held in captivity until his death. Timur held one of Bayezid's sons ([Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi)) captive in Samarkand, and placed another, [Mehmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I) as his vassal in the territories he conquered in Anatolia. The remaining Ottoman territory was divided among Bayezid's sons [Süleyman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCleyman_%C3%87elebi) (who declared himself an Emir and took control of the European territory of the empire, known as Rumeli), [İsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0sa_%C3%87elebi) (who controlled Bursa and its environs in Anatolia), and [Musa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_%C3%87elebi) (who at first allied with Mehmed in Anatolia, then took control of European Thrace after the defeat of Süleyman). They began fighting for control more or less immediately; after Timur died in 1405, the Anatolian territories became effectively independent again, but the four brothers remained locked in a four-way civil war which lasted until 1413, now often known as the [Ottoman Interregnum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Interregnum) (1403-1413).
**Recapture, reunification and restoration (1413 onward).** Mehmed ultimately killed off his brothers, won the civil war, and re-established unified control over the empire's old territories in July 1413. After he defeated his last rival, Musa, he had himself re-crowned as Sultan in [Edirne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edirne), making him [Sultan Mehmed I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I). He then had to fight off his last surviving older brother [Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi) (who demanded a partition of the empire and then led an unsuccessful rebellion when he was rebuffed). In the course of the civil war, the warring brothers had bargained some of the formerly Ottoman-controlled territories away (most importantly, the city of [Salonica / Thessaloniki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessaloniki) in return for temporary alliances with the Byzantine Emperors, who often served as power-brokers or mediators during the conflict; these territories were besieged and recaptured over the course of the next couple decades. The reunified and restored Sultanate resumed its military expansion into eastern Europe and central Anatolia, ultimately leading to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 (by Mehmed's grandson, [Mehmed II Fatih](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror) and then of Egypt and most of the Middle East in 1516-1517 (by Mehmed I's great-great grandson, [Selim I Yavuz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_I)), leading into the peak of Ottoman imperial power in the 16th and 17th centuries. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The state Qin conquered and unified all the warring states of China, and formed the first Chinese Empire in 221 BC befoe falling in about 207 BC. The Qin statea nd governmentwas totally destoryed, and various rebel groups ruled different parts of China.
One could claim that Han Dyanasty China from 202 BC to 220 AD was either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin Dynasty, or else a sort of recreation of the Qin Empire by a rebel group.
Rebels revolted and China was divided into three major powers, each claiming to be the rightful governmentof all China, by the time the last Han dynasty emperor was deposed in 220. The rebel state of Wei eventually conquered the others, ending the Three kingdoms era and beginning the rule of the Jin Dynasty over China in 280.
The Chinese Empire during the Jin Dynasty can be considered either a totally new empire, somewhat inspired by the Qin and Han, or as else a sort of a recreation of the Qin and Han empires by a rebel group.
The Jin Dynasty ruled from 266 to 420, but only ruled a united China for a few decades after 280. The series of civil wars called The War of the Eight Princes
(or Eight Kings) from 291 to 306 AD broke the Jin State into several more or less independent states, especially since the conflicts encouraged the barbarian invasions callled The Uprising of the Five Barbarians from 304-316.
The Jin Dynsty government fled to south China, along with millions of Chinese refugees, and the period of unified China was followed by the Sixteen Kingdoms from 304-4439, and the Nothern and Southern Dynasties from 42-589. One stte did not conquer all of Chaina until 589.
And this type of events went on for century after century of Chinese history.
So some people can claim that the Chinese Communists seized power in a country which had existed continuously since 221 BC. And some people can claim that unified Chinese states only existed for about two thirds or three fouths o fhe period from 221 BC tot he present, and there was no Chinese state in the intervals between, but instead several warring states whose wars often resulted in millions of deaths. Thus those people can claim that the various unified Chinese states in history were each a seperate empire, republic, or people's republic with no connection to previous states.
So the Chinese communists could be considered to be successful rebels against successful rebels against successful rebels against succesfull rebels aginst...an so on back to successful rebels agains the Qin Dynasty. But some of the Chinese rulers that were overthrown, leading to periods of division in China, were foreign conquerors of all China, so foreign conquerors have to be inserted into a few places in the otherwis euninterrupted succession of successful rebels.
