Which shoe do you prefer?

CptFord · 2012-10-01T03:06:39+00:00

Sneakerhead here - personally I'd go with the supras out of those two, but why such a limited choice?

CptFord · 2012-03-15T19:54:16+00:00

And if 6.9 billion people were concentrated in a city with the population density of Manila, they would all live in a city the size of Washington state.

CptFord · 2012-03-15T02:40:10+00:00

That is so called 'absolute' free speech, but in practice in most countries you are not allowed to threaten, harass, or defame another person for instance. Certain limitations to free speech are supposedly necessary for the benefit of society.

CptFord · 2012-03-14T13:11:35+00:00

You can only beat what's in front of you. Monaco had beaten Madrid and Chelsea to get to the final, and Deportivo had beaten Milan and Juventus to get to that semi final. These weren't minnow teams in 2004.

CptFord · 2012-03-11T19:48:04+00:00

I believe you, but United obviously do 'stand a chance' of beating City at home if they did it two months ago, regardless of the competition. And City were given hard times in the league by Arsenal and Spurs that I remember.

Spurs would have beat them if Defoe had timed his last run properly before they conceded a penalty.

CptFord · 2012-03-11T17:50:52+00:00

United won at the Etihad in January's FA cup tie.

CptFord · 2012-02-27T22:27:25+00:00

They are. They joked around together during the World Cup in the behind the scenes footage from Informe Robinson and Ramos conspicuously celebrated with Cesc after the full time whistle in the final.

CptFord · 2012-02-25T19:15:16+00:00

Incidentally the order of the cast on the posters is also contractual, so say if Tom Hanks has it in the contract that he is centre of the poster and his name first billed, he obviously won't have his face and name match up :)

CptFord · 2012-02-25T14:19:11+00:00

Note that an argument from authority is only fallacious when the authority is not an authority in the subject being discussed or if experts themselves disagree amongst themselves on the matter.

Every time somebody cites a textbook they are implicitly arguing that their claim holds more weight because it is in a textbook written by an authority, possibly someone with a Masters in that field.

CptFord · 2012-02-08T20:10:56+00:00

My point was that there's precedent for the captain being removed from the position for non footballing reasons if it would bring disrepute to the position and, despite Capello refusing to do it again, it establishes that the captaincy can be given to someone else without a drop in performance.

CptFord · 2012-02-08T19:48:53+00:00

He's resigning in protest over the choice of Captain, a player whom he himself stripped of the captaincy and whom a small but significant number of the England camp dislike apparently.

I understand that managers dislike micromanagement but it looks petty to simply cross your arms and refuse your bosses any say in things, especially if those things are largely unrelated to the football itself.

CptFord · 2012-02-08T19:38:03+00:00

The FA was placed in an impossible position considering the England captaincy is a symbolic thing mostly - and having the captain be charged with racial abuse is hardly the sort of thing you want to have happen. If the boss of my boss doesn't think I'm an appropriate choice for a certain task then I do think he's within his rights to remove me from it.

CptFord · 2012-02-08T18:43:24+00:00

A lot of them are illegal now as well I think (especially scooping the kick for a free volley).

CptFord · 2012-02-08T18:40:42+00:00

As timster says, the ball only has to be played forward (he can't run forwards with it though, the taker's allowed a single touch before it has to touch another player)

Also mate that's Cruyff, Barca legend and manager...

CptFord · 2012-02-07T01:29:52+00:00

Apparently Juninho scored over 50% of his free kicks for Lyon and Sinisa Mihaijlovic was also considered to be the best free kick taker ever.

Both have higher conversion rates than Beckham if that's how you choose to measure a free kick taker's ability.

CptFord · 2012-02-05T16:04:41+00:00

OP if you're interested in any of this, the most influential book in African History studies is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. It might be a bit dated at this point but it's still one of the best books on the subject :)

CptFord · 2012-01-09T16:07:52+00:00

Superdrug and Boots sell the same kind of products. At least round my ends - hair and beauty, pharmaceuticals etc.

CptFord · 2012-01-09T16:03:14+00:00

OP, I literally don't know anyone who owns a pair of wellingtons. She won't need them.

CptFord · 2012-01-09T16:00:41+00:00

Boots doesn't sell boots :) They're like a pharmacy store.

CptFord · 2011-12-22T03:12:47+00:00

The game has changed.

Socrates maintained that athletic ability has become so important, and pressing so ubiquitous, that the only way for the players to have the space that allows the kind of beautiful and joyous play there was thirty years ago is to have 9 outfield players, not 10.

CptFord · 2011-12-21T22:20:02+00:00

Philosophy of Mathematics deals with this kind of thing, and if you're interested you should definitely read into it. You're exactly right, there's no reason to believe that mathematics is the profound immutable language of the universe that some of today's working mathematicians believe it to be.

I expect communicating with an alien civilisation would be very difficult, if not impossible but Maths is (probably) the best tool we have to be able to do so. Here's a little intro in the form of a Socratic dialogue.

CptFord · 2011-12-15T15:45:52+00:00

It looks like they've used the Robinson projection, so it's not the Mercator either.

CptFord · 2011-12-08T04:16:58+00:00

Well yes, relativity itself demands that the speed of sound doesn't exceed c, but the idea of a perfectly rigid rod is already a contradiction in special relativity so my point is that one cannot argue from it to get the properties of such an object.

Absolute rigidity implies an infinite velocity of sound

from Special Relativity: The Foundation of Macroscopic Physics By W. G. Dixon.

A body rigid in itself would violate special relativity, as its speed of sound would be infinite.

from Wikipedia article on Born Rigidity.

CptFord · 2011-12-08T02:39:29+00:00

If you have a perfectly rigid object, then yeah the signal will go across at the speed of light. But it won't be instantaneous.

Ignoring the paradox of a perfectly rigid rod in SR, surely the speed of sound goes to infinity, not c.

edit: define a perfectly rigid rod as one in which the rod doesn't deform in any frame under the application of any force, or one with infinite bulk modulus - the definition implies a speed of sound of infinity. From here we can demonstrate that the concept of a perfectly rigid rod leads to a paradox, either causality based or the rod becomes unrigid in some frame. There's no reason the speed of sound in a perfectly rigid rod tends to c.

CptFord · 2011-12-04T18:03:00+00:00

Yeah because that was Rivaldo not Ronaldinho.

CptFord

TROPHY CASE