I'm trying to remember a story or series with a certain non-human species:   I believe they were roughly centaur-like, but IIRC their appearance did not feature prominently. Particularly I want to say they had two hands and four hooved legs. They may also have been carnivores. Females were "normal size" (i.e. human size to horse size), but males were very small (smaller than domestic cats). They were prolific breeders. Young were dropped and left to fend for themselves. Females carry "husbands" in pouches (under their arms, IIRC). A male becomes a notable character when he takes a human female as his "wife". In particular, he helps her out and tries to take care of her, and in some instances uses his small size to advantage (e.g. secretly scouting). This particular male may have been unusually intelligent. He could talk, but IIRC was slightly child-like. (Females of the species are human-comparable.) The work (though I'm not sure if it was the species as a whole, or just this particular male) specifically used the terms "husband" and "wife" describing the relation between the characters.   Anyone recall what work this was? (I think it was either a full-length book, or series of full-length books.)
I read a novel where several enemy alien species were stranded together on an interdicted planet.  They had to recycle everything and keep hidden. By "keep hidden" I mean make sure there is no evidence of their presence visible from space. They recycled everything and lived in camouflaged dwellings.  The younger generation was building a mixed culture community until the older home species showed up.  One of the alien races had a body made of rings or donuts of gases that mixed to express itself. Members of this species could be taken over and controlled by rings transferred from another member of the species.  The book may be 20 years old or more.
I want to say "someone (or something) intends to help, but instead it makes things worse". Is there any succinct expression or phrase for this?  Thanks. Proof of "the continuous image of a connected set is connected" None of the existing questions is exactly answering my question so I'm posting a new question, but feel free to refer me to some already answered question!   In Rudin Theorem 4.22, we know that      If $f$ is a continuous mapping of a metric space $X$ into a metric space $Y$, and $E$ is a connected subset of $X$, then $f(E)$ is connected.    In the proof, we started with consider $f(E) = A \cup B$, where $A$ and $B$ are nonempty separated subsets. Then put $G = E \cap f^{-1}(A)$ and $H = E \cap f^{-1}(B)$. Then Rudin is claiming that $E = G \cup H$. I'm a little suspicious about this. What if $f$ is non-surjective, then $f^{-1}(A) \cup f^{-1}(B)$  is only a proper subset of $E$? Is there a property of $f$ being continuous that forces $f$ to be 1-1? SQL Server equivalent to Oracle's CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW In Oracle, I can re-create a view with a single statement, as shown here:  CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW MY_VIEW AS SELECT SOME_FIELD FROM SOME_TABLE WHERE SOME_CONDITIONS   As the syntax implies, this will drop the old view and re-create it with whatever definition I've given.  Is there an equivalent in MSSQL (SQL Server 2005 or later) that will do the same thing? Which arena do free and crown chests use when determining the cards you will get? If I am in arena X when I collect my tenth crown for the crown chest, or a free chest becomes unlocked, then proceed to climb to arena X+1 before opening the chests, which arena will be used to determine the cards I get? Will it use the arena I was in when I unlocked the chests in, or the arena I opened them in? Are there surface-mount pin header footprints for KiCAD? I'm designing a small module that breaks out a DIP SPI EEPROM to a 2x5 pin header socket(more info here: ). I want to mount the socket on the end of the board, with the pins lying parallel to the board.  I think two 5x1 surface-mount header footprints, on both sides of the board right near the end would do the job. Trouble is, KiCAD doesn't come with such a footprint(if it does, I haven't found it yet). Where might I find one? If one doesn't exist, that's OK; I'll have a shot at making my own. What's the best way to convert a string to an enumeration value in C#? I have an HTML select tag containing the values of an enumeration. When the page is posted, I want to pick up the value (which will be in the form of a string) and convert it to the corresponding enumeration value. In an ideal world, I could do something like this: StatusEnum MyStatus = StatusEnum.Parse(&quot;Active&quot;);  but that isn't a valid code. What is the difference between g++ and gcc? What is the difference between g++ and gcc?  Which one of them should be used for general c++ development? Does David not understand that humans can't live that long? In the movie AI: Artificial Intelligence, they say David's mom is dead because 2000 years have passed. Does David not understand that humans can't live that long? I have a custom .desktop file: [Desktop Entry] Type=Application Terminal=false Icon[en_US]=/home/alex/bin/idea-IC-173.4127.27/bin/idea.png Name[en_US]=IntelliJ Exec=/home/alex/bin/idea-IC-173.4127.27/bin/idea.sh Name=IntelliJ Icon=/home/alex/bin/idea-IC-173.4127.27/bin/idea.png  Output of ls -lha .local/share/applications/intellij.desktop: -rwx--x--x 1 alex alex 248 Dez 30 10:54 .local/share/applications/intellij.desktop  Answers posted to a previous question () don't work for me. I can find this launcher in Activities and I can double click on that file and IntelliJ will start. Nevertheless, I cannot add this launcher as a favorite to the dock. The option does not show up. I just notice it now as I am new to Illustrator.  