How do I write a long response to an answerer?

Question: Please note that I'm asking about a thread on this meta (Forum tone, reasonableness, and the possibility of a curated stack), not for general use within ELU. I will be needing more than 600 characters for sure. Do I answer my own question and put it there?
Comment: I would recommend that a **substantial** edit to a question after an answer has been received is generally Not A Good Thing To Do.
Comment: Post an answer might be best, or edit your question and include your reflections. Although I think it's already overlong to begin with, but that's MO.
Answer: You don't respond, especially if the response is that long. Stack Exchange is not a discussion forum.
More in the way of discussion is inherent in Meta, but a post which is longer than 600 characters should really be crafted into its own entity. A response that long to an answer implies a contrary view; a response that long to a question implies it's really an answer.
Answer your own question with the answer you think it should have, and let the community vote on the alternatives thus presented.
Comment: @John Lawler I had no idea that deleted answers are still visible to some users! Oops. I simply wanted to get rid of it.
Comment: Thank you for the response. To be clear, this applies equally to meta? There is a discussion tag built into the software. I think there is some confusion as to this point among experienced users, as it is quickly becoming a heated topic in the question I linked to above.
Comment: @Albatrosspro Clarified in the answer.
Comment: @Albatrosspro: I'm coming late to this .. um ..  discussion. I noticed that you answered your question and then deleted it, thereby making it visible only to people with high points. Was that the intent? In any event, I haven't gone through all the discussion (tl;dr) yet, so I'm not really sure whether I have anything to say on whatever the topic turns out to be. Surely there are problems with the SE model here; but there are problems with the group, and with the clientele, as well. To say nothing of problems with English grammar and usage.


Using the wordpress plugin, how do I overide the the template files, ie EventInfo.tpl?

Question: I have spend a number of hours trying to figure this out.  If I want to change one of the template files, say EventInfo.tpl, but not inside the plugin so updates would not override it.  How do I need to do that?
Comment: @ramesh, Thank you for your answer.  I want to just create a custom template folder.  I have read that linked content many times.  Every time I go set the custom template directory, I get a 'Custom Templates' directory does not exist error, event though the folder does exist.
Comment: Can you share with us the directory where you placed your 'custom-templates' folder and what you've typed in the field for "Custom Templates" in the Directories screen?
Answer: If you need to over ride a .tpl you can just do that by creating an extension or by using custom template folder in civicrm
which will be more easier - also, in the time of upgrade you need to compare the file and do the changes
More reading:
https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Customize+Built-in,+Profile,+Contribution+and+Event+Registration+Screens
https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Create+a+Module+Extension
https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Create+an+Extension
I guess this helps !!!


What screen to use to keep flies and gnats out at night?

Question: Every Summer, I like having the windows open in my house. The problem is that if there is a light on, small flies and gnats always come in through the window screen as they are drawn to the light. I think that the flies are smaller than the holes in the screen. Does anyone know if there is a window screen to prevent them from coming in?
Comment: Yes, there are fine mesh screens.  Hardware stores in your area should have screen fabric fine enough to keep out the local bugs.  If not, you can find screen fabric online that goes down to almost microscopic openings if you're willing to pay the price.  Or consider a different approach.  Use two closely placed layers of larger mesh and electrify them.  Then you'll have the satisfaction of hearing every one of the little bastards get fried.  :-)
Comment: Great post. Any ideas for how fine it needs to be?
Comment: @fixer1234, answers go down there.
Answer: Bugs come in a lot of sizes, so unless you measure the bodies of the ones that get through in your area, it's hard to give you a specific size.  In general, though, screen fabric comes in a few nominal meshes intended to handle the typical-sized bugs.
I would start by just seeing if your screens are coarser than the "fine" mesh sold in your area.  Measure the holes or count the "threads per inch".  Compare that to the finest mesh they sell at the local store.  If you use threads per inch, be sure to compare against similar weight screening because different diameter wire or filament will have different gaps between them for the same count per inch.
If the finest they sell has a substantially smaller opening, I would just assume that it's fine enough. If you already have what's considered a fine mesh, you may need to do some research, like measuring bug bodies, or finding out what insect the local pest actually is and how small they are.
If you need openings smaller than the fine mesh sold in your area, you can get screen fabric online that goes down to almost microscopic size.  Some very fine mesh fabric is available for window screens.  The super-fine mesh is typically used for purposes other than keeping bugs out of your house, and can get expensive.
Comment: I recommend starting with a 17x17/sq.inch fibreglass mesh (a size used in Western Canada) as a start. You may choose to look at mesh sizes smaller than that if the gnats would still pose issues.


Wireframe and vertices have disappeared

Question: New to Blender, no idea what hotkey I've pushed. The wireframe/vertices in Edit Mode have all disappeared. Effectively, Object Mode and Edit Mode are now look identical. If I move to "Modelling", they're all available. Additionally, when I select an object in Object Mode, the orange border that appears is now no longer there.
I'm assuming there's some way to hide/unhide or a preference of some description but I've got no idea how to find it.
Answer: You probably turned off overlays. See below:

Wireframe and vertices have disappeared


How to tell whether a purchase used an iTunes gift card or my credit card?

Question: I redeemed an iTunes gift card and purchased some songs. When i tried to go see how much money I had left on the card it said: credit card total $1.29. This information was displayed underneath latest purchases in my account information. Does this mean it was charged to the credit card or the gift card?
Comment: If you have any iTunes Credit (Gift Cards) available and enough to complete a purchase, it will be used before your credit card.
Answer: If you have a credit card assigned to your account as well as a gift card, purchases will use the gift card first as a rule. Only when the gift card is consumed or can not cover the entire cost of the purchase will money be deducted from your credit card.


Identify 'Career' Participants on StackOverflow

Question: Has it been considered to allow some form of optional (opt-in) piece of flair (in this context, just an icon next to your contributions) on stackoverflow indicating you have your CV online with "Careers," and you are interested in job-offers. Perhaps this is already in the works, but just in case it isn't I thought I'd put it out there as a suggestion.
Answer:
indicating you have your CV online with "Careers," and you are interested in job-offers.

I'm not sure that is a great idea:

it removes much of the need for employers to go to the trouble of, you know, paying
it says "hey, current employer! I'm going as soon as I can find something I hate less"

I really don't think that this is a good idea. Fine for contractors, maybe.
Answer: I sure don't want any more flair cluttering up the Q&A pages. So, I'm against it for that reason.
I don't want to give any more justification to authors who feel slighted when someone edits their post and crowds their flair. So, against it for that reason.
As Marc points out, it kinda defeats the whole privacy aspect of SOC. Sure, you could limit the visibility to signed in employers, but... what's the point? They could just use SOC! So, against it for that reason as well.
And if all that weren't enough, it smacks of desperation. "I've hit bottom and am left with no option but to spam SO with answers in hope that someone will notice me" desperation. That can't be good...

If you really feel good about your CV and want to show it off, just... mention it in your "about me" box. Heck, you could do that now and maybe save the $29... ;-)
Comment: "no option but to spam SO with answers" - are you on about me again?
Comment: If the shoe fits... (j/k) :-)
Answer: If you want to do this, just add a link to your public CV in the "About Me" part of your SO profile.
Comment: what is the "checkbox in the SO profile" for?
Answer: I could see having this icon available only to logged in employers when they are viewing SO, but I don't think it should display to others.  For employers it would be very handy identifying individuals -- perhaps it could also be linked to the person's CV.
Answer: Well, there is a checkbox in the profile. Perhaps if it's checked, then you have a link to the public profile of careers when it's available.
Comment: Perhaps just a star below your avatar linking to your CSO CV?
Comment: Yeah; I remember that, but I was more interested in the implementation.
Answer: I realize this was declined, but I think the SO folks are missing a very important point:
It helps to have some motivation for people to answer questions, over-and-above "wanting to help people" and trying to earn points.
Also, I think the issue of public exposure, clutter, etc, could be mitigated or eliminated by allowing users to control when the icon was visible.


How does Elemental Adept change the damage dice?

Question: The Elemental Adept feat says that I can treat any 1 on the damage dice as a 2. Does that meant that, if I've chosen fire, when casting the Fire Bolt cantrip I can roll 2d20 instead of 1d10?
Answer: It doesn't change what dice you roll, it changes how you read the dice. When you roll, any dice that come up showing 1 you treat as if they had rolled a 2.
So if you roll 1d10 and get a 5, Elemental Adept doesn't do anything; but if you roll 1d10 and get a 1, then you treat it as a 2 instead.
It's not so useful on a 1d10 because it only does anything 1/10th the time, but it's much more useful on 3d6 and other rolls that have multiple small dice.
Answer: Not sure about this... but the wording says, "treat 'ANY' 1 on the damage die as a 2." (Not roll of a 1 or a 2!) ...
 As noted for the Halfing luck, or fighters GWF.
 ... so .. think Witch Bolt .. d12.
10=20,11=22,& 12=22!... Hmmm?
Comment: Hi James, and welcome to the site. Take the [tour] to check out how this Q&A site works. Your answer becomes hard to parse in the second half, could you unpack and explain your thoughts on the topic?


Can a US President ban a Congressman from using SCIFs?

