Basil - to wash or not to wash? Best practices?

Question: I know that washing basil weakens it's flavor significantly. I often buy it from local supermarkets where everyone can touch it, that's why I just have to wash it. But even when I buy organic basil, I still feel the urge to wash it.
How do you deal with that? Is there any way to 'wash' the basil without weaken it's flavour?
Comment: Where did "I know that washing basil weakens it's flavor significantly" come from? I have never heard of that.
Comment: How do you wash your basil?
Comment: @rumtscho Better yet, where did the idea of buying an "organic" version of something negates the need to wash it come from?
Comment: I put it into a small strainer and rinse it with lukewarm water. After that, I dry it with paper towels.
Comment: Actually, a well known chef said this to me, that's why I always thought it is true.
Comment: Well known chefs love the "old wives tales" :-)
Answer: People generally wash fruit and vegetables (organic or not) to remove surface contamination ,and the bacteria it may host, from the farm and supply chain
This includes soil (ground based animal faeces), compost (rotted vegetable matter), airborne dropped bird faeces, road dust (often high in animal faeces), and other surface contamination that can host bacteria
A short and simple wash by hand in a bowl or sink of cold tap water will remove large amounts of these surface contamination from most fruit and vegetables. Some may require light brushing or scrubbing. And for best results rinse in running cold tap water after washing. Shaking water off usually works better than trying to blot it off with a tea towel
Gentle washing will NOT remove any significant flavour or aromas. Think about what happens when it rains :-)
Answer: If you feel the urge to wash it before using, then wash it. The stress of not having washed it is not worth it.
I used to work in the Adelaide Central Markets, and having seen what some people did before touching the produce, I habitually wash goods that were within reach of the public before I use them. When you've seen customers stick their hand in their pants to scratch their butt and straight afterwards pick up the fruit, you get a bit paranoid.
I accept that most of the time, I don't need to wash the produce. I also accept that that does not matter to my brain what I tell it, if it wants me to wash the stuff before using it, it's not worth arguing.
When I do wash my ingredients, I don't dry them immediately. Instead, I leave them in the dish drainer on the sink while I do another part of meal preparation. Most of the water will drain away without having to put in any effort, and what's left can be shaken off or blotted, depending on how fragile I feel the ingredients are.
The other way you can deal with feeling the urge to wash produce before using it is to grow your own, or acquire it from a friend or relative. I get my basil from my Dad, who always grows about ten times as much as my parents will use.
Comment: +1 for growing your own or getting it from a trusted source.
Answer: Washing basil DOES remove flavour, as the oils accumulate on the surface of the leaves. Unwashed leaves taste like basil, and washed leaves taste like grass clippings (i.e. chlorophyll). This can be confirmed by any Italian nonna, or even just by tasting your basil plants after a good rain (or, before and after a wash); the flavour is noticeably diminished.
You can just use more leaves to compensate for the lost oils with most dishes, but pesto is virtually ruined with anything but unwashed leaves, getting that unmistakable grassy/banana-y/chlorophyllous taste. That said, I defo wash store/market basil regardless; use the coldest water and least agitation reasonably available to you...it's still gonna suck tho.
Of course, the only way you can (relatively) safely omit washing is to grow your own, ideally using an inert growing medium like a peat-based potting mix. A raised bed would give you an extra layer of protection from the feces of ground-dwelling critters like dogs, cats, raccoons, etc.
Answer: Washing basil (or indeed, anything) in lukewarm water is going to do very little to remove germs; in fact, you're probably just giving them an excuse to party.
Basil is easy to grow in a pot on a warm windowsill, so perhaps you could grow your own and avoid any misgivings about the hygiene aspects that way?
Comment: I thought washing produce was more to remove dirt, fertilizers, and pesticide than to reduce bacteria count.
Comment: I think the confusion here is over the fact that washing *meat* is generally useless. It's different for produce because of a combination of the other comments here - most of the bacteria and other nasties you might find on produce live in/on the soil. Wash the surface, get rid of the soil, and it's generally safe to eat afterward.
Comment: @Sobachatina: I'm not so sure about that. I very quickly found several sources saying that washing removes bacteria; for example, [the FDA says it does](http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299). I believe this is partially because a substantial amount of the bacteria that might be there will be living in the (possibly invisible) dirt that's on the surface, not just on the vegetables itself. (The bit about bacteria growing in room temperature water is the reason you wash right before using.)
Comment: Do you have a source for your claim that washing in lukewarm water will do little to remove germs? That seems counter-intuitive.
Answer: I would wash my basil leaves in salted water.  Salt, whose chemical composition is NaCl, when put in solution (water) dissociates into Na+ and Cl- ions.  These ions will then attract the dirt, bacteria, etc.  Then i would rinse them and dry them on paper towels.
Comment: Do you have anything that can corroborate this statement?
Comment: *Attracting the dirt*? Dissolved ions attracting larger particles is very unlikely. There is of course the tip to [add salt to remove insects](http://www.flavor574.com/2016/06/17/tips-for-growing-harvesting-and-cleaning-herbs-from-your-garden/)


Should we report when mobile application is responding slow on slow network

Question: I am testing an Android based application. Which is responding slow. Meaning the fetching display late on slow network reception.
Should I report it or not? I'm a beginner tester in this organization.
Comment: Not a duplicate, but related questions: https://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/16640/should-testers-first-discuss-a-bug-with-the-developers-before-writing-a-bug-repo
Answer: Testers should signal issues they think might cause problems in the field. Of-course slow performance is one of these possible issues. Do not triage issues yourself, do it together with the test/development/product team.
If it is a critical issue depends on the product. Now the question should you formally report this in a defect tracker? Maybe, but I would first spar with the person who defines the requirements for this product. Discuss if performance issues like this should be reported. Maybe the product will only be used by people on really fast devices and connections. After the discussion decide to track the issues or added to a list of known trivial issues.
Answer: This question is destined to be closed as Not Enough Information, but it has a good generic answer- Why do you ask us ?
Ask the developers, ask the product managers, ask the users- both existing and future imaginary ones (what would you think if you were one ?).
Ask the bug tracking system (or just look on past bugs and how were they handled), ask other testers those who handle functionality and those who test performance, ask your manager and manager's manager, ask the CEO (I did !).
Consult the literature, newspapers, market research papers, academic UI research papers, customer surveys.
Go read the requirements, not just the developers version but also how the product and sales department see them.
And finally use some common sense.
Answer: Application running slow generally considered under performance testing related concerns. So this defect is generally should be reported under performance testing cycle. You can check for any performance tester to get more info about this. But as mentioned by others that you have to consult others like developer team, BAs etc in order to clarify that whether this slow running is really a concern for the managers or users of application or not. If the application is intentionally designed such that it runs slow on slow networks then this should not be defect.


Java 64 bit application takes more memory than 32 bit

Question: We have an application running on Mac with java 1.5 .This is a 32 bit VM.
The heap memory is within the limit.
When we move this application to Linux with java 1.5.(64 bit) We see a 50% increase in memory utilisation.
Will the memory foot print of the jvm be so high in Linux?
Do we have a patch for the same on Linux?
Answer: It will be quite usual for 64-bit applications to require more memory than 32-bit ones, (bigger variables, pointers, etc.). This, and the different JVM implementation between the two systems, could very well be the reason.
I personally don't find this to be strange at all, so I would not consider it an issue, unless the memory usage started going up like crazy os some similar performance problem arose.
Answer: On a 64bit environment, all pointers take up twice the space.  long integers might too, but i think they're already 64bit on both cases.
How much that affects you depends on your specific case, any object reference is a pointer.  If your objects are mostly links to other objects, they will be blown up.
There are 32-bit JVM builds for linux.  The bad news is that once you outgrow 32-bit, you go from 2-3GB to needing 4-6GB just to be on par.


What are the main differences between Flares and Chaff?

Question: Over the years I've heard the two used almost interchangeably but after watching some videos it would seem that they each have specific and particular functions.
Answer: Both chaff and flares are defensive countermeasures deployed by military aircraft. The purpose is to confuse radar-guided or infrared-guided anti-aircraft missiles fired so that they can divert.
A good definition about them is here:

Chaff is composed of millions of tiny aluminum or zinc coated fibers stored on-board the aircraft in tubes. When an aircraft is
threatened by radar tracking missiles, chaff is ejected into the
turbulent wake of air behind the plane.
Flares are used to distract heat-seeking missiles. Most are magnesium pellets ejected from tubes to ignite in the wake behind the
aircraft. These flares burn at temperatures above 2,000 degrees
Fahrenheit, hotter than the jet engine nozzles or exhaust and exhibit
large amounts of infrared light.
Answer: Flare
Flares are a, let's call it "passive defense system". They are used for misleading rockets fired on an aircraft. Many missiles are following a heat source to hit their target. In case of an aircraft, it's the engine. If such a missile is on the way, the pilot fires those flares. They burn really hot and the missile will fly into the flare instead of the aircraft.

Source
Chaff
Chaff is also spread out by aircraft. There are used for, what can be called "electronic war". As you know, a radar sends out electromagnetic signals. If they are being reflected to the radar, there is a dot visible on the radar. This can be an aircraft but also lots of birds. Now, chaff is made of aluminium or metallized glass fibre or plastic. So, when the aircraft spreads a big cloud of that chaff, it is visible on the radar. And this can work like a curtain. There is a wall of chaff sprayed out. Behind that wall, every aircraft is invisible and operations can be accomplished secretly.
But chaff can also be used as "flare" but for radar-assisted systems. Like radar-lead missiles or radar-targeting systems by fighters.

