Which of the following is correct?  What matters are people. What matters is people. What matter are people.  Thank you.
In my , I provided the following, problematic,  wording (especially bold italic), and I need help to better understand this issue so I can fix my answer:1          The thing is the books. (Reduced form of Sentence 2.a)         Fundamentally, Sentence 2.a (the so-called "correct" answer), is grammatically defective. Recall there is another grammatical rule: the subject and subject's complement should match in number.    A clarification is needed here. I am not suggesting here, in this EL&amp;U question, that there is any such singular grammatical rule as indicated in the quote above.  The quote continues as follows:     The reduced sentence makes the disagreement between the subject's and complement's plurality obvious. What is one to do? Language is linear and we know "The thing is X" is better than "The thing are X", so we go with the former, which is the subject-verb agreement rule. But what is "the books" then? It must be thought of as a collective noun, even if it doesn't look or feel like one. Forcing something to be a collective noun is related to the idea of notional agreement.   Others noted that grammatically defective is too strongly worded.  There is no such "grammatical rule" for subject/complement agreement.  Please help me understand/improve upon my line of thought here.  I'm stating that Sentence 2.1 presents a fundamental "conflict" or "error" (however one might define error) at some level (morphological, syntax, grammatical, semantic):     The thing is the books.  (Or, "The thing is the objects.")   Based on the "obvious" morphosyntactic plurality conflict, the above sentence feels so wrong that I think many native speakers would think it "simply" grammatically incorrect. However, @F.E. gives counter examples:     And here are some more grammatical examples, where the number of subject and predicative complement don't agree: "They were a problem to us all", "That so-called work of art is simply four pieces of driftwood glued together" (CGEL, page 254-5). As CGEL says: "What is required is semantic compatibility, not syntactic agreement . . .". There are more examples on page 512: "The only thing we need now is some new curtains", "The major asset of the team is its world-class opening bowlers", "Our neighbors are a nuisance", "This gadget is five different tools in one".   I think all the examples given above can be explained as notional agreement.    Question 1: If we explain this phenomena in terms of notional vs syntactic agreement, where does "grammatically correct/incorrect" fit in?  Question 2: Can a simple sentence such as "The thing is the objects." be grammatically incorrect while more complex sentences such as "The thing is four pieces of driftwood glued together." be grammatically correct?  (The answer, in my mind, must be no; this is my conundrum.)  Question 3: Would it be better to say that Sentence 2.a has a low level of (linguistic) ?   Question 4: How about a low level of  and that it's semantically difficult to be (linguistically) ?    Question 5: Do we simply draw a hard line and say "The thing is the objects." is 100% grammatically correct?  I didn't particularly like this option based on intuitive notions of "grammatically correct".    1. Please help me and be kind; I'm trying to improve my understanding. I'm looking for cool, objective advice on how to look at this.  I numbered my questions so they can be easily referenced, if desired.  My preference is the final answer would sufficiently answer all the questions, but of course that can be done explicitly or implicitly.
Why is saltatory conduction in myelinated axons faster than continuous conduction in unmyelinated axons? How does spacing apart sodium and potassium channels allow the action potential to travel faster down the axon? This is the reason always cited for saltatory conduction and myelination, but my mental model of conduction tells me that the density of ion gates along the axon should not affect the speed of the AP.   To illustrate, consider a myelinated axon. A wave of Na$^+$ from action potential site 1, a node of Ranvier, rushes into and quickly diffuses down the axon. (It travels in both directions, but backwards is still in the refractory period.) It diffuses through the myelinated region, its concentration always diminishing. Before it attenuates too much, however, it happens upon node of Ranvier 2, where it triggers another action potential. A new wave of Na$^+$ rushes in and the cycle repeats. This should be plain so far.  Now imagine that there is actually a node of Ranvier halfway between node 1 and 2, called node 1.5. The wave of Na$^+$, on its way to node 2, happens to trigger an action potential at node 1.5, from which a wave of Na$^+$ pours in and either boosts the original wave or replaces it by taking its momentum. Now the reinforced wave proceeds to node 2 and triggers it just as soon as, perhaps even sooner than, if node 1.5 had not existed. Repeatedly insert nodes at higher densities until the situation is simply lack of myelination, and we conclude that unmyelinated axons can transmit an action-potential-triggering wave of Na+ as fast as or faster than a myelinated one.  