So it is a mattet of opinion, interpretation, and speculation whether the Chinese Empire fell and was totally dissolved and then after a time and many bloody wars recreated several times, or whether there were a number of totally different and totally new Chinese empires each of which rose and then fell completely and were never recreated.
The city stateof Rome expanded under the RomanREpublic to rule the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, and expanded to be evenlarger durng the Roman Empire. In 395 there was an admiinstative division between two Emperors, one with authority in the East, and one in the west, but it remained a single empire.
The western section fell apart rapidly in barbarian invasions and revolts, and the last western emperos were deposed and assinate din476 and 480. People in the west who were still loyal to the empire, or claimed to be, acknowledged the eastern emperor as their rightful overlord. In the 530s under Justinian the empire struck back, reconquering about half of the former territory of the western Roman Empire.
A terrible plague, more barbarian invasions, the terrible Roman-Persan War in 602-628, and the following Arab invasions halted that Roman reconquest. But someone could consider Justinian's reconquests a recreateion of half of the western section of the Roman Empire.
This was not the first time, nor the last, that the Roman empire fell apart at least partially and then was at least partially reconstructed.
There were many Roman civil wars from the late Republic and then in the Empire were rival claimants had control of diferent sections of the Empire starting with the Year of the Four Empeors in AD 69, and repeating at various times.
In the Crisis of the Third Century from 235 to 284, The population and economy of the Empire declined, Barbarians tribes invaded, there were Persian Wars, and the soliders in various regions kept revolting and nominating willing or unwilling generals as emperors.
Men classed as legitimate RomanEmpeors are usually those who ruled the entire Roman Empire, and/or were recognzied by the Roman Senate, and/or were accepted as collegues by other and more or less legitimate emperors.
There were 27 more or less legitimate Roman Emperors in the 49 years from 235 to 284 in the list in Wikipedia, may of them began as Romanurusprers agaisnt previus emperors.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors#Crisis_of_the_Third_Century_(235%E2%80%93284)>
If each emperor ruled alone the average reign before dying or being killed would have been about 1.074 years, but since their were many joint reigns the average survival time was a little better.
And if you think that was bad, there were 27 less successfull claimants, classified as Roman usurpers, in that period according to Wikipedia's list of Roman usurpers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_usurpers>
This omitts several doubtfull cases, and also the 5 emperors of the Gallic Empire and the 1 or 2 emperors of the Palmyrene Empire.
And a few of the many rebellious regions in this era lasted long enough to be considered to be sort of separate states and offshoots of the Roman Empire.
For example, the so called "Gallic Empire" lasted from 260 to 274, and included Gaul, Hisbania, and Roman Britain at its height. The Palmyrene empire lasted form 270 to 273.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Empire>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire>
So someone could claim that the Roman Empire dissolved and was later recreated. But that would be like saying that the USA dissoved in 1560 and was recreated in 1865. Most of the USA remained loyal to the Federal government under Lincoln, and fought a long war to reconquer the rebellios region. Similarly most of the Roman Empire remained under the control of the central government, and eventually Emperor Aurelian reconquered the Palmyrene and Gallic Empires.
Similalry the "Brittanic Empire" was founded in RomanBritain and northern Gaul in 286 and listed until 296 until being reconquered.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carausian_revolt>
>
> The Tetrarchy was the system instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293 to govern the ancient Roman Empire by dividing it between two senior emperors, the augusti, and their juniors and designated successors, the caesars. This marked the end of the Crisis of the Third Century.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy>
Each of the four emperors in the Tetrarchy was assigned a region to defend against rebels and invaders. The two caesars were surbordinate to the two Augusti, and each e caesar was considered to be heir and succesor of his Augusutus.
Unfortunately, the Tetrarchy broke down as rival emperors battlde for power, until one, Constantine I, defeated his rivals and made himself solde emperor in 324. The imperial role was divided and reunited several moe times, until in 395 two emperors gained authority in the eastern and western sections of the Roman Empire.
