I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

New Home

New Home wrote: »

I bet he picked his name 'cause he likes to eat fish fingers (not a euphemism!) after dark.

What's happened to NH? Between this and calculator indecency I'm reeling from shock!

New Home

I SAID "NOT A EUPHEMISM!"!!! "NOT!!!"

Capt'n Midnight

Fourier wrote: »

At least Wibbs is still a ripped Indian Jones figure rescuing ancient watches from tombs.

mzungu

In order to set a precedent for the future of the office, George Washington chose to be called "Mr. President" instead of the senate proposed titles of "His Excellency" or "His Highness the President"

There is a visiting German gentleman in work (with whom I've fallen madly in love on the strength of his amazingly deep basso profundo voice) who was telling me that over 35% of the wind energy in the entire world is produced off the coast in northern Germany, and that Germans recycle a shade under 50% of all waste. Americans, on the other hand, account for 5% of the worlds population but over 30% of the worlds waste, and typically recycle less than a third of their household waste.

Even more interestingly, unexploded WW2 bombs are still being found all over Germany, weighing in at over 20,000 tons a year. Which everyone else might know, but I didn't!

mzungu

Candie wrote: »

There is a visiting German gentleman in work (with whom I've fallen madly in love on the strength of his amazingly deep basso profundo voice) who was telling me that over 35% of the wind energy in the entire world is produced off the coast in northern Germany, and that Germans recycle a shade under 50% of all waste. Americans, on the other hand, account for 5% of the worlds population but over 30% of the worlds waste, and typically recycle less than a third of their household waste.

Even more interestingly, unexploded WW2 bombs are still being found all over Germany, weighing in at over 20,000 tons a year. Which everyone else might know, but I didn't!

A few still wash up off the Irish coast too! Recently there was one in Kinsale in 2018 and another in Antrim in 2017.

partyguinness

Candie wrote: »

Even more interestingly, unexploded WW2 bombs are still being found all over Germany, weighing in at over 20,000 tons a year. Which everyone else might know, but I didn't!

Frankfurt centre was shut a years ago due to a bomb found. Quite a regular occurrence TBH and it will continue for many years to come.



Even in the UK unexploded WWII bombs still found on a regular enough basis. Birmingham a couple of years back my train was cancelled as they found a bomb near the train line and they were sorting it out.

RiderOnTheStorm

Cant find confirmation, but sounds like it could be true ..... Google (or YouTube?) have a dedicated conspiracy-theory scanning group to keep the flat-earth, lizard-people, illuminati, etc to a minimum. However....the staff have to be reassigned often as they start to believe the theories!

When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you!


PS .... I do have a surf board!

partyguinness

partyguinness wrote: »

Frankfurt centre was shut a years ago due to a bomb found. Quite a regular occurrence TBH and it will continue for many years to come.

Even in the UK unexploded WWII bombs still found on a regular enough basis. Birmingham a couple of years back my train was cancelled as they found a bomb near the train line and they were sorting it out.

I remember hearing a few times about UXB's in the UK (sounds like a song title) but apparently they find some kind of dangerous WW2 leftover between 10 - 15 times a week in Germany.

There was one found not too long back in a disused airport in Kent that was going to be used as a massive lorry car park in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Kat1170

Candie wrote: »

T

Even more interestingly, unexploded WW2 bombs are still being found all over Germany, weighing in at over 20,000 tons a year. Which everyone else might know, but I didn't!

Unfortunatly throughout the world UXB's cause misery and death years after the conflict has ended.

UXB's worldwide.

Squall Leonhart

Kat1170 wrote: »

Unfortunatly throughout the world UXB's cause misery and death years after the conflict has ended.

UXB's worldwide.

Interesting to see Egypt is top of the list. I automatically assumed it'd be somewhere like Vietnam, which is only 10th or so.

Capt'n Midnight

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

Interesting to see Egypt is top of the list. I automatically assumed it'd be somewhere like Vietnam, which is only 10th or so.

Foreign mines at that.

