What Does Your Eye Color Say About You?

divlicious · 9 months

Here is a map of blue eyes in Europe, which appears to center on the Baltic states. Interestingly, it is similar but not identical to the blond map of Europe, which is more centered on central Sweden and Finland.

SgtTechCom · 9 months

There's Norman.

chrisgeek · 9 months

It's kinda interesting (and convenient) that a round number like 10000 km is actually accurate to within 0.1% of the real distance (10008 km)

It's nothing of a coincidence. ;-) That's how the meter was initially defined.

I'm kinda rusty on the calculus required to figure it out, but if anyone cares to work it out, I can understand it, and I'd be interested to hear.

Finding an exact formula would be highly complicated, you'd need to take into account the precise ellipsoid geodesics and there would evidently be plenty of elliptic integrals involved. Finding a first-order expansion (in the flattening or eccentricity or whatever), however, should be pretty manageable, however I don't have the patience to actually do so.

chrisgeek · 9 months

To put things even more succinctly: if you start somewhere on the Earth other than the equator (or poles), and start walking due east (or due west), walking perfectly straight, after some time you will no longer be walking due east (resp. west). In fact, after ~10000km you hit the equator, no matter where you started from.

matude · 9 months

In France, restaurants must have free toilets. Fast foods sometimes have a lock on the door to the toilets whose code is printed on the receipt. Non-free toilets are only found in train stations and the like. Paris had a lot of non-free toilets on the street ("sanisette Decaux") which were recently converted to free.

hollymo93 · 9 months

You might enjoy this page then, which appears to consist entirely of Frodo+Sam slash (i.e. gay-oriented) fanfics. Not illustrated, though.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read any of them.)

rgower · 9 months

Another example: current chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel holds a PhD in quantum chemistry.

Edit: and an amusing but not really serious example: the Emperor of Japan has written a number of articles in peer-reviewed papers on ichthyology. (This one has a nice biographical footnote which says: "The author is the Emperor of Japan. He resides at the Akasaka Imperial Palace in Tokyo." Classy.)

hollymo93 · 9 months

Library of Moria comes pretty close.

thehappyhobo · 9 months

If you can read French, and French law interests you, one of the most famous bloggers in the French blogosphere is a lawyer who goes by the name of Maître Eolas, which you might try reading. It's mostly about penal law and procedure, but he (and his permanent invited cobloggers) speaks about other matters (constitutional law, comparative law, etc.) and he's really good at making things understandable.

Of course, one of the things about French law which would probably confuse those acquainted with the US legal system is the strong distinction between administrative law and civil law.

crackerjack4294 · 9 months

Generally in video games, a red fluid is associated with health/life/HP, while a blue fluid is associated with mana/magic points/MP.

Do you happen to know precisely which game started this meme? The first I saw was Ultima Underworld (cf. the two fluid flasks at the bottom right of the various screenshots), around 1992 or 1993, but I suppose it wasn't the first.

MrWink · 9 months

April 7, 1969, to be precise. It's a mostly conventional birth date (publication of RFC 1), and not really the birth date of "the Internet" in a meaningful sense, but it's still what is generally agreed upon as "the birth date of the Internet".

deathofpatriotism · 9 months

You've just restored my faith in... well, in something. When I first watched The Matrix, the moment I heard this ridiculous story about generating energy, I thought it was insanely stupid, and all the more stupid that there was this obvious alternative explanation which is the one you just gave. I'm glad it was the screenwriter's original intention.

bayareatrojan · 9 months

Try to avoid "parlez-vous."

To clarify this, "parlez-vous anglais?" is indeed more formal (hence less idiomatic) than "est-ce que vous parlez anglais?". But for someone who in any case doesn't speak French (and is stating that fact), this really doesn't matter: just pick whichever you find easier to pronounce or remember.

bayareatrojan · 9 months

You're welcome. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions. (However, it might be useful if you specify which country you're from when asking for advice, because some facts/conventions about Paris might be obvious for other Europeans and not, say, for Americans or Australians.)

bayareatrojan · 9 months

First, I do not speak a word of French. I will be trying my hardest until the 10th to pick up some common phrases and whatnot and will also try my hardest to be respectful while in France. Any advice on this front?

By all means, learn how to say some simple things like "pardon", "merci", "au revoir" ("sorry", "thank you", "good bye") and some variation(s) of the following magical phrase: "excusez-moi, je ne parle pas du tout français; parlez-vous anglais?" ("excuse me, I don't speak any French; do you speak English?"). Although a reasonable proportion of them do speak English (the actual proportion depends on how well you need to speak to qualify ;-), Frenchmen tend to find it rude for someone to start speaking English without making the minimal effort of speaking at least one sentence in French to make sure that conversation can proceed in English.

Also, when you speak English and find that people don't understand you, try saying things more slowly and more distinctly. This should be an obvious piece of advice, but for some reason many native English speakers fail to realize that speaking more loudly isn't of much help, whereas speaking slowly and articulately does wonders. (For many other languages I would have added the advice "use simple words", but in the case of English versus French it's not an obviously good idea, because a good number of the longer and more sophisticated words in English are actually of French origin, so Frenchmen might have more trouble understanding short words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Anyway.)