The western section was soon taken over by barbarian groups, but the eastern section later struck back and reconquered much of the west.
The Roman Republic had an area of 1,950,000 square kilometers in 50 BC.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic>
By 25 BC the Roman Empire ruled 2,750,000 square kilometers; in 117 it reached its brief peak of 5,000,000 square kilometers, and in 390 it ruled 4,400,000 square kilometers, still as much as 0.88 of its maximum size 273 years earlier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire>
By 518 the eastern section of the Roman Empire, the so called "Byzantine Empire", was down to 2,300,000 square kikometers, 0.46 of it's maximum size.
This rose to 3,600,000, 0.72 of its maximum size, by 565, but was down to 2,900,000, 0.58 of its maximum size, in 600.
By 668, the Roman Empire was down to 1,300,000 square kiometers, 0.26 of its maximum size, due to the Arab invasions.
By 775 the size was down to 800,000 squae kilometers, only 0.16 of its maximum size.
By 1025 the Roman Empire was back up to 1,675,000 square kilometers, 0.335 of its brief maximum size 908 years earier.
555,000 After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 the empire rapidly shrank, and was down to square kilometers, 0.111 of its maximum size, in 1097.
This rose to 1,000,000 square kilometers, 0.2 of its maximum area, by 1143, and then fell to 610,000 square kilometers, 0.122 of its maximum area, by 1204.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_the_Byzantine_Empire>
In all that tiem where the empire lost and regained territory, nobody could claim that the empire had been dissolved and then recreated. The central government had always retained a lot of territory and had always managed to reconquere a lot of lands taken from it.
The Empie did dissolve in 1204 The westerners who captured the Capital, Constantniople, in 1204 established the so called "Latin Empire of Constantinople", a group of rebels established the co called Trapezuntine Empire, and more loyal Romans established the so called Despotate of Epirus with is short life "Empire of Thessalonika", and the so called "Empire of Nicae.
The Nicaen Empireeventually reconquered most of the Latin Empire and more or less recreated the previous "Byzantine" Empire. By 1282 it ruled 550,00 squae kilometers, about 0.90 of the size in 1204, though only 0.11 of the maximum size of the Roman Empire in 117.
The empire of Charlemagne is often considered to be a partial reconstruction of the dissolved former western Roman Empire. By 843 it became divided into several kingdoms whose kings gave little obedience to the emperor, and the last emperor was assassinated in 924.
In 962, Otto I the Great, mighty king of Germany and Italy, was crown emperor. Otto's realm later became known as the Holy Roman Empire, and lasted until 1806.
Sometimes the Holy Roman Empire is considered to be the continuation of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, and sometimes it is considered to be a totally new Empire. And a sort of midway positon could be to claim that the Carolingian Empire was dissolved and recreated several times before being dissolved in 924 and then being recrated in 962 as the Holy Roman Empire.
The ideology of the Holy Roman Empire was that the Emperors were the successors of the Carolingian Emperors. It was also claimed that when "Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was depsoed in7987, and his mother ruled the Roman Empire, the emperorship was vacent sinc eit was wrong for a woman to rulethe RomanEmire. Thus it was claimed that Charlemagne in 800 ws the rightful successor of Constantine VI in 797 and of all the "Byzantine" emperors back to Arcadius in 395, and of all the earlier Roman Emperors back to Augustus in 27 BC.
So the Holy Roman Empire never claimed that the RomanEmpire had been dissolved and reconstructed, but instead claimed that it had always existed in varius forms since 27 BC.
So in the case of Chine and Rome there is considerable uncertainty whether it is acurate to say that their empires dissolved and were recreated or existed continuously. | The [Second Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Turkic_Khaganate) was founded in 682 CE, about 50 years after the end of the [First (Eastern) Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate).
The [German Reich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich)
was founded in 1871, about 65 years after the end of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire).
Plus there are of lots of current nation states that trace their roots to some previous kingdoms (or similar) and that at some point were incorporated into other states. E.g. Poland, Portugal, Korea, Egypt, Israel etc etc. |
68,444 | This is all horribly nebulous, and I understand it.