Question: A SCIF is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, and is mandated for use in some situations when reviewing classified and sensitive materials.   If a President has cause, e.g. knows a Congressman has a known history of leaking classified material, can they ban that member of Congress from accessing all SCIFs?
Comment: @Fizz yes they do if they do it in their official work as a Congressman.  That is how the Pentagon Papers were entered en toto into the Congressional Record.  Covered under the Free Speech and Debate Clause
Comment: @Fizz timing is somewhat non material.  Congress is protected under the FS&D Clause. The NYT under the 1st Amendment. Different acts.
Comment: Congresspersons have no immunity for leaking classified material, as far as I know. So if the Congressperson leaking was known, they could be prosecuted, I think.
Comment: Who are you talking about? Ellsberg was not a Congressperson. And he was the leak as far as I cantell in that case.
Comment: @Fizz https://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/16/former_senator_mike_gravel_on_putting
Comment: Yes, but Mike Gravel only put into the record what already leaked to the press.
Comment: Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/100211/discussion-between-k-dog-and-fizz).
Answer: In principle, perhaps, though it seems it would likely require an executive order. In practice, it would be an immense violation of longstanding protocol, and in particular if the congressperson was on any committee with a professional interest in the material (including oversight materials) then it would likely be a violation of the constitutional separation of powers. The following is from the Security Clearance Process FAQ of the Congressional Research Service:

Are Constitutional Officers (e.g., the President, Members of Congress) Required to Hold a Security Clearance to Access Classified
  Information?
Security clearances are not mandated for the President, Vice
  President, Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, or other
  constitutional officers. The criteria for election or appointment to
  these positions are specified in the U.S. Constitution, and except by
  constitutional amendment, no additional criteria (e.g., holding a
  security clearance) may be required. (18) Further, "by tradition and
  practice, United States officials who hold positions prescribed by the
  Constitution of the United States are deemed to meet the standards of
  trustworthiness for eligibility for access to classified
  information." (19) Additionally, as Commander-in-Chief, the President has
  the authority to establish the standards for access to classified
  national security information. This authority is typically exercised
  through the issuance of executive orders. Executive Order 13467, which
  covers suitability checks and security clearances for federal
  employees, applicants, and contractors, includes a determination of
  which executive branch individuals are covered and which are exempted

The footnotes read as follows:

(18) For example, qualifications for Members of Congress may be found
  in Article I, Section 2, clause 2, of the U.S. Constitution, and
  qualifications for President may be found in Article II, Section 1,
  clause 5. Also see Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969).
(19) Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), Classified
  Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 312) Briefing
  Booklet, Spring 2001, p. 66, at
  http://www.archives.gov/isoo/training/standard-form-312.pdf. ISOO
  notes, however, that Members of Congress, as constitutionally elected
  officials, are not exempt from the "need-toknow" requirement, and
  might not have unlimited access to all classified information if such
  access is not required. Instead, ISOO writes that "[Members] are not
  inherently authorized to receive all classified information, but
  agencies provide access as is necessary for Congress to perform its
  legislative functions, for example, to members of a committee or
  subcommittee that oversees classified executive branch programs."
Comment: @Fizz NTK is based on committee assignment. Ultimately, the President cannot use an executive order (which is all that classification is based on) to prevent an independent branch of the government from performing its constitutional duties.
Comment: This is a very good answer.  I will wait if someone speaks directly to SCIFs, although one could certainly infer that from your post.
Comment: Does this cover "need to know" though? Random Congressperson asking about the most restricted materials would probably get told "no" for starters. Executive privilege probably covers that.
Comment: Unrestricted access to a SCIF requires a Top Secret/SCI clearance. Theoretically, the President wouldn't have to revoke a member's clearance; just downgrade it to TS or below.
Comment: @PlutoThePlanet As this answer describes, members of Congress don't need a security clearance to access classified materials in the first place.
Answer: So you're both right... or both wrong... The responsible parties who first generate classified documents may release the documents they generate, but not ones of other branches.  While Congress can produce it's own classified documents and both executive and legislature can share and use each others classified documents in the creation of their own classified documents, they may not release any information from documents they did not generate.   That means that the President may classified documents about Military Helicopter specs, he may not release documents about the budget for those helicopters because the budget was set by congress (if the specs have dollar signs on them, he'll need to to make sure they get redacted before release).  Similarly, Congress may release closed-door testimony heard with respect to the Kennedy assassination by an investigative sub-committee, but they cannot release the documents still classified by the FBI.
With that out of the way, blocking access to a SCIF depends more on the classification level of the particular SCIF in question.  If a congressman has only secret level access, they may not access a Secret level document in a Top Secrete level SCIF even if a congressman with Top Secret access could access a Secret level document in a TOP Secret level SCIF.  This is largely to do with the fact that you can view any document in any SCIF rated at that classification level or lower.  If you're clearance doesn't grant you access to higher levels, you can't get in (even though you may certainly read it if you're allowed in).
Additionally, all classified information is compartmentalized, so it's not enough to meet the the levels, but you need to be read into a compartmentlization before accessing any information on it, even if the classification would grant you access.  This determination is called "Need to Know" and means that really, you should only have access to information in so far as not having it will be detrimental to doing your job.  In practice, it means that if a Chair of the comittee on agriculture has Top Secret access, he'll get access on every dark ops farming program conducted by the United States... but not access to Area 51 reports of their experiments with flying saucers (assumed) because what do UFOs have to do with Farming (Okay, so he gets the reports on extraterrestrial cattle rustling...  Roswell maybe as the crash was on a farm... but generally, no, he doesn't need to see reverse engineering of craft or diplomatic notes on the lizard people's demands from this week).
Additionally the President can only ban Congress people from Executive controlled SCIFs, not legislative SCIFs.  The problem for Congress is location, because the nearest SCIF to their office in the Capitol Building... is in the West Wing... so it's not that the President can ban them from any SCIF... just that he can ban them from the nearest SCIF they can go to... cause it's in his office (I think Congress has a non-TS level SCIF) and he can ban them from seeing his classified information without unless they make a specific oversight request relevant to their committees areas of oversight.  No one from Congress is allowed to waltz into the White House and peruse the classified docs for curiosity's sake.
Comment: This answer would benefit from sources. While my experience in classified environments says that this answer is right about how it works _within executive departments_, it's not clear from this answer that this is correct with regard to members of Congress. For example, members of the military are explicitly allowed to report anything they have concerns about - regardless of classification level - to any member of Congress. Like the President himself, members of Congress are an exceptional case with regards to access to classified information.
Comment: Also, while members of a relevant committee might have _more_ need to know about some particular issue, all members of Congress are entitled to vote and and have a policy-making interest in pretty much all aspects of the government, not just the aspects related to whatever committees that particular member is on.


