Serious Thread Time!

Have you ever wondered about
All the factors that influence computer languages? Does
Xenu from Scientology influence C syntax?

Many CS majors think so and
You should too for good reason.

All of us know that culture affects any language.
None of us can deny that.
Usually we don't see it.
Some of are smart enough to see the truth.

Presently seated at a silent moment of
Eternity, where the prospects of life and
Death now hold no course, for it is
Only when one crosses into the inevitable that a
Philosophy can truly cause them to look upon themselves,
Heralding into their hearts this one genuine
Instant of grace, to finally, in death,
Languish within themselves the
Eternal conflict of life as it was before.

More formally, a non-zero number can be used for two purposes: to describe the size of a set, or to describe the position of an element in a sequence. For finite sets and sequences it is easy to see that these two notions coincide, since for every number describing a position in a sequence we can construct a set which has exactly the right size, e.g. 3 describes the position of 'c' in the sequence <'a','b','c','d',...>, and we can construct the set {a,b,c} which has 3 elements. However when dealing with infinite sets it is essential to distinguish between the two — the two notions are in fact different for infinite sets. Considering the position aspect leads to ordinal numbers, while the size aspect is generalized by the cardinal numbers described here.

In mathematics, "infinity" is often treated as if it were a number (i.e., it counts or measures things: "an infinite number of terms") but it is not the same sort of number as the real numbers. In number systems incorporating infinitesimals, the reciprocal of an infinitesimal is an infinite number, i.e., a number greater than any real number.

This does not necessarily mean that physical infinities exist; it may mean simply that the theory is incapable of describing the situation properly. Two other examples occur in inverse-square force laws of the gravitational force equation of Newtonian gravity and Coulomb's law of electrostatics. At r=0 these equations evaluate to infinities.

Sets and proper classes. These include Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory, which has the same strength as ZFC for theorems about sets alone, and Morse-Kelley set theory and Tarski–Grothendieck set theory, both of which are stronger than ZFC.

Another approach is taken by the von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel axioms (NBG); classes are the basic objects in this theory, and a set is then defined to be a class that is an element of some other class.

This has been used as an argument against the use of the axiom of choice.

These axioms are sufficient for many proofs in elementary mathematical analysis, and are consistent with some principles, such as the Lebesgue measurability of all sets of reals, that are disprovable from the full axiom of choice.