DrKrettin

I have just learned that poker players have their own spellings. Have you watched the video? They claim it's 2.5 years, and Feynmann got it wrong. Today I learned that Feynman has only two "n"s

I have just learned that there is no Wikipedia page about the Wikipedia page about the Wikipedia page about Wikipedia

Something I discovered recently when (trying) to learn Spanish is that they have a charming expression "media naranja" = "half an orange" which means your soul mate, or other half, the person which fits exactly to you. A strange expression, I thought, so I looked for an etymology and found that it is taken from Plato Symposium 189e-190a. This is a description of the original state of the species, being spherical with four legs, so the two sexes split into two so that a male and a female each had a partner which fitted each other exactly. The reason I mention this is that the Spanish rendering of Plato is taken from an Arabic translation, where the Arabic translator has inserted the words "like an orange" to the description of the original spherical being. This has then been faithfully translated into Spanish. The actual original Greek text does not mention an orange, which is not surprising since the Greeks did not know about oranges. This is what prompted me to investigate the etymology. So the Spanish expression is from an Arabic interpolation of the original Plato. Not many people know this.

I must take issue with this - I know that many ancient texts are known only through Arabic translations, but as far as I can make out, the vast majority of what we have of Aristotle is the original Greek. The texts listed here in the Corpus Aristotelicum are all in Greek, and I know this because I have them here on my computer in the original. I've just been searching the Nicomachean Ethics in Greek for the quotation I mentioned above. I might well be completely wrong, so if you can find some Aristotle which we have exclusively from an Arabic translation, I would be very interested.

Today I was investigating quotations from Aristotle, and as often happens, discovered that there are many attributed to him which he did not say (or more exactly we have no record of his saying it). This is not a dig at the previous poster, but his signature is just one example. (Link) If anyone could disabuse me, I'd be grateful for an exact reference. Google is extremely bad at propagating quotations, because once a false quotation is made, everybody copies it without questioning its validity.

Just in case Strange reads this thread: A lawyer named Strange passed away. His friend asked the tombstone maker to inscribe on his tombstone, "Here lies Strange, an honest man, and a lawyer." The inscriber insisted that such an inscription would be confusing, for a passerby would tend to think that three men were buried under the stone. However, he suggested an alternative. He would inscribe, "Here lies a man who was both honest and a lawyer." That way, whenever anyone walked by the tombstone and read it, they would be certain to remark, "That's Strange."

I think it's changed its meaning since Old Norse. In Old Norse hundrath meant 120, that is the long hundred of six score, and at a later date, when both the six-score hundred and the five-score hundred were in use, the old or long hundred was styled hundrath tolf-roett ... meaning "duodecimal hundred," and the new or short hundred was called hundrath ti-rætt, meaning "decimal hundred."

My own personal experience is that flies are mainly attracted to moisture. Where I live (Tenerife) the climate is very dry, usually a very low humidity. When I have had a shower and emerge with my head wet, I am tormented by any flies in the house who find it an instant target, and I usually finish up with the absurd attempt at swatting myself on the head for 20 minutes. When I've dried off, they lose interest. They also make a beeline (if I'm allowed to mix insects) for any pools of water, such as in the sink or on a work surface where something has dripped.

I've found this link to Scientific American where they state that fruit flies are repelled, but mosquitoes are attracted.

That's not how christianity developed, though. It was utterly vile in the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition is an obvious example of spreading religion by force.

A woman's inability. Absolutely concrete. (I don't care if that is sexist)

That's a relief. I had already wondered why the letter was written in English.

RTFM - Read the manual

Well, I recently saw some footage of orcas playing with a see lion, throwing it about as if they were playing basketball. The commentator said this was the nearest thing he knew of to cruelty outside our species. But I wonder about the kitten. The real question is whether the kitten was aware that a butterfly could experience pain. If so, then it is cruelty, but I question that. Cats are known to toy with mice rather than kill them outright. but this is probably because they never learned how to kill, rather than being cruel on purpose. Something I have never understood is how anybody can love a cat - as animals it is perfectly obvious that they are phenomenally selfish, probably autistic (if that's possible). What people see as affection I see as learned behaviour for their own benefit, and is totally false. But there I suspect I am in a minority with that opinion. I even prefer people to cats.

That is probably true, but as already stated, probably irrelevant because you just don't meet many kind people. The converse could also be said: the cruellest person is going to be crueller then the cruellest animal. Where in the animal kingdom do you find cruelty other than in our species? Animals are easier to love than humans. Loving humans is hard work, whereas loving a dog is usually a doddle. You could argue that this is a cop-out.