I ran across this phrase in a video made by an Australian walking the Camino de Santiago. He describes a horrible sleep-deprived night and suffering from food poisoning, and states that he's feeling a little precious.  at 1:09:25. I assumed from the context it meant wasted or shaky. In  blog entry there's a similar use, I believe also from an Australian:      It was a good night as everyone celebrates throughout the city just as we do at home.   Woke up the next day feeling a little precious and was having a coffee and looked at a stamp I had on my hand from a bar we went to.   But then, in  blog, which is also an Australian, it's used a bit differently:      Matt is feeling a little precious about a couple of scams he's fallen in to over the last couple of days. The first one was when he asked me the time one morning and I mistakenly read my watch as 6.30am - off he went running at 5.30am. He was a tad confused to get back at 6.20am. The second I will let him explain but when you read it bear in mind how many years he spent dealing with reps and suppliers getting the best possible price for shop stock. Right Matt here. Absolutely gutted yesterday got conned by a gypsy woman about 4 foot 6 and with only one tooth.   In that case, it seems to mean disappointed or embarrassed.   So, what's up with this?
I understand that the word “precious” in the following quote of Maureen Dowd’s article “Heart of Darkness” (NYT, March 20) literally means “2. valuable or important and not to be wasted” as defined in OALD:     Congressman Jones read an e-mail from a former boss of General   Allen’s, giving the congressman this unvarnished assessment:   “Attempting to find a true military and political answer to the   problems in Afghanistan would take decades. Would drain our nation of   precious resources, with the most precious being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot solve the Afghan   problem, no matter how brave and determined our troops are.   But I didn’t know “precious” has another meaning as defined in OALD: 5. (disapproving, people and their behavior) very formal, exaggerated and not natural, and Readers English Dictionary: 2.(colloquial) terrible, almost worthless, until I was told by my respected forum mate a few days ago.   Being encouraged by his suggestion for me to “ask another question if I’m not sure of what he means by describing his input as “precious” is actually rather “precious” phrasing, I would like to ask:   What is an example of “precious” being used as “disapproving” or sarcastic way (as neither OALD nor CALD provides examples)? Is there an easy way to discern the instance “precious” being used as “disapproving” from the case being used in the sense of genuine “great value” as used in the above quote other than judging from the context?
If $A/I \cong A/J$ as rings and $I\subseteq J,$ then $I=J.$ Let $A$ be a commutative Noetherian ring and let $I$ and $J$ be ideals of $A.$  Suppose that $I\subseteq J$ and that $A/I \cong A/J$ as rings.  I want to prove that $I=J.$    Observations so far:  1) If we drop the hypothesis $I\subseteq J,$ then the result is false:  $$\mathbb{Q}[X,Y]/(X)\cong \mathbb{Q}[X,Y]/(Y) \text{ but } (X)\neq (Y).$$  2) If $A/I\cong A/J$ as $A$-modules, then $I=J$:  $$I=\mathrm{Ann}_A(A/I)=\mathrm{Ann}_A(A/J)=J.$$  I'm now a bit stuck as to how to proceed. Any hints would be most helpful!  Many thanks :) How do I loop through or enumerate a JavaScript object? Do elevator upgrades increase your passive credit earnings, too? It looks like we'll be adding  support to Stack Overflow. This is necessary to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious scripted activity. We only want human beings to post or edit things here!  We'll be using a JavaScript (jQuery) CAPTCHA as a first line of defense:    The advantage of this approach is that, for most people, the CAPTCHA won't ever be visible!  However, for people with JavaScript disabled, we still need a fallback and this is where it gets tricky.  I have written a  which we can re-use.    However, I'd prefer to go with something textual to avoid the overhead of creating all these images on the server with each request.  I've seen things like..   ASCII text captcha: \/\/(_)\/\/ math puzzles: what is 7 minus 3 times 2? trivia questions: what tastes better, a toad or a popsicle?   Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills here, but I'd like to have a less resource intensive, non-image based &lt;noscript&gt; compatible CAPTCHA if possible.  Ideas? This is more of a panic question after reading reviews on Istanbul Atatürk Airport. They said it's messy and hard to navigate, therefore I'm asking questions here in name of my girlfriend who will need to transit through this airport.  