Can I create a statement in python 2.7?  Something similar to the print statement, that it's like a function, but gets the parameters without parenthesis.
Can you add new statements (like print, raise, with) to Python's syntax?  Say, to allow..  mystatement "Something"   Or,  new_if True:     print "example"   Not so much if you should, but rather if it's possible (short of modifying the python interpreters code)
My system is not dual-boot, I run a standard Ubuntu desktop system "on the metal" (I think running it in a VM is the same).  Pressing c while booting does not cause the GRUB menu to appear (which I believe it does for a dual-boot system).  How can I get the GRUB-menu to present itself on a single-boot system? Proof that the real numbers are countable: Help with why this is wrong I was just thinking about this recently, and I thought of a possible bijection between the natural numbers and the real numbers.  First, take the numbers between zero and one, exclusive.  The following sequence of real numbers is suggested so that we have bijection.    0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 0.01, 0.02, ... , 0.09, 0.10, 0.11, ... , 0.99, 0.001, 0.002, ... , 0.999, 0.0001, etc.  Obviously, this includes repeats, but this set is countable.  Therefore, the set of all numbers between zero and one is a subset of the above countable set, and is thus countable.  Then we simply extend this to all real numbers and all the whole numbers themselves, and since the real numbers, as demonstrated above, between any two whole numbers is countable, the real numbers are the union of countably many countable sets, and thus the real numbers are countable.    Please help me with this.  I understand the diagonalization argument by Cantor, but I am curious specifically about this proof which I thought of and its strengths and flaws.  Thanks. Privilege progress indicator interferes with (old) Stack Exchange dropdown I know I'm late with this; this could be the last bug report about the old topbar. But the text on the privilege progress indicator (on your profile page) appears above the dropdown menu coming from the Stack Exchange button, as can be seen in the picture below.     Changing the z-index property of .s-progress-bar._badge .-info, .s-progress-bar._privilege .-info from 2 to 1 solves the problem.    The new menu seems to have a high enough z-index so that this is no longer a problem anymore: Is it safe to use a voltage divider for Arduino and DC motor controller? Under Wild Shape it says "assume the shape of a beast" you have seen before. Does this mean they can only transform into creatures that have the beast type, such as bear, wolf, crocodile, etc.? Or can they turn into things with other types, like dragon, monstrosity, humanoid, fiend, etc.? How to know that your machine learning problem is hopeless? Imagine a standard machine-learning scenario:     You are confronted with a large multivariate dataset and you have a   pretty blurry understanding of it. What you need to do is to make   predictions about some variable based on what you have. As usual, you   clean the data, look at descriptive statistics, run some models,   cross-validate them etc., but after several attempts, going back and   forth and trying multiple models nothing seems to work and your   results are miserable. You can spend hours, days, or weeks on such a   problem...   The question is: when to stop? How do you know that your data actually is hopeless and all the fancy models wouldn't do you any more good than predicting the average outcome for all cases or some other trivial solution?  Of course, this is a forecastability issue, but as far as I know, it is hard to assess forecastability for multivariate data before trying something on it. Or am I wrong?   Disclaimer: this question was inspired by this one  that did not attract much attention. It would be nice to have detailed answer to such question for reference. I've been reading , and I would like to know why the Lasso provides variable selection and ridge regression doesn't.  Both methods minimize the residual sum of squares and have a constraint on the possible values of the parameters $\beta$. For the Lasso, the constraint is $||\beta||_1 \le t$, whereas for ridge it is $||\beta||_2 \le t$, for some $t$.  I've seen the diamond vs ellipse picture in the book and I have some intuition as for why the Lasso can hit the corners of the constrained region, which implies that one of the coefficients is set to zero. However, my intuition is rather weak, and I'm not convinced. It should be easy to see, but I don't know why this is true.  So I guess I'm looking for a mathematical justification, or an intuitive explanation of why the contours of the residual sum of squares are likely to hit the corners of the  $||\beta||_1$ constrained region (whereas this situation is unlikely if the constraint is $||\beta||_2$). What would happen if you used a dead person's hair in Polyjuice Potion? How do you use Batch for send more than 10 emails? Most people know the famous equation:    What were his steps of thinking for this equation that helped us discover so much about our world? Why could centering independent variables change the main effects with moderation? Seeing strange things in light I have noticed that if you look directly at tubelight (I have only white ones in my home) and close your eyes little, you see little random shaped colourless things sometimes with slow speed and sometimes with falling down.   They are shaped like circles with something in between and in chains of random length.   My father has also seen them. So, I am sure I am not imagining things. What the hell are they? Is there a "theirs" version of "git merge -s ours"? When merging topic branch "B" into "A" using git merge, I get some conflicts. I know all the conflicts can be solved using the version in "B".  I am aware of git merge -s ours. But what I want is something like git merge -s theirs.   Why doesn't it exist? How can I achieve the same result after the conflicting merge with existing git commands? (git checkout every unmerged file from B)  UPDATE: The "solution" of just discarding anything from branch A (the merge commit point to B version of the tree) is not what I am looking for. How do I deal with 'sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner'? Whenever I try to install or remove something using terminal it gives the following error message:  bluebird@bluebird:~$ sudo apt-get update sudo: /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner sudo: fatal error, unable to load plugins bluebird@bluebird:~$ sudo apt-get remove vlc sudo: /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner sudo: fatal error, unable to load plugins bluebird@bluebird:~$ sudo apt-get install apt-file sudo: /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner sudo: fatal error, unable to load plugins How to configure a firewall that only allows a few webpages and dropbox and U1 services? Add something to crontab programmatically (over ssh) I have a deployment script, it must add something to a user crontab (trigger a script that clean logs every XXX days), however this must only be done during the first deployment, or when it needs to be updated.  (I can run xxx.py deploy env or xxx.py update env)  so I have to do this:  Check if my cronJob already exist Put my cronJob if it does not already exist or update my cronjob if one of the parameter of the command is different   I don't see how to add/check/remove something to the crontab without using crontab -e or editing the crontab file (download it, rewrite it, re-upload it)  PS : this is a user specific cronjob, "webadmin" is going to do it and he should not use sudo to do it. Reference — What does this symbol mean in PHP? We just had a scenario where the enemy set up a 'death trap' with arrow slits covering a corridor, allowing them to pop in, shoot, then pop out -- all without actually entering the corridor.  Which was fine in and of itself, until my cleric ran through the corridor at top speed, with Spirit Guardians up.  The DM and I discussed it, and as far as we can tell the spell doesn't require a line of sight and isn't blocked by walls -- just being 'in range' gets you the damage.  So I wiped out an entire encounter with one well placed third level spell.  In and of itself, that doesn't seem too OP -- at level 5/6 a third level spell is a pretty big investment!  But it still seems a bit odd that I can do it without even LOS.  Are there any rules I'm missing? For wall-sized graphics and large banners (e.g. 3m × 5m), what is an acceptable PPI for print? As I understand it 300 ppi is the typical for 'small' artworks (esp. for clean text resolution). However, for small artworks, the audience usually engages at a much closer distance. Therefore, in the interests of keeping a bitmap file down to a reasonable size, can you get away with a much-reduced PPI for a large format/banner print? breaking of output into new lines