I bet you didnt know that

steddyeddy

Four Phucs Ache wrote: »

^^^^wibbs


Every time I see you post I go through about 3 smokes and then have to charge me phone again.

I read your posts in the voice of a gent with the title "Sir"

The most intelligent poster on Boards by a country mile.

Capt'n Midnight

Candie wrote: »

It saddens me to think that we might never know all our ancestors,

The one that gets me is that the first Australians had stories going back maybe 50,000 years and most of them were lost only in the last 150 years.

Tales of now-extinct volcanoes, tales of sea level changes from the last Ice Age. Tales of the extinct mega fauna.

Wibbs

Yourself isit wrote: »

I didn't want to get into the full explanation but it comes down to this - if you don't name a colour can you see it? Seems odd but some research indicates it is true.

A closer to everyday one are the various reds we now have. Before we came up with "orange" or "pink", they were described as reds. A good example is the Robin Red Breast bird. It's clearly orange to our eyes, but many folk legends concerning blood surround the bird. EG one folktale(handily current to this very day) held that it got the "red" from trying in vain to pull the nails from Jesus' hands at the crucifixion and this gave it a blessed status down the years. So it seems that the orange we see now, was once seen as red, the colour of blood.

Blue is never the first colour named by any civilization. What's odd about that to me is that the sea and sky are clearly blue on sunny days and many ancient civilizations were largely near or on the Mediterranean, with sunny climates.

Maybe what they describe in words is not colour, but tones? So they had dark and light and shining as broad descriptions(with IIRC red and browns added in). So in this framework the sky would be "bronze", that is bright, shiny. The sea was "wine coloured" because it didn't shine and was darker overall. Tonally the two were similar(and both liquids). It actually makes quite good sense albeit in an odd way to our minds.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Tales of now-extinct volcanoes, tales of sea level changes from the last Ice Age. Tales of the extinct mega fauna.

Which goes to show that folk memory of real events can be remarkably tenacious. Modern and older tales of wild men like Bigfoot, Yetis and the like may well be folk memories of other not quite humans from way back in prehistory, when we shared our world with a few of those peoples. For me tales of trolls could handily map onto Neandertals. They're described as people who live in the wild places, mountains and deep forests. They were held to be very strong, hairy and ugly, but not the quickest of wits. They preferred to be left alone, but could sometimes be quite hospitable if respected and treated kindly. However some tales show them as cannibals and prone to stealing women away. In Native American folktales we have what we call Bigfoot in a continent that no previous humans seem to have made it to. Maybe those first peoples from Asia brought their folk memories with them into this virgin land.

Wibbs

steddyeddy wrote: »

The most intelligent poster on Boards by a country mile.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Wibbs wrote: »

A closer to everyday one are the various reds we now have. Before we came up with "orange"...

And the colour orange is named after the fruit, rather than the more logical other way round.

Yourself isit

There's a tribe that can't see blue, but can tell different shades of green more readily than westerners.

Supposedly they were shown a colour wheel with green squares and one obvious (to us) blue squares and found it difficult to see the blue.

This article has the colour wheel.

http://www.sciencealert.com/humans-couldn-t-even-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-research-suggests

There's also a colour wheel with all greens, one slightly different. I can't see that at all but they find it immediately

mr chips

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

Wibbs wrote: »

A closer to everyday one are the various reds we now have. Before we came up with "orange"...

And the colour orange is named after the fruit, rather than the more logical other way round.

Indeed. The proper term for the colour orange in Irish is "flannbhuí", i.e. red-yellow (yellow shaded with red, if you like). The word "oráiste" should really only be used when referring to the fruit.

Yourself isit

The thing is is tribal lads who don't see blue live in a forest. That all doesn't explain the Greeks.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Most people in the English speaking world only know Don Quixote for the chapter when the titular character attacks windmills. Most people don't realise what an influential work of literature it is. It is possibly the first example of the modern novel.

Cervantes wrote it in two parts, one in 1605 and one in 1615. In part two, the first book is a bestseller within the universe of the story. Most of the characters who Don Quixote meets who already know he is because they already read part one. Some ask questions about part one and point out mistakes or inconsistencies.

Also, somebody had stolen the idea and published a fake sequel a few years prior. Cervantes takes a character from this book and places him in his story, including a chapter where Don Quixote forces him to admit that the events depicted in the fake sequel never happened.

So not only did Cervantes invent the modern novel, he was one of the first people to use meta fiction like this.

jimgoose

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

...So not only did Cervantes invent the modern novel, he was one of the first people to use meta fiction like this.

Tres cool indeed - that's the type of thing seen today from the likes of Robert Rankin. Actually, your username reads like one of his characters from something like The Brentford Trilogy. :pac:

MonkieSocks

tomwaterford wrote: »

The squid was alive

:pac: With The Sound Of Music








Snigger Snigger

uch

The colour pink in Irish is Bán Dearg, translates to white red

jimbobaloobob

uch wrote: »

The colour pink in Irish is Bán Dearg, translates to white red

thats right it translates as its mixing colours

uch

jimbobaloobob wrote: »

thats right it translates as its mixing colours

No, it's because there is no proper word in Irish for Pink, Bándearg is all we have

jimbobaloobob

uch wrote: »

No, it's because there is no proper word in Irish for Pink, Bándearg is all we have

right ya be. now the thread lives up to its name

uch

jimbobaloobob wrote: »

right ya be. now the thread lives up to its name

DId you notice that boards didn't like the fada's there and made both our posts look daft, bet you didn't know boards was anti Gaeilge!!

uch

Also I bet you didn't know that Rum and IRN-BRU is actually lovely

jimbobaloobob

Rum isnt for my head thanks very much.

