> Surely rainfall is even over a surface regardless of terrain and therefore a ridged roof would collect the same amount as a smooth slopes roof?

Of course. It's the cross sectional area of the roof that matters, not the surface area. Imagine that there is no wind, and the rain is falling straight down. It's not going to make any difference whether the rain falls on a flat roof, a tall A-frame roof, a mansard roof, a hip roof, a roof with ridges, or a smooth roof.

Bermuda is primarily a limestone island. The original roofs on houses were made from limestone slabs quarried on the spot. The pit that the limestone slabs were quarried from became the cistern in which the rainwater was collected. Being somewhat thick, these limestone slabs gave the roof a stepped appearance. Over the years, this stepped appearance became the norm for what roofs were supposed to look like. Modern Bermuda roof systems are made to look like the old limestone tile systems because that's what people expect.

Long story short, the ridges are aesthetic, not functional.

P.S. Bermuda needs to collect rainwater because there are very few other sources of fresh water on the island. The government mandates that at least 80% of the roof needs to be dedicated to harvesting rainwater.

> Just by watching the moon you can come up with 13 months of 28 day cycles, and that's 364 days.

Um... The lunar cycle is 29.3 days long.

> You should leave the trim and replace the window. Avoid all these problems

The advice I've always heard is to always do a "brick-to-brick" replacement. If the old window was leaking, the damage will be hidden beneath the trim. Replacing just the window means that the leak is still there. A brick-to-brick replacement gives you the opportunity to repair any damage that may have occurred.

> Big? You mean vig?

"Vigorish (also known as juice, under-juice, the cut, the take, the margin, the house edge or simply the vig)..."

I guess I do. I must have mis-heard it.

> while N are the natural numbers (0 to +inf)

I was taught that Natural numbers were 1,2,3,..., and Whole numbers were 0,1,2,3...

> Essentially, numbers give us forward. Negative Numbers give us backwards, and imaginary numbers give us "sideways"

So what gives us a vertical? SQRT(-i)?

> You can owe the mob 5 sheep. Which means that if you want to have 2 sheep, you'd better buy 2 sheep so you can pay your debts before you start farming wool.

Your math is wrong. If you owe the mob 5 sheep and you want to have two sheep, you're going to need to buy 8 sheep (5 for the mob, 1 for the "big" and 2 for you).

> There only long term solution is to remove the source of hair, and that's usually illegal.

It may be illegal, but that doesn't stop nature from removing my hair from the source.

> So while he lost those funds, they still exist in the market; it just means that someone else now has access to the profits that were previously associated with his ownership in XYZ Corp.

Not necessarily. Just because the stock value of XYZ corp went down, doesn't mean anything else went up. Stock values are not a zero sum game.

>I know we get them through massive telescopes…. But how do they capture images so far away? How do they work?

Actually, quite a lot of them are from very light telescopes - ones attached to interplanetary probes sent to explore the planets. Quite often these images are mosaics, stitched together from multiple pictures.

> County, not country.

Ah! Gotcha. I guess I had a leftover R from last talk-like-a-pirate day, and it chose this moment to escape.

Yes, counties and municipalities can have bylaws banning wood burning, especially in hot, dry seasons and in dense sub-divisions. OP will have to consult his local town council (or equivalent) to get an explanation - probably an anti-nuisance bylaw, though.

> wood burning is illegal in your county.

Illegal?!? I've not heard of that before. In what countries is it illegal to burn wood?

> That's why you're not supposed to burn wood, it releases more CO2 into the atmosphere and makes it worse.

It only releases the carbon dioxide that the tree itself took out of the atmosphere while growing. That carbon is part of the current carbon cycle.

Coal and other fossil fuels are the problem. The carbon there has been out of the loop for so long that life's carbon cycle has adjusted for its absence.

> Be a bit like describing the colour red to a blind person

No. Just because a person has never heard music in their life, doesn't mean they are deaf.

> Our Sun is called Sol by the way. That’s why it’s called the Solar System.

Yeah, and Earth is called Terra. Two names for the same object.

> Water is softer and easier/safer for squishy humans to land on (especially if sick or injured) than land, and there is much more water than land.

I understand a splashdown as an emergency contingency, but Orion was being designed to land on the ground. I've seen pictures.

> He just answered: water is softer and less complex for squishy humans.

So NASA astronauts are soft,and NASA can't handle "complex"? I don't buy it. There must be a better reason.

> ...a vessel looking for a water landing...

Why is the vessel looking for a water landing? Why can't it land on the ground? The Russians have been doing it for over 50 years, with hundreds upon hundreds of successful missions.

> Why do they look like they're the same quality as what we could get in the 70s?

Because NASA is using the technology of the 1970s. An Apollo style capsule splashing down into an ocean followed by a naval search and rescue op? I mean, really! What has NASA got against landing on land? I mean, they even forced the Crew Dragon to splash down instead of doing a civilized landing.

> “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Wasn't this the guy who froze to death, trekking through the snow in shorts and an "invincible summer" t-shirt?