I'm struggling to recall this word. If I recall correctly, it's of French origin. My search has so far been fruitless.   The nearest equivalent I came up with was the idiom  but that is obviously English and not a single word.     pull strings / wires   (a) to use one's influence or authority, usually in secret, in order to bring about a desired result.   (b) to gain or attempt to gain one's objectives by means of influential friends, associates, etc.:      He had his uncle pull strings to get him a promotion.
I’m looking for a word I’m struggling to remember that refers to a job or role which is inconsequential and usually created in order to install someone in a company, not based on their merit.  An example would be creating a vague new role for a friend’s son. The word I’m looking for refers to the actual job itself - it’s a noun that would replace the ‘job’ (e.g “they put so and so’s cousin in a ____”).   I believe the word may not be a strictly formal or technical word but I don’t think it was slang.
I am new to Stack Exchange. I know there is a lot of discussion sites for Stack Exchange. I would like to know about there were any Stack Exchange site available for discussing and solving personal psychological problems. Gapless superconductivity I don't understand what is meant by &quot;gapless superconductors&quot;. As far as I know, the superconducting gap is necessairy for both zero resistance and the Meissner effect, the two hallmarks of superconductivity. So, what does it mean to have gapless superconductivity and how does it work? Thanks in advance, Greetings Why is everybody so concerned about etc/passwd? What term describes a non-offensive substitute for a swear word?   For example, Battlestar Galactica used frack instead of fuck. Another example is the use of snap instead of shit.  I think I may have heard a single-word term used to describe such alternate non-offensive words before, but I don’t know what it is. Proof that a sum of Bernoulli rvs has Binomial distribution Let $\{X_n, n \geq 1\}$ be iid Bernoulli random variables with $\Pr(X_1 = 1) = p = 1 - \Pr(X_1 = 0)$ and let $S_n = \sum\limits_{i=1}^n X_i$ be the number of successes in $n$ trials. Show $S_n$ has a binomial distribution by the following methods:  1.) Prove for $n\geq0,$ $1\leq{k}\leq{n+1}$  $$\Pr(S_{n+1} = k) = p\Pr(S_n = k - 1) + q\Pr(S_n = k)\text{ where }q = 1-p.$$  2.) Solve the recursion using generating functions.  For the first method, I think I need to use convolution of $n + 1$ Bernoulli rvs, but I cannot immediately see the progression. For the second method, I don't exactly understand how to proceed either. This is problem 1.2 from Resnick's Adventures in Stochastic Processes. My 3 years old doesn't tell me when he needs to use the bathroom My son is 3 years old and doesn't tell me when he needs to use the bathroom. It has been 5 months now that I took his diaper off him. I just do not know what I should do.  Should I put a diaper on him again?  I mean, is this normal? Please help. I get frustrated sometimes.  He doesn't want to potty at all! I did train him before but now that he understands, he doesn't want to go to potty. Spring Data JPA Update @Query not updating? How do I grep for lines containing either of two words, but not both? I'm trying to use grep to show only lines containing either of the two words, if only one of them appears in the line, but not if they are in the same line.  So far I've tried  grep pattern1 | grep pattern2 | ... but didn't get the result I expected. Why doesn't my question show up? is invisible in the  section, but visible in the  section. What gives? What is the "correct" way of embedding text into math mode? Let's say I have a class that has a member called data which is a list.    I want to be able to initialize the class with, for example, a filename (which contains data to initialize the list) or with an actual list.  What's your technique for doing this?  Do you just check the type by looking at __class__?  Is there some trick I might be missing?  I'm used to C++ where overloading by argument type is easy. I am rendering my scene with only one sample but all the renders of the same picture have a different seed value. How can I combine them correctly? I wrote a java-program that loads all the images and takes the average pixel color for each pixel of the images. Is that a correct way of combining the images? It doesn't reduce the noise very much so I am not happy with it. What can I do? How to configure @SkipValidation by XML configuration in Struts 2 Which one should be used?      To me, it makes no difference, but I'm not really sure why.   vs     For me, it makes no difference, but I'm not really sure why. Which Harry Potter works are considered canon? There are many different Harry Potter works including:   books short stories movies card games video games toys amusement parks web content   Which ones are considered to be canon? Extruding surface while keeping the shape here is the picture of what I would like to get(example nr. 2). I need the edge frame to be same in width and length. Also the extrusion is on surface (without depth) I tried extruding region, but it did not give me the result I wanted.   I know I could just adjust the scale and do it manually, but that would be eyeballing without achievign accuracy. I would like to know if it is possible to extrude or inset while keeping the shape (even edge space) I've recently set up the compiz cube again, and I was very happy to find that that flickering window glitch is gone! However, the cube reflection and deformation plugins are also gone.  I am running a fresh 12.10 install, and I have every compiz plugin package installed (including compiz-plugins-extra, which supposedly contains everything that compiz-fusion-plugins-extra package used to have), but those two plugins are still missing. I haven't been able to find anyone with the same problem.   Any ideas? (thanks!) How can I get free or trial ExactTarget instance Bonferroni adjustment in SPSS - what does it do? Calculating residue of pole of order $2$ Is there a good way to compute the residue of $f(z)=\dfrac{1+z}{1-\sin z}$ at $z=\pi/2$, which is a pole of order $2$?  Using the residue calculation formula yields  $$\text{Res}_{z=\pi/2}f(z)=\lim_{z\rightarrow\pi/2}\dfrac{d}{dz}\left(\left(z-\dfrac\pi2\right)^2f(z)\right)$$  The derivative is quite ugly, and calculating the limit requires L'Hospital probably twice (or more). The calculation is just too much. Is there a better way?