On this day Brian Boru defeats Vikings at the battle of clontarf.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

jimbobaloobob wrote: »

Rum isnt for my head thanks very much.

On this day Brian Boru defeats Vikings at the battle of clontarf.

The Battle of Kinsale was fought on Christmas Eve but only from the point of view of the Protestant English. The Catholic Irish and Spanish armies thought it was the 3rd of January. This is because Catholics were already using the modern Gregorian calendar.

Purple Mountain

tomwaterford wrote: »

Lucy8080 wrote: »

Some very intellectual and interesting stuff here. Here's an easy one that all should get their head around.

It takes four hours to cook a live octopus.

Reason: The fecker will keep turning off the gas!

Here's an even worse one

I happened once upon a time to be made watch a video of someone eating a squid alive.

And to add insult to injury..they couldn't even afford a dvd player..

uch

Purple Mountain wrote: »

And to add insult to injury..they couldn't even afford a dvd player..

ooohh look at me with my DVD player, we're not all rich you know

cdeb

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

The Battle of Kinsale was fought on Christmas Eve but only from the point of view of the Protestant English. The Catholic Irish and Spanish armies thought it was the 3rd of January. This is because Catholics were already using the modern Gregorian calendar.

Queen Elizabeth has two birthdays - her real one and an official one when the weather's nicer and she can have a bit of a public celebration.

Prince Philip also has two birthdays - because he was born in Greece when they were still using the Julian calendar.

Capt'n Midnight

cdeb wrote: »

Queen Elizabeth has two birthdays

And multiple addresses, doesn't use licence plates or driving licence , doesn't use a passport, only pays taxes when she feels like it

I smell benefit fraud.

IvyTheTerrible

cdeb wrote: »

Queen Elizabeth has two birthdays - her real one and an official one when the weather's nicer and she can have a bit of a public celebration.

Prince Philip also has two birthdays - because he was born in Greece when they were still using the Julian calendar.

The two birthday tradition actually started with George II, because he was born on November 9th, and it's a bit cold in November for a full military parade. Queen Elizabeth could make do with one celebration, as April 20th is generally nicer!
The multiple birthday celebration thing gets even more complicated when you look at the Commonwealth countries.
In most of Australia, the official day is the 2nd Monday in June. (In WA it's sometime in September). In Canada it's on the 25th of May, because that was the day Victoria's birthday was celebrated.

Red Kev

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And multiple addresses, doesn't use licence plates or driving licence , doesn't use a passport, only pays taxes when she feels like it

I smell benefit fraud.

She doesn't need a passport, she just need to make sure she has a £5 note in her handbag when she goes abroad. Her picture is on it.

Or a few coppers, postage stamp etc.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

jimbobaloobob wrote: »

On this day Brian Boru defeats Vikings at the battle of clontarf.

It was 23rd April not 15th. And it was a Friday not Saturday.

wrote:

No, it's because there is no proper word in Irish for Pink, Bándearg is all we have

That's a desperately anglocentric understanding. Perhaps there's "no proper word in English for bándearg"? After all, etymologically the word pink does nothing to describe the colour: "The plant name is perhaps from pink (v.) via notion of "perforated" petals, or from Dutch pink "small" (see pinkie), from the term pinck oogen "half-closed eyes," literally "small eyes," which was borrowed into English (1570s) and may have been used as a name for Dianthus, which sometimes has pale red flowers."(Etymology of pink).

Bándearg, in contrast, tells us the two colours that are needed to create pink and gives us a unique name for it.

lmimmfn

Digital Solitude wrote: »

And the person was too?

Pretty sure that's in a movie, I've seen it linked on boards a few times.

Its in Old Boy, fantastic movie( the original south Korean version ) and he did actually eat it alive, no movie trickery

Digital Solitude

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

The two birthday tradition actually started with George II, because he was born on November 9th, and it's a bit cold in November for a full military parade. Queen Elizabeth could make do with one celebration, as April 20th is generally nicer!
The multiple birthday celebration thing gets even more complicated when you look at the Commonwealth countries.
In most of Australia, the official day is the 2nd Monday in June. (In WA it's sometime in September). In Canada it's on the 25th of May, because that was the day Victoria's birthday was celebrated.

Isn't the 20th April reserved for other celebrations?

Renowned physicist and indoor sportsman Albert Einstein, once suspected by his teachers of being slow and expelled from school for bad behaviour, may be the genius who gave us the theory of relativity and the father of modern physics, but it turns out he was a bit of a pervy sex pest too.

His many documented affairs (including one with his sister-in-law) aside, Al was also a flasher.

His personal letters kept at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveal Al's "Oops, my robe fell open!" technique for assessing whether or not a woman was game. He'd wear his silk robe in the presence of his target, let it 'accidentally' fall open, and examine the reaction of the observer to the wonders revealed. If (as was usual) they were less than impressed, he'd apologise and sort himself out, but if he suspected any interest he'd see how far he could get. He had a robe he was particularly fond of that used for the exercise.

I wonder if Al was Hugh Hefners style crush.