There's a lot of land mines left over from WWII and Israeli's dumped shed loads of the things in Sinai.

bauney

Did you ever get annoyed when you open a jar/tube of honey, only to find that it's hardened up (cyrstalization has occured ).
Today I found a quick way to undo this. Put the jar/tube into saucepan and heatup to near boiling. Wait few minutes. Simple as that.

Gloomtastic!

bauney wrote: »

Did you ever get annoyed when you open a jar/tube of honey, only to find that it's hardened up (cyrstalization has occured ).
Today I found a quick way to undo this. Put the jar/tube into saucepan and heatup to near boiling. Wait few minutes. Simple as that.

Or stick it in the microwave for a minute......

New Home

Or leave it on the windowsill in the sun (may take longer).

764dak

Mew and Mewtwo are cat Pokémon.

764dak

764dak wrote: »

Mew and Mewtwo are cat Pokémon.

And for a pokemon, Mewtwo is quite the deep guy

The turquoise killifish Nothobranchius furzeri has an incredibly accelerated lifespan, living for less than a year and reaching full sexual maturity only 14 days after hatching (shortest of any vertebrate on Earth)!

For this reason it's thought they'll act as a good experimental species for modelling age related diseases and senescence in general in humans.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

The coral reef dwarf goby has the shortest lifespan of any vertebrate with a survival limit of 59 days.

Nevaeh Shaggy Destroyer

Nevaeh Shaggy Destroyer wrote: »

The coral reef dwarf goby has the shortest lifespan of any vertebrate with a survival limit of 59 days.

Aplogies I ought have formatted my post better - I was only referring to the killifish's time to sexual maturity as being the shortest of any vertebrate

Capt'n Midnight

clostridium perfringens a bacteria that brings you food poisoning and gas gangrene can double it's numbers in as little as 6.3 minutes under optimal conditions.

sbsquarepants

Our moon is quite unusual insofar as it is chemically very similar to the earth, ie it appears to be made of the exact same material as the earth. This is very unusual as most moons are wandering objects which become trapped by the gravity of the larger planet they orbit and they therefore have no real relationship to that planet. Think of Jupiter and how vastly different all those moons are.

A new theory has possibly shed some light on this anomaly - it suggests that far in the past a mars sized object collided with the earth, releasing enough energy in the process to vaporise the whole planet, creating an astronomical body known as a synestia, the material for the moon then spun off from this synestia and over time both bodies cooled and solidified into what we see today.

https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_t_stewart_where_did_the_moon_come_from_a_new_theory?language=en

Buford T. Justice XIX

I came across this just now, interesting graphic about child deaths in Africa.
https://twitter.com/countcarbon/status/1126055688180989952?s=19

partyguinness

Irish politicians are hovering at the bottom of the European table when it comes to higher education qualifications.

For example over 30% of German politicians have PhDs but none in the Irish parliament- might have changed in the last few years but can't imagine that it's by much.

There is a link somewhere if I could bother to find it.

In other words the Irish parliament is one of the least educated in Europe. That's hard to write. Although looking at the UK at the moment it is reasonable to conclude that higher education may be a tad overrated.

Too much family dynasty nonsense going on. Any old mucker can get their LC and then do a few token years in the family business and then for election.

New Home

I was reading the TA thread earlier, and there was a "discussion" as to whether vegan/vegetarian sausages could be considered sausages at all. It appears they can, provided they contain salt.

From etymonline:

sausage (n.)

mid-15c., sawsyge, from Old North French saussiche (Modern French saucisse), from Vulgar Latin *salsica "sausage," from salsicus "seasoned with salt," from Latin salsus "salted," from past participle of Old Latin sallere "to salt," from sal (genitive salis) "salt" (from PIE root *sal- "salt").

So there. :P

New Home

^^^
In English at least, because the Latin word should be made up of "sal" + "insicia". The part after "sal" (in Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, and even French, and probably to a few more languages) refers to finely chopped/ minced meat. So, it's supposed to mean salted minced meat.

