How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)

How Hidden Technology Transformed Bowling

Todays Thought

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. 

-Annie Dillard, author (b. 30 Apr 1945)

Todays Thought

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story. 

-Terry Pratchett, novelist (28 Apr 1948-2015)

Friday Mix

Todays Thought

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. 

-Edward R. Murrow, journalist (25 Apr 1908-1965)

Todays Word

 

amusia

PRONUNCIATION:

(ay-MYOO-zee-uh) 

MEANING:

noun: The inability to recognize, reproduce, or appreciate music.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek a- (not) + mousike (music), from Mousa (Muse). Earliest documented use: 1890.

NOTES:

Hear this fascinating description (video, 4 min.) of amusia by Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia.

USAGE:

“The woman (who eventually decided she had amusia) had spent her life attending concerts out of politeness.”
Christopher Borrelli; Don’t Like Music? You Are Not Alone; Chicago Tribune; (Chicago, Illinois); Aug 3, 2014.

Pat's Run 2024

Todays Thought

I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes. 

-Anthony Trollope, novelist (24 Apr 1815-1882)

Todays Thought

This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

-William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (23 Apr 1564-1616)

Todays Thought

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. 

-Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (21 Apr 1818-1885)

Todays Thought

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. 

-Fred Brooks, computer scientist (19 Apr 1931-2022)

Todays Thought

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. 

-Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (18 Apr 1857-1938)

Todays Word

 A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

arithmomania

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-rith-muh-MAY-nee-uh) 

MEANING:

noun: An obsessive preoccupation with numbers, calculations, and counting.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek arithmo- (number) + -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze). Earliest documented use: 1892.

NOTES:

If you go for a bicycle ride and can’t help but determine the distance, time traveled, average speed, elevation gain, and more, chances are you have arithmomania. If you feel it necessary to count the number of steps in a staircase as you go up or down, chances are you have arithmomania. If you count the number of floors in buildings as you walk through a downtown area, arithmomania.

I only count the number of words in a dictionary.

Count von Count, a vampire Muppet on Sesame Street, has arithmomania. He counts run-of-the-mill things such as those mentioned above, but also bats in his castle. Apparently all vampires have arithmomania. One way to stop them is to spill grain around them. They have no choice but to count the grains, allowing you to escape.

Todays Thought

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. 

-Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (17 Apr 1885-1962)

Todays Thought

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 

-Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (16 Apr 1844-1924)

Mathematician Answers Geometry Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | W...

Todays Word

 

neophilia

PRONUNCIATION:

(nee-uh-FIL-ee-uh) 

MEANING:

noun: The love of what’s new or novel.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek neo- (new) + -philia (love). Earliest documented use: 1899. The opposite is neophobia.

USAGE:

“Neophilia is at the root of the growing problem of hazardous waste in the US and other developed countries. More than 100 million mobile phones were discarded in the US last year, along with tens of millions of computers.”
Neophiliac; New Scientist (London, UK); Jun 10, 2006.

Meatballs - SNL

Why do some people always get lost?

 Why do some people always get lost?

Experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to sense of direction.

BOB HOLMES, KNOWABLE MAGAZINE - 4/14/2024, 3:55 AM

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location—or, more challenging, to imagine they are someplace else and point in the direction of a third location—and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others...

Todays Thought

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. 

-Arnold J. Toynbee, historian (14 Apr 1889-1975)

Todays Thought

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. 

-Charles Baudelaire, poet, critic, and translator (9 Apr 1821-1867)

Where Does One U.S. Tax Dollar Go?

 Where Does One U.S. Tax Dollar Go?

Aqua regia

 Aqua regia

Aqua regia (/ˈreɪɡiə, ˈriːdʒiə/; from Latin, "regal water" or "royal water") is a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, optimally in a molar ratio of 1:3.^[b] Aqua regia is a fuming liquid. Freshly prepared aqua regia is colorless, but it turns yellow, orange or red within seconds from the formation of nitrosyl chloride and nitrogen dioxide. It was named by alchemists because it can dissolve noble metals like gold and platinum, though not all metals.

History[edit]

Aqua regia first appeared in the De inventione veritatis ("On the Discovery of Truth") by pseudo-Geber (after c. 1300), who produced it by adding sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) to nitric acid.^[6][d] The preparation of aqua regia by directly mixing hydrochloric acid with nitric acid only became possible after the discovery in the late sixteenth century of the process by which free hydrochloric acid can be produced.^[8]

The fox in Basil Valentine's Third Key represents aqua regia, Musaeum Hermeticum, 1678

The third of Basil Valentine's keys (c. 1600) shows a dragon in the foreground and a fox eating a rooster in the background. The rooster symbolizes gold (from its association with sunrise and the sun's association with gold), and the fox represents aqua regia. The repetitive dissolving, heating, and redissolving (the rooster eating the fox eating the rooster) leads to the buildup of chlorine gas in the flask. The gold then crystallizes in the form of gold(III) chloride, whose red crystals Basil called "the rose of our masters" and "the red dragon's blood".^[9] The reaction was not reported again in the chemical literature until 1895.^[10]

Antoine Lavoisier called aqua regia nitro-muriatic acid in 1789.^[11]

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.^[12][13]

Todays Thought

Mark Twain once said, “I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.”

How to Fight the Bad Logic of the Internet | Argument Clinic

The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk

 The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk

3M’s story, in its own words, suggests a similar crisis of culture. In A Century of Innovation, a book published by the company in 2002, around the time of its 100-year anniversary, the company compared the creation of the spin-off, which it called “the most wrenching decision in its history,” to that of its determination eight years earlier to sell its Duplicating Products Division, which sold copying machines:

Of all the businesses 3M has shed over its 100 years, the two seminal decisions that people point to as most significant involved the sale of 3M’s Duplicating Products business to Harris Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia, and the spin-off of 3M’s data-storage and imaging-systems businesses in 1996 creating a new company called Imation in Oakdale, Minnesota, near 3M headquarters. The two decisions have several elements in common—both involved businesses that 3M created and, in fact, ranked number one in the marketplace for decades. They were “homegrown” businesses—largely created within 3M and commercialized and built with the energy of many internal sponsors and champions. The businesses were risky because the products were based on pioneering technologies. They not only changed the basis of competition; they also created all new, global industries. The businesses were highly profitable for decades, and they represented a significant share of the company’s total annual revenues. They also produced many of 3M’s next generation of leaders.

Todays Thought

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. 

-Booker T. Washington, reformer, educator, and author (5 Apr 1856-1915)

Todays Thought

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. 

-Maya Angelou, poet (4 Apr 1928-2014)

Todays Thought

I am only one, / But still I am one. / I cannot do everything, / But still I can do something; / And because I cannot do everything, / I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. 

-Edward Everett Hale, author (3 Apr 1822-1909)

Todays Thought

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping. 

-Kenneth Tynan, critic and writer (2 Apr 1927-1980)

Todays Thought

Make no judgments where you have no compassion. 

-Anne McCaffrey, writer (1 Apr 1926-2011)