My girlfriend (Canadian national) traveling from Toronto (YYZ) to Istanbul (IST) for a couple hours (~4 hrs, so transiting) in order to come to Pristina (PRN). I would like a quick guideline on how to pass through this airport seamlessly without facing any trouble or delay.  Her tickets are both with Turkish Airlines. She purchased it via a third party (Flighthub.ca). It's only one booking and it includes both flights in it.   Once my girlfriend departs, she's obviously required to follow the signs and go to the transit area. Once she's there, will she be required to present a ticket? Where does she get that ticket? Does she get it in YYZ or does she need to visit a counter in IST and get it? After she's got the proper ticket, what does she need to do exactly? Wait in line to have her passport checked? Will they also control her carryon?  After this step, does she simply go to the PRN flight gate and that's it?   We're simply worried about Istanbul Atatürk Airport because of the recent things that happened in Turkey (coup attempt and ISIS attack) and she doesn't wanna somehow end up locked up there. I've read that the airport is a mess lately and a lot of people will be there waiting in line. So, another question: Are 4 hours enough?  I would appreciate a step by step guideline on how she needs to navigate and what she needs to do in that airport to have a smooth experience without facing any delays. Also some misc information on Istanbul Atatürk Airport would be appreciated. Why isn't there a centre of charge? When determining the gravitational attraction between 2 solid bodies, we can simplify computations by taking their masses to be concentrated at their respective centres of mass. However, had they been electrically charged bodies and we needed to compute electrostatic attraction, there is no "centre of charge" notion available to us. ( We would evaluate a 2-dimensional integral, or equivalently, apply Gauss's law. )  Is there any simple reason for the absence of such a centre of charge? Frequently, I've got the answer: "charge just doesn't work that way". Proof that all abelian simple groups are cyclic groups of prime order Just wanted some feedback to ensure I did not make any mistakes with this proof. Thanks!  Since $G$ is abelian, every subgroup is normal. Since $G$ is simple, the only subgroups of $G$ are $1$ and $G$, and $|G| &gt; 1$, so for some $x\in G$ we have $x\neq 1$ and $\langle x\rangle\leq G$, so $\langle x\rangle = G$. Suppose $x$ has either infinite order or even order. Then $\langle x^2\rangle \leq G$ but $\langle x^2\rangle \neq \langle x \rangle$, a contradiction. So $x$, and therefore $G$, has odd order, and by Feit-Thompson, $G\cong Z_p$ for some prime $p$.  Edit: Thanks, I see that Feit-Thompson is too much.  Since $G$ is abelian, every subgroup is normal. Since $G$ is simple, the only subgroups of $G$ are $1$ and $G$, and $|G| &gt; 1$, so for some $x\in G$ we have $x\neq 1$ and $\langle x\rangle\leq G$, so $\langle x\rangle = G$. Suppose $x$ has infinite order. Then $\langle x^2\rangle \leq G$ but $\langle x^2\rangle \neq \langle x \rangle$, a contradiction. So $x$, and therefore $G$, has finite order. Suppose $x$ has composite order $n$ so for some $p &gt; 1$ that divides $n$, $\langle x^p \rangle$ is a proper non-trivial subgroup of $G$, so $G$ is not simple. So $G$ is a cyclic group of prime order. I deleted the "/etc/passwd" file and cannot log in So I know the basic gist is that fusion power's main issue is sustaining the fusion. I also know that there are two methods. The Torus method and the laser method. The torus magnetically contains plasma and heats it with radiation and accelerates the plasma around to make strong enough collisions that protons fuse. The laser method uses 192 lasers and focuses it on tiny frozen hydrogen pellets and aims to initiate fusion each time pellets are dropped.  The though struck me when we could sorta combine the two designs together. The torus doesn't have to worry about making fusion happen at a specific location but it has issues in that the plasma is unevenly heated and leaks. On the other hand, the laser design is extremely complicated in the level of precision needed and would have to repeat this for every pellet. This lead me to think to make something precise and contained at the same time.  