Two bodies of finite size treated as two point masses in Newtonian gravity

Question: When discussing gravitation between two bodies of finite size, for instance Earth around the Sun, we suppose the mass of Earth and the Sun to be perfectly localized at the center of each body. Is this a "useful" "good" "approximation" or the "absolute truth"?
Comment: This is the shell theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem
Comment: @BenCrowell Ah, so it has a name! I'll edit my question to reflect the correct terminology :) Also, wikipedia's first derivation is really unnecessarily tedious.
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/90979/2451
Answer: This is certainly not the absolute truth, since every human on this planet is a living witness to the fact that Earth is not pointlike: It has finite volume.
However, there's a very good mathematical reason why we can consider the sun and Earth as pointlike when doing calculations in celestial mechanics: It's because the gravitational field due to a spherical body like the sun, when seen from outside of the sun, is identical to that of a pointlike gravitational charge with the same mass as the sun. This is called the shell theorem, and it is a consequence of Gauss' law for gravity, and a very similar result holds in the context of electromagnetism (where the name Gauss' law is most famous). This is an elementary exercise that many undergraduates are asked to derive in their first E&M course.
The relevant equations are:
$$\vec \nabla \cdot {\rm \vec g}= -4\pi G\rho(\vec r)\ ({\rm gravity})\hspace{1cm}\vec\nabla\cdot \vec E =\frac{\rho(\vec r)}{\epsilon_0}\ ({\rm electrostatics})$$
One can immediately see that they are essentially telling you the same thing, up to some proportionality constants, so a similar result is expected to hold for both.
There is one big caveat: Planets and stars are of course not perfectly spherically symmetric, so we're really dealing with an approximation after all. In fact, as pointed out in the comments, it is practically impossible to achieve perfect spherical symmetry, so our result should not be expected to hold exactly in reality - even though it's often extraordinarity close. However, this is not due to the fact that the bodies are not pointlike, but rather due to their lack of symmetry.
Answer: All finite-sized objects act like point masses at sufficiently large distances. A finite-sized three dimensional object of mass $M$ has a unique minimal bounding sphere with some radius $r$ and center $c$. For any distance $R>r$ from the center, the magnitude of the gravitational force on a small test body of mass $m$ is bounded by $\frac {GMm}{(R+r)^2} \le F \le \frac {GMm}{(R-r)^2}$, and the force is directed toward the center object, plus or minus $\arcsin\left(\frac r R\right)$. As $R$ grows ever larger, this converges to the gravitational force exerted by a point mass of mass $M$ located at $c$.
An object with a spherical mass distribution (density is a function only of distance from the center of the object) looks like a point mass everywhere outside the object. Other objects don't look quite like point masses at close distances. For example, a rotating large object will have shape that is more or less that of oblate spheroid (i.e., it will have an equatorial bulge). At close distances, that equatorial bulge will result in departures from a point mass model. These departures can be significant and important. For example, the Earth's equatorial bulge is what enables us to have satellites in sun-synchronous orbits.
This equatorial bulge is but the first of an infinite number of terms in the spherical harmonic expansion of an object's gravitational field. Using spherical harmonics is a commonly used approach to modeling a non-spherical object. That there are, in theory, an infinite number of terms presents a challenge with regard to modeling. Typically, a spherical harmonics approximation is truncated to some degree and order. For objects of extreme interest (e.g., the Earth), that degree and order can be rather high. The GRACE gravity model of the Earth is complete to degree and order 360. A formerly highly classified US agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, takes this even further. They have developed a 2190x2159 spherical harmonics gravity model of the Earth.
Even that 2190x2159 is a bit coarse compared to items of interest to a geophysicist. Academia churns out a lot more geophysicists than are needed by academia, and much of that surplus finds work in the petrochemical or mining industries. Local deviations from the gravitational acceleration suggested by an oblate spheroid are key indicators that there's oil, gold, or some other precious resource hiding underground. These deviations can also be of academic interest. For example, gravitational anomalies form one of the key pieces of evidence that the North American continent almost split in two 1.1 billion years ago at the Midcontinent Rift System.
Further afield, the Moon too does not look anything like a point mass at close distances. For example, the Apollo 16 mission released a small object, PFS-2, in orbit about the Moon, the intent of which was to orbit the Moon and measure charged particles and the Moon's magnetic field. PFS-2 was intended to be in a more or less circular low lunar orbit about the Moon. That's not what happened. Instead, something bizarre happened. After 35 days of weird changes to its orbit, PFS-2 crashed into the Moon.
A truncated spherical harmonics approximation works quite nicely for large bodies because the higher order terms quickly tend to zero for large bodies. Only a handful of terms are needed to describe a gas giant or a star. Significantly more terms are needed to accurately describe an Earth-sized body, and even more terms to describe a Moon-sized body. Ever smaller objects exhibit ever more deviations from sphericality. At some point, the spherical harmonics approach just doesn't work that well. An alternate approach used for small solar system bodies is to use a 3D picture of the object. Computer graphics models tend to use polyhedra to describe the 3D shape of an object. Starting with Barnett, "Theoretical modeling of the magnetic and gravitational fields of an arbitrarily shaped three-dimensional body," Geophysics 41.6 (1976): 1353-1364, these polyhedral gravity models turn out to be rather useful for describe the gravity of a small (asteroid-sized) body.
Answer: Point masses are merely an approximation of the motion of an extended body by the motion of its center of mass. It's a good approximation for small, mostly homogeneous (at least spherically layered) bodies, e.g. planets moving around the sun. But even for the orbital motion of the Moon around the Earth it's not a good approximation anymore.


Meaning of "Body of Flesh" in Colossians 2:11

Question: In Colossians 2:11, what does Paul mean by τοῦ σώματος τῆς σαρκός? Paul uses σάρξ to refer to the body or the physical far less than John, and it is clear that isn't what he's referring to here: the point of the verse is that the circumcision received by the Colossians was not physical (περιτομῇ ἀξειρομοιήτῳ). But this use of σώμα seems more unusual, and the two in combination especially. So what's the best way to understand and to translate this phrase (other than wooden literalness)?
Answer: The NET Bible translates this as:

In him you also were circumcised—not, however,1 with a circumcision performed by human hands, but by the removal2 of the fleshly body,3 that is, 4 through the circumcision done by Christ.

That's four footnotes in one verse, all related to translation issues:

tn The terms "however" and "but" in this sentence were supplied in order to emphasize the contrast.

tn The articular noun τῇ ἀπεκδύσει (th apekdusei) is a noun which ends in -σις (-sis) and therefore denotes action, i.e., "removal." Since the head noun is a verbal noun, the following genitive τοῦ σώματος (tou swmatos) is understood as an objective genitive, receiving the action of the head noun.

tn Grk "in the removal of the body of flesh." The genitive τῆς σαρκός (th" sarko") has been translated as an attributive genitive, "fleshly body."

tn The second prepositional phrase beginning with ἐν τῇ περιτομῇ (en th peritomh) is parallel to the prepositional phrase ἐν τῇ ἀπεκδύσει (en th apekdusei) and gives a further explanation of it. The words "that is" were supplied to bring out this force in the translation.

(I don't pretend to understand all that as I am a mere novice in Greek (or any other ) grammar.)

As for what Paul means by this, I take it as an allusion to something Moses said:

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.—Deuteronomy 10:12-22 (ESV)

It's a theme that Paul returns to over and over again in places like Ephesians 2:11-22 and Romans 2:25-29.  Less directly, he talks about needing to die or put aside our natural selves in order to obtain spiritual bodies in passages like Galatians 2:15-21 and 1st Corinthians 15:35-49.  I don't think this passage is so much saying something new as saying the same thing in a new way.

Finally and further afield, the idea Paul expresses seems so much like something C. S. Lewis wrote in The Dawn Treader:

"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. There he caught hold of me—I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again. You'd think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they're no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.
"After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me . . . in new clothes—the same I've got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here."

After this point in the story Eustace Scrubb becomes a full member of the crew of the Dawn Treader very much as if he were baptized and initiated.

Summary
Given Paul's other writings, I think we can understand "body of flesh" here to mean something of the old life that must be miraculous removed in order to commence living a new life as a part of the church.
Comment: I would give an extra +1 for the C.S. Lewis connection if I could. I have often found that Dawn Treader metaphor very helpful but had not thought about in connection with this passage.
Comment: @Kazark: The NET Bible (classic) is my go-to source for translation  and textual criticism issues.  Thanks for the extra +1.5 for accepting my answer.  I'll try to make up excess +0.5 by quoting Lewis some other time. ;-)
Comment: My friends had told me about the NET Bible, but I had never taken the time to look into it—looks like it would be worthwhile!
Answer: This answer is complementary to Jon's. Having thought about this and researched it a good deal more and discussed it with friends, I have decided to render the phrase the whole mass of the sinful nature.

This rendering fits well with Colossians 3:5: So kill the parts [of you] which are worldly: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil passions, and greed, which is idolatry. (my translation) Murray J. Harris renders this Therefore put to death your limbs as used for earthly purposes in his commentary, citing C.F.D. Moule. However, besides being a convoluted sense, that makes it difficult to explain how immorality etc. are parts, whereas they can certainly be thought of as parts of the whole mass of the sinful nature.
It fits the circumcision metaphor (see Jon's answer).
I do not think that Paul's use of the same phrase to refer to Christ's physical body in Colossians 1:22 is at odds with this, since the point, as Jon has explained, is that Paul is using a physical metaphor.

Paul's use of σάρξ and σώμα are incredibly difficult to grasp; they are slippery and seem to change from passage to passage. Nevertheless, passages such as this are enriching to meditate on. For further thought: what is the relationship to Paul's use of σώμα in Romans 7:23-24 and 8:13?
Comment: FYI: the characters to either side of "of you" in point #1 are rendered as boxes on my browser.  I love your turn of phrase!  It sounds like Paul is advocating a surgery to cut out a cancerous tumor, which seems a perfect analogy.  (Is there any chance such a surgery could be known to Paul?)


Is Limb Darkening because at centre we are directly looking core, whereas at limbs we are seeing only photospheric part?

Question: Is limb darkening of the Sun because at centre we are directly looking the core and different zones, whereas at limbs we are seeing only the photospheric part (and less beneath photospheric part)? Or there is some other physics behind this phenomenon?
Comment: I don't understand. What is 'Limb Darkening?'
Comment: When you look at sun, the limb (edges) of sun appears darker than then other part. That is limb darkening.
Answer: We can't see the core, but we can see deeper into the photosphere of the sun. The deeper layers of the photosphere are hotter and brighter, and this is the cause of limb darkening.
Comment: To add up on that, this figure might help the readers understand more: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjVqNmVhoPcAhUn6oMKHT_jBYsQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLimb_darkening&psig=AOvVaw2IuNuBqaRHhxZC_B5PCDJz&ust=1530711308674832
Comment: According to the figure, you can only see deep from the real surface of the sun up to the distance L. So, looking directly to the center of the sun gives you looking deeper (drawing a circle with different radii from the center of the sun) inside the surface, therefore hotter and brighter.
Answer: The visible surface of the Sun is defined by that location within the Sun's atmosphere from which photons produced in the gas can escape towards the Earth. That location is determined by the amount of gas between it and the Earth, since that gas would reabsorb photons if there were enough of it.
Now you need to think about the geometry of a roughly, spherically symmetric Sun.  When we look at the solar centre, photons can escape from a certain layer in its interior. That layer is nowhere near the core of the Sun, it is the solar photosphere at a temperature of approximately 6000K and at a radius of $6.96\times 10^8$ m from the centre.
Now imagine looking towards the limb. The same quantity of intervening gas is reached by the time you get to a layer in the Sun that is at a larger radius than at the solar centre. Because the temperature decreases as you move outwards in the solar photosphere, this layer is cooler and has a lower surface brightness (surface brightness is proportional to $T^4$). As a result, the solar centre looks hotter and brighter than the limb of the Sun.


getting second monitor to work

Question: I have it hooked up properly but how do I get the second monitor to pay attention to the mouse and how do I place other material on this second monitor?
Comment: just move it there?
Answer: First, open up System Preferences and go to the "Displays" preference pane.
You should see two displays. If you don't then click on "Detect Displays" and the second should come up. The main monitor is the one in the pref pane that is showing the menu bar on it. If you wish to switch the main monitors then click on the menu bar and move it to the other monitor. You can move the second display so that it is on either the right or the left of the main one.
Once you have done that you can move your mouse to the edge of the main monitor and it will appear on the second one. You can click and drag windows from one to the other.

getting second monitor to work


Adding Airdrop functionality to an already deployed erc20 smart contract

Question: How can you add airdrop functionality to an already deployed smart contract on the mist wallet?
Answer: You don't actually need to add the Airdrop functionality to an existing smart contract - which is not possible-, you could just create a separate smart contract that interacts with your ERC20 token.
You'd just need to transfer the tokens from your balance in the ERC20 token contract to this new contract which would have a function that distributes some tokens to a list of addresses.
Here's an article I recently wrote, which could give you a few pointers on how to build such a contract: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-built-a-multi-token-airdrop-central-to-distribute-erc20-tokens-cb70b6218b5c


How much math did Iannis Xenakis understand?

