I'm losing my favourite game

[venta]

Return of an old rant:

I just called the Swan to book my car in for some work on Saturday. During my fifteen second conversation with the receptionist, she said "just bear with me a second" three times.

That's a whopping 12 bwm/minute, on average.

Comments

I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Area of Vatican City: 0.44 km²

Number of Popes in Vatican City: 1 (usually)

Vatican City Pope density: 2.27 Popes/km²

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[venta.livejournal.com]

:)

I remember being delighted during a lecture on computer architecture (a rare occurrence) when the lecturer started talking about the speed of light being a limiting factor in laptop design.

He pointed out that, for the purpose, it was most useful to think of the speed of light as being "about a foot per nanosecond".

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

the speed of light = 0.983571056 feet per nanosecond to be precise.

Yeah, I can see how "1" is a useful approximation.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

If it's any help to you, pi seconds is almost exactly a nanocentury.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Is that still the case even when it's not any help to me?

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, yes.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The foot/nanosecond thing kind of brings home the latency inherent to everyday experience, IYSWIM.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Or for practical purposes in PC hardware, roughly 4 inches per clock cycle.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, why ? I don't follow.
What happens for nine days ? I'm not very well up on my popery.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Why does no pope = infinite popes ?

Or are you referring to the infinite number of popes-in-potentia ? In which case surely it isn't infinite, it's about 24, or however many redhatty guys there are in the College of Cardinals these days.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You got the fraction the wrong way up!

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Apparently the mourning period is supposed to be nine days. But wikipedia indicates that's not the only part of the usual interregnum. Not that the exact numbers matter much when we're talking zeros or infinities l-)

Other things that might throw the density off would be a visit by another Pope.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[venta.livejournal.com]

And who knows what an antiPope would do to the density :)

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that even. Virtual Pope-AntiPope pairs will be continually created and destroyed. So although the total "Pope number" of the Vatican is constant, and one could calculate Pope density from this value, that value won't actually reflect the whole Pope interaction of a particle in the Vatican. See physics texts on renormalisation for an idea of how to resolve this issue.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

And that's even assuming that there aren't any Hawking-radiation-style effects at the event horizon city wall, which could result in a steady radiation of high-energy Popes.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

How do you get infinite density rather than zero density for the nine days?

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think it's inaccurate.

0/x = 0, regardless of the value of x.

x/0 = infinity, regardless of the value of x.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'll give you 1 out of 2 for that - and that's being generous.

0/x = 0 only for x != 0.

x/0 is undefined, not infinite.

Proof:

* Let Z be some well-defined extension to the integers ('infinity') such that x/0 = Z.
* 1/0 = Z = 2/0
* 1/0 = 2/0 => 1 = 2 (contradiction)

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

And even if it were true:

( X + infinity ) / N

where X is the usual Pope density, and N is "some time period"

= infinity

Not 20.404!

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

I suspect you are thinking of the specific case 0/0, not 0/x in general. This is a logical deduction from the "self evident" (but incorrect) premises:

0/x is always 0
x/x is always 1
x/0 is always infinite.

Therefore it is a common belief that 0/0 can be either 0, 1 or infinite.

As others have said, these premises are not true when you are dividing by zero.

Re: I see I'm not the only person who likes silly ratios.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Meaning, presumably, that the last one is never true. I.e. what bateleur and many others said.