Source
Comment: Rockets are unguided, I think you mixed up with missiles.
Comment: @Cypc Yea, thank you. In german "rocket" and "missile" is the same, so I mixed them up.
Answer: They both belong in the category of countermeasures, but let's say that they... target different audience. Chaff is used to spoof radar guided (active or semi active) missiles. Flare is used to spoof heat seeking (passive) missiles.
Chaff pods contain several small metallic parts of similar size and shape and their aim is to create false returns to the radar beaming the targeted aircraft. The sized and shape depends on the radar wavelength they try to spoof but I am unaware of the exact relationship.
Flare on the other hand targets heat seeking missiles. As user3528438 mentioned in their comment, they are "fireworks" that aim to create a brighter thermal image and drive the missile away of the aircraft's thermal trail.
The tricky part for the pilots (and perhaps the modern warplane designers) is to distinguish between the type of the homing missile, so that they use the right countermeasure for each threat without wasting consumables. That's probably the reason you've heard them as chaff/flare like there is no difference.
Answer: There are two ways for an anti-air missile to "see" its target:

Radar signature : the missile is fitted with a radar receiver, so when the launching plane illuminates his target with his radar, the missile get the signature and can go to the target. (Some more advanced missiles even have their own little radar emitter and receptor for the last part of their guidance.)
Heat signature : the missile is fitted with a heat seeker, and will follow the eat source he was assigned by the launching plane before firing.

Chaffs are designed to defeat the first category, flares the second :

Chaffs are small pieces of material that will reflect radar waves in different directions. Their goal is to disrupt attacker's radar so he can not guide his missile or will guide it on the chaffs, not the defending plane.
They do not produce any smoke and are really difficult to see visually.
Flares are small pieces of material that will produce a lot of heat, trying to blind / confuse the enemy eat seeking missile, making him think one of the flare is in fact the planes engine.

In both cases they are employed to try to divert a missile from his target.
Answer: Flares are normally pyrotechnic devices designed to create a large IR signature to capture IR targeting on missiles.
There are two common types of chaff.  The most common is metal based and is reflective, designed to create a field of reflections and capture the radar receiver.  They are not necessarily foolproof.  For example, their velocity drops to the ambient wind velocity within a few seconds, were as an aircraft will continue to depart at a flight velocity.  Also, metastatic radar and other techniques may see around / through them.
There is also IR chaff (also a pyrotechnic measure) which is designed to create a field of temperature, reducing the signal to noise of the targeted aircraft (or other target) and decreasing the capture and hold on that target.  The effectiveness of IR chaff is similar to RF chaff as reported by several sources.
Comment: Could you include a source on the IR chaff? A cursory search doesn't seem to bring it up.
Comment: @AEhere sure.  Just had a student do a paper on IR chaff. There are many DTIC papers, but an open reference is: EW 102, David L Adamy, (2004) page 105.  Keep in mind that chaff is different from flares, in that flares are larger devices and chaff is small.  This means that flares generally are sensed as point sources, and chaff is rather a distributed region.


Why does K have a greater electron affinity than Ca?

Question: Why will $\ce{K}$ have a greater electron affinity than $\ce{Ca}$? I know that $\ce{Ca}$ has a greater first ionization energy, and I also know that $\ce{K}$ has a greater second ionization energy, but I am confused on how to explain this.
Answer: Neither K nor Ca "wants" to ionize.  Both ionization energies are endothermic.  This question refers to eelctron affinity, which is gaining an electron.
K has a more exothermic electron affinity because the electron gained fills the 4s orbital.  In Ca the electron goes to 3d.  The energy gap between 4s and 3d is enough to make the process barely exothermic.
Note that the numbers given in tables are positive but that the process is exothermic.
Comment: But don't K and Ca want to ionize (aka lose electrons, since it's in the context of ionization energy)? K loses 1 electron to form K+, and Ca loses 2 to form Ca2+.
Answer: the octet rule. All elements want 8 electrons in their outer shell. K normally has only one electron in its outer shell and removing it exposes the full octet shell underneath which is favorable and spontaneously occurs, which is why K exists as K+ in solution. So K actually wants to ionize to +1 but no further. However Ca has two electrons in its outer electron shell. Therefore it wants to loose two and expose the next full shell of eight electrons, which is comparable to the electron configuration of Argon (Ar).


Are there cheeses that are not suitable for making for macaroni and cheese?

Question: I've noticed that american and gruyere are dominant cheeses recommended in mac and cheese recipes. I assume this has to do with their mild flavors and ability to melt somewhat quickly.
But what is to prevent someone from using cheeses like parmesan or blue cheese? Is there a criteria for what constitutes an optimal mac-and-cheese cheese?
Comment: This question is a little bit subjective because you're asking about an "optimal" cheese.  If you're looking for substitutions for a specific recipe, or if you want to know what cheeses to avoid entirely and why, you may want to edit your question for better answers.
Comment: The Title question asks for cheeses that are "*not suitable*", but the text question asks for "*optimal*".  That's two completely different questions.  This has already resulted in two completely different answers, one for each question.  Correcting the question will leave one of these answers off-topic.
Answer: I can think of three general reasons why some cheeses are better than others for melting:
Age:
The age of a cheese often determines how well it'll melt.  For instance, a 5 year old cheddar will (generally) not melt very well into a bechamel sauce.
Texture:
You may find that stringy cheeses like mozzarella make the mac'n'cheese more difficult to eat, as it's a little impractical to have strands of cheese hanging from your spoon.  At the same time, cheeses like parmesan or feta may not melt the way you'd expect for a cheese sauce
Taste:
As for flavour .. I don't think many people would line up for macaroni and blue cheese :o
Comment: Most types of blue cheese are delicious with pasta. On the other hand, expectations play a large role in our appreciation of a dish. Coffee mistaken for tea can taste awful, even if the drinker normally enjoys coffee. In the same way mac and cheese made with Roquefort or Gorgonzola will taste different to how most people would expect, and might therefore go unappreciated.
Comment: +1 for everything except your last point.  Blue cheese doesn't work as the core of a mac & cheese but it's an *excellent* accent.  Especially when paired with crumbled bacon.  Edit: like so... http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/blue-cheese-bacon-macaroni-cheese-recipe/


Stopping rain collecting

Question: My garden slopes from road towards house and rain collected outside front door. How can I stop this happening?  The garden is tarmac and I don't want to have to replace as it would be very expensive.
Answer: If the existing surface preparation is sloped the wrong direction and water runs to an undesirable area then you would normally work to re-install the surface preparation to get a different slope.
Since you have a desire to not replace your tarmac due to cost considerations then your only real choice is to do one of the following:

Install an additional curbing at the lower edge of the tarmac area to divert the runoff water to another area. The height of curbing required would be fully dependent on conditions at your site.
Install a French style drain at the area adjacent to the tarmac. This drain would be a pit dug into the ground that can accept the run off water and allow it to disperse into the soil. Generally such pit is filled with rocks or course material that can let water enter easily into the pit. It is often good to cover the pit with a screen and lid. The screen can be used to filter organic material from entering the drain and hopefully preventing it from plugging up.
You could install a sump pit with a water pump unit. The pit would have an opening at the low spot where water collects so that the water can enter the sump pit. A water level switch on the pump system turns on the pump when the a certain level of water has accumulated. The pump moves the water out of the sump pit through a drain pipe that is plumbed to an area where the water can be safely discharged. This could be to a lower area of your property, out to the street curb or into a storm sewer system. This solution also requires the availability of electrical service to the pump area.
Answer: It sounds like you have removed natures way of sumping water and replaced it with a low maintenance solution. The solution may now involve a Ground Gutter Trough. Cut a trench at the lowest point - as per instructions - using a whizzer around to your nearest drain point. Fill to required level with cement and shimmy your ground troughs in level with your existing surfaces - maybe 1 or 2 mm lower. When set, fit the filter plates into place. Things to be aware of. Run-off slope - 1.5 to 2 degrees but if trough is deep enough it will still drain all surface water below filter plates. Width of cut should have high tolerance as you don't want to be troweling in cement at the sides of the trough. I have done this task myself and it was spot-on. Good luck
Comment: What is a "whizzer"?!

Stopping rain collecting


Is alternative splicing possible in the same cell?

Question: I know alternative splicing is possible in different cell types of an organism, or within the same cell at different developmental stages. There are several examples like this. But are there any instances of alternative splicing within the same cell at the same time? Perhaps some melanin variants producing shades of different color for example. Normal cells, not cancerous.
Answer: In complex eukaryotes like humans, alternative splicing is the rule, rather than the exception.
Eukaryotic splicing is managed by a complex regulatory system, including more than 100 different elements, some of which are enhancers and regulators.
Thus, while one form will often be dominant, one should generally expect at least some alternatives to be present in a cell.
While the amount of work on population-level heterogeneity is still much larger than that on variation within single cells, studies of splicing heterogeneity have identified that multiple forms are often present simultaneously within a single cell. For example, in this recent study, Figure 2 shows that although the distribution between two splicing alternatives is bimodal, single cells exist with the full range of fractional mixes between the two forms.
Answer: Provirus of HIV makes a 9kb pre-mRNA which can go under alternative splicing to produce a variety of different mRNAs. Therefore alternative splicing in this infected cell can happen at the same time.

I do not recall any cases of such behaviour for normal cells, off the top of my head but it must exist. Probably, alternative splicing in the same normal cell can happen in early embryo differentiation or in the case of protein localization of a specific peptide in different compartments of a cell.
Comment: What you write is correct, but the question clearly relates to cellular, not viral transcripts.


What is the price does Shinsuke pay for the assistance of the flower god?

Question: The gods in Sengoku Youko are whimsical and often demand a price for their assistance. While the mountain god waived her original price of a soul from the sibling pair (Jinka and Tama). I can't recall what the resolution of Shinsuke's assistance from the flower god (she was a big help for the fight against the cloud god in retrieving the injured). At the end of the series we see the flower god hanging around what is presumably his tombstone.
Answer: When Shinsuke goes off to find Yazen, Hanatora (the "flower goddess") claims she has a reservation for his soul, so we can pretty much assume that's what she got out of that deal. I don't think the manga ever tells us exactly how those godly characters take souls, or what they do with the souls they collect, but we know that Hanatora also had a claim on Ashikaga Yoshiteru's soul. In Yoshiteru's case, she only collected her "payment" at the time of his death (and later "forged" the Shogun's soul into the soul-sword she gave Senya). Considering Hanatora is pictured nearby Shinsuke's tombstone, as you mentioned, I'd say it's implied that "taking his soul after he died" was the price she asked of Shinsuke as well.