Question: Paul Griffiths wrote on 2011 Feb 5:

Iannis Xenakis, the Greek-French composer who often used highly sophisticated scientific and mathematical theories to arrive at music of primitive power [...] These writings show how deeply he based his music on mathematics and logic.

Tom Service, PhD in music (Southampton) wrote on 2013 Apr 23:

And that's exactly what Xenakis would do, and was already doing - which is both one explanation of his music's shocking otherness (it was heard as "alien" even by the hipsters of the early 1950s; the 1955 premiere of Metastasis at the Donaueschingen Festival was one of the scandals of postwar music) and a revelation of this music's deep, primal rootedness in richer and older phenomena even than musical history: the physics and patterning of the natural world, of the stars, of gas molecules, and the proliferating possibilities of mathematical principles. Xenakis resisted the label of being a mere mathematician in music just as surely as he refused the idea of his music's political or social message, and it was of course how he used those scientific principles (outlined in his book, Formalized Music) to create pieces of shattering visceral power.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy OBE, The Secret Mathematicians, on 2014 May 21:

Actually, another composer who used a lot of sort of Schoenberg's ideas, and went well beyond those actually I think, I have just discovered, is an Emeritus Professor at Gresham College, Iannis Xenakis. He was a Greek composer who was very obsessed with mathematical ideas. This piece here actually is a piece called Metastaseis – it is the score for that piece. But if you looked at that, you would, at first sight, say, well, that is a piece of geometry, looks like hyperbolic geometry, not a piece of music. Xenakis was very interested in symmetrical ideas, and in fact, he dedicated a piece called Nomos Alpha to one of my mathematical heroes, Evariste Galois, who developed a language in order to describe symmetry.

I'm not sure if Messiaen knew more than A-Level Math, but he affirms Xenakis's:

When Xenakis first approached Messiaen in Paris for composition lessons, the latter turned him down, because, "I think one should study harmony and counterpoint. But this was a man so much out of the ordinary that I said… 'No, you are almost 30, you have the good fortune of being Greek, of being an architect and having studied special mathematics. Take advantage of these things. Do them in your music'." That, he did.
Comment: While these questions are kind of interesting, at some point you probably should stop asking "how much math did $COMPOSER$ understand" before doing a decent amount of research on your own.
Comment: I do remember reading somewhere that Xenakis used Brownian motion in a (possibly more than one) piece, but I cannot remember where. This is an explicit physics phenomenon, so you might want to look that up, as one would have to be familiar with mechanics to have come across the idea.
Answer: His compositions show that he understood the basics of at least stochastics (probability distributions, Markov processes), group theory, linear algebra (vector spaces), logic (e.g., conjunctive normal form for his theory of sieves), and writing software.  In other words, a decent undergraduate education.  He applied this mathematics to music, but strictly within mathematics he didn't publish any papers or original research.


Can I put cavaquinho strings on a ukulele?

Question: I have currently a concert ukulele that I'm not using and I would like to put on it steel cavaquinho strings in order to use it as a cavaquinho. Is it a bad idea ? Are there risks for my instrument ?
Answer: It's always a bad idea to put steel strings on an instrument not designed for them.
The tension is a lot higher than nylon & could result in a bent neck, the bridge coming away or at worst a broken headstock or neck.
Comment: Yeah, that's typically why any ukuleles with any metal strings usually have a metal C-string or low G-string. Metal A string seems rather difficult to work with.


How can I copy part of a texture to another part of the same texture?

Question: Specifically I have an object that is symmetrical in shape, so the UVs are the same and I would like to copy part of the texture to another place of the UV map so that I can put in different details on each of them but use the same starting textures. Here's a screenshot to help clarify what I'm wanting to copy.
Comment: you can probably go in paint mode and use a clone brush, see also https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27552/how-can-i-use-clone-brush-in-the-uv-image-editor
Answer: Activate the Magic UV addon
After unwrapping the mesh
Select a single face and set the face with the uv texture.
Press U and you get the extra option with UV Magic Addon below
Select Copy/Paste UV -> Copy UV- Default
Then select the face you want to paste or face with similar texture on other
side
Press U
Select Copy/Paste UV -> Paste UV- Default
Comment: I don't want to move the UV, I want to copy part of the texture.
Comment: This doesn't seem right, but maybe I misunderstand. I want to copy the texture, and then change the texture afterwards. This seems to be using exactly the same texture, which isn't what I want to end up with. I'll try playing with the UV Magic addon in the mean time.
Comment: with the L key u can select the uv and move where u need it
Answer: First, set your UV Image Editor to 'Paint' and then choose the Clone tool instead of TexDraw. Then set the clone image as the one you are painting so you can use it as a texture to paint with, and move it to position with rmb. Paint at full power to clone the pixels into the new position from the repositioned image. Turn off the clone source and then save the image progress.


Should I take the 2018 Developers' Survey if I no longer work as a developer?

Question: Should I take the 2018 Developers' Survey if I no longer work as a developer? I do have development experience, and could theoretically do the job again if someone was willing to hire me to do it, but I have more or less successfully transitioned to another career and have no current plans to return.
Comment: [It's all about the ads](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/361588/take-the-2018-developer-survey?cb=1#comment546022_361588) so everyone's input is welcome.
Comment: Sure, if you still participate (passively or actively) in any way with stackoverflow.com, or related programming Stack Exchange sites, your feedback and input will still be considered valuable.
Answer: Yes! In fact, we have a question that specifically asks about that.

Which of the following options best describes you today? Here, by "developer" we mean "someone who writes code."

I am a developer by profession
I am not primarily a developer, but I write code sometimes as part of my work
I used to be a developer by profession, but no longer am
I am a student who is learning to code
None of these

As you work through the survey, some of the questions may not apply to you as much, but you can either skip them or give your best answers today.
Comment: needs free-hand circle on the correct option
Comment: I'd be surprised if there were a specific free-hand circle option in Markdown. However, most OS's support screenshots ;)
Comment: But it's not an image! Is there some magic by which I can free hand circle on Markdown?
Comment: Writing in Word, taking screenshot and posting it on SO. This is how we roll :-)


How do I fit a 16:9 or other non-square photo into a 1:1 image without cropping on iOS?

Question: I want to fit a picture bigger than 1:1 into square format, but don't want to crop it. How can I do this on iOS?
Comment: Personally, I think the question is pretty clear. The OP wants to know how to enlarge the "canvas" of an image so that it is in 1:1 ratio, presumably filling the enlarged canvas with black or white. On iOS. Maybe not a great question for this site, but understandable - to me at least.
Comment: @omtnt don't sweat it. Everybody has to have a first time. Whoever has to come through to clean these comments up will be reminded that I'm new here too :)
Comment: @CrazyDino imagine a 16:9 picture, you want to make it fit into a square (1:1) without cropping
Comment: @mattdm bigger than 1:1 aspect ratio
Comment: IMO the title of the question needs to be revised but a question of how to make 16:9 into 1:1 is photo relevant. Ios Apps are not really relevant on this SE though
Comment: @omtnt If this is your question and you are user72514, please visit https://photo.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts
Comment: @mattdm yes, that's me. This is my first question at SE, I'll check that link out, sorry for the mess.
Comment: @omtnt Yeah, no problem. There are some confusing and weird things here. :)
Comment: @osullic before the edit this wasn't clear. -1 removed.
Answer: Your options for resizing the 16:9 image mentioned to be 1:1 in size are

Crop it
Letterbox it
Stretch it

Let's pretend the image is 16x9 instead of 16:9 (units are irrelevant.)
Crop,  taking the sides off so that the image becomes "9x9." This is the most obvious way but OP states it is undesirable
Letterbox, place blank space above and below so that it is "16x16." This means that about 46% of the image will be black or white pixels but all image data would be represented in the 1:1 space. In most cases, the end consumer would need to magnify the image to see detail since the 1:1 letterbox displayed on a 16:9 screen would have it's magnification reduced to 56%
Stretch Distort the image such that the pixels are made taller but not wider. your image would be 16x(9*1.77) This would entail making the "scale" of the image 1x1.77. An example of this is when you try to use a 4:3 background as your desktop on a 16:9 screen or vice versa. Good news is that your image will take up the entire 1:1 space. The bad news is that most subjects look very odd when stretched by even a very small amount.
Now that you know the photography terms for what you are trying to do, you can post an appropriate question on iOS SE. Recommending an app is outside the scope of this photo.SE.
Comment: Thank you for the detailed explanation, I guess what I'm looking for is to letterbox the picture, now that I know what I need, I'll look for app recommendations elsewhere
Answer: I just did a very quick google for "enlarge image canvas ios" and the first result was Photo Canvas Size Increaser.
Answer: The 16:9 aspect ratio is almost twice as wide as the 1:1 aspect ratio.
Regular resizing, cropping, letterboxing or stretching is no good.
What you want is to remove the background of an object and shift it over, then crop, preserving the intent of the original image. That's a lot of work, there's got to be an easier way ...
Try Seam Carving using ImageMagik - Liquid Resize or the GIMP Plugin - Liquid Rescale.
There are also online applications that do the same: Rsizr, Photo-Kako, etc.
See this video from 2008 explaining that the technique also works for video: "Improved Seam Carving for Video Retargeting", this video: "Using the GIMP Plugin: Liquid-Resizer" shows how it works for photos.