When I am in RGB mode, blending transparency seems to be easier as mode such as Screen, Multiply or Overlay looks good naturally.  If I switch the document mode to CMYK then the image is getting messed up.  I'd like to know, if CMYK is not ideal for blending options? How to append multiple lines of text to a file? I am trying to solve an integral in $k$-space where I want to calculate the ratio of the average energy of an arbitrary electronic band ($E(k)=k^n)$ to the square of average group velocity of electrons($v_g   = k^{n-1})$ approximately in the form of this expression given by $$L=\frac{\frac{\sum_{\mathbf{k}}k^{n}}{\sum_{\mathbf{k}}1}}{\left(\frac{\sum_{\mathbf{k}}k^{n-1}}{\sum_{\mathbf{k}}1}\right)^2}\;.$$  Now, I want to do this for $d$-dimensions, so I convert this sum to integral.  $$L=\frac{\dfrac{\int_{0}^{k_f}k^{n} d^d k}{\int_{0}^{k_f}1d^d k}}{\left(\dfrac{\int_{0}^{k_f}k^{n-1}d^d k}{\int_{0}^{k_f}1d^d k}\right)^2}$$ where $d^dk  = \dfrac{d \pi^{d/2}}{\Gamma(\frac{d}{2}+1)}k^{d-1}dk$ is the volume element in $d$-dimensional space.  I want to get a simple expression for $L$ and how it depends with $k_f,n$ and $d$. any physical insight into this integral could also be helpful. In which situations is it OK to omit articles in short sentences? Recently, in many new online software I often see that developers omit articles in short sentences, especially on action buttons or tooltips.     For instance: "Add new task" (not "Add a new task"), "Create project" (not "Create a project"), but often in the same software I can see "Make a copy". What are situations it can be justified? "[somebody]'s theme" vs "[somebody] theme" — Saxon genitive dillema When is it required to use 's in phrases like below (examples taken from Wikipedia)?   James Bond theme 007 theme Boba Fett motif Droids motif Yoda's theme ...   Are there any rules for eliding Saxon genitive?  How does the situation change if we have something instead of somebody? let's say that I have a following file structure:  ~/DIR1 -fileA -DIR2 --fileB   Then, being in ~, I run this script:  cp DIR1 NEWDIR2   And just an error happens:  cp: omitting directory ‘DIR1’   I understand why nothing from DIR1 gets copied (because I didn't use -r switch that would enforce recursion) but I'd expect the DIR1 folder itself copied to NEWDIR2 (so practically a creation of a new "NEWDIR2" in ~ or a creation of ~/NEWDIR2/DIR1).  Could someone explain to me why is my expectation wrong? CDF of absolute value of difference in random variables Prove that $\sin(2A)+\sin(2B)+\sin(2C)=4\sin(A)\sin(B)\sin(C)$ when $A,B,C$ are angles of a triangle Prove that $\sin(2A)+\sin(2B)+\sin(2C)=4\sin(A)\sin(B)\sin(C)$ when $A,B,C$ are angles of a triangle   This question came up in a miscellaneous problem set I have been working on to refresh my memory on several topics I did earlier this year. I have tried changing $4\sin(A)\sin(B)\sin(C)$ to  $$4\sin(B+C)\sin(A+C)\sin(A+B)$$ by making substitutions by reorganizing $A+B+C=\pi$. I then did the same thing to the other side to get $$-2(\sin(B+C)\cos(B+C)+\sin(A+C)\cos(A+C)+\sin(A+B)\cos(A+B))$$ and then tried using the compound angle formula to see if i got an equality. However the whole thing became one huge mess and I didn't seem to get any closer to the solution. I am pretty sure there is some simpler way of proving the equality, but I can't seem to figure it out. Maybe there is a geometric interpretation or maybe it can be done using just algebra and trig. Any hint's would be appreciated (I would prefer an algebraic approach, but it would be nice to see some geometric proofs as well) Let $x$ be a real number such that $x &gt; 0$. Prove that x +$\frac {1} {4x}  ≥ 1$.   Not really sure on the correct way to approach it/is valid and could use some help.  Answer:  Proof Strategy: Proof by cases:   $x = 1$ $x &gt; 1$ $x &lt; 1$   --  Case 1: $x = 1$  $x+\frac1{4x}$  $= (1) + 1/(4(1))$  $= 1.25 \ge 1$  Case is true  Case 2: $x &gt; 1$, in this case $x = 2$.  $x+\frac1{4x} $  $= (2) + 1/(4(2))$  $= 2.125 \ge 1$  Case is true  Case 3: $x &lt; 1$, in this case $x = 0.5$.  $= (0.5) + 1/(4(0.5))$  $= 1  \ge 1$  Case is true  Since all possible cases were satisfied therefore $x+\frac1{4x} \ge 1 $ when $x &gt; 0$. Superluminal neutrinos I was quite surprised to read this all over the news today:     Elusive, nearly massive subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light.   &mdash;  Apparently a CERN/Gran Sasso team measured a faster-than-light speed for neutrinos.   Is this even remotely possible? If so, would it be a real violation of Lorentz invariance or an "" effect?   The ; a webcast is/was planned .  News conference video Editing polygons simultaneously in ArcMap? I have two polygons:    How can I reshape both Polygon 1 and Polygon 2 at the same time?  Will the area of each polygon change automatically in the table after reshaping?  I'm using ArcMap 10.1.