But are there any examples in history, when any existing empire had dissolved and was afterwards recreated to more or less the same territory it occupied during its peak for any meaningful period of time (let's say 50+ years)?
I welcome suggestions about how to make this question more precise, but obviously I am looking into current aspirations of some people in Russia, who speak of "uniting Russia" to its historical 17th century borders. | 2022/03/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68444",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/27293/"
] | The **[Ottoman Sultanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire)** was established sometime around 1300-1330 (the periodization is complicated because it evolved out of an existing, expanding beylik under [Osman I Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_I); it's not clear when exactly they first started claiming the status of *sultan*, but this certainly was the case by the time of his son [Orhan Ghazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan).) They grew steadily throughout the 1300s in western Anatolia and then, increasingly rapidly, into the Balkans and Greece; by the end of the century they had grown to completely encircle Constantinople, and were the dominant power throughout southeastern Europe (below the Danube) and the western half of Anatolia.
**Conquest, Partition and Interregnum (1402-1413).** In 1402 the empire was conquered and shattered after a catastrophic defeat at the hands of [Timur's (Tamerlane's) army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur) at the [Battle of Ankara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ankara). The Ottoman's military forces were devastated and the [Sultan Bayezid I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_I) taken prisoner and held in captivity until his death. Timur held one of Bayezid's sons ([Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi)) captive in Samarkand, and placed another, [Mehmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I) as his vassal in the territories he conquered in Anatolia. The remaining Ottoman territory was divided among Bayezid's sons [Süleyman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCleyman_%C3%87elebi) (who declared himself an Emir and took control of the European territory of the empire, known as Rumeli), [İsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0sa_%C3%87elebi) (who controlled Bursa and its environs in Anatolia), and [Musa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_%C3%87elebi) (who at first allied with Mehmed in Anatolia, then took control of European Thrace after the defeat of Süleyman). They began fighting for control more or less immediately; after Timur died in 1405, the Anatolian territories became effectively independent again, but the four brothers remained locked in a four-way civil war which lasted until 1413, now often known as the [Ottoman Interregnum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Interregnum) (1403-1413).
**Recapture, reunification and restoration (1413 onward).** Mehmed ultimately killed off his brothers, won the civil war, and re-established unified control over the empire's old territories in July 1413. After he defeated his last rival, Musa, he had himself re-crowned as Sultan in [Edirne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edirne), making him [Sultan Mehmed I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_I). He then had to fight off his last surviving older brother [Mustafa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_%C3%87elebi) (who demanded a partition of the empire and then led an unsuccessful rebellion when he was rebuffed). In the course of the civil war, the warring brothers had bargained some of the formerly Ottoman-controlled territories away (most importantly, the city of [Salonica / Thessaloniki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessaloniki) in return for temporary alliances with the Byzantine Emperors, who often served as power-brokers or mediators during the conflict; these territories were besieged and recaptured over the course of the next couple decades. The reunified and restored Sultanate resumed its military expansion into eastern Europe and central Anatolia, ultimately leading to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 (by Mehmed's grandson, [Mehmed II Fatih](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror) and then of Egypt and most of the Middle East in 1516-1517 (by Mehmed I's great-great grandson, [Selim I Yavuz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_I)), leading into the peak of Ottoman imperial power in the 16th and 17th centuries. | The [Second Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Turkic_Khaganate) was founded in 682 CE, about 50 years after the end of the [First (Eastern) Turkic Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate).
The [German Reich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich)
was founded in 1871, about 65 years after the end of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire).
Plus there are of lots of current nation states that trace their roots to some previous kingdoms (or similar) and that at some point were incorporated into other states. E.g. Poland, Portugal, Korea, Egypt, Israel etc etc. |
12,119,171 | I am designing a software in Python and I was getting little curious about whether there is any time differences when popping out items from a dictionary of very small lengths and when popping out items from a dictionary of very large length or it is same in all cases. | 2012/08/25 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/12119171",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1599825/"
] | You can easily answer this question for yourself using the `timeit` module. But the entire point of a dictionary is near-instant access to any desired element by key, so I would not *expect* to have a large difference between the two scenarios. | Check out this article on Python [TimeComplexity](http://wiki.python.org/moin/TimeComplexity):
>
> The Average Case times listed for dict objects assume that the hash
> function for the objects is sufficiently robust to make collisions
> uncommon. The Average Case assumes the keys used in parameters are
> selected uniformly at random from the set of all keys.