Mac Minis: 2012 Quad Core vs 2014 Dual Core for a virtualization host?

Question: My office is looking to get a Mac Mini for testing our website in Safari. Because Apple now allows you to run previous versions of OS X in a VM, we will be looking to run at least Mavericks and Mountain Lion VMs on a Yosemite host. We're going w/ the Mini's because we'll be stuffing the box in the server room (or somewhere) and connecting remotely from our Windows developer PCs.
Because the Mac Minis hadn't been updated in awhile and we figured an update was coming, we were holding out until Apple announced them at the big event last Thursday. However, now that they have, we've noticed that the quad-core Mac Mini is no longer available!
This has left me wondering: For the task of running two or three OS X VMs, would we be better served getting a newer, faster dual-core 2014 model? Or would we be better served by having more cores in the 2012 quad-core?
The box will most likely not be used for any other purpose, so we aren't as concerned w/ the performance of the 3D chip or other factors. We just want good VM performance.
Thanks.
Answer: As a test server with multiple VM running, definitely quad core is much better than dual-core. None of the new features introduced in late-2014 mac mini benefits you.


HTC Desire Z key number two misbehave at times

Question: HTC Desire Z touch key number 2 (ABC) occassionally presses itself repeatedly without any apparent trigger. In such cases, I press the power button on/off to quieten it down. Is it a software or hardware problem. This happens infrequently but when it starts it is quite annoying as you cannot do anything with the keyboard as other keys do not respond to touch.
Answer: This is very likely to be a problem with the touchscfeen hardware. To test this, try installing a drawing/painting app from Google Play. Open the app, get into painting mode, and leave it for a minute. If you start getting paint appearing at the same point (where the 2 ABC soft key shows up), you know that part of the touchscreen isn't working. In the same way, try painting in the app and check whether any parts of the screen can't be painted on.
If there are any stuck parts of the screen, you can try giving them a wipe with a slightly damp, soapy cloth. Turn the phone off to do that, and make sure you dry the screen before trying to use it again. If that doesn't solve the problem, you're left with sending the phone back to the shop, or making a warranty claim, depending on how long you've had the problem.


What's the fastest way to make Echoes (money) in Echo Bazaar?

Question: What's the fastest way (fewest actions) to earn the most valuable commodities?
Answer: The fastest way I've found so far is in Mahogany Hall; it requires a very high Persuasive skill. If you train the Louche Devil and teach him Philosophy, you'll get 111 Nevercold Brass Slivers per action and increase your Pygmalion quality. When Pygmalion reaches 17 or 18, you should be safe to take him out to a Society dinner, which gives you 1000 bonus slivers. ... You can then re-train him as often as you like to rack up lots of Echoes.
If you want to do it with your Dangerous, head to the third coil of the Labyrinth of Tigers.  "Avoid becoming an exhibit yourself" and "Fight back" for ~1 Echo per action.  (Most of the actions in the third coil earn ~1 Echo per action, but they require a very high Persuasive as well.)
Answer: This is a difficult one to answer; given the link between Stories and Qualities, it will be different dependant on what is available to you.
As a general rule, completing a series of linked Stories will carry greater reward, but this can become inefficient if the Story is difficult for the determining Quality (failed attempts receive no monetary reward).
As for a specific tip; I would recommend searching the ruins in the forgotten quarter in the early game. The reward for the lowest level option is based solely on luck, and the cost of entry can be reasonably quickly reclaimed. 10 x relics @ 5p with a 50% success rate = 25p/adv.
Answer: It appears that you gain more valuable goods for completing more challenging stories. I would suggest focusing on a single statistic to unlock more rewarding stories. Risky and Chancy challenges seem to increases stats very quickly. When you want more loot per action, seek out easier stories.
Keeping on hand Second Chance items earned through social activities (Chess, etc) improves your chances of success in stories and is worth spending a few actions on.
Comment: I meant more concretely, which stories generate the most loot per action.
Comment: I wish I could answer more concretely. The existing wiki doesn't provide much analysis or guidance. The only forum topics I've found discussing money-making suggest you can make ~1 echo/turn in certain zones at high levels (80+). I haven't seen much solid spading of this game yet, beyond recording adventures and results.
Comment: Money isn't really worth much until the late game, and getting there will be much easier if you try to spread your growth out. It's very frustrating to be at 100 in one stat, only to find that you need 100 in all four to become a Person of Some Importance.
Answer: I think most storylets are pretty well balanced. Labyrinth of Tigers and Mahogany Hall can give you about an Echo per success, but you also need stats of 90-100 to play.
So if all you're after is money, concentrate on one stat, because the rewards seem to be tied to that.
Also, many of the longer-term sequences (e.g. ones with Running Battle) can have big payoffs at the end.
Answer: Gambling in the House of Chimes, in the Heart's Hazard room (need to be an Exceptional Friend and a Person of Some Importance), gives you about 1.5 echoes per action and an occasional epic success giving you 13 echoes and some suspicion.
Comment: The normal success is +3.5 Echoes but the failure is -2 Echoes, so on the 50% success rate it has, it works out to a measly 0.75 Echoes per action on average (and the rare success is not THAT common).
Comment: 1.5 echoes per action _on average_, but still depends on your luck.
Answer: Once your stats are at a reasonable height, most grinding yields about an echo per action, but that's at straight bazaar prices where it doesn't matter if you're talking rostygold or glim or rats or whatever - but if you go with a grind that yields an improvable currency (foxfire candle stubs, glim, jade fragments, souls, stolen correspondence, lamplighter beeswax, whispered secrets, prisoner's honey, silk scraps, proscribed material, primordial shrieks, greyfields 1882) then grinding it high enough to bulk trade up through the chains to completion, and then selling finished products - Way more lucrative.
Answer: Once you become a Person of Some Interest then you can do "Unfinished business" storylets at the main quality based locations like: Spite, Ladybones, Veilgarden, Watchmaker. The options that require 5 or 6 actions give random results but on average they give 1.5 Echoes. It's also less time consuming if you just need 2 clicks for 5 or 6 actions rather than 12 clicks  for 6x 1 action.
I've found that bulk converting upwards is actually action inefficient and unprofitable if you work out the rewards. It's not "lucrative" at all.
Comment: If you still have it lying around, would you mind sharing some of the math you used to find that bulk converting isn't the way to go? That would be extremely helpful.
Answer: Currently at Polythreme you can "Lurk in the eaves." The challenge level is quite high (broad 120 Shadowy), but:

it has no menace on failure
success gives 12 Romantic notions which make 1.2 Echoes at current Bazaar rate.

It seems also to be a good challenge for improving shadowy.
Answer: The devs don't like people talking about Fatelocked content, for good reason, but if you choose to become a Spirifer, you gain access to a storylet that will provide you with roughly 1.74 echoes per action /on average/, if you use the Unfinished Business storylet in Spite to grind the requisite resource. Sometimes you'll get less than that and sometimes you'll get more than that; Unifinished Business storylets are unpredictable.
Keep in mind that this post assumes you're at the stat cap. The higher your stats are, the better your average will be.
If you haven't spent the Fate, or chose the other option, you can do the Affair of the Box Carousel; that's slightly less profitable at 1.6 Echoes Per Turn, but, y'know, it doesn't cost real money.
EDIT: If you're somehow looking at this and not at the official wiki's money-making guide page, every suggestion here is horrifically outdated. Even in the midgame there are now options that provide well over 4 echoes per action, and in the endgame you can hit 6EPA. Look here for more info.
Answer: The Writer's Desk storylet is accessible from persuasion 10 in Veilgarden pays off very well, although the action cost per "cycle" is relatively great.
Anyway, according to some math I did, always publish as competent, write rapidly from 54 persuasion onwards, and frienzedly from 189 on, and the payoff per action is:

0.24 - 0.37, for persuasion 10-17
0.37, for persuasion 17-53
0.37 - 0.44, for persuasion 54-67
0.44, for persuasion 67-188
0.45 - 0.55, for persuasion 189-249
0.55, for persuasion 249+

Of course, long before you get that far, much better sources of income will become available.
Comment: There is no perception stat. Perhaps you are referring to Persuasion. Additionally, at 0.45 Echoes per action, there are significantly better options available for level 189 Persuasive... Pretty much everywhere you look at that point, honestly. Even at 50, you're probably going to be finding better options. At 100, as a Person of Some Importance, the Unfinished Business storylet opens up and you're even better off doing other things.
Comment: @Snowskeeper Yes, true. And thanks for the correction, I've edited my post :P
Comment: Sorry about the tone of my comment; I noticed it a few minutes after I wrote it, but by the time I'd finished editing, I'd passed the five-minute deadline. =S


RPM shoots up at full throttle Slipping Clutch?

Question: 2002 Subaru WRX 5 speed manual. Whenever I'm sitting around 2500RPM for example and I give the car full throttle, the RPMs will shoot up to about 5000 with hardly any acceleration and then fall back down to 2500 and the car will then begin to accelerate. I'm thinking the clutch is starting to slip but could it be something else? Also after I let off the throttle sometimes the car will take half a second to stop accelerating. Almost feels like the throttle body is staying open for a split second after I release the throttle.
Comment: Just for completeness' sake, I want to point out that 300,000 km is approaching the distance from the Earth to the Moon, which is a little over 356,000 km at closest approach (perigee).
Comment: Is it serviced regularly and do you know if the clutch has been replaced at all before?
Comment: Yes it's been very well maintained it's entire life. I've only owned the car for a month but I believe it's the original clutch. Car has 300k km on it
Comment: I'd suggest you idea of a slipping clutch is right. I'd start prepping for it, as it's only going to get worse.
Answer: When you get your foot off the clutch, there is(or rather said there should be) a fixed connection between your engine and your wheels. If you see a rise in rpm without the car accelerating, there is no other possibility than that the connection has slippage somewhere. And while the clutch is the most plausible option, i also think it's the only possible option. So i'd take a look at your clutch because to me, it sounds like its totally worn out. The only other option is that if you heavily upgraded your engine without upgrading the clutch. Then the clutch is simply not capable of handling the higher torque form your engine.
Comment: Yeah it's the original motor too so I'm quite sure it's just the clutch is worn out.
Comment: after 300k km it's not surpsising the clutch is worn out. Especially it its driven sportively much, which can absolutely be expected from such a car.


