In the following passage, is &quot;These are a piece&quot; grammatically incorrect? It feels odd to change it to &quot;Theses are pieces&quot; but that would seem more consistent. &quot;The word politics may conjure images of capital buildings, government officials, and language steeped in legal jargon. These are a piece of our politics, but fundamentally politics is the activity shaping the way we organize our shared life together. To shape our shared life in a way that is truly just and peaceful we must bring our full selves. Only a politics steeped in love can breathe life into law. When we engage in passionate politics, our politics will become less about legal structures and more about the people inside of them. The question we ought to ask is then: in what direction will we point our love?&quot;
My fish's native habitat is rice fields. My fish's native habitat are rice fields.   Which one is correct? I'm pretty sure it's the first, since 'is' modifies 'habitat,' but it still sounds weird...
How can you strip non-ASCII characters from a string? (in C#) How can you strip non-ASCII characters from a string? (in C#) Random quadratic equation I would like to produce quadratic equation with integer coefficients.  Here's my code using pgfmath.  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{tikz} \pgfmathsetseed{\pdfuniformdeviate 10000000}  \begin{document} $\pgfmathdeclarerandomlist{signe}{{+}{-}}% \pgfmathrandomitem{\s}{signe}% \pgfmathparse{random(2)}% \pgfmathparse{ifthenelse(\pgfmathresult==1,"-"," ")}\pgfmathresult \pgfmathrandominteger{\a}{1}{6} \pgfmathparse{ifthenelse(\a==1," x^{2} ","\a x^{2}")}\pgfmathresult % coeff a \pgfmathdeclarerandomlist{lincoeff}{{}{2}{3}{4}{5}{6}} \pgfmathrandomitem{\b}{lincoeff}% \pgfmathrandomitem{\s'}{signe}% \pgfmathsetmacro{\e}{random(0,6)} \pgfmathparse{ifthenelse(\e==0," ", " \s' \b x ")}\pgfmathresult % coeff b \pgfmathrandominteger{\c}{0}{6} \pgfmathrandomitem{\s''}{signe}% \pgfmathparse{ifthenelse(\c==0,"","\s'' \c")}\pgfmathresult % coeff c =0$ \end{document}   It works but it seems to be not a good way, I had some pain with the x-coeficient and my solution looks complicated. I tried to use an ifthenelse inside an other ifthenelse but without success. Is there a better way ? To ensure that a new chapter starts on a right-hand page, the book class (and the report class with the options twoside and openright) will insert blank pages between chapters if necessary. However, these pages still contain the headers and footers as defined by the class. How can I remove those?  Note: I know that I can manually add \clearpage\thispagestyle{empty} at the appropriate points of my document. However, this seems awkward and is prone to fail if I change my document later. I'm looking for automatic solutions. Can I fetch the value of a non-standard CSS property via Javascript? I am trying to read a custom (non-standard) CSS property, set in a stylesheet (not the inline style attribute) and get its value. Take this CSS for example:  #someElement {   foo: 'bar'; }   I have managed to get its value with the currentStyle property in IE7:  var element = document.getElementById('someElement'); var val = element.currentStyle.foo;   But currentStyle is MS-specific. So I tried getComputedStyle() in Firefox 3 and Safari 3:  var val = getComputedStyle(element,null).foo;   ...and it returns undefined. Does anyone know a cross-browser way of retreiving a custom CSS property value?  (As you might have noticed, this isn't valid CSS. But it should work as long as the value follows the correct syntax. A better property name would be "-myNameSpace-foo" or something.) German language: use of comma in numbers How to install Tor? I tried to install Tor on my new version of Ubuntu, but it seems that Tor is not available in the repositories.  How else can I install and use Tor? itoa() is a really handy function to convert a number to a string. Linux does not seem to have itoa(), is there an equivalent function or do I have to use sprintf(str, "%d", num)? I just wanted to make some input where I press a key and the auto-repeat function engages so I don't have to press the 0 key many times to make a long number.  10000000000000000000000000000  This has always worked without fail in the past, but it's not something I do often and I'm not sure where to look next to figure out what might be preventing this.     I've toggled the sliders to change the delay for key repeat, but the only thing I can hang my hat on is that perhaps Lion disables this with the new feature where you hold down some keys (like the vowels, but also some consonants) to get alternate accented characters.  s turns into ß or ś or š and so on....  Am I missing an obvious setting, or is this something that has moved to a hidden setting or is simply a bug that these controls are still around since key repeat is now deprecated?  Comments welcome if anyone doesn't have an answer, but can provide specifics where this does work for them. I've checked two Macs so I'm guessing it's not related to keyboard type or connection method. Explain reflection laws at the atomic level The "equal angles" law of refection on a flat mirror is a macroscopic phenomenon. To put it in anthropomorphic terms, how do individual photons know the orientation of the mirror so as to bounce off in the correct direction? Do there exist an infinite number of integer-solutions $(x,y,z)$ of $x^x\cdot y^y=z^z$ where $1\lt x\le y$? Question : Do there exist an infinite number of integer-solutions $(x,y,z)$ of $x^x\cdot y^y=z^z$ where $1\lt x\le y$ ?  