Here's what it looks like:

9:16 -> 1:1

9:16 -> 16:9

16:9 -> 1:1 -- Sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly ...

The reason it didn't work is because there was no seam to carve. Cropping a bit off of the right side would have fixed everything. That's the advantage of using the GIMP Plugin, more control.
For iOS try one of the online applications.


Change Tiling size in Gnome 3

Question: Is it possible to change the tiling size of windows (by moving them to the right or left edge of the monitor) in gnome 3?
Usually the left and the right window are each 50% wide but I'd like to make it 70/30
Answer: Customizing Gnome 3  is  something between hard and impossible, as this "distracts the user" and damages the unique "Gnome brand identity".
Maybe one of the dozens of "extensions" will solve your problem, but even if such an extension does exist, there is no warranty that it will work with your version of Gnome 3.x, as the gnome devs intentionally break extension compatibility with every minor version change of Gnome 3.
J.

Change Tiling size in Gnome 3


See t-s and t-v graphs of motion tracking points

Question: Is it possible to display the movement of the tracking points of Blender's motion tracking function as a graph (probably in the graph view tab) with time[seconds or current frame] on the x-axis and either distance covered or velocity on the y-axis?
Answer: This may help you get on the right track (the idea is to bake the tracked object's motion to an animation curve): Getting raw data from object track
You may need to write some python at some point, depending on the information you want to get out.
Edit to add more info quoted from the linked answer:

You can use a Follow Track constraint to 'project' a single track onto an object.

track your point, you dont need to solve the camera.
make a plane, and position it perpendicular to the camera... how you want to set this up is up to you, but it will effect the numbers you get out at the end.
add the constraint to an object, i just used the default Cube, and refer to the image bellow on how i set it up.
in the viewport image, I have calculated the motion paths, and you can see the path of the track is on the plane.
click the Constraint to Fcurve button, and it will bake the constraint to XYZ values. Edit: Some times this button doesn't work. An alternative is: Search->Bake Action
you can then write some python to convert your animation to CSV format.
Comment: Thanks for the link, it helped me to move on. The only problem is now, that I can not get the right unit (m or cm) and I do not see any possibility to define a given length in the video to be xyz Meters.


Did Lily know that her death would save Harry?

Question: In this answer DVK says, that "Lily's protection magic was triggered by her choosing to die to protect Harry". Has she got or knew anything, that would let her believe, that her sacrifice will save Harry? Or was it -- like JKR says in an interview mentioned by Slytherincess -- something, that any normal mother would have done for her child (no magic or mystery involved)?
Comment: Seems to me like when you jump to take a bullet for somebody, you don't have any guarantee that they won't simply shoot at the person you're protecting again. I assume it works the same for magic, you're not doing it because you are certain it works?
Comment: @Theik- Ive always wondered about that. Sure you stop the first bullet, but then you are most probably dead... So who is going to stop the next one? Movies are so stupid ;)
Comment: @LepelLeLama - You probably don't think much about it. Besides, I guess depending on the situation it can actually work.. If the shooter is a trained killer maybe not, unless the protective act gives the original target enough time to take cover.
If the shooter is acting not "professional", the fact that he just killed someone, and someone "innocent" in his eyes, might shock him enough to not shoot another bullet at the original target.

Of course in this example with Voldemort, it was obvious he would attempt to kill Harry anyway, with or without Lily protecting him before that :)
Comment: Canon answer aside, I think the head canon for me will always be that she didn't know. I think it makes Lily's sacrifice much more significant because even though she was not sure if her death would prevent Harry's death she would rather die than give up her son, even if the fate of her son remained unchanged. I think it speaks more to her kind and caring personality that was foot-stomped elsewhere in the books.
Answer: Zero canon evidence that Lily had any idea her sacrifice would protect Harry. Lot's of circumstantial evidence to say she didn't.
No one knew
No-one in the world, save Dumbledore, understood how Harry survived. This suggests that there is little or no research or documentation on this effect, since surely someone else would have looked into it and discovered the truth?
Old magic
Voldemort himself describes it as "old magic", the implication being that it is far beyond the realms of what we could call "ordinary" wizards. He was the second most powerful wizard of the age, and he had to have it explained to him (though to be fair, he obviously understood the magical principles behind it) by Harry. Lily was clever, but she wasn't anywhere near Riddle's league.
Not repeatable
Other answers have pointed out that JK has stated that this isn't a formula that you can repeat - the old magical rules are far more vague and elemental than what's portrayed in the series proper. Even knowing that the effect COULD happen might stop it from doing so.
Comment: I always understood "old magic" to be a primal magic, not something that could be done consciously. Just what happens when a magic user is in situation and protecting offspring. Link the metaphorical mother who overturns a car to save her child.
Comment: @JeremyFrench Interesting, I read it more as the most basic magical laws of the universe. Old in the same way as physics, but far more mysterious and little understood by all but the smartest wizards of their time.
Answer: She did not know, which is exactly why the magic worked, and why it is so rare.
Even though it is possible Voldemort would have spared her after he had killed Harry, she still gave her own life trying to protect him.
Her sacrifice was so selfless because she gave her life trying to protect Harry despite knowing in the end it would be futile. Once she was dead there would be nothing standing in the way of Voldemort.
If she had even the slightest knowledge that her death would mean Harry was spared, then the act would have been inherently self-serving, as she would essentially be trading her life for Harry's, meaning that the act would not have been selfless and would not have worked.
Comment: In what way is giving your life for another's "self-serving"? Also, this interpretation is contradicted by the events of the last book, IIRC.
Comment: It would have been self-serving because she wanted to save Harry's life. If she had known that by sacrificing herself that she would achieve this, then she would have been acting to reach her own goals, even though her goal was inherently selfless.
And from her point of view, she couldn't know for sure if Voldemort would spare her, she didn't know that Snape had asked him to.


How can I learn to read and write Spanish in Aljamiado (Arabic) characters?

Question: The Spanish language has a Arabic orthography due to hundreds of years of Moorish rule. How can I learn to read and write Spanish in these characters, assuming that I can already read and write modern Spanish reasonably well in Roman characters?
Comment: Aljamiado was not a standardised orthography.
Comment: @J.Siebeneichler Would it be more correct to say that it was a convention for transcribing Romance languages in Arabic script?
Comment: Even you consider a convention in widespread use to be a standard (as in English), I wouldn't call Aljamiado a standardised orthography. It's not like the books I've read ever said this explicitly, but the impression I get from reading details about it is that it was ad-hoc use of Arabic letters, thanks to wording in the style of "such-and-such Arabic letter represents such-and-such sound; in some texts it represents such-and-such sound; some texts use such-and-such letter for this sound instead"
Comment: By "standardized", I meant that writing Spanish in Arabic characters was a common practice that clearly developed into some sort of reasonable consensus on "this is how you do it". I didn't mean that there was an official body or ruling. I'll edit my question slightly.
Comment: Even if there is not a 100% Official Aljamiado Version (TM) Accept No Substitutes, I'm interested in learning a common version or a version that was used in one of the major Aljamiado works.
Answer: What I can recommend is Glosario de voces ibéricas y latinas usadas entre los mozárabes by Don Francisco Javier Simonet. Although it focuses on Mozarabic rather than [Old] Spanish, it has a lot of information about the use of Arabic letters in Romance languages in Iberia.
You might find the section titled Advertencias preliminares (page ccxv) particularly useful, as it has a list describing how each individual Arabic letter was used.
This book is from the 19th century, so it's in the public domain. It's also available online :-)
Comment: Much thanks, this will do wonderfully.


Rare list of character archetypes and psychology?

Question: I've been researching this on my own for weeks without finding anything useable. I need a list of American-style (not Japanese, anime, etc.) character archetypes in American fiction of any type and the psychology of each archetype. At this point genre doesn't matter. A character archetype example: The villain who secretly yearns to be killed, and "finally" released from being alive. My goal is original character creation and I need lists to show me new things. No anime/manga, absolutely no TV Tropes. No IRL psychology like Jung, absolutely no Greek myths. And I'll buy books if I have to.
Comment: A new and original archetype is a contradiction in terms.  See Google's definition of the term "archetype":

>    1. a very typical example of a certain person or thing.
>    2. an original that has been imitated.
>    3. (in Jungian psychology) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious.