Advantage of credit union or local community bank over larger nationwide banks such as BOA, Chase, etc.?

Question: With the recent news that many banks are going to start charging from debit card use, I was thinking of switching to a credit union or local community bank because I heard they would most likely not do such a thing.  What are the pros and cons?
Comment: Another option is online banking. I use an online bank and because they have no overhead from maintaining an actual bank, there are no fees and i can use anyone's ATM and they will reimburse the fees that those banks charge. I recently opened a savings account at Ally bank, but they do have checking. It's actually a pretty good bank. There have been very few times where i actually needed a physical bank after switching, but there are ways around that.
Comment: See also http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/823
Answer: Banks, the big ones, have shareholders and the board to answer to.  Credit Unions have members and the board to answer to.  You become a member by joining a CU.
Banks' prime objective is profit maximization, a credit union's prime objective is members' welfare.
Personal experience: I didn't mind that the banks charge fees, what was frustrating was keeping up with the policy changes.  Have X amount to avoid Y fees.  Once you fulfill that, do something else to avoid some other fees.  You miss one notice and you'll pay dearly!  This constant jumping of hoops was enough to switch.
Not saying CUs don't change rules, but in my opinion, not as frequently as big banks.
On fee, for instance, my overdraft with my CU is $5.  With BofA it was something like $35 before regulations put a cap on such ridiculous fees.
Comment: Do you get to vote on who is on your credit union's board, or directly vote on rules?  In what way do you ensure the credit union "answers to" its members?
Answer: Don't switch just because you hear people panicking on the talk shows. Banks are competitive business and won't start charging for using debit cards too fast.
If and when they decide to do such a thing after all - then start shopping and see who doesn't catch up with the fees and still provides the services you want for the price you're willing to pay.
Comment: But also don't wait until they start charging you fees.  Competition is already ongoing.  Switching a bank is easier than you think.
Comment: Yeah, but CU is not a silver bullet solving all the problems. They have fees, and the one I'm entitled for from my work is actually more expensive than Chase.
Comment: Actually several banks like Wells and BoA have already announced they plan to begin charging for debit cards or raising what they already charge.  Dont get me wrong, I am sure that if they could have justified doing so because the wind blew they would have this is just a convient excuse to raise fees.
Comment: @Chad - yeah, I got the memo: http://t.co/oWMzbmcF
Answer: Fees mostly.  BOA, for example, just announced $5/month for for all debit cards.  Chase has foreign transaction fees, mostly hidden. BOA once famously raised interest rates on credit card holders to 28%, legally.  Also, some people do not like patronizing a bank with CEOs that bankrupt the company and then get multi-million dollar golden parachutes. Finally some people have a problem with banks or institutions that suspend accounts based on political or unproven legal proceedings (ala Wikileaks and BOA).  Credit unions are less like to be involved in this sort of activity since they are not privately traded, and as such they are not ruled by shareholders who demand bottom line results at all costs.


When you delete a Facebook post, is it still possible that it is visible to someone else hours later?

Question: I posted a photo to my own Facebook page. Five hours later I deleted it. I hit "delete" and got message saying it was deleted. Others and myself could not see the post. However the next day, about 13 hours later, someone saw the post and screen shot it. How could that post still have been visible to them a day later when it had been deleted and was not visible to others, or to me? Can this happen - can there be a delay that long in the posting being deleted?
Answer: No, when you delete a post, it get deleted from your Timeline and no one can see this including you.
However, it might not always be instant as sometimes there is a delay in synchronizing between servers.
But this page claimed that,

You'd hope that by clicking delete, your content is permanently removed. Apparently, that's not quite the case. New evidence suggests that Facebook might not really be deleting the posts you think you're getting rid of. In fact, sometimes these deleted Facebook posts are reappearing.
Answer: Another possible scenario is that user X has their newsfeed open and this post is displayed. Let's suppose that X leaves the room having their pc on. Then you delete your post.
After a while, X comes back to their pc. The post is still displayed unless X refreshes their browser.
So this is another way that this could happen .


Impact of praying fajr on sleep continuity

Question: As more and more studies establish the importance of sleep, and specially of continuous sleep, I am wondering how does praying fajr impact sleep. I recently started praying fajr, and I am finding that due to split sleep, I am not as refreshed as I used to be when I used to sleep continuously. I live in North America where time duration between Isha and Fajr is only 3.5 hours during summer months. Therefore, sleeping early is not an option. I dont want to miss fajr either. If someone has found the right balance of sleep and prayer, then I would love to know. Thanks!!
Comment: You need to sleep continously for about 6 hours to get the proper feeling of having slept. Maybe you can go to bed earlier or later?
Comment: Those days I know that I want alot of sleep, I try to keep the lights close during Fajr so it doesn't wake me fully up. Then when I go back to sleep, I end up waking up a bit later, but feel good. Just keeping your eyes closed for a while might help fix that re freshness! It works for me all the time aka powerdown!
Answer: In light of the fact that prayer has to be offered at its time and Fajr cannot be combined with any other prayer, your only option is either to (a) stay awake for that 3.5 hours [maybe do Tahajjud or read Qur'an] and then sleep after Fajr continuously or (b) continue sleeping as you have been, waking up for Fajr in between. Perhaps being "less refreshed" is worth Paradise.
If you want to know the practice of early Muslims, Allah (ﷻ) said, إن ربك يعلم أنك تقوم أدنى من ثلثي الليل ونصفه وثلثه وطائفة من الذين معك (Indeed, your Lord knows, [O Muhammad], that you stand [in prayer] almost two thirds of the night or half of it or a third of it, and [so do] a group of those with you" - Qur'an 73:20. -- They would be up portions of the night praying and then sleep... and then they would take a humble mid-afternoon nap.
It will actually greatly benefit you if, after deciding to keep waking up for Fajr, you take a mid-afternoon nap as well. That extra rest will again freshen you up for the remainder of the day.


Video to GIF online/offline solution

Question: Is there any free software or a website to convert video to GIF without having watermark of the product in the GIF?
Answer:
https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif does it online, it's free and without watermarks, but has 100MB file size limit.
ffmpeg is a great offline, command line tool with many options
and can be easily used for batch conversions.
instagiffer is a pretty good offline, GUI tool.

Video to GIF online/offline solution


UISlider only slide a small distance

Question: So I've put a UISlider into a view with the following code, but it could only be slided for the distance of about 10 points a time. It can only be dragged back and forth within a range of about 20 points. Why?
v = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:someFrame];
UISlider *slider = [[UISlider alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10, 10, 200, 30)];
[v addSubview:slider];
[self.view addSubview:v];

I've put this code into another test project, it does work. So it might be some other code. I'm wondering if anyone else has been through the same problem before.
Answer: - (BOOL)gestureRecognizer:(UIGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer shouldReceiveTouch:(UITouch *)touch {
    if([[touch view] isKindOfClass:[UISlider class]])
    {
        return NO;
    }
}

I was using IIViewDeckController, so I added this piece into the IIViewDeckController.m code and it solved the problem!

UISlider only slide a small distance


Gravity assist from Jupiter if leaving Callisto?

Question: If I spacecraft was leaving Callisto to return to Earth, would there by any situation where it would use a gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its velocity?
Answer: No, there wouldn't be any way to use Jupiter's gravity as for an assist because the spacecraft is already around orbit around it, or around Callisto which amounts to the same thing. In a gravity assist energy must be exchanged between two gravitational bodies, for example when the Voyager probes got assists the forces acted upon the probes and Jupiter equally. This changed Jupiter's velocity infinitesimally because it's such a massive object, but changed the probes' velocity substantially because they have little mass. A spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter has no relative difference in velocity to Jupiter, so there no energy to be exchanged.
A spacecraft could potentially take advantage of Jupiter's high gravity to increase its rocket impulse using the Oberth Effect, where the spacecraft would maneuver as deeply as possible into Jupiter's gravity well, and then fire its engine at periapsis, where velocity is highest. This would expose the spacecraft to the worst of Jupiter's radiation environment, so may not be practical, although if it was visiting Jupiter's moons it would need to be pretty hardy to begin with.
Comment: The Oberth Effect, that is what I was thinking of, just didn't remember the term for it. Thanks.
Comment: It could possibly use a gravity assist from Jupiter roughly 12 years later. It would have to leave the Jupiter system onto an elliptical orbit and meet up with Jupiter one orbit later. If you're not in a hurry that's probably the cheapest to get from Callisto to more or less anywhere.  Also a gravity assist from Ganymede or Europa might work.


Lens sometimes fails to step down

Question: A couple of days ago I shot a timelapse sequence of the sunset with the Sony a7s. I shot everything in speed priority mode so the camera gradually adjusts the aperture when it get's darker. It worked out fine except for some frames in the middle of the sequence: Those frames are overexposed although according to the EXIF data they have exactly the same settings (f/16, 10", ISO100) they have different exposure. I suspect that somehow the lens failed to stop down when told by the camera. What could be the reason? I was using a 17-40mm f4L by Canon adapted to E-mount by a Commlite adaptor, could that be the reason?
Here are the two unedited images:

The overexposed image doesn't show the lens spots that the correct one does and it has heavier chromatic aberration, so I think it was shot at f/4 despite the camera telling the lens to stop down to f/16.
Is that a problem with the lens or does it have something to do with the adaptor?
Comment: Those aren't lens spots. Your sensor needs to be cleaned.
Answer: With semiconductor electronics anything is possible. My guess, however, would be that the adapter you're using has been reverse engineered without access to Canon's proprietary information regarding exactly how their aperture control protocol works. You've likely discovered a bug in the firmware the adapter uses to translate the instructions from your Sony camera to the language understood by your Canon lens.
A quick google search leads to a few threads where similar issues have been experienced when using variously branded adapters with mostly older Canon EOS lenses. The EF 17-40mm f/4 L is a relatively old design, having been introduced in 2003. Other lenses commonly reported to have the same issue when using adapters with Sony E-mount cameras are the EF 50mm f/1.8 II (1990), EF 50mm f/1.4 (1993), EF 85mm f/1.8 (1992), etc. On the other hand, some users report successfully using the EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (1998) that predates the 17-40.
I also found this tidbit at the Sony Alfa Forum:

Quite often adapters must be initialized with camera and lens.
  1) Turn on camera
  2) Mount adapter
  3) Turn camera off then back on
  4) Mount lens
Same process is recommended for Metabones adapters to initialize the adapter.