In short, my point of confusion is this: I cannot see how a higher density of gated channels can possibly slow down the wavefront of Na+ that triggers action potentials. If anything, the additional influxes of Na+ should speed up the all-important wavefront, assuming that new waves really "either boost the original wave or replace it by taking its momentum", and also assuming that the wavefront of Na$^+$ is really all-important for signal transmission, and also assuming that the mere presence of (voltage?) gated ion channels in the membrane does not significantly retard the wavefront.  But the usual explanation for why saltatory conduction is faster than continuous conduction (a fact I hope is empirically and unambiguously established) relies on the putative slowing effect of ion channels on the signal fore. Please explain this effect in more detail, if it is not a misconception. Given Ohm's law, how can current increase if voltage increases, given fixed resistance? According to Ohm's law, $V=IR$ (voltage equals current times resistance).  So if the voltage increases, then the current increases provided that the resistance remains constant.  I know that Voltage or potential difference means work done per unit positive charge in bringing that charge from one point to another.  So according to Ohm's law, if the work done per unit charge increases then current will increase. How can this be true? Point out my mistakes. Adding user to a group - Why had to reboot? I was not able to access the VirtualBox shared folder, so I made the user part of the vboxsf group. But, still not able to access it. Rebooting the guest resolved the problem. Is it a bug? A reboot is not required to add a user to a group.   sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf praveensripati   There was similar query .  I am using 11.10 and don't remember seeing similar behavior in 11.04. Port Forwarding to a VMware Workstation Virtual Machine How can I join these two meshes in a proper way? I know I can Ctrl J to join them, but how can I do so without having overlapping faces? Many of the UK visa refusals we see here share a common pattern and the prevailing reasons refer to V 4.2 (a) and (c).    I do understand that, while the applicants may describe very different individual circumstances, there's a consistent pattern and, broadly, fall into specific categories:    Credibility (lifestyle, lack of ties, visit history, lies &amp; omissions) Funding (insufficient funds, provenance of funds, funds parking) Sponsorship (family, friends, employer)   Question: What most commonly triggers a UK visa refusal where V 4.2 (a) and (c) are given as the grounds?  Secondarily: Given that there is a clear pattern, to what extent are these refusals predictable? Does sponsorship make a difference? Is there a set of personal circumstances, however abstract, where a refusal is all but guaranteed? For example, why do those we see here on TSE who sought entry for the PLAB or British Army appear to be refused with a common theme? Is there a uniform shortcoming or is it just discrimination?   PLAB: What is about applications for a visa, for the purpose of sitting the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) exam, that seem to invite refusals. After all, the test is given so that international medical graduates can show that they qualify to practise medicine in the UK. The first part, PLAB 1, can be taken in centres outside of the UK. However, PLAB 2 can be taken only in the UK. Why can't you can't get a visa just to sit the exam, promising that you'll leave immediately after?    British Army: Since Commonwealth citizens are eligible to apply online to join, even those who don't reside in the UK, why is it so difficult to get a visa just to attend an interview to see whether you are suitable? Even with an invitation from the Army, such visa applications seem to be unsuccessful. Isn't a career in the British Army a valid reason?     Lastly:  After such a refusal, what approaches would increase the chance of a successful application? Running Synaptic I get the following error message:  E: The package hl1440lpr needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it. E: Internal error opening cache (1). Please report.   Upon accepting the message, Synaptic quits. Let $a_1,a_2,a_3,\ldots$ be reals. Prove that if $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} a_n^{2}$ converges, then so does $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac {a_n}{n}$.   For this I have shown the case for when $ a_n^{2} \le\frac {|a_n|}{n}$ $\Rightarrow$ $ |a_n|\le\frac {1}{n}$ $\Rightarrow$ $\frac {|a_n|}{n} \le \frac{1}{n^{2}}$ and we know that $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac {1}{n^{2}}$ converges and hence $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac {a_n}{n}$ converges by the comparison test. Now considering $ a_n^{2} \ge\frac {|a_n|}{n}$ $\Rightarrow$ $\frac {|a_n|}{n} \le a_n^{2}$ $\rightarrow$ combining the two cases for any n we have: $\frac {|a_n|}{n}\le\frac{1}{n^{2}}+a_n^{2}$ Hence using the comparion test again we know that $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} a_n^{2}$ converges and $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac {1}{n^{2}}$ converges hence the sum converges so we can conclude that $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac {a_n}{n}$ is absoluetly convergent $\Rightarrow$ convergent.  