Third, best cheap places to eat?

For French food, any of a huge number of brasseries around Paris. It's impossible to tell beforehand which are good and which aren't, so just try one which doesn't look too seedy, and if it's good, stick to it, otherwise, move to another one. I'd recommend staying away from those places which loudly advertise that they have a menu in English, because they're just trying to attract tourists (many restaurants will have a menu in English, or at least in Gibberenglish, even if they don't say so outside).

Where can I find awesome baguettes?

Any of a zillion boulangeries around Paris (although something between 1/2 and 2/3 of them will be closed on any given day in August). Baguette is the most basic bread they make, and the quality depends much less on the boulangerie you go to than on the time of the day (baguette is really good only for a few hours after it's baked). So you could try asking a given boulangerie at what time(s) they make their baguettes (generally two or three times during the day, I think) and come shortly thereafter.

But beyond the basic baguette, there are a number of specialty baguettes and other kinds of breads, with strange names that even Frenchmen can't understand or remember (and whose prime function seems to be that the boulanger can make fun of you for stupidly pointing and saying "je veux ça" because you don't know what "ça" is supposed to be called[#]), and which can be much better than baguette (at least according to most people's tastes). Sometimes these will be advertised outside the boulangerie. E.g., "flûte Gana" ("flûte" literally means "flute" but refers to a thinner shaped baguette, and "flûte Gana" is a trademarked kind of flûte which is made from a special flour, maybe whole weat flour or something), "Banette" or others. These won't be available everywhere.

[#] There is even a kind of bread called "pain" (it's a sort of thicker baguette), which is very stupid and very confusing because "pain" just means "bread".

Also, should I be worried because I'm going in August?

No. It used to be the case that everything was closed in Paris in August, but now things have improved enormously. (Except if you need to see a dentist. This is still annoyingly difficult.) Contrariwise, there are a number of things to do specifically in August, e.g., there are outdoor movie projections and the beaches of Paris Plages.

Make sure to check the city's official web site, which has an English section and contains some useful information. And, of course, the Wikitravel page on Paris and on France (the latter has a lot of general useful information, e.g., reminding you that you are not expected to leave a tip in restaurants because service is always included).

kingofapes · 9 months

Did you learn by just picking it up, or did you get some kind of teaching?

Was there any difference in how you were treated (by guards or other inmates) once you started speaking Thai?

Gro-Tsen · 9 months

It doesn't depend on OS or browser but on the fonts installed. Try installing the "Symbola" font from this page (when it comes back to life, that is).

Gro-Tsen · 9 months

Someone who speaks only English might hear it as a "t" and not notice the aspiration or the retroflex quality. The aspiration might be heard as a slight "h" immediately after the "t" (but not so as to form the "th" in "this" or "thing"). Retroflex means you curl your tongue back: that's really easy to do (if you really need an explanation, pronounce an English "sh", notice what position your tongue is in, try putting the tip of the tongue even further back if you can while still touching the palate, and now say a "t" in this position, followed by "h" when releasing the "t"). I could record it but not right now because my boyfriend is sleeping.

Gro-Tsen · 9 months

You mean more aspiration.

Gro-Tsen · 9 months

Something which has always surprised me about the fact that this meme works is that it implies that nearly everyone browsing Reddit has a Kannada font installed (not an obvious fact at all: e.g., my Android phone doesn't have one apparently).

Since Unicode 6.0, there are hundreds of fun little symbols (and emotica) which can be used to sprinkle any text with glittering 💎 Japanese sparkles. I wonder whether most Redditors have a font to display them and if/when the practice of using them will catch on. 😇🙌

Gro-Tsen · 9 months

Retroflex means the tongue is curled backward toward the back of the palate (so that it's actually the back of the tongue that touches the palate). (Actually, English dentals (t/d) are already articulated further back than non-retroflex dentals from typical Indian languages, so they would be considered "somewhat" retroflex and might be heard as retroflex by a speaker of Hindi, Kannada or whatever.)

Concerning aspiration, to clarify what you wrote, it's essentially the same as pronouncing an 'h' after the consonant (thus, 't·h' as two separate consonants but with no pause between them; something like the middle part of the word "butt-hole").

hyperforce · 9 months

I'm afraid this is pretty incomprehensible to non-Americans (or to anyone who doesn't follow American TV series). I'm not entirely sure what the connection to /r/gay is, either.

carolyn_ · 9 months

Do you see yourself living all your life there or do you intend to move elsewhere?

bleerg · 9 months

Ah! I will arrive Friday morning. Having been to Paris in August for the past 35 years, I can tell you every year it gets a bit better.

My father moved to Paris (from Canada) around 1965, and he claims at that time it was possible on August 15th to walk the Champs-Élysées right in the middle, from the Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, and not encounter a single car. I don't know how much of an exaggeration this is. He also claims all swimming pools were closed in August, something he found mind-bogglingly stupid.

Gro-Tsen

TROPHY CASE

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