I've taken thousands of photos using an EF 17-40mm f/4 L on Canon bodies and don't recall ever having had a case where the aperture appeared to have not stopped down properly. I've taken hundreds of thousands of photos with various other Canon lenses and don't recall ever having had a case where the aperture appeared to have not stopped down properly. The electronic aperture control used by the EOS system has, in my experience, been much more reliable and consistently accurate than previous mechanically linked apertures.
The last time I can recall having had a lens with an aperture not stopping down properly was with a Konica Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 sometime in the late 1980s or very early 1990s. I simply replaced it with a used Hexanon 50mm f/1.4 from B&H. Shortly after that I started using the all-electronic EOS system and have never looked back.

Lens sometimes fails to step down


Is comprehending that something is incomprehnsible itself a paradox?

Question: Urfi Shirazi, a Persian poet, in one of his couplets says to his love that your beauty's limit cannot be comprehended and this statement comes from my limited comprehension.
Comment: But is "comprehending that something is incomprehnsible" the same as " comprehending the incomprehnsible" ?
Comment: You can look at it from a logical/mathematical perspective for an example. We have proofs that some things are unprovable (although some nuance to this statement is need, see [undecidability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem) and [independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_(mathematical_logic))). It is as Mauro says, knowing that something is unknowable and knowing something unknowable are two different things, the former of which is possible and the latter of which is impossible.
Answer: No.  To comprehend means to "take in the mind", so it means Urfi Sharazi knows the beauty-capacity of his mind is somewhat less than the quantity of beauty beheld.  Not unlike how one knows the capacity of one's stomach is less than a full luncheon buffet table.  Or how a 100G hard disk can't hold every movie ever made.  It's no paradox to overfill a cup.
Answer: Claiming to know that something is unknowable does not seem to be a paradox straight away, but it can become a paradox if the ground for the unknowability claim is itself umknowable, by its own standard. One famous example from 20th century philosophy is the verification principle of the logical positivists. The verification principle asserted that only statements that can be empirically verified have meaning. It was soon suspected, however, that the verification principle itself cannot be empirically verified, and must be therefore meaningless, by its own standard...


Where did Sauron go after his defeat in the Second Age?

Question: Sauron was defeated in the War of the Last Alliance and his spirit fled from his body. Where did he flee away and hide for thousands of years? Are there any details as to where he went or is it just plainly 'his spirit left his body and didn't return until the Third Age'?
Comment: Maybe Albania?    :-)
Answer: No, this is never discussed in any detail
Gandalf tells us early in Fellowship only that Sauron's spirit "fled" (emphasis mine):

Isildur Elendil's son cut the Ring from Sauron's hand and took it for his own. Then Sauron was vanquished and his spirit fled and was hidden for long years, until his shadow took shape again in Mirkwood.
Fellowship of the Ring Book I Chapter 2: "The Shadow of the Past"

But as far as where he went specifically, all we're told is one line in The Silmarillion (emphasis mine):

Then Sauron was for that time vanquished, and he forsook his body, and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places; and he took no visible shape again for many long years.
The Silmarillion V Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
Comment: Is there really not a question like "what happened to Sauron" or something?
Answer: As a side-note to the previous answer, it can be noted that Sauron lost his ability to transform into a "charismatic being" when Eru drowned Númenor under the sea. He was only able to take shape again because he wore his Ring, in which he imbued much of his power and strength.
When separated from his Ring in the "War of the last Alliance", it is plausible he lost yet another aspect of himself.
Without the ring, it certainly took Sauron many hundreds of years to "evolve" from "tingling annoying mist" to "evil spirit with some sort of physical appearance" then to "necromancer of Dol Guldur".
Except for the very last hundred years, his dark brooding was certainly close to boredom and nothing much of interest.
As for possible in-verse sigthings, knowing that the Council discovered the truth behind Dol Guldur very late and that Orcs / the evil side are not fond of keeping history records, it is unlikely to find much evidence on Sauron's whereabout's during his "recovery" :)


The zoom function with the mouse wheel sometimes zooms uncontrollably

Question: I do not believe the reference question about zooming to a point and refusing to zoom further relates to what I experience.  When I open a file, one click either way on the mouse wheel zooms + or - approximately as much as one click on numpad+ or numpad-. After working with the file for a while, zooming with the mouse wheel is no longer useful: one click of the wheel changes the image from microscopic to huge or the reverse. Numpad+ and numpad- continue to respond properly. It is especially bothersome when I depress the mouse wheel to inspect an element in 3D mode. It is hard to depress the scroll wheel without rotating it a little.  Just a little rotation makes the selected element almost disappear or become huge.  I'm using Blender 2.72b.
Answer: I recently had this same problem in Blender 2.72 with no apparent answer. However, I found that by pressing Shift - C re-centered the Viewport and then I switched from User Perspective to User Ortho with NumPad 5, and everything returned to normal. I too experienced uncontrollable zooming that led to unquantifiable Location coordinates, but this method worked for me, I hope it solves your problem.


Choral version of Pachelbel Canon in Korean tv

Question: Possibly more about culture than language. Many tv shows use a short segment for choir based on the Pachelbel Canon, usually to underscore moments of epiphany by characters or participants in studio panels. What is the origin of this segment in that form? And is it just 'ah' or are there actually words?
Answer: I think you are talking about Sanctus by Libera, which is based on Canon by Pachelbel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmuPJvr89Jw
Many Korean TV programs have been using the introduction part of this song to make the scene holy in fun way. 'Ah' is not a word but after that part, there are some lyrics. https://music.naver.com/lyric/index.nhn?trackId=5204267
Hope this is what you are looking for.
Comment: It starts with the Latin word _Sanctus_, so I think the excerpts used come from the melisma on that _a_ sound of the first syllable.
Comment: Thank you. Yes, that's the one. I probably would never have found it otherwise, but I've listened to some of Libera's videos, so I might have stumbled on it. Many of the comments on the video are in Korean, but one in English mentions Running man. I've seen a few episodes of that, but I associate it more with studio-based programs. They usually play only the first section. If I'd heard 'Benedictus qui venit', it might have been easier to track. I have written music for the communion service of the Anglican Church of Korea, but haven't had any takers, there or here in Australia.


Union not yielding merge geometries in QGIS

Question:
I'm trying to merge the geometries and attributes of a TIGER census block shapefile with those of a vector land cover shapefile. However, I'm not getting the results I want. Whenever I run Union in QGIS, I get one geometry or the other, not a combination of both. When I open up the attribute table, both entries are there but they are separate not merged. Which geometry I get seems to depend on which one I select first in the Union window. Can anyone tell me why the geometries and attributes are not merging?
Comment: Can you confirm which CRS' the two datasets are in? I notice you're using a User defined projection with "On-the-fly" reprojection enabled for the view window. Would have to test later today whether two different projections could cause this behaviour.
Answer: From your description I understand that you need to merge items from the same layer.
If you want to merge items in the same layer make sure that the "Advanced Digitizing Toolbar" is marked be clicking on the right bottom in the muse in the area of the Toolbars
Now you need to mark the item you want to merge
Once they are marked use the "Merge Selected Features" and press "O.K" (it's in Hebrew on me screen, so maybe in English it will "Approval" or something similar)
Now all the items that was overlapping are transformed into one merged item

You also can use the "Dissolve" option in the Vector Toolbar.
Using this option will make you a new temporary layer with the overlapping without changeling the old one. You need to save the new layer or alas it will be deleted once you close the project.
The union option is used for merging different layers. It will make a new layer from the two different layers.
The overlapping items will be combined into one, but they all will have a different row in the attribute table
Comment: "I'm trying to merge the geometries and attributes of a TIGER census block shapefile with those of a vector land cover shapefile."
Comment: If the attributes are not the same, tray to make a new layer with less data and merge them. After this, save it all as CSV and add more data as you like.


Does Lasting Bass Note from Previous Chord Progression affect Next Chord Progression?

Question: This question is quite universal and I havent found a proper answer yet. If the lowest note (bass) lasts and is still held after chord prog. change, would it affect the next chord?
For example:

Thank you.
Comment: Depends on what is in m. 6. Right now, I'm inclined to describe those as passing notes, and call the entire measure C minor.
Comment: I'd also note that the term Chord Progression refers to a sequence of chords, so the wording of your question would make a little more sense if you were to remove the word progression.
Answer: The thing about music theory is that it can be very subjective and can be analyzed on a number of different levels.  There are a lot of conventions within theory on the whole, as well as conventions that are more genre specific.
This can be exemplified nicely with this question.  You have analyzed the measure as having more than one chord, where those commenting and other answers are suggesting that there is just the one chord in the measure.  In reality, we could say that everyone is right here, depending on your approach to analyzing things.  I would tend to agree with the others that this would be best described as a single chord with non-chord tones, as that lines up more closely with the conventions of pretty much any genre.
The difference between these analytical approaches could be described as micro vs. macro, though if you are in an academic setting, you may want to be careful with those terms, as analyzing things on a macro scale could have larger implications than this specific example, such as the reductive analysis of Schenker.  The concept is that we can analyze each set of individual notes and try to apply a chord to each, which would be very micro, or we could analyze groups of notes and attempt to apply a chord to each groups.  When making such a choice, it is best to consider what you stand to gain from the analysis.  Will it be more helpful to declare a chord each beat?  Does this actually provide more information and further the understanding of the piece?  Sometimes the answer will be yes and sometimes no.  For instance, some Choral music will have one chord per beat and identifying them will provide you with valuable information about the way the chords are supporting the melody.  Other times you will find that giving a chord name to each beat or note is actually making it more difficult to determine what the music is really doing, as it may cause you to identify chords that do not function as you would expect, such as a V chord not resolving to I and then trying to argue the reason why there is a stressed leading tone, etc.
If you were to analyze this on the micro level, there are a couple ways to think about it.  The first would be to come up with a chord for each group of notes that doesn't conform to the rest of the harmony.  In this case, we would be trying to label the G/Bb/D on beat 4 that you are asking about and potentially the D that appears on the upbeat of beat 2.  It's a little more plain to see that this first D could be analyzed as a passing tone, as it is just one note that doesn't conform to the C minor and doesn't create a triad.  If I were to label this as a chord, it would have to be a C5 add 9 (C/G/D).  The G minor triad that appears over the C could be analyzed as a G minor/C (G minor with C in the bass), or we could call the C a Pedal Tone/Drone.  A Pedal Tone is a note that is sustained through/against different harmonies.  In such a case, we could mention the Pedal Tone's existence but wouldn't need to reference it for every chord that takes place, so in this setting we could just describe the chord as a G minor or G minor/D.
When myself and the others have chosen to call the Bb and D non-chord tones, we are considering their importance and prevalence within the measure.  These notes only last for an 1/8 note and fall on a weak beat, so it doesn't make as much sense to describe them as a separate chord.
The one thing that comes to mind that may change this choice of whether or not to analyze this as a single chord is the tempo.  If the piece were very, very slow, perhaps 30 bpm or slower, then it might make more sense to think of this as a G minor because it would be lasting so long, however, it would be a strange decision to have such a low bpm instead of longer note values at a faster tempo.
I think it's safe to say in this case that the entire measure should be analyzed as C minor within any normal context.  As you go through and try to analyze different music over the years, you're really trying to figure out what will give you the most value in understanding the piece, or provide the most value to whoever is reviewing your analysis.  If you're in an academic setting, there will be more pressure to conform to the conventions of the genre you are studying but if you have a good teacher, they should be accepting of analyses that differ from the conventions, so long as you have a good justification for your thought process and how it actually provides additional value/information to better explain the piece.
Answer: Actually, note that the C in the bass is held for the entire measure, so your comment that the bass is still held after the chord progression change is actually incorrect. There hasn't yet been a change, it's still just a C minor chord!
The D (as well as the Bf) is just a passing tone connecting the chordal third (Ef) to the root (C). Note that the upper voice of each staff plays almost the same musical line.
Comment: The last bit of the bar could constitute Cm9, maybe leading to Fm. So, yes a full bar of C of some sort. That's why the bass note is o.k. to let ring.
Comment: To me, the D leading to C at the end of the measure gets rid of any possible "chordal ninth," but to each his own!
Comment: I would agree.  In my opinion, the prominence of the D in the phrase is not strong enough to warrant calling it a chordal ninth.


Do I roll for reinforcements when I lose a Pygmy due to a Sorcerer taking control of it?

Question: When Pygmies are killed the player can roll the die and get 0-3 new pygmies for his next turn. Does he get to do this if a sorcerer uses his special ability to take control of a lone pygmy?
My guess would be yes due to the way elves interact w/ sorcerers, but I couldn't find anything conclusive in the base set rules, and there is only a summery insert w/ the expansion!
Answer: Yes, you can roll for reinforcements.
The Rules for the expansion read:

Each time you lose a Pygmy token, roll a reinforcement die ...

The Sorcerer definitely causes you to lose a Pygmy token, it is not required to be killed.  Therefore you get to roll the reinforcement die to replace them.
Answer: Yes. The Sorcerer's substitution ability causes the Pygmy to lose a token. The Sorcerer's ability specifically states that the substitution causes a Loss (the example in the rule book uses Elves). The Pygmies ability allows them to roll the reinforcement die and get 0-3 Pygmies that are redeployed at the end of the current players turn.
The base game rule book says:

Sorcerers - Once per turn per opponent, your Sorcerers can conquer a Region by substituting one of
  your opponent's Active tokens with one of your own taken from the storage tray. If there are no more tokens in the storage tray, then you cannot conquer a new Region in this way. The token your Sorcerers replaces must be the only race token in its Region (A single Troll token with its Troll's Lair is considered alone for this purpose; likewise for a Race token in a Fortress or on a Mountain, these markers provide no protection to a lone Race token) and that Region must be adjacent to one of your Sorcerers'. Place the substituted opponent's Race token back into the storage tray. If an Elf is converted by a Sorcerer, the Elf does lose his token.

The Expansion rule book says:

Pygmies - Each time you lose a Pygmy token, roll a reinforcement die and receive as many new Pygmies from the storage tray as you rolled pips on the die (up to the number of Pygmies left). Deploy them on the board at the end of the current player's turn.
Answer: No, I tested with the iPad. Pygmies do not roll reinforcement dice when transformed by the sorceler.
Comment: The iPad version is someone's implementation. Do you have any proof that the owners/makers of the game checked that all rules were correctly implemented?
Answer: No. The pygmy is changed into a sorceror and therefore is not lost but transformed.
Comment: The other two answers both provide quotes from the rule book that suggest that the Pygmy token is indeed lost. Do you have some rules text, or maybe word from the designer, to back up your answer?


What does it mean to say "Gravity is the weakest of the forces"?

Question: I can understand that on small scales (within an atom/molecule), the other forces are much stronger, but on larger scales, it seems that gravity is a far stronger force; e.g. planets are held to the sun by gravity. So what does it mean to say that "gravity is the weakest of the forces" when in some cases, it seems far stronger?
Comment: Related: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/755038/226902
Answer: When we ask "how strong is this force?" what we mean in this context is "How much stuff do I need to get a significant amount of force?" Richard Feynman summarized this the best in comparing the strength of gravity - which is generated by the entire mass of the Earth - versus a relatively tiny amount of electric charge:

And all matter is a mixture of
  positive protons and negative
  electrons which are attracting and
  repelling with this great force. So
  perfect is the balance however, that
  when you stand near someone else you
  don't feel any force at all. If there
  were even a little bit of unbalance
  you would know it. If you were
  standing at arm's length from someone
  and each of you had one percent more
  electrons than protons, the repelling
  force would be incredible. How great?
  Enough to lift the Empire State
  building? No! To lift Mount Everest?
  No! The repulsion would be enough to
  lift a "weight" equal to that of the
  entire earth!

Another way to think about it is this: a proton has both charge and mass. If I hold another proton a centimeter away, how strong is the gravitational attraction? It's about $10^{-57}$ newtons. How strong is the electric repulsion? It's about $10^{-24}$ newtons. How much stronger is the electric force than the gravitational? We find that it's $10^{33}$ times stronger, as in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more powerful!
Comment: It may or may not also have been Feynman who said words to the effect that the question "why is gravity so weak?" can be rephrased as "why is the mass of the proton so small?".
Comment: Charge and mass are two different quantities. What amount of charge do you equate to what amount of mass to state that one force is stronger?
Comment: This answer might be useful in response to a different question. Here it does not seem to jive with what the OP is asking. Then again, after seeing some of the OP's comments it is not clear to me *what* he was asking.
Comment: This answer just shows how electromagnetic force is much stronger than gravitational force in an example. Do you mean that the meaning of the statement, "Gravity is the weakest force" is that it is the weakest in "many examples" ?
Comment: @Tinkidinki: Another way to think of this is that mass is a measure of what warps space to generate gravitational force, while electric charges create electrical fields that can move objects with mass against or through a gravitational field.
Comment: @Nathaniel I believe it was actually Wilczek, in https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1387576.
Answer: When we say that gravity is much weaker then the other forces we mean that its coupling constant is much smaller than the coupling constants of other forces.
Think about a coupling constant as a parameter that says how much energy there will be in per "unit of interacting stuff". This is a very rough definition but it will serve our purpose.
If you determine the coupling constants of all different forces, you discover that, in decreasing order, strong, eletromagnetic and weak forces are much, much stronger than gravity.
You need around $10^{32}$ (that is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) times more "stuff interacting" to get around the same energy scale with gravity if you compare it with the weak force. Moreover, the difference between strong, weak and electromagnetic forces among themselves isn't nearly as extreme as the difference between gravity and the other forces.
Comment: This doesn't answer the question. To answer the question, you would have to explain what system of units you have in mind such that all four coupling constants have the same units and therefore can be ranked in size.
Comment: @Leandro: that is just one particular hierarchy problem. In general @space_cadet is right, the problem in general is with understanding the magnitude of coupling constants which usually requires some fine-tuning or new physics. The actual mechanism which explains it (in your case either fine-tuned cancellation of bare mass by quadratic radiative corrections or the usual SUSY solution) is only secondary. By the way, another instance of a famous hierarchy problem is the one of the smallness of cosmological constant.
Comment: +1, this is basically the answer I would have posted if I hadn't already seen it here. (I think it would not be inappropriate to include a small bit of mathematical detail, though.)
Comment: This answer is incorrect. Newton's constant, the coupling constant for gravity, has different units from the coupling constants for the other interactions, so it's meaningless to compare them. There is no meaningful sense in which gravity is fundamentally any weaker than the other forces, except in reference to specific Standard Model particles.
Comment: Yes, it answers what it means, but doesn't offer an explanation. I guess, though, he didn't ask for one...
Comment: Actually the Hierarchy problem is about the radiative corrections in the Higgs propagator. The large discrepancy of coupling constants is not a real problem.
Comment: I stand corrected then! :)
Comment: @Leandro that is a gross misstatement. from what I know of the hierarchy problem it is **entirely** about the vast difference between the coupling constants.
Comment: No, is not about the difference of coupling constants, is about quadratic divergence of Higgs mass correction (first order radiative correction). I will find a question about it. This area of comments is not appropriate for a more detailed answer.
Comment: @BenCrowell When I first read the question, I assumed the person asking had no knowledge of physics beyond high school physics and I tried to adapt my answer to that context. Feel free to edit my question to add more detail if you want.
Answer: I don't think that any of the existing answers fully answer this rather subtle question (correctly). If we just consider the interactions themselves, and not particular particles that they couple together, then there is no meaningful sense in which gravity is any weaker than any of the other forces. This simply follows from the fact that the gravitational coupling constant $G$ has different units than the coupling constants of all of the other Standard Model interactions, so the fundamental "strengths" of the interactions are incomparable.
It's true that for some applications, it's simplest to work in Planck units where $\hbar = c = G = 1$ - but that statement simply reflects the fact that no dimensionless ratios can be formed out of those constants, so this simultaneous assignment is possible. It's therefore incorrect to say (as claimed in another answer) that the strength of gravity is "equal" to the strength of any other interaction in any nontrivial way. It's simply incomparable, neither weaker nor stronger. You could just as easily choose a system of units (like SI!) in which either coupling constant's numerical value is arbitrarily larger than the other's.
To meaningfully compare the strength of gravity to that of the other interactions, you need to consider the specifics of the Standard Model (SM) matter fields. The dimensionally meaningful statement is that $G M_H^2/(\hbar c) = (M_H/M_P)^2 \approx 10^{-34} \ll 1$, where $M_H$ is the Higgs mass and $M_P$ the Planck mass. (You get similarly small numbers if you plug in the mass of any other SM particle.) Different types of physicists will find different natural ways to interpret this inequality.
To a (phenomenological) particle physicist, the natural mass scale is the Higgs/SM scale $M_H$ (and the natural velocity and action scales are $c$ and $\hbar$). From this perspective, $G = M_P^{-2} \approx 10^{-34}$, and the natural question is