I see that particle colliders are able to direct two beams of protons and have them collide at a specific spot with a very precise energy. Couldn't we tune the energy of the two beams of protons to the energy required for them to fuse? We have the ability to smash them into bits, surely we have the ability to have them fuse. (I'm thinking about the type of collider that circles two beams in opposite directions)  It would be at much lower energies than normal colliders and would be very precise and it would be possible to fuse at a specific location that has greater leeway because for protons that missed collision, they'd just circle around again! Thus protons would efficiently be used and very little would be wasted. There wouldn't be problems of plasma leakage because we are focusing them in a thin tight beam.   It seems that this idea has girth, or I feel this way at least, can someone back me up by offering some calculations on how to calculate the efficiency? How would I go about calculating the two circling beams of protons and at what specific velocity would be needed? etc. $P[X=x]=0$ when $X$ is continuous variable Does the Symmetric difference operator define a group on the powerset of a set? $G$ is the set of all subsets of a set $A$, under the operation of $\triangle\;$: Symmetric Difference of sets.  $A$ has at least two different elements.  I need to check if this is a group, and if it does to show if the group is abelian and/or finite.  Associativity - easy from Symmetric Difference. Identity element - empty group. Inverse element - each element is inverse to itself. Am I right?  abelian? finite? How many arrangement of the letters in MISSISSIPPI have at least 2 adjacent S's?  I was thinking that I can glue two of the S's together, so there will be 9 letters plus the special letter SS, and the number of arrangements will be $10!/(2!2!4!)$, this is not the correct answer, but what is wrong with my reasoning.  (the correct answer is $11!/(4!4!2!)-7!/(4!2!)\binom{8}{4}$, I understand the solution) How do Android tablets use magnet to auto-lock the device? Natural Sort in MySQL Proving $\sum_{k=1}^n\frac1{\sqrt k}<2\sqrt n$ by induction I am just starting out learning mathematical induction and I got this homework question to prove with induction but I am not managing. $$\sum_{k=1}^n\frac1{\sqrt k}&lt;2\sqrt n$$ Please help! What identifies an action-reaction pair of forces? This is a question on a worksheet that I'm giving to a student:  A man of weight $W$ steps into the lift. The lift then moves downwards with a constant speed. If $R$ represents the force acting on the man by the lift floor, which of the following statements is/are correct? (3) $R$ and $W$ are an action-reaction pair according to Newton's third law  Why isn't this statement (3) correct? In the  library, they are overloading the () operator.  Is this a convention in C++? For callbacks, etc.?  I have seen this in code of a co-worker (who happens to be a big Boost fan). Of all the Boost goodness out there, this has only led to confusion for me.  Any insight as to the reason for this overload? How to obtain optimal hyperparameters after nested cross validation? Force a rebuild of the start menu program index/database in Windows 10 With Windows 10 Microsoft migrated to a database-ish solution for indexing programs in search and the start menu, rather than just using a /startmenu/ directory. AFAIK the exact implementation is still pretty unclear, but there is something along those lines.  Updating from 8.1 to 10 causes it to migrate everything from /startmenu/ to the new system, which ignoring issues such as a (seemingly arbitrary) cap of 500 applications, works fine.  However this failed for me, and from googling seems to be an issue from upgrading with an older dev build, which then carried on to RTM.  So does anyone know a way to force a rebuild/re-index of the program library? Rebuilding the system wide index through control panel (also in &lt;=8.1) has no effect. In the case of a non-inverting amplifier, if I DC couple the input signal with a capacitor only, \$C_1\$ (i.e. no resistor to ground), sources (as well as an experiment in the lab) show me that the op amp input will be saturated as the input bias current deposits charges on the terminal without having a return path to ground. This is solved by using connecting a resistor (\$R_1\$, as shown in the image below) to ground to create the return path. [The image is reproduced from an answer by "Neil_UK" on one of my previous questions, thanks Neil!]    My questions:   1) How is the input bias current able to continuously deposit charges and saturate the input if I don't use the resistor? The resistor should not allow the DC bias current through, so where is this current flowing from/into?  2) Why is this not a problem for the feedback path to the "-" terminal? There is no resistor to ground in that case, and capacitor \$C_2\$ seems to be causing no issues. The PDFs I've been reading suggest that the feedback behaves similar to when I have a resistor to ground by acting as the return path, how is this?