I bet you didnt know that

New Home · 10-09-2018 1:45pm

It's different again if someone has a hypersensitivity to chlorine.

mzungu · 10-09-2018 1:56pm

New Home wrote: »

It's different again if someone has a hypersensitivity to chlorine.

True, although I would imagine any kind of pool visit would be out of the question for somebody in that situation.

Most people at some stage of their lives will approach a door and wonder if it is a push or pull. These poorly designed doors that confuses or fails to give you an idea whether to push or pull are called 'Norman Doors.' It was called after the author Don Norman who wrote The Design of Everyday Things which examined the phenomenon.

New Home · 10-09-2018 1:57pm

I call that the "Midvale" effect.

Kat1170 · 10-09-2018 2:09pm

Kintarō Hattori · 10-09-2018 2:14pm

mzungu wrote: »

Has it ever happened that when you yawn that a bit of saliva shoots from your mouth into the air? This is called Gleeking and is caused when salivary glands are stimulated (usually by your tongue) by accident.

A million times I thank you. Was always wondering what the hell this was.

Carsanal · 10-09-2018 2:15pm

I got my silage under wraps before the rain this evening.

RIGOLO · 10-09-2018 3:05pm

Ciaran_B wrote: »

The first word on the Divine Comedy album 'Casanova' is Hello and the last word is Goodbye.

When recording Liberation Neil Hannon ate nothing but porridge, so it would not interfere with the muse that was flowing thru his corporeal frame.

Grayson · 10-09-2018 3:13pm

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

While smell plays an important part in the discernment of flavours in most things, it is completely untrue that red wine, of and in itself, has no flavour. My brother had no sense of smell and could certainly taste and discriminate between red wines.

While blindfolded anosmics can struggle to differentiate between some particular flavours they can still tell red wine from water.

I've tried it because there are some wines that are known to get their taste from their smell. A Pinot Noir for example is known to have a large part of it's taste from it's smell. I drank it holding my nose and compared to drinking it when you can smell it, there's a distinct lack of taste. That's not to say there's no taste, there certainly is, it's just not as strong as when you can smell it.
And it all varies from wine to wine.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 10-09-2018 3:17pm

Grayson wrote: »

I've tried it because there are some wines that are known to get their taste from their smell. A Pinot Noir for example is known to have a large part of it's taste from it's smell. I drank it holding my nose and compared to drinking it when you can smell it, there's a distinct lack of taste. That's not to say there's no taste, there certainly is, it's just not as strong as when you can smell it.
And it all varies from wine to wine.

I'll bet it still didn't taste like water. The assertion was that it has no flavour. The lack of smell affects the perception of taste in many things but doesn't render them completely tasteless.

Grayson · 10-09-2018 3:36pm

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

I'll bet it still didn't taste like water. The assertion was that it has no flavour. The lack of smell affects the perception of taste in many things but doesn't render them completely tasteless.

Of course not, there's still a taste, just not as strong. And it varies from wine to wine so some will taste strong regardless.

Water John · 10-09-2018 4:37pm

On the chlorine the way to get rid of the smell esp in drinking water is to add more chlorine. The 'Free chlorine' over powers the THMs.

Pool water should be either treated with ozone or UV not chlorine which is old lazy tech.

Yes there is a chemical that can show up urine. Story goes a new swimming pool was being opened in the UK. The public were nor aware this chemical had been added. To launch the pool, the mayor decided to get his ex-model wife to swim the length of the pool at the grand opening. One can guess the rest of the story.

cdeb · 10-09-2018 5:01pm

Surely there's some things you're better off not knowing?

Are Am Eye · 10-09-2018 5:31pm

NASA got a $400 litter fine from an Australian Parks Official after the debris and vestiges of their space station Skylab crashed in the western Australian desert.
Skylab launched in 1973 it's life ended in 1979 when it reentered the Earths atmosphere, breaking up and littering Australia. NASA dodged the ticket for thirty years - it was paid on their behalf in 2009.

Capt'n Midnight · 10-09-2018 7:54pm

di11on wrote: »

Solar power is nuclear energy... from a safe distance

It's not.

That's we need suncream and hats.

micar · 10-09-2018 8:13pm

The second Indiana Jones movie is a prequel to the first.

The third movie is a sequel to the first.

The Nazi-sympathising archaeologist Elsa Schneider, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was played by an irish girl called Alison Doody. She was married Tony O'Reilly's son Gavin.

She was also a bond girl.

retalivity · 10-09-2018 10:27pm

Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking country in south america, and with guyana, are the only one sthat are not primarily spanish-speaking. It is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with over 200+ languages recognised and spoken at some level, the majority of them regional indigenous languages.
That said, there are more german (3m) and venetian (1m) speakers in brazil, than spanish speakers (500k). There is also a sizeable japanese population there, the largest outside the japanese islands, and there's approximately 300k that use the language daily.

In argentina, there is a small Welsh speaking community in southern patagonia, descendents of settlers from 150 years ago. There are approximately 4000 speakers still, with welsh schools and bilingual signs.