"Why is the gravitational interaction between SM particles so much weaker than the other SM interactions? Or equivalently, why is the Planck mass so huge relative to the SM scale?"

To a quantum gravity theorist, who is less concerned with the details of the Standard Model, the natural mass scale is the Planck mass $M_P$. From this perspective, $M_H \approx 10^{-17}$, and the natural question is

"Why is the Higgs mass so tiny relative to the Planck scale?"

This is what Wilczek meant when he said "The question is not 'why is gravity so weak?' The question is 'why is the electron mass so small?'." I'll leave it to the philosophers to debate whether this is actually a "better" formulation of the question. The "hierarchy problem" really encompasses both formulations of this question, but is usually formulated from the latter perspective, and phrased in terms of "unnaturally fine-tuned radiative corrections to the Higgs propagator" and a bunch of other jargon involving the renormalization group, whose details are orthogonal to the OP's question.
Another answer states another common misconception, which is that the weakness of gravity simply stems from the irrelevancy/nonrenormalizability of the gravitational interaction. To see why this explanation is seriously incomplete, it's useful to consider yet another type of physicist's perspective: that of a condensed-matter theorist. The key point is that irrelevant operators (in the technical sense of the word) are only irrelevant (in the colloquial sense of the word) at energies far below the microscopic "UV cutoff" energy scale.
In this case, the cutoff scale is the Planck scale, so it is indeed straightforward to show from general arguments that gravity is very weak at energies far below the Planck scale. But this doesn't really answer the question; it just pushes it back to the question "Why do SM particle interactions occur at energies so far below the 'natural' Planck scale?" In a generic system, we would expect the low-lying excitations (the elementary particles) to have mass gaps on the order of the microscopic energy scale (the Planck scale). Only very close to a phase transition does the mass gap almost close and field theory become applicable. So to a condensed-matter physicist, the natural formulation of the hierarchy problem is

"Why are the Planck-scale interactions so finely tuned to lie near a phase transition, thereby allowing us to use field theory to accurately describe the low-lying excitations (the elementary particles)?"
Answer: Gravity seems stronger because it's always attractive. Of the other 3 interactions:

Electromagnetism has positive and negative charges, so it only manifests macroscopically when there is a charge imbalance.
The weak and strong interactions are intrinsically short-ranged.
Comment: Though color (i.e. strong force related) charges come in 3 (plus 3 anti) flavors they share with electric charges the ability to form "neutral" bodies (indeed confinement requires this), the phenomena called "color transparency" (known in meson systems and theorized in baryons) takes advantage of this even inside the range of the strong force. In principle bodies could be assembled that are on aggregate "weak neutral", though not using a small integer number of bits.
Answer: This is indeed something one has to be careful about, because, after all, gravity scales with the mass of the particles in question, whereas the other forces scale with the electric charge or the magnetic moment. It appears that one compares apples with pears.
However, I believe the declaration that gravity is the "weakest" of the forces stems indeed solely from its irrelevancy on the scale of particle physics.
Comment: other forces don't scale ? sure ?
Answer: Gravity is weak because the masses of elementary particles are so small.  Gravity has a natural mass unit, $m_p~=~\sqrt{\hbar c/G}$, the Planck mass, which is about $10^{-5}$ g.  The proton is $22$ orders of magnitude less massive.  So the stuff which makes up the world is elementary particle "styrofoam stuff" which gravity couples to.
This can be seen as well with IIA strings and their S-dual heterotic strings.  Those heterotic strings just do not like to stay on our brane, which they have no end points to form Chan-Paton factors or Dirichlet boundary conditions on the brane with.  They slip through our brane as if nothing is there.  Their S-dual strings are open strings on the brane, but with puny masses --- far less than the Planck mass or the mass corresponding to the string tension.
Comment: @space_cadet Not sure why this is such a crazy request by @Smashery. He wants an explanation of how to reconcile everyday phenomena with commonly cited theory: "Gravity seems to be the most important force in my life, yet people say it's the weakest. Explain." Do you see how talking about Chan-Paton factors might not be a satisfactory response?
Comment: Then look for answers on a psychology site, not a physics site. We're supposed to be answering physics questions, not explaining how your mind works.
Comment: @Smashery this is the best answer to your question. To repeat myself, please do not down-vote unless you actually have a *good* reason to do so. And if you do do so, don't proclaim it. It hurts your credibility.
Comment: To explain the down-vote: the question isn't about why gravity appears weaker. It's the fact that, in my mind, gravity *doesn't* appear weaker.
Comment: Hi @Spencer. If you were to ask a physicist today the question "why is gravity the weakest force" then of the many ways of stating the problem, one way is to note (as @Lawrence did) the tremendous difference between the natural mass scale of gravity and that of the standard model. This is what is referred to as the "hierarchy problem". Ask a postdoc or a professor about it and I'm sure they would be delighted to explain. The tidbit about S-duality is only *one* of many ways to find a resolution to this question, another one being the Randall-Sundrum model as @Gordon mentions in his answer.
Comment: @space_cadet I understand that this is the deeper reason, but it's also impenetrable to someone just trying to understand how physics interacts with daily life. Perhaps this is a discussion which should be had on meta - it seems like we are returning to the very-common 'how advanced should physics.se be' question.
Comment: @Spencer I guess it boils down to a difference in perspective. When you get to a certain level you realize that there's no two ways about it. Either you discuss the physics aspect or the pop-science version. Or perhaps I am just a jaded cynic. In any case @Smashery is entitled to his perspective and so are you.
Comment: @space_cadet- No, it's not the best answer to my question (and this may sound arrogant; but I think, as the person who is having trouble understanding something, I should be the judge on whether it has helped me understand). This answer may be a completely accurate reason as to physical reasons why gravity is stronger; but if you read the question, I'm not disputing the fact that gravity is weaker: I already believe the physicists who say it is. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to me since gravity seems to have more of an effect on me.
Comment: What Spencer and others have done in their answers is shown me where my misunderstanding is: my forgetting that gravity is purely attractive, whereas the electromagnetic force has both attractive and repulsive forces. By reminding me that these positive and negative charges usually balance each other out, it all made sense to me. Yes, I'm a layman when it comes to these things; a good answerer will try to get inside my head and help me with my real misunderstanding.
Comment: Lawrence and Gordon are obviously knowledgeable; I thank them both for their efforts (and have upvoted their excellent answers elsewhere); but these answers here were not useful in helping me understand. The appropriate thing to do to filter out answers which do not help answer the question is to downvote them. My apologies if I have offended anyone by doing so.
Comment: @Smashery you have surely not offended anyone :) However please do keep in mind that on a site such as this you should expect answers from experts. Obviously these are likely to be technical.
Comment: @Smashery, all: Actually the question why gravity is weak in some peoples mind and strong in others is interesting in its own right! Physicists usually decide gravity is weak because they compare the gravitational force with the EM force between, e.g., two electrons. There is some arbitrariness to this. I could also say "gravity is a strong force - but an electron only has very tiny gravitational charge!". It's like comparing apples to pears. There is a scale factor one has to decide on.
Answer: The Randall-Sundrum model explains it. The other forces are confined to the brane which  we consider to be our universe. The brane is embedded in higher dimensional space where some of the dimensions may be compactified, but others could be larger or even infinite (a 5 dimensional anti-de Sitter space in which a (3+1)dim brane is embedded.All particles except the graviton are bound to the brane.) Higher dimensional space is called the bulk. If gravity is not confined to our brane and can penetrate into the bulk, that would explain its weakness. The problem with the extreme difference in strengths of the forces is termed the hierarchy problem (weak force=$10^{32}$grav force). There are other explanations involving supersymmetry.
Comment: Dear @Smashery please quit down-voting answers based on perfectly good physical arguments. Otherwise it appears you not looking for answers but only an affirmation of your pre-existing beliefs.
Comment: @Smashery: Your headline question seems to ask why gravity is considered the weakest force. In your elaboration you seem to be asking why you think it should be stronger. Arrghh, I am not a telepath. An obvious reason would be that we evolved brains on one massive mother of a planet and gravity is accretive. Any number of other explanations as to why you think gravity should be stronger come to mind, but none of them are flattering.
Comment: My apologies if you took the downvote personally; like I said elsewhere, you are obviously knowledgeable about the topic; but the gap in my knowledge was more that "to my intuition, gravity doesn't seem weak at all." Sorry if that wasn't clear in the question. I've since upvoted another of your excellent answers.
Comment: To explain the down-vote: the question isn't about why gravity appears weaker. It's the fact that, in my mind, gravity *doesn't* appear weaker.
Comment: @space_cadet: Thanks for the support. I thought he wanted to learn something, not that I am the Amazing Kreskin.
Comment: I think there is recent evidence against this explanation.  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYw6vPR9qU
Answer: To compare the strength of e.g. the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force one should not simply compare the difference of strength for a specific particle, because there are too many (electron, proton, myon, etc.) and all these comparisons would yield a different number. Instead let's compare gravity and EM force using a scale given by fundamental constants. For gravity this means, we choose the gravitational force between two particles of Planck mass $m_P=\sqrt{\hbar c/G}$ and for the EM force we compute the force between two particles of Planck charge $q_P=\sqrt{4\pi\epsilon_0 \hbar c}$. If we compute the forces for these two cases respectively we get
$$
F_g = G \frac{\hbar c/G}{r^2} = \frac{\hbar c}{r^2}\\
F_{EM} = \frac{1}{4\pi\epsilon_0} \frac{4\pi\epsilon_0 \hbar c }{r^2} = \frac{\hbar c}{r^2}
$$
So we see the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force are actually of equal strength and range when they are compared at their natural scale.
In this sense gravity is not the weakest force. Instead the puzzle here can be rephrased to: Why is the mass of the known particles so low compared to the Planck mass, or why is the charge of the known particles so high compared to the Planck charge?
For example the ratio between planck mass and electron mass (the proton mass should not be used for comparison, because a proton is not a point particle and it's mass is made complicated by effects of QCD) is
$$
\frac{m_P}{m_e} = 2.389 \cdot 10^{22}
$$
whereas the ratio between planck charge and the charge of the electron is
$$
\frac{q_P}{q_e} = 11.706
$$
The ratio of these ratios is $2.040 \cdot 10^{21}$ and why this is such a high number is the real puzzle, and I don't know any theory which could explain this number.
It should be noted that the so called Mass-to-charge ratio for an electron is of order $10^{11}$, for a hypothetical particle with a Planck charge and a Planck mass it is accordingly of order $10^{-11}$
$$
\frac{q_e}{m_e} = 1.759 \cdot 10^{11} \frac{C}{kg} ,\
\frac{q_P}{m_P} = 8.617 \cdot 10^{-11} \frac{C}{kg} = \sqrt{\frac{4\pi\epsilon_0}{G}}
$$
which I think is a quite remarkable "symmetry".
UPDATE: The numbers shown here might not be familiar. But I want to note that the fine-structure constant is
$$
\alpha^{-1} = \left(\frac{q_P}{q_e}\right)^2 = 11.706^2 = 137.036
$$
and the gravitational fine structure constant is
$$
\alpha_G^{-1} = \left(\frac{m_P}{m_e}\right)^2 = (2.389 \cdot 10^{22})^2 = 5.709 \cdot 10^{44}
$$
Comment: I don't understand. Your last line would imply that $q_E m_P/m_e q_P = 1.759/8.617$ ~ O($1$), right? But the lines above that would say that $q_E m_P/m_e q_P= 2.389*10^{22}/11.706$ ~ O($10^{21}$) . Right?
Comment: You are right. I missed a minus sign. $q_P/m_P = 8.617\cdot 10^{-11}$. I fixed the paragraph.
Comment: Your claim that "the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force are actually of equal strength and range when they are compared at their natural scale" is trivial and misleading, because their apparently equality just comes from the fact that you are working in units designed to make them both equal to 1. In fact they have different units and are incomparable, so you make choose units in which their numerical values are as near or far from equality as you want.
Comment: @tparker, that's the point. Using Planck Units, the apparent weakness of gravity is solely because the masses of all of the particles in the Standard Model are *soooo* much less than the unit mass, yet the charge on any of those particles that have electric charge is on par with the unit charge. That is the seminal reason that, in the context of the SM (atoms and fundamental particles) gravity has no apparent effect.
Answer: Not exactly an answer but a resource that bears relevance to this question: Richard Feynman had a few words to say about the notion in his messenger lectures series, lecture 1, around the 48:20 time mark
Answer: Gravity is the weakest force as its coupling constant is small in value.
Gravity cannot be felt by us in daily life because of the huge universe surrounding us. Electromagnetic force is undoubtedly stronger as it deals with microscopic particles (electrons, protons). Gravity is always attractive in nature. It is a long range force among all other interactions in nature.
Comment: ""gravity cannot felt by us in daily life "" Rofl I recommend You lay down under an apple tree for some hours!
Comment: This doesn't quite deserve the downvotes it received. There is a reason to downvote, which is that this answer is not an answer to the question. However, that you cannot feel gravity is exactly correct. You feel weightless when you jump out of a window. There's nothing to feel because you can't feel gravity. *Nothing can.* When you splat and hit the pavement moments later, that's not gravity. That's the normal force you are feeling.
Comment: Or jump out from the window.
Comment: Try to walk or sit in the air :)


