You learn something new everyday: what did you learn today?

Post Reply New Topic

on a similarish note, arabic has no /p/ phone, while it has the voiced counterpart /b/. ivrit has both.

there's a statue (or more like a relief sculpture?) of muhammad inside the united states supreme court building. needless to say there's been objection and requests to have that taken down...

i think it's just with religious figures, so not the presidents. which is good cause rushmore really is a marvel.

^ Although Arabic doesn't have a letter that is equivalent to English 'p', they sometimes pronounce their 'b' unvoiced (=p). In other words they often make no distinction between 'b' and 'p'. That's what I noticed. When they speak English, they often mix them up. For example I hear them say 'broblem' instead of 'problem'.

^ This reminds me of a Guy de Maupassant story, called Un Duel, which was part of the French 'A' Level course I studied in the mid 1970s. It's set during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, and Maupassant's Prussians speak in a very similar way to the one you describe, eg:

" Ché bris ces bolissons de Français bar les oreilles. "

In standard French = "J'ai pris ces polissons de Français par les oreilles."

I learned that we don't actually know who the first slave owner in America was, but that the first documented slave was an indentured servant who, in 1640, ran away and was punished by being made an indentured servant for life. Historians think there were slaves prior to 1640, but have yet to find definitive proof.
Along those same lines, I've found that people like to claim that the first slave owner in America was an Angolan (black, Southern Africa), but his case was only relevant because it was the first time the court declared an indentured servant serve for life without having committed a crime. His case also came a few years or so after 1640.

- Panera Bread is overly expensive for the quality/quantity of food they give you. I had to pay nearly $12 for a you pick 2 lunch and a drink (does not include tax).

- You have to find the cosine inverse to find the angle between two vectors

- The ambiguous case of a Law of Sines triangle is when the angle is not in between two given side lengths, and two answers may persist.

- It is extremely difficult to write a 10 page research paper EVEN on a topic that interests you!

- At track/field (Same lesson over and over): Even if you do the warm-ups correctly, the coach may make the whole team re-do them because SOME weren't doing them properly

I'm graduating High School in less than 4 weeks and i'm extremely nervous.

That you can't consume anything with caffeine the day before an EEG.

That guys shouldn't date girls with bruised knees. I have no idea *why* they shouldn't though, this was mentioned in a video by ScrewAttack about the Top 5 ugliest female characters in video games.

Maybe she falls down on them a lot because she's drunk, or high, or possessed by a demon or alien, but I doubt that's what they meant.

Oh! Maybe it's because she's knee'd a lot of guys in the groin! But I can't see how that would bruise them.

Maybe she prays a lot.

So ... Vegemite chocolate has already hit supermarket shelves here in Australia. Naturally I had to go and buy some, and I tried it out with some family and relatives.

The verdict?

Pretty good, actually. We all liked it. Probably because we were expecting a major flavour clash, and in the end it wasn't like that. There was a good amount of chocolate and caramel, and not a lot of Vegemite. Honestly, it tasted a lot like salted caramel and chocolate. Pretty good, all up.

I learned this yesterday, but when you kill a spider, you make the spider population in your house smarter and sneaker by taking a stupid spider out of the gene pool.

oh, ok i get it now thanks! now this is something new that i learned today. i think mandarin doesn't make a distinction either?

Murihiku, you're making me envious.

If you want to keep a secret, then don't write it down.

Patience, despite what I might have thought, does eventually pay off. Sometimes.

When compiling Linux, do not use 'make config' - it takes a VERY. LONG. TIME.

.

I learned that the smart car is a very unpleasant little shitbox to drive. the abominable automated shift mechanism gives the driver something close to whiplash, and the engine is rough, slow, noisy and HOT! it is both unabsorbing of bumps yet handles sloppily, the worst of all worlds. the only thing worse than the ever-present wind noise is the basso rumbling radiating up through the floorboards. how this is a popular car escapes me. it is undeniably a cute little thing, though.

I learned that 18 == 200.

I learned that avocado oil goes rancid quicker than olive oil.

I learned that South Africa is the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.