>
>
> Note that there is a fast-path for dicts that (in practice) only deal
> with str keys; this doesn't affect the algorithmic complexity, but it
> can significantly affect the constant factors: how quickly a typical
> program finishes.
>
>
>
According to this article, for a 'Get Item' operation, the average case is O(1), with a worse case of O(n). In other words, the worst case is that the time increases linearly with size. See [Big O Notation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation) on Wikipedia for more information. |
532,415 | I am currently reading my text, for my electromagnetics course, and we are discussing guided waves. The text casually mentions the term "guided modes", and never really defines what that means. | 2020/11/15 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/532415",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/252083/"
] | A *mode* is a configuration of the electromagnetic field that is stable as the system evolves in time according to Maxwell's equations. Mathematically, it's an eigenstate of the differential equations and boundary conditions describing the system.
A guided mode is a mode that is confined within a guiding structure of some kind. For example a metallic waveguide, an optical fiber, or a photonic crystal.
It's contrasted, for example, with a free-space mode (by which electromagnetic waves propagate unguided in free space) or an evanescent mode (which don't actually propagate due to exciting the structure below the cut-on frequency, but which can couple power between other waveguides if the structure with the evanescent mode is short enough). | I would typically use "guided mode" to refer to a mode moving down a waveguide. For example, the LP01 mode of an optical fiber would be a guided mode. The opposite of a guided mode would be a mode in free space.
There may be other uses depending on context however. |
43,018,962 | I am working on project using Java and I'm looking for open source library to parse swift messages: ISO 15022 and 20022.
for 15022 I already find a solution which is Prowidesoftware, but for 20022 I didn't find anything.
any ideas?
thanks. | 2017/03/25 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/43018962",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/7731093/"
] | **November 2020 Update:**
The Prowide ISO 20022 library is now **open source**.
Distributed with Apache license and including features for:
* Java model for ISO 20022 MX (for example: MxPacs00800109 class, for all MX categories)
* Parser from XML into Java model
* Builder API from Java to ISO 20022 XML
* Conversion to JSON
* JPA model for persistence
* Support for multiple application headers: ah$v10, head.001.001.01, head.001.001.02
Info and download at: <https://www.prowidesoftware.com/products/iso20022>
The open source covers all categories, variants and versions of the ISO20022.
While restricted ISO versions such as SEPA, CBPR+, SIC or TARGET are provided as complementary comercial packages.
---
I've deleted the outdated previous answer. I'm one of the Prowide libraries authors. | We have searched a lot for this about a year ago, but could not find, so we have made our own parser using XPath.It is a tiresome job, but will be helpful in understanding the structure more closely. |
511 | The purpose of this question is to get a clear policy about [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") questions.
There have been instances where reading order questions have been closed because ["there doesn't seem to be any connection between the different... novels"](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in#comment2330_788), such as the question [What order should I read Thomas Pynchon's novels in?](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in) This creates problems because it's not exactly clear what qualifies as a connection between the different novels. For example, the question <https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/1783/111> isn't about books in the same series, but some community members have argued that the question is on-topic because the books revolve around a common theme.
What is the criteria for whether reading order questions are on-topic? | 2017/02/22 | [
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/511",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Reading order questions are a chance for us to offer practical, experience-based advice on how best to approach specific sections of the material this site is about. Obviously they should adhere to [good subjective](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), of course, and should support their solutions clearly by explaining why and how the suggested reading order is a good one. But I'm honestly kind of baffled at the pushback against having questions that are so well-fitted to this site.
In the interests of [optimising for pearls, not sand](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/), we would expect these questions to specify why the querent suspects the reading order of that particular group of works is non-obvious/non-trivial. To avoid collecting answers that aren't actionable solutions to the querent's problem we would close such questions as unclear or too broad--same as with any other kind of question.