How to save on taxes due on a lump sum pension payment

Question: Upon resigning from a company, if employer offers a lump sum pension payment of 100k, what are some ways to save on tax on this 100k?
Assuming this 100k, is the only income that year, the RRSP room is only around 18k. Is there a way to save on tax on this pension lump sum payment?
The situation arises when you leave a company before your retirement age and the only option the company offers is a lump sum pension payment.
Comment: Where did this pension payment come from? Is it payments the company has made matching your own pension contributions? Or is it buyout from a defined-benefits pension scheme?
Comment: it's normal that transfers out of a pension scheme can be transferred into another pension scheme without penalty. If it was an RRSP you would certainly be allowed to do that.  But I've never dealt with a defined benefits scheme. A visit to a tax professional might be worth it.
Comment: It is a defined benefits plan with optional contributions made by the employee. So I guess it is a buyout.
Comment: They don't allow you to leave your benefits with them, deferred until retirement age?
Answer: I'm american and know little of Canadian law.  I assume what I state here to be similar to American law...
I do not believe the "lump sum" of the distribution makes any difference.  If you earn 100k in 2016, you earn 100k in 2016...whether you earned it on May 16th, or on every Monday in 2016.  Taxes, I'd presume would be the same.
I'd look to see if you can roll the lump sum distribution into some sort of private retirement savings plan.  Like an IRA in the U.S.
Also, is the person receiving the lump sum of retirement age?


Usernames that say more.

Question: Can't we require users to fill in a nicer username than user$xxxx$ when registering? It is (at least for me, but I can imagine it is also the case for others) to keep track who they are (as in, what they have written in the past and so on).
Comment: Could you please be more specific as to what you are proposing? If users want to be anonymous and are required to fill in a username, what would stop them from filling in "anonymous"?  At least currently the names are distinguishable, unlike at MathOverflow where there are numerous users named "unknown (google)", some more named "unknown (yahoo)", some simply "unknown".
Comment: Meyer: You can still find an anonymous name that isn't "userxxxx", the idea is that not all the anonymous users are named "userxxxx" (of course they can pick that if they like) so they are easier to distinguish. If you for example remember a question a certain user has posted (which is probably easier to remember than user2304) but not the question itself, you can look into the user list to look it up.
Answer: I can't think of a viable way to do that, maybe to just remove automatic username assignment when registering via open-id (which is now in place). Other than that, users will still be free to choose whatever pleases them, including filling something like userX2321 instead of user2321.
Comment: If you register via open-id you can still let the user pick a name at first login. They can choose whatever pleases them, even if it is user1234, but I think less users will then pick userxxxx if they are required to choose something. Not having a username like user1234 doesn't mean they lose their anonymity.

Usernames that say more.


How to prevent snakes from eating goldfish in pond?

Question: Some snake found its way into my pond. I heard that local snakes will eat the fish. The pond is 1/2 underground and 1/2 above ground with a 2 ft high brick wall all the way around. Is there some strategy I can use to keep snakes out?
Comment: what are the size of your goldfish and what type of snakes do you have where you live and how large are the snakes.
Comment: http://www.pondexpert.co.uk/there-way-deter-grass-snakes-from-pond.html i have had garden ponds for 30+years and grass snakes live around my pond and i have never lost any fish to snakes,i wonder if protecting the pond against snakes is something you need to put time and money into the risk is very low but not zero for your fish.
Answer: The snakes stop eating fish when there are no more fish. You can try killing the snakes, but they are fast. I did kill one by putting a fish trap under the water; the snake went in, could not find the opening and drowned. If the snake is slow and mostly black, it is probably a cottonmouth, which does not eat many fish, but you shouldn't mess with it.
Comment: I have killed several snakes over the years . Here the fish eaters are yellow bellied and green water snakes. Otherwise I leave snakes alone , the copper heads are very docile and eat mice,etc.


SSAS Tabular Cube partitioning - number of partitions

Question: We ha a Fact table with 500 milions of rows (data from 10 years - 60GB). I've partitioned this table on database level and SSAS Tabular Cube level as well - one month per partition to improve the overall browsing performance and SSAS Cube processing time. But last time I've heard that configuring more than 2 partitions for SSAS Tabular cube is not good. There should be max 2 partitions per tabular cube. Have you heard about something like that ? Is that true ?
Comment: What version of SSAS? Enterprise edition or Standard?
Comment: 2014 Enterprise.
Answer: In SSAS 2014 Tabular partitions inside a table process serially. In SSAS 2016 Tabular partitions inside a table can process in parallel. So in your version partitioning won't speed up processing if you process the whole table.
However partitioning is great for use in incremental processing. If you partition by year and only 2017 rows changed then you can just process the 2017 partition. Also to archive off data older than 10 years old you can drop the oldest partition.
I don't know where the 2 partition rule you mentioned came from but don't believe it makes sense. If you have a reference for that assertion with some context then feel free to share.
Comment: Thanks. Unfortunately I don't posess any exact link to such article. I've just get that information from one of the BI consultant last time.
Comment: @TomaszWieczorkowski if I have answered your question please consider [accepting it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234/179419) by clicking the check-mark.
Comment: Oh yes, here you go :)