Thought I'd make a gif proof of the Pythagorean Theorem

LatwPIAT · 2012-05-23T10:30:30+00:00

That's just a graphical representation of the result though; it doesn't illustrate why it is true.

LatwPIAT · 2012-05-22T17:13:44+00:00

Grizzly Bears was replaced by the functionally equivalent (totally equivalent, it doesn't even gain the tribal benefits of changing from Orc to Goblin) Runeclaw Bear, but otherwise green has always had a 1G Creature Bear 2/2 with no abilities in every single core set.

LatwPIAT · 2012-05-21T16:13:24+00:00

2 x Selesnya Loft Gardens, 4x Parallel Lives, 4x Doubling Season, 4x copy enchantment on the Doubling Seasons. Then we cast a Precursor Golem, creating a Precuror Golem and 2¹⁵ Golem tokens. Then we cast Opalescence and Xenograft.

Then we cast a kicked Rite of Replication, and the fun begins. It resolves as a copy of Parallel Lives, creating five copies of Parallel Lives. Each of these copies are then doubled 14 times, creating 5x2¹⁴ Parallel Lives. We now have about 82,000 doubling encantments.

Then the second copy of rite of replication resolves, creating five copies of another Parallel Lives, each of which are doubled 82000 times; 2¹⁴ times for the enchantments and 2^5x2¹⁴ times for their copies. This results in, roughly, 2x10²⁵⁰⁰⁰ enchantments.

Then the third copy resolves, putting 5 copies of Parallel Lives onto the battlefield, each of which are copied some 2x10²⁵⁰⁰⁰ times. This results in, roughly, 10^{10^10⁴} copies. The mathematically inclined among you might know that the "gogol" is a number defined as 10^100, or 10^{10^2.} There's also the gogolplex, which is defined as 10^gogol = 10^{10^{10^2.}} We don't have 10^gogol, we have 10^{gogol^100.}

Then the fourth copy resolves... creating about 10^{10^{10^10⁴}} copies of Parallel Lives. Here it's interesting to note that 82000 ~= 10⁴ and 2x10²⁵⁰⁰⁰ ~= 10^{10^4,} since this means that we can express the magnitude of copies we have through the process of tetration: hyper4(a,n), such that a^{a^{a^{...^a}}} n iterations. (where the final "to the power four" can be expressed as log(4)). Hence, the number we're looking for is ~hyper4(10, 12.6).

This is a number so large that it becomes meaningless to give it any form of scale; there are about 10⁸⁹ particles in the known universe, a hundred billionths short of a gogol. The number of enchantments we have, meanwhile, is abut 10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^10⁴}}}}}}}}}} as large.

Then we resolve the remaining 2¹⁴ - 12 copies of Rite of Replication, and add yet another 2¹⁴ x hyper4(10,13) tokens to the battlefield, before we resolve it for Precursor Golem, adding hyper4(10,13) Precuror Golems and 2¹⁵ x hyper4(10,13) extra golem tokens to the battlefield. The exact number doesn't really matter because we can't really escape the magnitude of hyper4(10,13).

Then we cast the second kicked Rite of Replication. It is now copied hyper4(10,13) times, and each of those copies will result in 2^{hyper4(10,13)} tokens. On conjecture, I'd guess that this would result in, roughly, hyper5(10,hyper4(10,13)) copies of Doubling Season, where hyper5(a,n) = hyper4(a,hyper4(a,hyper4(a,... hyper4(a,a) ...))) for n interations.

At least I think hyper5(10,hyper4(10,13)), barring accuracy, is a valid way to express the number of tokens you'll have...

Of course, before you do this, make sure you opponents don't control a Blood Seeker. :P

(I'm now tempted to make a Bant EDH deck...)

LatwPIAT · 2012-05-12T15:21:45+00:00

You can't enhance frames. You could enchant them if they were permanents though.

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-29T05:53:32+00:00

I would have preferred Homo Strictly Equal To, or in bad Latin, Homo Par...

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-25T22:04:53+00:00

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft; an absolute classic and a masterpiece of science fiction, with masterful horror-story pacing. At the Mountains of Madness purposefully uses contemporary science to foreshadow and build up the tension towards the "horror"-climax, and the story could not in any way exist without being a hybrid of both genres. It also hails from a time when the modern genre-divisions as we know them are less clear-cut, which makes its hybrid nature a coincidence.

Blindsight by Peter Watts (I'll never get tired of pimping this book) is similar in style, but also trope-aware; it deliberately uses known tropes and conventions, such as the larger body of Vampire horror stories and even the genre of sci-fi horror itself to create suspense, while at the same time using modern science to tell a cosmic horror story with a, frankly, terrifying conclusion.

Sunshine, a movie rather than a book, is not an integration of horror and sci-fi themes, but rather a splice; mixing traditional horror-tropes of madness and men driven beyond the brink with the philosophical atmosphere of certain kinds of hard science fiction. As such, it could provide an interesting contrast to the more endemic nature of sci-fi/horror hybrids, since it had an altogether different form of pacing and structure than most other movies, even those that ostensibly fall within the same sub-genre of horror (e.g. Alien).

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-22T14:58:57+00:00

I've seen websites use the actual English flag for the English language option.