Your question specifically excludes both the originator of the modern concept of archetype (Jung) and the most exhaustive repository of archetypal characters (TV Tropes), so that doesn't leave much left.
Comment: Will this list be written on a cambric shirt with no seams nor needlework?
Comment: This might be the first question I have downvoted. And the first where I have upvoted all the answers.
Comment: I didn't ask for a new and original archetype. I've encountered that type of villain in two different movies and I thought he made a good example of an archetype. Sorry. Luckily the wonderful Bookeater realized that I need a list of "stock characters", not character archetypes, so thanks to Bookeater's infinite wisdom I now have a great resource and the correct search term if I want to keep researching. Thanks also to the other people who were serious here, and a look of disapproval for the trolls.
Answer: it is an interesting question, but I can't imagine it being one that has an actual answer. It is claimed that there are Seven Basic Plots (That number does change depending on who is talking about it)
So there are a finite number of plots to tell, there are also a finite number of personality types to fit into those plots.
I can't think how you could get away from real life psychology, since stories are written by people for consumption by people. Invariably all stories are about people to some degree.
Story telling has been central to human civilisation for as long as we've been able to go back. In that time all of those possible mixes have been discovered and written many many times.
when you consider that the Iliad is circa 3000 years, and that those stories still resonate in modern literature it is difficult to think that any modern countries have added anything to the concepts of story telling characters. It would be even harder to consider that any particular country has managed to create and maintain its own niche.
Comment: First, thank you for being mature. With entertainment being so different by nation I had to exclude certain things I don't want to use in my own work. Anime and manga archetypes for example. Anyway there must be someone here who has seen a list - I recall seeing a weirdly thorough psychological profile of characters from the XMen cartoon years ago. Hopefully someone with resources will chime in.
Answer: What you seem to need are Stock Characters. A nice list from "Absent-minded professor" to "Zombie" can be found here. It has a nice reference list as well.
Some more background, including the categories you reject is here
Comment: Stock characters, huh? I checked the first list and it meets my needs. This list is way better for me than any of the many, many archetypes links I clicked during my research. Thank you!
Comment: @AlmostASeriousAuthor Glad it helped. Have fun!
Answer: Almost all literary tropes have made it to tv/film except for the small number that don't work visually. On top of that the main characteristic of the english language is theft of which Japanese influence is only the latest (although to be fair a dominant influence for anime/manga and other post ww2 japanese culture is american popular culture). If we also exclude greek, we then also have to exclude latin as the myths only really differ in the names of the gods. And if we ignore Jung we should also ignore yoga (which is a interesting blend of indian religion and traditions, british military tradition including calisthenics and good old American con-arts and cultish thinking) and German (thank god that we don't have to list Nazi influences like Jewish, Socialist, Fascist, and other minor influences). If we follow along that line of thinking we should also probably also exclude Russian and Scandinavian myth. So I have compiled a list of all archetypes that meets this stringent list of restrictions and present it here for your approval:

Comment: You do realize this is an argumentative, mocking troll-answer right?
Comment: A bit. The question was a little short on possible serious answers due to the list of exclusions. On the other hand, I believe all the presented facts to be accurate if interpreted to be a little overbroad.


Why is the engineering chatroom so quiet

Question: Why is the engineering chatroom so quiet and there are no moderators to the rescue?Electrical engineering has a separate chatroom but there isn't one for mechanical engineers.Moderators please create one at the earliest.Please make Mechanical chatroom wide enough for physical metallurgy and extraction questions to fit in.
Answer: I'm not certain that I'm following the basis of your question.
Chat rooms live or die based upon the community that springs up within them.  Engineering.SE has "The Skunk Works" as its room, other SE sites have their own.  Pretty much anything Engineering related is on-topic for "The Skunk Works."
If you would like to see it be more active, then you need to be pro-active and provide meaningful commentary within there.  I have seen the rise and fall of other rooms (notably, "The Whiteboard") and it all comes down to the community of active participants.  That's not anything a moderator has control over.
The Electrical chat room is tied to the Electronics.SE site.  There's a subtle distinction there in scope.  The Electronics site has been around for quite a bit longer and has a more established user base.
If we need a separate room for mechanical questions, any chat user with sufficient reputation can create one.  But there's plenty of room within "The Skunk Works" for those types of questions right now.
Answer: I suspect that Engineering might be a forum with sporadic but not passionate, regular but not high-volume visitors.  There is math and physics behind the answer, right?
That is more about "how" driving a short frontier "why".
It might be over-regulated.  It might be uninteresting to enough of the folks who come.  It might have trolls.  Perhaps it is new, or under-known?
Comment: That's a very verbose way to say *"I don't know"*.


Can you identify this reggae song: "et ma lutte et ma chute et ma oueri"

Question: The first reggae song I heard had a line that sounded like the following in French, "et ma lutte et ma chute et ma oueri". It might have been 1967 or 1973. I'd love to know what it was and who it was by.
Answer: Thanks to Bebs for giving the crucial hint by transliterating some key lyrics:
I think this is actually Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)" (1967).  The time frame is right, and the actual lyric is "dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail" ("they loot, they shoot and they shout/sing").  The song is about the "rude boys," young members of the Jamaican criminal underclass.  In the song they admire James Bond ("007") and the suave gang of thieves from the original "Ocean's 11."
Dekker is best known for his plantive hit single about the working life, "Israelites," but "Shanty Town" was featured on the internationally known soundtrack The Harder They Come.  Interestingly enough, the translation of the lyrics you thought you heard (as per Google: "and my struggle, and my fall") would have also fit right in with the themes of that movie and soundtrack.
Comment: That's the one! Thank you. I didn't know if the words were actually French, heavily accented English, or something else.
Answer: Gregory Isaacs in 1975 released the single Babylon Too Rough that has the line:

Them a walk, them a shoot, them a loot

sometimes reverted

Them a walk, them a loot, them a shoot

"Shoot" sounds like the french word "chute".
"Loot" sounds like the french word "lutte".
I don't know the french word "oueri" but could it be "walk" ?


Is the current number of questions per day sufficient for a public beta?

Question: This is the first Stack Exchange offering I've committed to since its start and I've noticed it had a large amount of content initially, counting over 27 questions per day, but by taking a look in the respective Area 51 Page, we (as of now) have 6 questions per day. Is this a drawback or is it typical to every new proposal in public beta?
Comment: Sufficient for what? For a healthy young beta? For graduation? To the first, I'd say yes, to the second I'd say we are very far from it to actually worry about it.
Answer: This is normal.
First, check out the list of Stack Exchange sites, sorted by "questions per day". Scroll down to Mythology.
We're near the middle of the pack in all of Stack Exchange. In fact, we're in the top half of beta sites, in terms of activity. And there are six graduated sites with fewer questions per day than us, and a seventh one we are tied with. So, to reassure everyone, this is fine.
From personal experience (i.e. two other private betas, and a third beta in which I just missed private beta; not a lot, but a decent amount), I can say that this is normal. There's always an explosion of questions/answers/activity during private beta, as there should be. It's nearly impossible to sustain that pace. Why? We've built up questions prior to launch, and the start of private beta was akin to the burst of a dam. Now, our reserve is gone; we may never get to that level again - which is okay.
Gilles wrote up a comforting answer on Meta Stack Exchange, which essentially says the same thing. Here's the "typical growth pattern" graph he made:
Comment: Interesting! So then C.SE was actually **not** normal. We had two peaks - one at the start of private beta and the other at the start of public beta.
Comment: @El'endiaStarman That model makes more sense; in theory, the influx from new users should generate new content. We simply haven't had that influx, which is odd.
Comment: @HDE226868: That's what I said here! http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21642227#21642227
Comment: @HDE226868 I would guess that's because mythology is relatively obscure. However, there seem to be a lot of people who are casually interested in mythology: that's why this question is important http://meta.mythology.stackexchange.com/q/217/62


Backward selection in a Cox regression model

Question: My goal is to fit a cox regression model in SAS, for which I use the PROC PHREG statement. As I am still new to regression methods, I would appreciate a little of your help. My procedure is as follows:
First, I check all variables in a univariate regression and select those, which have a p-value less than 0.25. The next step is that these significant variables (p-value < 0.25) are considered in a model with backward selection. Variables with a p-value less than 0.167 (according to the AIC criterion) are removed from the model. The reduced model should then include the best explanatory variables.
My question now is, whether I can find out, why one variable is removed in the backward selection or which variable rather explains the influence? I am surprised, that this variable drops out, although it is very significant in the univariate regression.
Furthermore, I have deleted a variable from the backward selection, as this one is removed later anyway, and see, my "problem variable" remains in the model. How does this work?
Thank you for your thoughts!
Answer: Backward selection is not a good method of variable selection, this has been discussed here many times. Combining it with univariate screening can only make it worse.
However, one reason for the behavior you describe is that the two variables are correlated.
Comment: In addition to Peter's excellent answer, univariate screening has been shown to convert a really terrible stepwise variable selection algorithm into a total disaster.  How did you get the idea that building models based on $P$-values is statistically valid?


What history supports modern day Gladiatorial Combat?