[Late Latin salsīcia, neutral pl. of salsicium, formed by "crossing" insicium, insicia (minced meat) with salsicius (salty)]

Having said that, its meaning has changed with time and now it refers to anything "sausage-shaped".

partyguinness

New Home wrote: »

^^^
In English at least, because the Latin word should be made up of "sal" + "insicia". The part after "sal" (in Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, and even French, and probably to a few more languages) refers to finely chopped/ minced meat. So, it's supposed to mean salted minced meat.

[Late Latin salsīcia, neutral pl. of salsicium, formed by "crossing" insicium, insicia (minced meat) with salsicius (salty)]

Having said that, its meaning has changed with time and now it refers to anything "sausage-shaped".

The word 'salary' also comes from sal as people were paid in salt back in the day as it was a prized preservative.

mzungu

The flashes of coloured light you see when you rub your eyes are called "phosphenes".

dinorebel

mzungu wrote: »

The flashes of coloured light you see when you rub your eyes are called "phosphenes".

Not true everyone knows there Fairies.

According to the International Maritime Organization, the 20 largest ships in the world produce more toxic emissions than all the cars in the world.

The IMO has agreed to cap the emissions allowable from 2020, but as the massive funds required to modify the ships to reduce the emissions to the proposed levels aren't available, it appears the reduction will either be compromised or that they'll be decommissioned.

20 ships trump over 1 billion cars, and it's the cars that get the bad rap.

Capt'n Midnight

Candie wrote: »

According to the International Maritime Organization, the 20 largest ships in the world produce more toxic emissions than all the cars in the world.

The IMO has agreed to cap the emissions allowable from 2020, but as the massive funds required to modify the ships to reduce the emissions to the proposed levels aren't available, it appears the reduction will either be compromised or that they'll be decommissioned.

20 ships trump over 1 billion cars, and it's the cars that get the bad rap.

Only if you measure sulphur emissions.

Could be solved tomorrow if they used low sulphur fuel. Like changing from heavy bunker fuel to marine gas oil on the next voyage.

Or by fitting filters, or changing to something like LNG



New rules mean by 2020 they will have to do this.

blastman

Between May 5th 1963 and May 16th 1965, only two different acts had number one albums in the UK charts, apart from one solitary week during this period. The two acts were, probably unsurprisingly, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their dominance was only briefly broken by Bob Dylan, who spent the week of April 11th-18th 1965 at number one with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Gloomtastic!

Thought I’d throw this question out there......
Has any country tried to ‘metricise’ time? ie break it down into units of ten.

ohnonotgmail

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Thought I’d throw this question out there......
Has any country tried to ‘metricise’ time? ie break it down into units of ten.

Not surprisingly the french tried this. Not a great success

http://mentalfloss.com/article/32127/decimal-time-how-french-made-10-hour-day

Wibbs

Years ago I knew a chap with a decimal pocket watch, not unlike this example:



Though his was late 18th century so worth a fair few bob now. The one in the pic going by the method of winding(built in crown, rather than a separate key) that's a later one, likely from the end of the 19th century when they had a go at the concept again.

New Home

"Knew a chap". Right, Wibbs. "A friend of yours", I'm sure.

Wibbs

New Home wrote: »

"Knew a chap". Right, Wibbs. "A friend of yours", I'm sure.

I wish it was mine. Worth five figures these days. I've a couple of timepieces worth four figures, but not five sadly.

Bobblehats

Wibbs wrote: »

I wish it was mine. Worth five figures these days. I've a couple of timepieces worth four figures, but not five sadly.

Alright I can definitely envisage a monocle in place of that clouded eye now

And some not so shabby upholstery too, with only a slight sheen from all the hair lacquer

humberklog

partyguinness wrote: »

The word 'salary' also comes from sal as people were paid in salt back in the day as it was a prized preservative.

I think that's just something that got said once and repeated as fact but has no historical evidence to back it up.



The first female to male transgender operation was on an Irish woman-man. Michael Dillon was born Laura Maud Dillon in Lismullen in 1915. After studying sciences in Oxford he worked in a research lab. While there he sought hormone treatment but the doctor he was seeing started gossiping and she left Oxford for Bristol to work in a mechanic's garage.