And to be clear, reading order is not reading recommendation. Asking the order one should read a set implies that one has already chosen to read the set--so it's not [shopping](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158809/244929) and the primary reasons shopping questions are bad (both open-ended and quickly dated) don't transfer.
We just have to expect the same level of quality from reading-order questions and answers that we do from every other subjective question, and this will become a small but valuable subset of our site's content. | **I think [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") posts should be in-scope if there is reason to assume that there should be an order to read books in.**
The easiest case is obviously where all the books are in the same universe. However, that is not the only case. If it can be argued that several books build toward a theme, together, then it's reasonable to assume that there might be a recommended order in which the books should be read. Therefore, I believe that my question about Ayn Rand's stories is in-scope for Literature.
I am not familiar with the works of Thomas Pynchon, but [the question](https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/788/481) does not tell us why there should be an accepted order in reading his works, and so should be closed *not* as off-topic, but rather as "unclear what you're asking" or "primarily opinion based." (At least, until a basis for the assumption of a reading order is added. If/when that happens, that post should be reopened.) |
511 | The purpose of this question is to get a clear policy about [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") questions.
There have been instances where reading order questions have been closed because ["there doesn't seem to be any connection between the different... novels"](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in#comment2330_788), such as the question [What order should I read Thomas Pynchon's novels in?](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in) This creates problems because it's not exactly clear what qualifies as a connection between the different novels. For example, the question <https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/1783/111> isn't about books in the same series, but some community members have argued that the question is on-topic because the books revolve around a common theme.
What is the criteria for whether reading order questions are on-topic? | 2017/02/22 | [
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/511",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Don't ask for a recommended reading order, ask for things that inform a choice of reading order
===============================================================================================
Let me back up a bit. **Why do people want to ask about reading order in the first place?** In 99% of the cases, you can't possibly go wrong with publication order. This is the order hundreds, thousands or millions of people (had to) read the texts when they were first released and in most cases this is also the order the author initially wanted people to experience them in. Publication order is usually easily determined by a quick glance at Wikipedia or some other source and doesn't require an "expert" answer on Stack Exchange (exception could be older works where the publication order might not be well documented).
This means that when people ask for a reading order of a set of books, they must have some reason to assume that there must be other factors which make deviating from publication order a good idea. Common reasons include:
* Publication order does not correspond to the chronological order of the plot. This is commonly the case when prequels are written later or when gaps in the story are filled in.
* Texts may be published in a different order than they were written. It's reasonable to assume ([but not necessarily the case](https://literature.stackexchange.com/a/141/298)), that following this more "natural" order will lead to better reading experience.
* This usually but not always goes hand in hand with the first point, but multiple texts surrounding the same story often spoil or foreshadow each others' plot twists. By changing the reading order, one might be able to enhance the suspense and satisfaction of plot twists. A popular example of this from the world of movies is [Machete order](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/11964/31127) for watching Star Wars.
* Sometimes multiple tangentially related stories are being told throughout several books. Do you read one story first and then the other? Do you interleave them in publication other? Do the stories intersect at important points in the plots due to which the books should ideally be interleaved in a different order?
I think that in all of these cases, we can craft better questions and answers if we just **ask directly about the thing that makes us think that publication order might not be the best**. *"What is the best order to read X in?"* is a fairly vague, broad and potentially very subjective question. However, all of the following are answerable questions, that help *the asker make an informed decision about the reading order themselves*:
* *What is the chronological order of the books in the X series?*
* *What order were X's novels written in?*
* *Can the books set in the X universe be split into separate subseries and how do those interrelate?*
Such questions would result in useful content that people can use to find a recording according to their own preferences. Note that [popular](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JmnAP.jpg) [answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/339aO.jpg) [to](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VZpSf.jpg) existing reading order questions don't necessarily present a reading order. But they give the asker all the relevant information to pick out their own order without the risk of spoilers and with the chance to enhance their reading experience.
