Comparable with what exactly

To a pint of beer? A solid gold toilet seat? Or, just possibly, to other mountain bike brakes.

Ok, so you think counting is physics?

No it’s an example. Of course you can use mathematics for a multitide of different things, that doesn’t make mathematics a model of the real world though.

well, if you call it an axiom of course it has to be ‘true’ however it fails to represent what happens in the real world where adding one thing to another of the same does not always give you two of those things

Exactly, because it has nothing to do with the real world. It’s a formal system.

Ok… what are we using them for then?

See previous comment regarding physics.

You are contradicting yourself. 1+1=2 as a mathematical statement is axiomatically true (depending on your axioms). You are quite right that the numbers don’t exist in themselves, but they are explicitly not an attempt to model anything real.

Oh no it isn’t. etc.

I’m not, but now I’m wondering why you think I am

Why do you think I’d think that? It’s a pretty simple bit of text to parse, physics is an attempt to model the real world, maths isn’t.

some of them are very good but they’re plain uncompetitive on price, and not the most reliable.

Actually they are pretty comparable on price, and in my experience very reliable.

Maths is just a model which attempts to explain the real world

You seem to be confusing maths and physics.

How anyone needs 3l of water in two hours is beyond me

Here’s an idea, maybe, just maybe, not everyone wearing a camelbak is carrying around 3 litres of water. It’s not a legal requirement to fill them up to the brim…

very fierce-looking sheep

I don’t know about fierce, but they are certainly some of the ugliest sheep I have ever seen! Not that I make a habit of checking out the relative attractiveness of sheep, and anyone who says I do is lying.

It’s because most roadies are fat middle-aged biffers who think spending a grand on a set of wheels will make them faster…

Yes well done, they are flogging some old stock off cheap, hardly makes formula brakes cheap in general.

And the other is that for equivalent-performance brakes, the Hopes cost enormously more in the first place. That pays for an awful lot of replacement calipers.

Yes I’m sure 11 quid is an enormous amount in Northwind land, doesn’t buy you a whole lot of calipers though. 🙄

So I guess it’s just as well Formula have high performance low price brakes with full spares availability, so that you don’t have to make that awkward choice

Do you live in some bizarre alternate reality? Formula brakes are hardly low price! Not conviced by the claims of high performance either having experienced some K24’s…

Hmm, but there are different types of things in existence yes? Some you might be happy to pay for in general, and others you might prefer people to pay for when they use them?

Why should I contribute to schools when I don’t have children who attend?

TV’s not the same as schools and hospitals though is it?

Or schools?

Yes, good point, the ability to watch eastenders without adverts is next on my list of essential public services right after primary education.

That’s right, because the Communications Act 2003 legally requires you to hold a license if you watch any broadcast telly.

Yes, I know how it works thanks. My point was the difference between the legal and moral obligations.

Pretty sure that owning a TV capable of receiving terrestrial TV is the requirement for paying the license, not actually watching it.

Nope, completely wrong I’m afraid. It’s nothing to do with owning any equipment, you have to actually receive the signal.

so morally speaking they are still free-loading (to me anyway).

It’s not a moral question when one party is hanging a legal club over your head. Morally I might be happy to watch some ITV, for example, without forking out for a licence, but legally I can’t.

So. Please do enlighten me.

You need a licence to receive broadcast TV signals, that’s it. Owning a TV is fine, watching dvd’s, playing games, watching iplayer are all ok.

Fortunately, you don’t need a licence to own a TV.

The way I look at it is like this, the BBC is like a bus service

If you mean, like a bus service that extorts money from you on threat of prosecution even if you intended on walking instead of getting the bus, then yes.

In my day, (when it was all fields round here, young man…) we rode out to the Peak, did the routes that everyone raves about, then rode home.

WTF has this got to do with footpaths? Is it ok to ride them, just so long as you don’t drive to get there? Next you’ll be ranting about camelbaks and golf…

It tends to be people who ride in one small area, who start to want to ride on footpaths because they see stuff that they haven’t ridden and think that they can/should/will ride there.

Nah, in my experience almost everyone is happy to ride on some footpaths some of the time. Locals a bit more as they are more familiar with the footpaths available.

Pah, buffs are for amateurs, get yourself one of these.

No way! The natural condition of a mountain bike is to be covered in mud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

55*2 = 110 ?

but I think it’s obvious, even just from this thread that there’s been a shift in attitudes/culture towards the whole coaching thing

It’s certainly becoming more and more popular. It’s relatively inexpensive and generally seems to be pretty effective, so perhaps not surprising.

maybe ive stereotyped what i think is your average skills course attendee

Yes, I think you’ll find you have.

It was fully timed from start to finish, so effectively one long race.

Great event, really enjoyed the riding, especially on the saturday. Thanks to all the organisers and marshalls, etc.

Heaton moor to Hayfield is easily do-able in 90 minutes, nearly all off road. Naturally the more time you have the further you can get into the peaks. Alternatively you can get the train out and ride back.

Ask your teacher to explain ‘oversimplification’.

Ahaha, a joke so funny you had to use it twice. When you are finished being a patronising throbber, you could explain what else you actually need other than a bike?

The middle-classisation of mountain biking is interesting; it is far more exclusive in the sense of excluding those who don’t have the income, and the disposable income to participate, than in terms of obvious gender problems.

That’s why it most closely resembles golf in terms of the class of it’s participants, their income, the concentration on equipment and clothing, the need to be able to travel to do it, and the white male core group of players.

Rubbish. All you need is a bike, everything else is peripheral.

You’ll do metaphors next term.

You think mountain biking is a metaphor for golf? Really?

It’s golf, over a slightly wider area, with even more ridiculous outfits.

Yes, it’s almost exactly like golf. Except for the lack of hitting a little ball into holes. And all the cycling. Other than that, practically identical.

Don’t buy magazines then, problem solved.

Being British we’ve replaced riding around with maps by a nice queue on trails you could ride for fee

You can ride around with a map for free as well! And pick your own route, length of ride, pace, use of footpaths, etc…

so many planetary lifecycles will be about the same point

For values of about equal to +/- hundreds of millions of years, maybe.

You have to read the paper.

You cannot estimate the validity of any of the experimental work that the statistical study is based upon by reading that paper, so I’m not sure what you imagine anyone would achieve by doing so.

Also, she is a well respected statistics researcher.

The stats aren’t the issue.