He returned to Ireland and studied medicine in Trinity and while there he wrote a book (Self:A study in ethics and endocrinology) this lead to being put in contact with a doctor in London willing and able to do the op.
Dr. Gillies, a Kiwi, a Spitfire pilot in WW2 (captured) and a brilliant golfer had been making his name in plastic surgery reconstructing injured veterans.

By 1949 Michael Dillon had completed the 13+operations to transition and by '51 he'd qualified in medicine and signed up to the merchant navy as a surgeon and spent 6 years at sea.

Wanting to live a normal and anonymous life a fairly innocuous reveal in Debrettes Peerage caused a storm that Michael wanted to escape from.
He headed to India and wished to become a buddhist monk. He changed his name to Sramamera Jivaka. Things didnt pan out the way he hoped as his past caught up with him and that branch of Buddhism were unwilling to ordain him full monk status. He decided to hoof it to Tibet where they were more broadminded and he restarted his studies and changed his name to Lobzang Jivaka.
Under his Buddhist names he published a number of books on that religion.

Eventually his visa ran out and in 1962 aged 47 he dies. In India. In penury.

Laura Maud Dillon-Laurence Michael Dillon-Sramamera Jivaka-Lobzang Jivaka.

Navan man.

partyguinness

humberklog wrote: »

I think that's just something that got said once and repeated as fact but has no historical evidence to back it up.

But there is no historical evidence disproving it either...:D

humberklog

partyguinness wrote: »

But there is no historical evidence disproving it either...:D

Other than that getting paid in salt would be pants whatever era you lived in. Especially if you were a Roman soldier (that's who the myth lies with and not sure if they were paid at all) but having spent the week chopping off barbarian heads the last thing you'd want to be doing is popping off to the local market and bartering for grog with a bag of salt.

Professor Moriarty

humberklog wrote: »

I think that's just something that got said once and repeated as fact but has no historical evidence to back it up.



The first female to male transgender operation was on an Irish woman-man. Michael Dillon was born Laura Maud Dillon in Lismullen in 1915. After studying sciences in Oxford he worked in a research lab. While there he sought hormone treatment but the doctor he was seeing started gossiping and she left Oxford for Bristol to work in a mechanic's garage.

He returned to Ireland and studied medicine in Trinity and while there he wrote a book (Self:A study in ethics and endocrinology) this lead to being put in contact with a doctor in London willing and able to do the op.
Dr. Gillies, a Kiwi, a Spitfire pilot in WW2 (captured) and a brilliant golfer had been making his name in plastic surgery reconstructing injured veterans.

By 1949 Michael Dillon had completed the 13+operations to transition and by '51 he'd qualified in medicine and signed up to the merchant navy as a surgeon and spent 6 years at sea.

Wanting to live a normal and anonymous life a fairly innocuous reveal in Debrettes Peerage caused a storm that Michael wanted to escape from.
He headed to India and wished to become a buddhist monk. He changed his name to Sramamera Jivaka. Things didnt pan out the way he hoped as his past caught up with him and that branch of Buddhism were unwilling to ordain him full monk status. He decided to hoof it to Tibet where they were more broadminded and he restarted his studies and changed his name to Lobzang Jivaka.
Under his Buddhist names he published a number of books on that religion.

Eventually his visa ran out and in 1962 aged 47 he dies. In India. In penury.

Laura Maud Dillon-Laurence Michael Dillon-Sramamera Jivaka-Lobzang Jivaka.

Navan man.

Perhaps, but it's in alignment with Oxford University's online dictionary's definition of it's entymology:

Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French salarie, from Latin salarium, originally denoting a Roman soldier's allowance to buy salt, from sal ‘salt’

ohnonotgmail

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Perhaps, but it's in alignment with Oxford University's online dictionary's definition of it's entymology:

Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French salarie, from Latin salarium, originally denoting a Roman soldier's allowance to buy salt, from sal ‘salt’

receiving an allowance to buy salt is not the same as being paid in salt.

partyguinness

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Perhaps, but it's in alignment with Oxford University's online dictionary's definition of it's entymology:

Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French salarie, from Latin salarium, originally denoting a Roman soldier's allowance to buy salt, from sal ‘salt’

A quick search online shows that it does seem to provoke unusually strong reactions.

