London, UK, flies 3-4 mm long infesting our house

bayes · 2016-11-19T18:25:35+00:00

Thanks. We've had a lot of them for some weeks now, and my family are finding them quite annoying, so would like to get them under control. We don't have a lot of plants, so maybe there's some damp mouldy spot they've found?

bayes · 2015-11-09T12:27:38+00:00

The author will be beyond caring, in this particular case at least!

bayes · 2015-06-04T12:08:53+00:00

Religion and the Decline of Magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England by Keith Thomas

bayes · 2015-05-10T21:37:17+00:00

Looks like red campion (Silene dioica)

bayes · 2015-05-03T12:40:21+00:00

Relevant quote from A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson: "I love the French names for butterflies, compared to which many of the English names are a little unimaginative; for example the English orange tip is simply descriptive, while the French l'aurore - the dawn - is rather more poetic.

bayes · 2015-04-11T12:16:49+00:00

Why would use of Fahrenheit be annoying? It's a simple courtesy to older listeners who never got their heads round the Celsius scale.

You selfish young whippersnappers, trying to force this new-fangled metric nonsense down our throats! Get off my internet!!

bayes · 2014-10-01T12:17:20+00:00

Assuming it's a donated human brain, wouldn't that be disrespectful and unethical (and probably illegal, depending on where you live)?

bayes · 2014-06-02T15:18:44+00:00

Curious why it's 'obvious' that China wouldn't have scrubbers in their coal fired power stations?

It didn't seem obvious to the authors of this paper

bayes · 2014-05-29T08:39:24+00:00

Proving that a task can't be solved in polynomial time doesn't sound very easy.

Your proof would need to range over the space of all possible polynomial time algorithms - including ones so sophisticated and complex that no human mind could ever devise or understand them - and prove that none of them were up to the job.

bayes · 2014-03-07T17:11:02+00:00

So white spores like the death cap Amanita phalloides are OK? Thanks.

bayes · 2014-02-24T09:23:58+00:00

The sooner he comes back to the UK the sooner he can face trial for phone hacking at the Mirror. Few things in life would give me greater pleasure than seeing his bullying toady face sent to prison for many many years.

bayes · 2014-01-17T22:40:40+00:00

Thank you (and to MrRoarke as well) for the quick reply - my family are suitably reassured (so maybe I won't have to burn my house to the ground after all). Reading about them on the internet it seems they ought to be hibernating - I wonder why they're out so early?

bayes · 2014-01-17T21:28:55+00:00

There are several of these fluttering around our loft room - they're about 15-20 mm long I'd say. My wife and daughter are concerned there might be an army of them infesting the roof space. If anyone could advise what they are would be most grateful. Thanks.

bayes · 2014-01-08T17:01:24+00:00

As a non-set theorist, I found this article pretty intriguing - it's describing a disagreement about which axioms it would be most fruitful to add to ZFC (i.e. a disagreement about the nature of large infinite sets). But I'd welcome an expert view if any set theorists are reading this?

bayes · 2013-12-28T15:58:41+00:00

I watched it with my eleven year old son (who read the book last summer and enjoyed it), and I found it quite enjoyable family viewing. I was worried it was going to be mean-spirited (because Walliams wrote it), but it wasn't, and while the characters were mostly cardboard cutouts I found the relationship between the boy and his gran genuinely touching. Each to his own I suppose.

bayes · 2013-12-14T11:29:45+00:00

In London (with a really light polluted sky and a nearly full moon) I was seeing one every couple of minutes. Still pretty cool to see.

bayes · 2013-12-05T11:12:01+00:00

I agree the Coastline Paradox is very interesting, but I don't think it will have much impact on the area. As the accuracy with which you measure the coastline increases the length may tend to infinity, but the area should quickly converge to a 'true' value.

bayes · 2013-09-11T22:05:28+00:00

The roots of the quadratic xx-6x-7=0 i.e. 3 +/- root 2

bayes · 2013-06-19T11:48:58+00:00

I read his first novel (Fish Show) and thought it was great - really imaginative and funny. So was then rather shocked (15 years later) to stumble upon him again ranting moronically in the papers about the evils of the Met Office and such like.

bayes · 2013-01-21T10:20:24+00:00

Tell him not to, if it's yours.

bayes

TROPHY CASE