Vincent Vega · 10-09-2018 10:30pm

... a crow's ear looks like this

New Home · 10-09-2018 10:39pm

Not just crows, birds' ears look like that (there may be some exceptions, but I can't think of one at the moment).

VW 1 · 10-09-2018 10:42pm

Surprised at the number of languages in Brazil, would have thought India was the most diverse country linguistically. From memory they have 86 officially recognised languages.

retalivity · 10-09-2018 10:44pm

VW 1 wrote: »

Surprised at the number of languages in Brazil, would have thought India was the most diverse country linguistically. From memory they have 86 officially recognised languages.

I said it was one of the most, not the most - that is Papau New Guinea

10-09-2018 10:44pm

New Home wrote: »

Not just crows, birds' ears look like that (there may be some exceptions, but I can't think of one at the moment).

Owls?

Witcher · 10-09-2018 10:44pm

On the topic of Crow's ears...you can see the back of an owl's eye through its ear

VW 1 · 10-09-2018 10:46pm

retalivity wrote: »

I said it was one of the most, not the most - that is Papau New Guinea

Very interesting, im two chapters into Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel where Papau New Guinea is heavily referred to thus far. Look forward to reading on.

LarryGraham · 10-09-2018 10:49pm

retalivity wrote: »

Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking country in south america, and with guyana, are the only one sthat are not primarily spanish-speaking. It is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with over 200+ languages recognised and spoken at some level, the majority of them regional indigenous languages.
That said, there are more german (3m) and venetian (1m) speakers in brazil, than spanish speakers (500k). There is also a sizeable japanese population there, the largest outside the japanese islands, and there's approximately 300k that use the language daily.

In argentina, there is a small Welsh speaking community in southern patagonia, descendents of settlers from 150 years ago. There are approximately 4000 speakers still, with welsh schools and bilingual signs.

Suriname is mainly Dutch speaking!

Ipso · 10-09-2018 10:50pm

retalivity wrote: »

I said it was one of the most, not the most - that is Papau New Guinea

In Guns germs and Steel, Jared Diamond claimed that up to one third of the worlds languages are spoken there.
Supposedly mountainous areas end up with many languages, like the Caucusus region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Caucasus

retalivity · 10-09-2018 10:52pm

LarryGraham wrote: »

Suriname is mainly Dutch speaking!

Mea culpa, also forgot about french guiana next door...

the purple tin · 10-09-2018 10:53pm

Vincent Vega wrote: »

... a crow's ear looks like this

That's weird, I didn't think birds had ears, but then,duh...how could they hear.

New Home · 10-09-2018 10:54pm

About Brazil and those "odd" languages, for the most part they were "imported" when the large scale immigration took place in the 1800s, and were mostly dialects. However, while those dialects in their places of origin have changed (in large part by having being affected by languages of immigrants of their own and by languages of neighbouring regions and countries), in Brazil they resemble much much more the languages that would have been spoken back when they were imported.

Ipso · 10-09-2018 10:57pm

the purple tin wrote: »

That's weird, I didn't think birds had ears, but then,duh...how could they hear.

A little birdie would tell them

LarryGraham · 10-09-2018 11:00pm

retalivity wrote: »

Mea culpa, also forgot about french guiana next door...

Not really a whole country though. Just another part of FranceðŸ˜Š

mzungu · 10-09-2018 11:01pm

The language with the longest alphabet in the world is the Cambodian language Khmer with 74 letters (some are no longer used). It consists of 33 consonants, 23 vowels and 12 independent vowels. The shortest alphabet is 12 characters long, and belongs to Rotokas (Papua New Guinea). English is the language that has the most words (250,000).

New Home · 10-09-2018 11:03pm

mzungu wrote: »

The language with the longest alphabet in the world is the Cambodian language Khmer with 74 letters (some are no longer used). It consists of 33 consonants, 23 vowels and 12 independent vowels. The shortest alphabet is 12 characters long, and belongs to Rotokas (Papua New Guinea). English is the language that has the most words (250,000).

I've heard that said about French by French speakers, German by German speakers, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, etc. You see where I'm going. But none has been able to prove that definitively.

mzungu · 10-09-2018 11:09pm

New Home wrote: »

I've heard that said about French by French speakers, German by German speakers, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, etc. You see where I'm going. But none has been able to prove that definitevely.

Fair point.

The Oxford dictionary has weighed in on it and believes it's 'highly probable' but that we will never know for sure.

Short paragraph on it below...

This question is practically impossible to answer, for the reasons explained in the answer to How many words are there in the English language? However, it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages.

The reason for this is historical. English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German, and it shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages. However, after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church. Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. Consequently, English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family to which French belongs.

English is also very ready to accommodate foreign words, and as it has become an international language, it has absorbed vocabulary from a large number of other sources. This does, of course, assume that you ignore 'agglutinative' languages such as Finnish, in which words can be stuck together in long strings of indefinite length, and which therefore have an almost infinite number of 'words'.