Question: For the most part human against human bloodsport lived and died with the Romans, but a common sight in fantasy or science-fantasy is the existence of gladiator arenas in some form (Hunger Games to name a current popular one). Which makes me wonder, what historical events would best support (in a realistic way) modern day man vs man combat?
Comment: What distinguishes your gladiators from accepted modern fighting competitions like boxing and MMA? Is it only that death of participants is an accepted outcome? Or do you also want it to be a major social event similar to the arena fights in ancient Rome?
Comment: I like the question but I think you make some assumptions that just aren't true.  Gladiatorial combat while identified with Rome certainly didn't die with it.  Also hunger games is really not the same as gladiator battles, one is intended as a distraction from reality (Arena) and the other is a very poignant reminder of your subjugation.
Comment: I'm confused by your question. Your title is clearly asking something completely different from the last sentence in your question body. Also, you may want to take a look at this: http://uwm.tv/
Comment: As seen in many forms of entertainment, using death row candidates by offering them a pardon/sentence reduction/better quality of life in jail/somesuch.
Comment: @Aify +1 for uwm.tv
Comment: Gladiators were _expensive_ (very). While the death of one of the adversaries was an accepted outcome, gladiatorial combats most usually _did not_ result in death.
Answer: People who want to watch and pay
That could be directly (tickets, subscription TV) or indirectly (advertising revenue). I guess there would be enough people who are sick enough to enjoy real slaughter.
Reduced lethality
Make it so that death is not common. Injuries are expected, crippling injuries do happen, but no duel to the death. There are many real-world sports where pros will ruin their health.
Freedom to take risks
One could argue that an informed, consenting adult has the right to take the risk of arena combat to earn lots and lots of money. Working swing shifts for a wage is bad for the health, too. Others argue that no sane, informed person would make that choice freely -- when anybody tries to become a gladiator, he has to be restrained until he comes to his senses.
Protection from liability
Organizers and contestants would have to be shielded from prosecution for murder or assault. Even if death is not the only outcome, they would deliberately attack another human being with a lethal weapon and the intent to inflict wounds. If that happened in a dark alley, it would be a crime.
Comment: For what it's worth: death was not common for gladiators in ancient Roman times either. This doesn't hold for people who were *sentenced* to the arena (they were expected to die) - but proper gladiators were well trained fairly expensive assets. Gladiator fights to the death were quite rare.
Comment: MMA fight tickets anyone?
Answer: For a dystopian, bleak future, I could think of a few ways.
Nazi social and genetic engineering taking hold: Seeing other races as inferior would lessen the ethical dilemmas involved in combating to the death with beasts and each other. Prerequisites for this would include things like Christianity not necessarily having such a huge influence on the culturally accepted views on humanity. Or maybe just Hitler actually succeeding in turning the German industrialization around without going to war with everyone, but only by blaming the Jewish people. Seeing their crawl from a dire economic situation back to their feet by way of genocide could leave the world thinking there's something to their view.
People buying into the scare of overpopulation: Global warming (yes, I choose to use the misinformed, antiquated term deliberately) and overpopulation mania going overboard and instead of simply switching to the most yielding foods(away from meat production, basically) and dialing down the independence on oil, the solution worlds turned to was a culling of the population, either by force or by not distributing the wealth. Downside would be that I'm uncertain if this could've happened in a historical context, but maybe in the past few decades. This could also create a tiered system, where in order for you to elevate your living standards you'd either buy your way up, or fight in the highly lucrative arenas(close to how the Hunger Games and Divergent series do their thing). Rich nations just wall themselves in and let people join with a highly controlled system.
Radical religion rising to a world power: Be it Christianity or Islam, at their most radical, both are capable of terrible things. The opposing side, plus anyone falling out of favor with the pious elite, wouldn't feel safe for long. Perhaps the crusades would have crushed the Islam opposition completely and gained the excess wealth and influence, or perhaps the Ottoman Empire turned their conquests to Europe and triumphed over local rulers. This religious gladiator arena fighting could take either a public center stage as an atonement of sins, or underground purging of the unclean, a seedy underbelly or even government controlled gambling house kind of system. Upside of such an alternative history would also be that there wouldn't need to be any moral shifts: The xenophobia of the era and cultures during those times would have just been cemented further into the societies.
Concept of human rights not evolving: Modern understanding of slavery is quite a different one from a few years back. As is of people that have different colored skin. Maybe the emancipation proclamation never happened and the slave trade continued in the States, but the industrial revolution results in manpower being obsolete, so ownership of slaves simply continues as a brutal bloodsport.
Comment: Ah, yes. Global warming, an antiquated term proven false. Of course, that was after global cooling, and before scientists changed tactics to scare you with climate change.
Answer: If your looking for historical context just look at video games or movies.
First movies and video games were mostly PG, but as time went on they got more and more violent.
your gladiator combat could be the same way. At first the fight would only be to fist blood, this would make death and injury very uncommon. After the population gets used to the idea of gladiator fights, critics began to complain that the fights are to short and boring.
The gladiatorial industry begins to produce a few fights that instead of to first blood are to yielding. These fight are more violet and have a great chance of injury or death. But still they are to the death yet.
Religious and civil right leaders speak out against this new form of gladiatorial combat. They called excessively violate and immoral. However this only increase the about of people interested in the fight and many go there just to see these thing for themselves. The large about of money that the new fights bring in Leads the gladiatorial industry holding more and more of them. Soon the about of new fights outnumber the old ones.
After a while the someone has the idea to have a fight to the death between the to rival champions.  After have both sides sign a contract that saying that they chose to willing participate in a battle to the death, the industry begins to advertise for the battle. By this time there audience is familiar with see death on screen, however all those death have been by accident. The idea of a fight purposely to the death sounds to both intriguing and dangerous, many make bets on wither the industry and the gladiators will actual go through with it.  when the date of the battle comes most of the population is watching the fight. It ends up making more money then any other combated before it.  After make so much money of course the industry has to make another one.


Conditional vs. Marginal models

Question: I have data with an outcome of 0 or 1 (binary) representing success or failure. I also have two comparison groups (Treatment vs. Control). Each subject in the study contributed 2 observations (the treatment is ear drops, so 2 ears). I wanted to model the data and to look for differences between treatment and control. I ran both a generalized linear mixed model (PROC GLIMMIX in SAS) which is a conditional model, and a GEE (PROC GENMOD in SAS), which is marginal. I got very similar estimations of the outcome probabilities in the two groups, and also similar $p$-values. My question is, what is the difference between the marginal and conditional model, in general and in the context of this problem, and how do I know which one to choose and when ?
Answer: Either of the models you used are probably fine approaches -- and it's certainly reassuring that the results are similar.
Marginal models are population-average models whereas conditional models are subject-specific.  As a result, there are subtle differences in interpretation.  For example if you were studying the effect of BMI on blood pressure and you were using marginal model, you would say something like, "a 1 unit increase in BMI is associated with a $Z$-unit average increase in blood pressure" while with a conditional model you would say something like "a 1 unit increase in BMI is associated with a $Z$-unit average increase in blood pressure, holding each random effect for individual constant."
Diggle, Liang, and Zeger (1994) have recommended the use of marginal models when the objective of the study is to make population-based inferences (as is typically the case in epidemiological settings), and mixed models/conditional models when attempting to make inferences about individual responses.
However many others argue that conditional models should always be preferred to marginal models as conditional models can incorporate conditional AND marginal effects.  See for example, Lee and Nelder (2004).
I personally prefer to use marginal models, but that's because I'm often concerned with model misspecification (but you may not be).  Marginal models are quite robust and less susceptible to biases from misspecification of random effects (obviously).  See Heagerty and Kurland (2001).
Comment: Also, with regard to your particular experiment was one ear used as a control and one as a test?  If so, you could simply take the difference in your outcome measurements between the two ears and obtain a single measurement.  This could then be entered as a dependent variable in a traditional regression model (e.g. a non-marginal and non-conditional model), assuming your outcome is a continuous measurement.
Answer: One can view the marginal model as providing crude estimates of the regression coefficients [i.e. unadjusted for subjects] while the conditional model has regression coefficients that are assumed common to subjects and so the estimates are adjusted for subjects. In this sense, one is asking whether the subjects at hand are confounding. This is rather typical of confounding assessment : often involving how the subjects were obtained. The comparison of crude and adjusted is a confounding matter. One can also argue for quite elaborate assessments of confounding. Maybe one needs both intercept and slope as subject components.