Motivation : After struggling to find a solution, I've just got one solution, which is  $$(x,y,z)=(1679616, 2985984, 4478976).$$  In the following, I'm going to write how I got this solution.  Letting $d$ be the greatest common divisor of $x,y,z$, we can represent $$x=ad, y=bd, z=cd$$ where $a,b,c$ are coprimes with each other. Then, we get $$d^{a+b-c}\cdot a^a\cdot b^b=c^c.$$  In the following, let's consider without the condition $x\le y$. Here, I suppose  $$a=2^m, b=3^n, a+b-c=1.$$  (As a result, this supposition works.)  Then, we get $$d=\frac{c^c}{2^{ma}\cdot 3^{nb}}.$$  Hence, letting $c=2^k\cdot 3^l$, if  $$kc\ge ma=m\cdot 2^m, lc\ge nb=n\cdot 3^n,$$ then $d$ is an integer.  Since $(m,n)=(4,2)$ satisfies the above conditions, then we get $d=2^8\cdot 3^6=186624.$ Hence we can get  $$x=9d=2^8\cdot 3^8=1679616, y=16d=2^{12}\cdot 3^6=2985984, z=24d=2^{11}\cdot 3^7=4478976.$$ Note that here I interchanged $x$ and $y$.  P.S : I was surprised to get this solution because I got this almost by chance. So, I don't know the other solutions. If you have any helpful information, please teach me. he or she vs their when using 'one' as a pronoun Mindfulness allows one to cope with their daily challenges.   Is "one" correct with "their" here?  I want to know if it is okay to user their (instead of he or she) when using 'one' as a pronoun. I've a file named addresses.txt :  address1@domain.com address2@domain.com address3@domain.com   I'd like to echo "address1@domain.com.html" using for loop. Here's what I did :  cat addresses.txt | while read address do echo "${address}.html" done   Here's the result :  .htmlss1@domain.com .htmlss2@domain.com .htmlss3@domain.com   Same result if I add a space between the variable and ".html"  What am I miss ?  Thanks How to read a line from the console in C? What is the simplest way to read a full line in a C console program The text entered might have a variable length and we can't make any assumption about its content. Two submit buttons in one form I have two submit buttons in a form. How do I determine which one was hit serverside? Commandline shortcut for current directory similar to ~ for home directory? Vertical spacing for two consecutive figure environments Invariance of a maximally entangled state under unitary operation $U \otimes U^\dagger$ Background: I'm giving a presentation to colleagues at work on hypothesis testing, and understand most of it fine but there's one aspect that I'm tying myself up in knots trying to understand as well as explain it to others.  This is what I think I know (please correct if wrong!)   Statistics that would be normal if variance was known, follow a $t$-distribution if the variance is unknown CLT (Central Limit Theorem): The sampling distribution of the sample mean is approximately normal for sufficiently large $n$ (could be $30$, could be up to $300$ for highly skewed distributions) The $t$-distribution can be considered Normal for degrees of freedom $&gt; 30$   You use the $z$-test if:   Population normal and variance known (for any sample size) Population normal, variance unknown and $n&gt;30$ (due to CLT) Population binomial, $np&gt;10$, $nq&gt;10$   You use the $t$-test if:   Population normal, variance unknown and $n&lt;30$ No knowledge about population or variance and $n&lt;30$, but sample data looks normal / passes tests etc so population can be assumed normal   So I'm left with:    For samples $&gt;30$ and $&lt;\approx 300$(?), no knowledge about population and variance known / unknown.   So my questions are:   At what sample size can you assume (where no knowledge about population distribution or variance) that the sampling distribution of the mean is normal (i.e. CLT has kicked in) when the sampling distribution looks non-normal? I know that some distributions need $n&gt;300$, but some resources seem to say use the $z$-test whenever $n&gt;30$... For the cases I'm unsure about, I presume I look at the data for normality. Now, if the sample data does looks normal do I use the $z$-test (since assume population normal, and since $n&gt;30$)? What about where the sample data for cases I'm uncertain about don't look normal? Are there any circumstances where you'd still use a $t$-test or $z$-test or do you always look to transform / use non-parametric tests? I know that, due to CLT, at some value of $n$ the sampling distribution of the mean will approximate to normal but the sample data won't tell me what that value of $n$ is; the sample data could be non-normal whilst the sample mean follows a normal / $t$.  Are there cases where you'd be transforming / using a non-parametric test when in fact the sampling distribution of the mean was normal / $t$ but you couldn't tell? Let's say you have a typical web app and with a file configuration.whatever. Every developer working on the project will have one version for their dev boxes, there will be a dev, prod and stage versions. How do you deal with this in source control? Not check in this file at all, check it with different names or do something fancy altogether? Why can't I cd to a quoted tilde ('~')? Writing my first script so I'm sure this is a basic question, but can someone please explain to me why I can:  cd ~ cd bin cd ~/bin cd 'bin'   But not  cd '~' cd '~/bin'   I need to cd to a directory path with a space in one of the directory names, so I need the quotes (it's Windows Program Files under wine). I can get around it with two cd commands, but why can't I put ~ in quotes?  If I type cd '~' (or cd "~") I get:  bash: cd: ~: No such file or directory