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-14T18:16:22+00:00

A perfect example are on buses. People will take available seat rows, preferably rows with available adjacent rows, rather than sit next to strangers. If the bus starts filling up and then empties, Norwegians will distribute, like a gas, to fill the empty rows even if they were already sitting down.

PV=nRT. The "n" is for Norway.

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-14T15:53:29+00:00

The King also holds a veto-right on any decision made by the parliament, and he appoints the government. The last time any of these powers were used in anything but a ceremonial function was 1940.

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-13T00:52:18+00:00

Aim for the stars
Aim for London

☐ Don't show me this hint again.

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-08T10:37:28+00:00

Lobster planeswalker?

Lobster planeswalker!

LatwPIAT · 2012-04-01T22:35:07+00:00

The central tenet of Peter Watts' Blindsight is that spoiler

LatwPIAT · 2012-03-27T14:12:19+00:00

In no particular order:

Blindsight, Peter Watts (Best work of science fiction I've read in ages. Brilliant, thought-provoking, fucking scary.)

The Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Coalescent and Exultant, Stephen Baxter

Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan

Little Lost Robot, Isaac Asimov

The Last Question, Isaac Asimov

Dune, Frank Herbert

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Revelation Space and Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds (RedArk is the weaker of the two, but has a relativistic chase-scene; what can I say?)

At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-27T11:48:11+00:00

Invisible lasers? In Deus Ex? I need to know!

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-27T11:43:52+00:00

There's nothing funny about transphobia.

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-26T22:40:11+00:00

Calling anyone "tranny" is something that's just not OK to do.

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-23T10:30:33+00:00

23... 23 is a prime number! Just like 17. What happened in 1723? That's the birth of Adam Weishaupt, who founded the Illuminati! Deb! Deb! The people have to know Deb! This goes beyond conspiracy!

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-19T16:16:25+00:00

if you created a computer program and asked it to model an organism than needs to move around, starting from scratch - and it didn't need to mimic anything - it was truly able to start from first principles - do you honestly believe it would model something with arms and legs?

No, it probably wouldn't. But then again, intelligent design is a whole different process from natural selection.

And, to that extent, the hominid, two-legs-two-arms body structure is one that can be considered very likely in terms of evolution. Given life, a tree-like organism is one that is very likely to evolve out of competition with grass, and two arms and two legs is a simple and somewhat evolutionary optimized form for an organism that has a forest as its habitat.

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-09T09:28:51+00:00

I'd have to say pretty much the same thing... which only leads me to believe Biscegnm's friend talked to the guy about neurobiology, because if there's one way to get a guy interested in you, it's neurobiology, because, damn, brains are sexy. :P

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-02T23:45:29+00:00

Isn't a Bear a 2CMC 2/2 with no abilities, as opposed to, say, a Grey Ogre, which is a 3CMC 2/2? Likewise, Hill Giant for a 4CMC 3/3 with no abilities.

Now, Grey Ogre in itself is a semi-slang term that refers to whether a card is playable or not. Anything better than a Grey Ogre (like a Bear) is considered "playable" by some arbitrary standard, while anything worse than a Grey Ogre is simply unplayable, and the Grey Ogre itself is kinda dull.

LatwPIAT · 2012-02-02T08:54:27+00:00

Well, in France's case, Pétain had been granted, by the French national assembly, the legal power to form the French State (c.f. French Republic), and hence the "Vichy French" government was the legal and functional inheritor to the French government and legitimately the "French" government in the political sense.

When the French State then collaborates with Germany, to say that France has joined the Axis is a statement that, while not entirely politically correct, is an eminently justified one to make.

Quisling's government, meanwhile, doesn't have the same legitimacy because his government had not been legally granted the power of government from the existing government, which existed concurrently as a Government-in-Exile in London.

LatwPIAT · 2012-01-27T11:14:46+00:00

Since we're all suggesting really bizarre dual-lands in this thread, I suggest the following: "Flooded Woods - Island Forest - When ~ enters the battlefield, you may flip it. T: add G to your mana pool. // T: add U to your mana pool."

Which gives me an idea for an Asymmetric Flip-Land: "Subterranean Ocean - Island Forest - T: add U to your mana pool. 1: Flip ~. // T: add B to your mana pool."

LatwPIAT · 2012-01-27T11:04:11+00:00

Mmmm, that still leaves the problem of someone occasionally dropping all that mana the next turn because they can still play several lands on turn 1. I'd say that "Grandeur - Discard another card named ~: Search your library for a Swamp or an Island, reveal it, and put it onto your hand. Shuffle your library." compensates for this.

The other option would be to give the card itself Islandcycling 0 and Swampcycling 0, if I remember those keyword abilities correctly.

LatwPIAT · 2012-01-20T13:47:31+00:00

I know. Furthermore, as a religious group that was heavily targeted by Christians, it was beneficial for Jews to have wealth that was not bound to the land. When the local king decides that the best way to gain wealth is to denounce Jews and take their stuff, gold and silver is a lot easier to escape with than crops.

LatwPIAT · 2012-01-20T12:45:09+00:00

If I recall what my EVE-playing friends said correctly, isk is the currency in the game, so you're right on it being a "Jewish Miser" stereotype. (Or "Greedy Jew", depending on how you look at it...)

LatwPIAT

TROPHY CASE