I took a much-needed Luddite Day yesterday, shutting down the computer and spending the afternoon loafing on the couch reading. I had meant to have a new stereo installed in my car and do some Christmas shopping while I waited, but we got a moderately significant snowstorm yesterday afternoon, so I pushed the installation and shopping back to today, rather than waiting for the roads to get really bad and then trying to come home from the mall.
This means I'll be spending today doing some Christmas shopping while my car stereo is upgraded. So it'll be a day of open threads, a serious one to come a bit later, and this frivolous question:
People who go through a bowl of mixed nuts and pick out all the cashews and almonds leaving just peanuts behind are:
a) Evil heretics who should be flayed and scourged.
b) Totally sensible, and hey, could you re-fill this? All the cashews are gone.
Be sure to show your work. For extra credit, extend this to the case of people who eat all the nuts and pretzels out of a bowl of Chex Mix
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1/sqrt(2)|(a)> + 1/sqrt(2)|(b)>
It's antisocial to take the "preferable" nuts first, but entirely understandable. Evolutionarily, it's the way we're driven to be.
How evil it is is context dependent. For example, if it's just you, who cares? It's like cheating at solitaire; why does everybody think that's so bad? Cheating at solitaire is no more antisocial than, say, marrying somebody of the same gender. If it's you and somebody who prefers almonds, it's downright charitable.
But I'll assume the context is a sort of "mixer party" with a lot of people where everybody will either prefer cashews or will prefer the mix. In which case it's antisocial. But I'd write it off as a moment of human weakness rather than pure evil.
-Rob "took the question way too seriously" Knop
100% b. In fact, it's an act of altruism. The bowl of nuts was presumably provided by a host for your enjoyment and/or to fulfil their hostly perception of duty. Either way, partaking of said nuts is at worst neutral and more likely going to give said host the feeling of having succeeded, boosting their self-esteem. Hence, you should definitely eat a nut or two.
However, I dislike peanuts. So my choices are to either pick out non-peanuts, or not to eat nuts at all. Given the above, we see that 'pick out' is the only solution which benefits both parties and is hence indicated.
[Can one's tongue be in cheek while also swallowing a cashew?]
The true evil is people who put out nut mixes that feature peanuts at all.
I'm with Nick, here. If you want to give your guests nut options, by all means, set out multiple small dishes of single nut varieties. Not only do you prevent the inevitable result of people pawing through the mix for the nuts they prefer, but you are also presenting a nut option for people who are allergic to peanuts but not other nuts and would otherwise have been nut deprived.
(c) Providing an educational moment for the party-giver who was too cheap to splurge the extra dollar or two for the peanut-less mixed nuts.
More than sensible. It is Physics. I was just gathering data related to the following.
"The Effects of Layer Number and Container Geometry on the Segregation of a Bidisperse System of Hard Spheres"
Paul V. Quinn (Drew University and Lehigh University), Daniel C. Hong (Lehigh University), Stefan Luding (ICA1, Stuttgart, Germany, and Particle Technology, DCT, TU Delft, The Netherlands)
In the Brazil nut problem (BNP), hard spheres with larger diameters rise to the top. In a previous paper, a theory was presented for the crossover from BNP to the reverse Brazil nut problem (RBNP) using a relationship between the mass and diameter ratios of the different species of particles. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the inital layer number and the geometry of the container on the segregation of particles. New crossover conditions are determined for these parameters, and the theoretical predictions are compared to Molecular Dynamics simulations in two and three dimensions.
b) - why make your guests solve nut puzzles? When I put out mixed nuts, it's all cashews and almonds. When I put out peanuts, they're Beer Nuts, said confection having originated in my town.
(d) Leaving more peanuts for me. Yum.
Simple solution: Nuts are overrated. Put out chips and salsa.
Screw all that, and give me my bag of Gardetto's Rye Chips. The day they just started bagging them separately was a wonderful, wonderful day, if only for saved time.
Pass me the nuts. I don't like cashews that much.