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Post by Verbivore on Apr 28, 2018 7:41:58 GMT
[...] while staying with my friends, I passed a village in Worcestershire called Bricklehampton. It seems this is the longest place name in England without any repeated letters. I hope everyone will agree about the importance of knowing this. It is, I think, more interesting than much of the information than that with which we are assailed by today’s news media. LJH: I fully concur! Just think of me as I proofread the stuff for a living! I have, fortunately, developed the ability to dismiss it as soon as I've emended it, or at least at the end of a proofing day. In one eye and out the other, most of it. If it were a national paper rather than an independent local I'd never cope with the meaningless drivel. I mean, who gives a FF if Donald didn't have time to buy Melania a present FGS!
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 28, 2018 9:39:45 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 29, 2018 2:23:39 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Apr 29, 2018 11:50:24 GMT
I think that most visitors to this forum will know about TED talks. If there are folks who do not, I would urge them to go to www.ted.com and have a look around. In particular, I recommend the talk by Dr Lera Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. I found her her talk on “How language shapes the way we think” fascinating. Here is the link www.ted.com/speakers/lera_boroditsky I had difficulty recognising the names associated with her reference to the language which had no words for left and right. If anyone is interested it is the Kuuk Thaayorre language spoken at Pormperaaw in western Cape York.
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Post by Twoddle on Apr 29, 2018 12:59:17 GMT
I had difficulty recognising the names associated with her reference to the language which had no words for left and right. During an episode of QI it was stated that it's impossible ultimately to define "left" and "right". I looked up the definition of "right" in a dictionary, and my initial reaction was that QI had been talking nonsense, because the definition was something to the effect that, if one stands at the Equator and faces north, right is in the direction of sunrise. Hang on though, in that case, how does one define "north"? It turns out that most of the definitions of "north" beg the question by using north as part of the definition! One of the few that doesn't do so is "The direction along a meridian 90 degrees anticlockwise from east", where "east" is the direction of sunrise when one is standing at the Equator. Assuming that one accepts that "clockwise" is the direction of rotation of the hands on a clock, "left" and "right" can be defined ... unless one dwells in outer space, of course.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Apr 29, 2018 13:53:49 GMT
I don’t understand the QI argument. I think left and right have no objective reality except in relation to an observer’s viewpoint which is why we often need to refer to “my left” or “your left”. Twod’s mention of outer space seems to me to prove the point. Similarly, velocity is related to the change of position of an object in relation to some other object’s position. Up and down also relate to an observer’s viewpoint. We customarily think of up and down in relation to the effect of gravity but this, too, falls down when in free fall in space.
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 30, 2018 10:44:25 GMT
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