Today I learned
July 27, 2020
Modern dictionaries will trace words to Anglo-French
When I learned English in the 90s, the dictionaries attributed words introduced from French after the Norman conquest as "Middle French." Today I learned that this is an old classification. Merriam-Webster gives as their etymology "Anglo-French".
Anglo-French, or Anglo-Norman, was a legitimate dialect of French from 1066 until the 1400s.
This explains the difference in spelling between modern French words and English words borrowed from Anglo-Norman.
25 July, 2020
The Aztec symbol for Tenochtitlan had an eagle holding a glyph, not a serpent
The well known seal of Mexico, the eagle eating a serpent on top of a cactus, is the foundational myth of Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztecs. According to the article below, written in Spanish, what the eagle should be holding is a glyph symbolizing war. The glyph is the combined symbols of water and fire. It looks like a scroll.
The speculation is that priests transformed this symbol into a serpent, a symbol of the devil, to water down the original meaning.
Stone that shows the original symbol of Mexico
21 July, 2020
Woah is an alternate spelling of Whoa
I learned the 'woah' spelling by watching television with subtitles. While check spelling my writing this morning, the checker said it was wrong. I do an internet check, and yes, it is the less acceptable spelling of 'whoa.'
Merriam-Webster has a cool article on the whoa vs woah. It appears that the 'woah' spelling is a nineties thing.
11 June, 2020
Joseph Gayetty, inventor of the modern toilet paper
He invented the modern commercial toilet paper. It originally was a hemp sheet of paper with aloe, and sold as therapy for hemorrhoids. It started selling in 1857 and disappeared in the 1930s, when the Northern Tissue Company invented the splinter-free toilet paper.
7 June, 2020
Gravity: we don't know what it is
We can measure, we can predict trajectories of missiles, and we can plot the position of the stars. We still don't know what it is.
This bit is mind blowing to me. I was taught it as dogma, accepted it as dogma, so I never thought about it.
4 June, 2020
Harpies
Harpies are personifications of storms winds. They are half women half birds.
3 June, 2020
RaceTrack
Race track is a paper and pencil game that simulates the physics of a car race using vectors to represent direction and speed.You draw a racing track. Then each player can move one square ahead. You make an arrow reaching place where you car is. In the next turn you copy the length and direction of the previous arrow. From that point you have the eight vertices around that point where you can place the next arrow. These represent accelerating, slowing down, and moving to the right and left.
The game seems to be popular in Europe. It was covered by Martin Gardner in the early 70s in his column in Scientific American. It is used to teach about vectors in some countries.
Condominium
A condominium is a legal concept in international law. It is a piece of land whose ownership is shared by a number of countries. Condominium in international law
2 June, 2020
Edmund Hoyle
He was a whist tutor to the rich. He published his notes on the game and sold the printing out. Then he sold the rights to the book to a publisher. The publisher then had to deal with pirated versions of the book.
This is a delightful, small article on Hoyle. It is interesting in terms of learning about publishing and the history of the books that eventually became Hoyle's book of games.
1 June, 2020
The flag of Brittany
It is black and white with ermine spots.
Steradian
What a radian is to a circle a steradian is to a sphere.
Piquet
This is a very complicated card game from France. I learned about it. It was too difficult to learn yesterday. Piquet
31 May, 2020
I learned how to play whist to learn what a trick was in a card game.
Learning the simplest version of a game allows you to understand more complex version. I have been mystified by bridge. Yet most books, even the ones that claim they will teach how to play bridge, they cover the trick mechanism superficially. It is assumed you know or there is someone who can teach you.
We read the rules and watched a video on youtube.
26 May, 2020
Musical slurs
A musical slur is a line that joins two different pitches together. It is meant to indicate that you must slur the sounds together. In a piano that means playing it in legato style.
Previously I thought it was a strange version of a tie.It is confusing because the same symbol is use as a tie, which is when you have two note of the same pitch joined with the same symbol. When they have the same pitch, it indicates that you hold that note for the sum of the notes. Used when a note crosses a bar.
25 May, 2020
Youtube for learning
On a twitter thread I learned that one can learn how to improve many skills if you watch someone doing it on youtube. These include improving your sudoku skills, chess, monopoly, gardening, scrabble, and maybe more. I want to try it now.
This is the kind of tweets I liked twitter for 10 years ago. Learn via youtube
Fnord and Discordians
Fnord is a word with hypnotic powers which are taught to children to feel uneasy when they see it and not being able to recall it.
Discorcordians is a parody religion created in the 1960s. It worships chaos. I am so glad I have found this.
23 May, 2020
Protons
Protons are made out of two up quarks and one down one.
Previously I was told that protons were made out of smaller particles and quarks were mentioned, but they weren't connected the way this statement is.
Quarks
Quarks are elementary particles that are fundamental part of matter. We can't look at them directly. They have been proven to exist in the last century. My current understanding is that they are like atoms of subatomic particles.
Reading through the article I realize how little I understand this. I think it has to do with a poor grasp of what strong and weak interactions are.
Previously they were presented as the cool new discover that protons, neutrons, and electrons were made out of other particles. It was similar to revealing that Pluto wasn't a planet anymore. I was taught that they were up and down quarks, but it was confusing what that meant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark
Physic's Standard Model
This is the current theory that explains three of the four fundamental forces in the universe and that classifies elementary particles. It fails to include gravity, so it is considered a temporary theory.
Previously I was only barely aware of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
Strong and Weak Interactions
Strong interaction is the force that keeps particles together to form the nucleus of atoms or the force that hold quarks together to create hadron particles.
Weak interaction is the force responsible for radioactive decay in atoms. It is only felt at subatomic distances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_interaction
Anthony Eden and the Suez Canal
He was the prime minister of the UK after Churchill. His greatest political moment was the Suez Canal incident in the mid 1950s. It triggered the end of his political career.
Egypt through its president Nasser seized the Suez Canal, which was previously controlled by UK. The canal represented access to Middle Eastern oil and revenues from its tolls. Eden and his cabinet came up two plans. The first was to assassinate Nasser. The second one was to ask Israel to invade Egypt. Then UK and France would intervene to bring peace to region. They would conveniently then take over military possession of the canal.
Eden had not realized that UK was not a world power any more. UK owed a lot of money to the US. The US held a lot of pounds. Eden didn't consult with Americans about his plan because he felt he didn't need to. When they did consult them, their eagerness for taking over the canal made imagine US support. There wasn't any.
The plan started. But soon after the attack happened, the US stopped it. The US famously threatened to call the loans and to dump their holdings of pounds in the market, crashing the British economy. UK had to withdraw, bringing a humiliating political defeat.
Eden activated the plans to kill Nasser. But by this point Nasser had captured MI6 agents in Egypt.
Previously I didn't know who Anthony Eden was. I became familiar with him by watching the TV show The Crown.
The Club and The Other Club
Anthony Eden offended Churchill by declining to join his political dining club, The Other Club. To belong to this club, you had to be esteemed and entertaining.
Churchill created this club after he was rejected from The Club. The Club was a political dining club. It originally was meant to be a friendship dining club for Dr. Samuel Johnson. By the influence of Edmund Burke, it evolved into a political club.
22 May, 2020
Autocracy is a form of government where a supreme leader or party possesses absolute power.
An autocracy can be a personality-driven dictatorship, an absolute monarch, or a party dictatorship.
Before I thought it only meant a dictatorship.