Link:https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/does-english-have-most-words/

New Home · 10-09-2018 11:14pm

Arabic has 90 to 500 million words if you count other forms of the original word a word but if you don't then is 12,300,000

Just pick a comparison of four major languages:
main-qimg-4ce56fbc5b9e9b90a647d416f86c70fe

Somebody was also wondering whether the English words "Be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being" are supposed to be just one word and its variations or are they supposed to be counted individually. So yes, we can agree on the fact that it can be very difficult to determine.

Professor Moriarty · 11-09-2018 1:34pm

Gaelic or Irish Script was first printed in the 1500s. The typeface was used in a catechism ordered by Elizabeth I in an attempt to convert the Irish to Anglicanism.

retalivity · 11-09-2018 5:54pm

Blame it on the Boogie was written by an English songwriter called Mick Jackson (no relation).

11-09-2018 6:48pm

The Roadrunner, the North American bird made famous by Looney Tunes, is a member of the Cuckoo family; unlike many Eurasian Cuckoos it is not a brood parasite.

Tell me how · 11-09-2018 6:50pm

There are several shortcut key strokes which can be used with YouTube.

Spacebar to pause/start the video, Shift and ',' to slow down or Shift and '.' to speed it up for example.
The number keys 0-9 will automatically jump to a location in the video with each number corresponding to a % decade value; 1 =10%, 2 = 20% etc.

However, I bet you didn't know that all numbers on the keyboard work in this way with the exception of the number 1 on the dedicated numeric pad which for some reason does not perform any short cut function.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 11-09-2018 6:54pm

The Kookaburra is a Kingfisher yet eats mice, snakes, insects, & small reptiles. They wouldn't know what a fish was if they saw one.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-09-2018 7:08pm

Although Jesus was known as a carpenter, he never actually sang on any of their albums.

Water John · 11-09-2018 7:23pm

But Karen had the voice of an angel.

mzungu · 11-09-2018 7:27pm

A group of polar bears is called an aurora, a group of peacocks is called an ostentation and a group of pandas is called an embarrassment.

spacetweek · 11-09-2018 7:42pm

On the number of words in English: an odd feature of English due to its history is that there are often many words for the same thing, but from different sources. An example is "supervise".

Oversee (or watch over)
Surveil (surveillance)
Supervise

These 3 words mean the same thing but are German, French and Latin-derived respectively. However those 3 languages do not have 3 ways of saying it, only 1 (Modern German has Uberwachen). This is one of the main reasons English has so many words - the other being that it has a large amount of vocab specific to industry or science which is not used outside those domains. Other languages often use the English words when discussing those domains, not having their own.

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Gaelic or Irish Script was first printed in the 1500s. The typeface was used in a catechism ordered by Elizabeth I in an attempt to convert the Irish to Anglicanism.

Due to a primary school teacher I had who tried to get us all to write in that script, I still have a lifelong hatred of it.

Ipso · 11-09-2018 7:48pm

In English some words (such as those related to the sea and royalty) are very different than other Indo European languages, there is a theory that the Germanic languages may have a sizeable portion of its vocabulary come from a non Indo European language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis

Capt'n Midnight · 11-09-2018 7:55pm

Water John wrote: »

But Karen had the voice of an angel.

And a good drummer too.

RiderOnTheStorm · 11-09-2018 8:04pm

Next time you are in a cinema or theatre etc, have a look at the letters that denote seating rows. There is usually no "i" as i and j can be easily confused (esp in poor lighting), so they skip it.

Whistling in a theatre is considered bad luck or bad form. Because in times passed, set crew & backstage crew used to whistle (in code?) to each other when it was time to change set, drop curtains, backdrops etc. If you walked backstage while whistling you might get a sandbag dropped on you!

"Break a leg" means good luck in some circles. It comes from the theatre world, where they used a long pole to raise the curtain for encores etc. This pole was called "a leg". So break a leg means "I hope you get so many encores that they break the leg"

11-09-2018 8:22pm

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

"Break a leg" means good luck in some circles. It comes from the theatre world, where they used a long pole to raise the curtain for encores etc. This pole was called "a leg". So break a leg means "I hope you get so many encores that they break the leg"

Not 100% true.

No one knows for certain where it comes from. One idea of where it comes from is that "a leg" is the black curtain that hangs from lighting rig to floor, usually stage right and stage left. We still call them legs today.

Understudies would get paid more if they got on the stage, aka breaking a leg, so wishing someone, "to break a leg" originally meant, "I hope you have a good show by getting on the stage!"

BaZmO* · 11-09-2018 10:41pm

In the English language the word “set” has the most amount of different definitions for a given word.

Cookie_Monster · 11-09-2018 11:36pm

Kiwis have the shortest beak of any bird, despite it looking otherwise

New Home · 11-09-2018 11:39pm

If you mean kiwi as the fruit, then I definitely agree.

I bet you didnt know that

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