I want to make clear that I'm not advocating a blanket ban on reading order questions. The [Harper Lee question](https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/131/298) is an example of a very useful and evidently answerable question about an optimal reading order. But what makes it a good question is that *it focuses on the reason why one might deviate from publication order*. If you don't provide that reason in the question, you might just end up with an answer that is essentially "publication order, duh", but if you do that gives answerers a basis for telling you *why* one or the other might be better.
Another thing that came up in chat is asking questions *about a specific reading order*. Again, I think these can be good questions, if they want to discuss the merits of a certain order in way that falls into the scope of literary analysis. Going back to the example of Machete order (although it's not a literary example, it helps to illustrate the point), I could imagine the following question being answered in a way that is no more subjective than any other literary analysis:
* *How does Machete order improve the plot of Star Wars by reordering the major plot twists of the story?*
If we make reading-order questions about the reasons to deviate from publication order, and try to focus on the underlying information that would make someone choose and a different, then this will automatically eliminate reading-order questions about works where reading order is arbitrary (because all works are completely independent) or should necessarily be publication order (because each work builds on the previous one). | **I think [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") posts should be in-scope if there is reason to assume that there should be an order to read books in.**
The easiest case is obviously where all the books are in the same universe. However, that is not the only case. If it can be argued that several books build toward a theme, together, then it's reasonable to assume that there might be a recommended order in which the books should be read. Therefore, I believe that my question about Ayn Rand's stories is in-scope for Literature.
I am not familiar with the works of Thomas Pynchon, but [the question](https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/788/481) does not tell us why there should be an accepted order in reading his works, and so should be closed *not* as off-topic, but rather as "unclear what you're asking" or "primarily opinion based." (At least, until a basis for the assumption of a reading order is added. If/when that happens, that post should be reopened.) |
511 | The purpose of this question is to get a clear policy about [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") questions.
There have been instances where reading order questions have been closed because ["there doesn't seem to be any connection between the different... novels"](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in#comment2330_788), such as the question [What order should I read Thomas Pynchon's novels in?](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in) This creates problems because it's not exactly clear what qualifies as a connection between the different novels. For example, the question <https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/1783/111> isn't about books in the same series, but some community members have argued that the question is on-topic because the books revolve around a common theme.
What is the criteria for whether reading order questions are on-topic? | 2017/02/22 | [
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/511",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Reading order questions are a chance for us to offer practical, experience-based advice on how best to approach specific sections of the material this site is about. Obviously they should adhere to [good subjective](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), of course, and should support their solutions clearly by explaining why and how the suggested reading order is a good one. But I'm honestly kind of baffled at the pushback against having questions that are so well-fitted to this site.
In the interests of [optimising for pearls, not sand](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/), we would expect these questions to specify why the querent suspects the reading order of that particular group of works is non-obvious/non-trivial. To avoid collecting answers that aren't actionable solutions to the querent's problem we would close such questions as unclear or too broad--same as with any other kind of question.
And to be clear, reading order is not reading recommendation. Asking the order one should read a set implies that one has already chosen to read the set--so it's not [shopping](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158809/244929) and the primary reasons shopping questions are bad (both open-ended and quickly dated) don't transfer.
We just have to expect the same level of quality from reading-order questions and answers that we do from every other subjective question, and this will become a small but valuable subset of our site's content. | I think there are actually two classes of questions that might both be asked as "reading order" questions:
1. Questions about linked series of books (or plays, poems, etc.). These are the types of reading/viewing order questions we're used to seeing on SFF. For these it's clear that there is some factual basis for answers that's verifiable in some way (e.g. publication order, chronological order of events within universe, etc.).
2. Questions that might also be phrased "where do I start with author X?" (Or genre Y, or national literary tradition Z, etc.). These are cases where there's not necessarily a "within universe" connection between the works, but the prospective reader is simply trying to figure out how to tackle a monumental body of work and get a good introduction to its themes and tropes.
Now, for case #2, a lot of "primarily opinion-based" bells might be ringing there. But I believe that, at least in some cases, a well-researched answer could be supported by evidence. For example, if the question were asking for a reading order of Shakespeare's plays, an answer might provide an overview of which plays are typically covered in an Intro to Shakespeare course, based on a sampling of college syllabi. |
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