Wibbs

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Perhaps, but it's in alignment with Oxford University's online dictionary's definition of it's entymology:

Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French salarie, from Latin salarium, originally denoting a Roman soldier's allowance to buy salt, from sal ‘salt’

Which itself is a mistranslation. If you look to Roman sources on the matter nowhere does anyone mention soldiers being paid in salt. They do note the word salt and earnings in relation to taxes levied by the state. That brought a fair few quid into Roman coffers as it was a valuable item. So salarium was conflated with something valuable earned(salarius(sp?)), but by the state, not soldiers(or citizens). I seem to recall that "salt" or a similar word was related to political duties? But again nada to do with wages.

In the early part of Rome they were a citizen army so not paid as such, but got bed and board. Later on as a professional standing army they did get paid, but in coin of the realm. 100 denarii a week or whatever and bed and board(and a pension and land after 20 years service IIRC).

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Wibbs wrote: »

Which itself is a mistranslation. If you look to Roman sources on the matter nowhere does anyone mention soldiers being paid in salt. They do note the word salt and earnings in relation to taxes levied by the state. That brought a fair few quid into Roman coffers as it was a valuable item. So salarium was conflated with something valuable earned(salarius(sp?)), but by the state, not soldiers(or citizens). I seem to recall that "salt" or a similar word was related to political duties? But again nada to do with wages.

In the early part of Rome they were a citizen army so not paid as such, but got bed and board. Later on as a professional standing army they did get paid, but in coin of the realm. 100 denarii a week or whatever and bed and board(and a pension and land after 20 years service IIRC).

This fits with my understanding, there are not ancient records referring to soldiers being paid in salt,

partyguinness

Jesus I'm sorry. What have I done..

Realt Dearg Sec

Nevaeh Shaggy Destroyer wrote: »

This fits with my understanding, there are not ancient records referring to soldiers being paid in salt,

It seems to be an example of the myth of barter that is so all-pervasive that we tend to just assume it's true.

This is the belief that at one point in our history, people didn't use money to carry out exchange, but instead had to barter what they had for what someone else had. This is obviously completely cumbersome, so gradually we switched to a system where everyone was trading in a particular commodity universally agreed to be valuable, like gold or salt or whatever. The myth then states that goldsmiths would hold on to your valuable gold and issue a note saying you had it in their place (the first banks!) and these notes then came to stand for the gold and were exchanged freely.

Adam Smith perpetuated this myth as well, but there is zero evidence for it being true, certainly no evidence for a pre-money barter economy exists. As folks have pointed out above, it is often ludicrous on its face: were soldiers wandering around with a bag of salt buying things? To show how ahistorical it all is, Aristotle believed in the existence of a pre-money barter economy, while the myth about Roman soldiers still basically engaging in it obviously comes many centuries after Aristotle. In fact, we've never observed a barter economy at work in any "primitive" culture we've encountered either.

But if like me you took Leaving Cert economics, you read that stuff about the barter economy as fact in the textbook.

David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5,000 years takes on the myth, and argues that it is a product of a trade-based world view, where we find it impossible to imagine any society where people do not exchange things solely on the basis of calculations of perceived personal advantage, so therefore assume it could never have existed. But he provides lots of evidence of the existence of "gift economies" in which people gave one another things only in the expectation that when you had a need it would be similarly fulfilled, but not with any specific value being attached to the gift received, and therefore no debt being incurred that can be transferred. He uses the Iriquois native Americans as an example, but such gifting, provided solely because that is what a cohesive community does to maintain itself, appears to be very common historically.

Skylinehead

partyguinness wrote: »

Jesus I'm sorry. What have I done..

Sparked conversation and knowledge about the Romans!

ArnoldJRimmer

partyguinness wrote: »

Jesus I'm sorry. What have I done..

Sometimes people make mistakes, my advice would be to take it with a pinch of..., ah never mind