Not to sure if this is correct, any help would be much appreciated, many thanks. The title kind of says it all. Is it possible to replace C# with C++ on a game using Unity? What should happen if a logo I made is similar to another? Note: This is a canonical post created so that we can close the many similar questions as duplicates as discussed in .   We have created a logo for a client and they love it. We've already started preparing the materials that will feature the new logo.   However, after we had created the logo, we found a logo for another company that looks eerily similar. We did not intentionally create the new logo to look like the one of the other company, in fact we didn't even know it existed beforehand, but it does regardless.  What should we do? Is this plagiarism? Can our client use the logo we have created? Should they? Or do we need to come up with another logo that's more different? Passing Javascript variable to has been, have been , had been Mars needs water and women I read this book in high school too many years ago for me to think about. Martian colonist are raiding earth's oceans for water and because of the conditions on Mars where only male children are conceived, they are also on the look out for young women as potential mates. Our main character while on a raid, bags not only a young woman but her brother as well. Returning to Mars they find that Earth has attacked Mars can't remember much more. Wrong hyperref with repeated counter I'm having an interesting problem with hyperref.  Apparently, when a counter is reset by \setcounter{mycounter}{0} then hyperref always links to the first possible instance of the counter and not the one where the respective label sits.   Check this MWE out:   % !TEX TS-program = xelatexmk \documentclass{article} \usepackage[paperwidth=6in,paperheight=3in]{geometry} \usepackage{hyperref} \hypersetup{colorlinks=true, allcolors=blue, } \newcounter{mycounter}\setcounter{mycounter}{0} \newcommand\countme{\refstepcounter{mycounter}\themycounter}  \begin{document}  First line \countme{} has some interesting text.  The second line \countme \label{onelabel} has \textbf{more} interesting text.  As we saw at line \ref{onelabel} ...  \newpage  A new page brings new numbers \setcounter{mycounter}{0}   A very different first line \countme{} has other interesting text.  The second line \countme \label{otherlabel} has \textbf{different} interesting text.  As we saw at line \ref{otherlabel} ... \end{document}   As you can see in the screenshot below, the pop up preview of the \ref on the second page doesn't refer to the second line with \label{otherlabel} but to the one on the first page (also has the tooltip "Go to page 1" -- in TeXShop).   Am I not understanding something fundamental about hyperref?      The context for all this is an environment that resets my counter to 0 at begin.  And all subsequent \refs to labels in a second or third iteration of the environment point to the very first instance of that environment, not the correct one where the label sits. How to repair a broken .EXE file association After (hopefully) scrubbing viruses out of a Windows 7 installation (after deciding not to simply run over the laptop repeatedly with my car), I've got everything almost back to normal. The only lingering issue I have is that for my non-admin users, the ".exe" file extension doesn't work. That is, clicking on the various desktop application links results in a "How do you want to open this?" dialog.  I've been through the alleged registry fixing from "winhelponline" and that had absolutely no effect.  I've tried running "assoc" for the affected users, but it reports the .exe association to be "exefile" even though it persistently does not work.  Right-clicking on a desktop icon and then choosing "start" does successfully open an application, but that's clearly a terrible situation.  For my admin user, things seem to work fine.  What do I need to do to get things working? Why does sudo change the PATH? C# compiler error: "cannot have instance field initializers in structs" Why was Sam Wilson chosen for this, but not Bucky? At the end of the Avengers: Endgame movie,      old Steve Rogers passed down his mantle of Captain America   to Sam Wilson.  Why didn't he choose Bucky for this? Bucky seems more fit for the job as he is a super soldier. What does Use an Object cover? Are groups satisfying $g=g^{-1}$ for all $g \in G$ abelian? Is the following statement true or false:  If $G$ is a group with the property that $g=g^{-1}$ for all $g \in G$, then $G$ is abelian.   I believe it is false since I know that abelian or commutative property implies that every element in $G$ must have an inverse. Thus $g\cdot g^{-1}= g^{1}\cdot g = e$. I need someone to check my attempt.