sugna

Excellent, measured, expert advice from lichtgilphead, here. It's baffling that anyone could read his contribution any other way. Although I sense there's some history, here.

I have gone through the cutlery-trauma thing twice recently. I know more about spoons than I would like to. The cheap shot reply to our earlier post was my second instinct; my first was to say that tablespoons are not cutlery: I think they are for "serving at table". We got one of our cutlery sets from ProCook, buying it as a canteen since that was much cheaper than buying the same brand any other way - we got a couple of tablespoons with that. When we bought the other set of cutlery, we bought it as a mixture of separates and "wee boxes of aggregated separates", from Home Store + More. Neither the actual separates nor the boxes had the option of adding tablespoons, nor did any of the (admittedly wide range of) similar styles allow us to purchase tablespoons. I really like having a couple, for those rare occasions when we have food to serve from bowls, and where the metal spoons are just the ticket. I also use them for baking sometimes, although there's really no reason to do that. I ended up buying a boxed pair from TK Maxx. My biggest PSpoonsTGOMyN, though, is between the stupid "dessert and bigger dessert spoons" instead of "dessert and actual round soup spoons"; and the very annoying too-pointy teaspoons - I only really want those for making instant coffee, and pointiness is both pointless and a very bad fit for that. The image you've posted should come with a trigger warning.

If my guess is correct, you'll have the same problem with the teaspoons. Except the other pack will have the bigger ones this time.

In the interests of forum anonymity, I can neither confirm nor deny that. This was at Edinburgh airport, 6am this Saturday.

A Ryanair anomaly. A couple of times a year, I travel with "out of gauge" hold luggage. It's around 4.5m/15' in length. All airlines use a common facility for checking it's OK: they typically open it up, inspect and swab it. But before that stage, I have to take it to the baggage check-in. Absolutely every other airline balks at it, at this point. Ryanair staff cheerily joke about getting it on the scales properly, and are generally unfazed. I have no explanation for this, but would add it's a common experience amongst those of us who fly with this particular sort of gear. So in this particular case, the arsehole airline does brilliantly. As I say, an anomaly.

You poor sweet summer child.

Image reported for adverb abuse.

If I'm remembering it correctly, they were trying to explain anomalous step changes in the scores between 2 years, and the hypothesis was that a teacher was amending answers after collecting the sheets but before sending them off. In those circumstances, they "expected" the answers to just a few questions - those for which the teacher was remembering the correct answer - to be correct for virtually all of the cohort. The model they checked was for someone changing many papers in a very short period of time. Sure enough, that's what they found: very high rates of correct answers to 2 or 3 questions, on the first pages of the answer books, and uncorrelated with the national success rate for those questions. (It was something like that, anyway. "Hmm, this might be cheating... so how would one go about cheating, and what tests can we make to see if that's how the data looks?")

I’m right behind that anti-shitey general sentiment, but can’t wholly concur with this specific example. This morning, I happened to text a pal about two proofs [sic] of Euler’s Identity: a clunky one that I made up one lunchtime when we worked for the same company, in response to a question he had asked; and a much snappier, more elegant proof that I came across today (I didn’t come up with it). They have to be considered “two proofs” for that contrast to make any sense, and I think it’s appropriate that it make sense.

Scientifically, it is definitely not a valid question. Nothing can ever be proven in a scientific sense, even in principle. That may seem strange, but there are very good reasons for it. All that can be done scientifically is to gather data in a well-designed (in the Cochrane sense) to reject the null hypothesis that such combined vaccinations do not carry statistically significant additional risk relative to separate vaccinations. Sorry to be a bit wordy about that, but I don't think it's possible to be any terser without losing the meaning. So, in short, it's definitely not a valid question in scientific terms.

I thought you hated birds.

The time when the big hand and little hand point straight up is neither 12am nor 12pm. Those would expand out to “12 before/after 12 right in the middle of the day”; and it’s neither. Times either side of it work fine, but it’s just technically wrong* to use 12am or 12pm. That’s only my second-place horological PTTGOYN. That’s how petty I am. * The worst kind of wrong, as any bureaucrat kno.

It looks as though there’s only one person suffering from that particular confusion. It has, however, led to a bit of a paradox: because he thinks that [a foul after a shot] is somehow not [just a foul like any other foul], under the Laws, he’s stuck in a cycle of not accepting any facts that explain what happened. I think that happens a lot in sport, generally: people would rather adhere to what they think the rules should say, than to put in minimal effort and read what the rules actually say. I’ve had some experience of that when helping with rules officiating at golf, and I might almost say that there’s an inverse relationship between knowing the (golf) rules and being aggressively assertive about what a rules decision should be. Hmm. I think I feel a Top 5 thread coming on…

You're quite choughed with that one.

I don't see any monkeys there, Linda. Do you see any monkeys, George?

Happy Boo-urns Night.

Very worrying indeed.

Only my second sighting of a brambling at the weekend, and the first one where there was any chance of getting a decent photo. Loved seeing the patterns and colours, and its behaviour and appearance alongside a host of chaffinches. It seems much less assertive, but of course it wasn't backed-up by its mates. Nevertheless, my confident assertion is that bramblings are the scruffier, less confident cousins of chaffinches.

Elwood Blues found.

"an icy 2.5 degrees" To quote the great Martin Prince, "Highly dubious!"

That post is perfect.

Add half a dioptre to those lenses and the prosecution can rest.

To save anyone having to click on the link, he was given a fine for driving the wrong way up a one-way street. But wants special treatment.

My coach has a severe peanut allergy, but her mum gets her a tub of Celebrations every Christmas. I left training this morning with all of her potentially fatal Marathons Snickers. The perfect crime.

I just remember him saying how he’d stroll it in Scotland, then giving Scott Brown his dinner money to avoid a doing. Stereotypical coward-bully.