Conditional vs. Marginal models


Can a canon AF fit 35 mm 2x teleconverter work with EOS 77D

Question: I have an older Quantaray 2x teleconverter for a rebel 2000 film camera will it work with a new canon dslr 77D EOS
Comment: It will likely work, but it might not. Why don't you try it?
Answer: It might, but it probably won't.
The mount will fit, but Canon's electronic communication protocols between the camera and lens are proprietary. Canon updates versions of communication protocols periodically in ways that allow older Canon products to continue working with newer ones,¹ but will often disable or reduce the usability of third party products.
Third party lenses and converters are made to work with Canon cameras by reverse engineering. This usually works fairly well with Canon cameras that are already out when the third party lens or TC is designed. Often, though, newer Canon bodies will use aspects of the Canon protocol that weren't used in previous cameras, and the reverse engineered third party products have issues working with the newer cameras.
For instance, I have a Kenko Teleplus Pro 300 2X DGX that was purchased in around 2011. It works with the 7D (2009) and 5D Mark II (2008), but has issues with the 5D Mark III (2012) and 7D Mark II (2014). When AFMA is enabled, even with a value of '0' entered, and the TC is attached between the camera and a lens, if metering or AF is activated (via shutter half-press or AF-ON button) the camera locks up and gives an error code. The only way to reset the camera is to turn it off and remove the battery. When AFMA is disabled, the TC works - but without AFMA, it's kind of a lost cause since AFMA is most needed at long focal lengths. Better results can be gotten by using the lens without TC and with AFMA applied and then cropping.
I also have a Sigma 70-200mm f/4-5.6 DG purchased in the late 1990s. It works with my film EOS cameras, but has issues with all digital EOS bodies. If any aperture other than wide open is set, when metering/AF is activated, it throws an error and locks the camera up. The camera has to be turned off and the battery removed to clear the error code.
Sometimes third party lens makers will offer firmware updates to allow their fairly recent products to work with new camera models when firmware issues crop up. This used to require a trip to the lens maker's service center, but recently many Sigma and Tamron lenses can be updated by the end user via a USB dock attached to the lens after they have downloaded the updated firmware file.
If your TC was made in the EOS film era, the reverse engineered firmware will almost certainly not be compatible with a 77D introduced in 2017. But there's nothing stopping you from trying it. If the camera gives an error code, removing the battery should reset it.
¹ At least, they are supposed to. Canon once updated the firmware of their LC-E6 chargers around 2013. The LC-E6 is the charger for LP-E6 batteries that have been around since 2008. This resulted in certain batches of older genuine Canon LP-E6 batteries being rejected by the newer version of the charger as "non-genuine" and the new chargers refuse to recharge the older batteries.


What's the best SIM card for France, with long validity and no hidden fees?

Question: What's the best SIM card for France, with long validity and no hidden fees? And preferably cheap to access from other countries. I come to Europe for some months every year and wish to have continuity of the phone number and confidence regarding the expenditure. Two years ago I bought a Lebara Sim and put lots of Euros on it as they said it would not expire in that case. when I returned a few months later I found they had stolen my money and de-activated the sim card.
Thanks for your help.
Comment: that's horrible you had a bad experience w/ lebara.  i have never had an experience like that and usually recommend them. i'm sorry to hear it.
Comment: How many are "few" months? Some carriers might offer longer-lived SIM cards but I don't think there are any that would keep your number active indefinitely if you don't do anything (either top up or spend credit or at the very least connect to their network). +1 to the question in any case.
Comment: http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/8642/can-i-buy-a-prepaid-mobile-data-plan-while-on-route-in-france?rq=1 might be relevant,
Answer: Lebara is sometimes tricky due to some 3G thing depending on your model. If you are open to Vodafone and Orange, even though they are more expensive, maybe they would be a solution...


IPA characters in plain TeX

Question: Is there a way to type IPA characters in TeX? There is the tipa package for LaTeX, but what about plain TeX? I don't have any experience with installing fonts in TeX and can't find any good resource on it.
Answer: You could use XeTeX with a OpenType font which includes phonetic symbols. Example:
\font\sil="Charis SIL"
\sil
['tiːaıpıːeı 'taıpfeısız]
\bye

Compile with xetex yourfilename.tex (produces yourfilename.pdf)
Comment: Thanks, I guess that would work, but I don't really want to use XeTeX (I use macros that need pdfTeX)... Anyway, solved.
Answer: I didn't realise that the font from that package could be used in plain TeX too (like \font\ipafont=tipa12).
Comment: You'll need also some macros for getting at the symbols, if you don't want to consult every time the font table. It's possible, by looking at `t3enc.def` and modifying it to make it compatible with Plain.
Comment: Actually, I hardly needed to consult the font table -- the font pretty much follows SAMPA. Thanks anyway.

IPA characters in plain TeX


how to tune a spring?

Question: So here's the situation I'm in; I had this really weird dream with this really weird instrument in it. It was kinda like half a dulcimer with springs on it. There were 11 springs on it, (But I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be 12, corresponding to the 12 steps of the western scale) That acted kind of like sympathetic strings or a tremolo in a guitar. So my real question here is, How do you tune a spring that's under tension, or rather in what way do you put it under tension? the only way I can think of is putting one end of the spring on a sort of tuning pin and turning in the direction of the spring. Would this work?
Comment: Wurlitzer electric pianos utilized a small piece of spring steel as a "reed" which was struck by the hammer to produce a note/ tone. Tuning the reed is accomplished by adding a small bead of solder to the tip of the reed to add weight and then filing away that bead until the proper resonant tone is achieved. Not considered a pleasant task by those required to perform it. But you may have actually had a coil spring in mind when you asked the question.
Answer: Springs will have too many and too slow vibration modes to be useful for an instrument I would think.  For example, springs are used in "spring reverb" by putting a signal in in one side and picking off the resulting torsional vibrations as the signal propagates back and forth through the spring.
Answer: Just off the top of my head, I can think of three different types of springs. A leaf spring could probably be tuned in the same manner as a xylophone tyne. A coil spring that is at rest when expanded, and a coil spring that is at rest when compressed, would need to consider size, weight, material, applied tension, and more. I imagine the original question was actually intended to "stump the band" and had in mind a device or method already developed that could be used for that purpose. You very well may need to become inventive.

how to tune a spring?


Emulating RHEL for apt get

Question: I am constantly requiring the use of multiple packages for my work, but alas my work PC doesn't have an internet connection.
Hence, I am always stuck on downloading the package on a separate PC which has Ubuntu.
I was wondering if it was possible to emulate my OS as RHEL6 and download the required packages to an rpm file via apt-get or something since most common answers to my problems seem to be answered in an apt-get install format.
Answer: If your work pc has a network connection to the ubuntu system, you may be able to solve by using an ssh forwarding.
ssh has the ability to act as a socks-proxy.
the first step would be
ssh -D localport ubuntu-server

since yum doesn't understand socks by itself you need tsocks to work around this step like described here How to use SOCKS proxy with yum?
Comment: Thanks for the reply, but the ubuntu and work pc have no link between them.
Answer: You can use Docker to spin up a CentOS 6 container. Then use yumdownloader to download packages and their dependency RPMs.
Comment: I haven't used Docker before. From the looks of it, it seems like something worth looking into. Theoretically, I think it could solve my question, so I'll mark the question answered

Emulating RHEL for apt get


Is it possible to protect a Cubesat's electronics from 100g of acceleration?

Question: I am currently researching the feasibility of setting up a coilgun that launches Cubesats for a paper. 1 cubesat per launch total payload mass <100kg.
Comment: You will want to specify a duration also. Some artillery rounds can sustains much more than that, for a very short duration (and also have some electronic)
Comment: While it may be possible for 1kg nanosatellite and 1dm^3 nanosatellite, I think it would be quite difficult for a 1kg 1dm^3 nanosatellite. Any structural empty space would result in heavy damages due to the acceleration; the thing should be *full* and filled with a quite durable material that will likely be more dense than 1kg/dm^3. Another thing to consider is massive eddy currents induced by the coilgun. And you still need a propulsion to circularize.
Comment: @Antzi I suspect the goal is to go to 7.8 km/s. If the acceleration is 100g, it happens in around 8 sec.
Comment: Protection against 100 g is not possible anyway, only against very short peaks higher than 100 g. You may use very rigid cases, very strong PCB boards but you need all electronic components used certified for about 120 to 150 g. If you want to launch from ground to orbit per coilgun, you need an excellent heat shield to pass the densest parts of the atmosphere at abou 8 km/s. But a circular or elliptical orbit above the atmosphere is impossible with only one coilgun acceleration.
Comment: @SF A 1kg nanosat should, very roughly speaker, be able to stand 100g if it can stand a heavy person standing on it
Comment: Surely Sprint missiles had electronics, and they accelerated at 100 G. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/29553/what-is-the-maximum-speed-can-a-space-rocket-can-travel-with-an-air-pressure-of/29557#29557
Comment: All I know is that if you do indeed build this- dont let anyone weighing less than 100kg near this device else you're in for some unethical world records.
Answer: It is certainly possible to mount electronic components to survive 100G, see HARP which had instrumented rounds firing at thousands of G. The fundamental step is to mount everything in epoxy with the aim to have everything be roughly the same density with no air gaps or denser sections to keep forces in direction of motion, not attempting to displace things sideways which tends to break electrical connections.
This can work for a single function sensor but some interesting complications making a useful cubesat fly this way. Optical sensors for example generally need a void for the lens assembly to work, so do many solid state MEMS devices and crystal oscillators . Power will also be complicated, since most high density battery chemistries are high density by virtue of mechanically minimalist design and loose a lot of capacity being made robust enough to not crumple to one end of the cell and short out. High performance solar cells are also not noted for robustness and would need to go on the outside of the chassis, where they would tend to sag away as the chassis shortens during acceleration.
So a 100G target is provably possible, but the question is how useful the resulting electronics is at actually being a functional satellite, especially with probably a much lower electric power collection and storage budget compared to a rocket lifted cubesat of the same size.
Comment: If everything is mounted in epoxy, heat may be a problem.
Comment: @Uwe, agree but could not work out if the problem would be heat build up from the epoxy, or excessive cooling due to the very solid metal chassis pulling heat away so ended up editing it out. Certainly just grabbing a standard cubsat electronics bay and filling it full of epoxy is a quick way to overheating.