Things you have recently learnt

pinno

TheBigBean said:

I rcently learnt that there is some education in Octonauts. My son could identify an animal in the zoo I had never even heard of.

It does contain some actual marine concerns.

pinno

elbowloh said:

Current favourites are Snail and the Whale, the Highway Rat, Gruffalo and Room on the Broom - all on iPlayer.

We have all of the above in written form as well as the Gruffalo in Scottish dialect. It's fab.

elbowloh

That in the Go Compare adverts, that bloke is actually more annoying as himself than as the opera singer.

kingstongraham

When they made The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman was 29 and Anne Bancroft was 35.

TheBigBean

kingstongraham said:

When they made The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman was 29 and Anne Bancroft was 35.

She was 8 years older than her daughter.

Ben6899

rick_chasey said:

I knew there were some brave people who helped contain and clean up the Chernobyl accident, but I had no idea about the thousands of soldiers who the authorities sent up to the roof to literally throw the super radioactive bits of graphite back off the roof into the remnants of the core.

It was so radioactive they were only allowed to spend between 1 minute and 2 minutes up on the roof, depending on which part. Imagine how frantic that must have been. Terrifying.

Each time someone was done their lead protective suits had to be buried in concrete as they had absorbed so much radiation.

(scene from the programme of the same name).

You should read this:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=safari&sa=X&hl=en-gb&q=Chernobyl:+The+History+of+a+Nuclear+Catastrophe&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLSz9U3SCk2zi7MUeLVT9c3NEwzLMoyzE4z0ZLKTrbST8rPz9ZPLC3JyC-yArGLFfLzcioXseo7Z6QW5eUnVeZYKYRkpCp4ZBaX5BdVKuSnKSQq-JUm56QmFik4J5YkFpcU5RdkpO5gZZzAxggAGWjEeHEAAAA&ved=2ahUKEwi3kuS0n4bzAhUJJBoKHXXaD3cQgOQBegQIIxAE&biw=414&bih=829&dpr=2

kingstongraham

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(film)

The production details of this film. Mental.

pinno

"Roar is a 1981 American adventure comedy film[3][4] written, produced, and directed by Noel Marshall. Roar's story follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, tigers, and..."

There are no Tigers in Africa.
And due to the above, I didn't go any further.

kingstongraham

pinno said:

"Roar is a 1981 American adventure comedy film[3][4] written, produced, and directed by Noel Marshall. Roar's story follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, tigers, and..."

There are no Tigers in Africa.
And due to the above, I didn't go any further.

Oh you should... "A number of lion tamers warned that it was impossible to bring a large number of big cats together on a film set. "

"The family would eventually accumulate, by 1979, 71 lions, 26 tigers, a tigon, nine black panthers, 10 cougars, two jaguars, four leopards, two elephants, six black swans, four Canada geese, four cranes, two peacocks, seven flamingos, and a marabou stork; the only animal they turned down was a hippopotamus."

"One scene where Marshall and Mativo drive a 1937 Chevrolet containing two tigers took seven weeks to complete, because Glassey and Miller had to train the animals to ride in a car."

"One session involved a leopard licking Hedren's face which had been coated in honey"

"It has been estimated that, of Roar's 140-person crew, at least 70 were injured during production."

pinno

kingstongraham said:

"It has been estimated that, of Roar's 140-person crew, at least 70 were injured during production."

Hee hee.
That taught 'em.

capt_slog

pinno said:

kingstongraham said:

"It has been estimated that, of Roar's 140-person crew, at least 70 were injured during production."

Hee hee.
That taught 'em.

But not very quickly.

rjsterry

In the days when all printed text was set by hand, every fount (pronounced 'font') came in a pair wide shallow drawers - one containing all the capitals and one containing all the small letters and punctuation marks - which were literally the upper case and the lower case of each fount.

rjsterry

Out of sorts, stereotype and cliché are also printing terms brought into everyday use.

briantrumpet

rjsterry said:

In the days when all printed text was set by hand, every fount (pronounced 'font') came in a pair wide shallow drawers - one containing all the capitals and one containing all the small letters and punctuation marks - which were literally the upper case and the lower case of each fount.

Didn't know that was why upper/lower case... hadn't even thought about it. (Remembering 'majuscule' is also a good way not to forget it's minuscule.)

Hmm, OED seems to think font/fount were exactly the same thing, and the earliest citation of 'font' is a little earlier (1664) than 'fount', and the pronunciation this seems to be from 1897, so I'm not sure about that point when the two terms were concurrent.

1664 C. Chauncy Let. 2 Nov. in R. Boyle Corr. (2001) II. 383 Marmaduke Johnson..may carry on the printing worke with greater advantage. if your selves shalbee pleased to commit the mannaging of the presse to him, and to furnish him with fonts of letters, for the printing of English, Indian, Latine and Greeke, and some also for Hebrewe.

1683 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises II. 13 A Fount (properly a Fund) of Letter of all Bodies.

Compare slightly earlier fond n.3, fund n.2
N.E.D. (1897) gives only the pronunciation (fǫnt) /fɒnt/.

Both derived from the process of casting (founding, in metal) the font/fount

rjsterry

briantrumpet said:

rjsterry said:

In the days when all printed text was set by hand, every fount (pronounced 'font') came in a pair wide shallow drawers - one containing all the capitals and one containing all the small letters and punctuation marks - which were literally the upper case and the lower case of each fount.

Didn't know that was why upper/lower case... hadn't even thought about it. (Remembering 'majuscule' is also a good way not to forget it's minuscule.)

Hmm, OED seems to think font/fount were exactly the same thing, and the earliest citation of 'font' is a little earlier (1664) than 'fount', and the pronunciation this seems to be from 1897, so I'm not sure about that point when the two terms were concurrent.

1664 C. Chauncy Let. 2 Nov. in R. Boyle Corr. (2001) II. 383 Marmaduke Johnson..may carry on the printing worke with greater advantage. if your selves shalbee pleased to commit the mannaging of the presse to him, and to furnish him with fonts of letters, for the printing of English, Indian, Latine and Greeke, and some also for Hebrewe.

1683 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises II. 13 A Fount (properly a Fund) of Letter of all Bodies.

Compare slightly earlier fond n.3, fund n.2
N.E.D. (1897) gives only the pronunciation (fǫnt) /fɒnt/.

Both derived from the process of casting (founding, in metal) the font/fount

And strictly speaking, font/fount refers to just one particular size and style of a typeface e.g. Garamond Bold 12pt.

A cliché was a commonly used phrase, cast together as a single block to save time setting the type. A stereotype was similarly a whole page of a popular publication cast as a plate.

Minding your ps and qs also comes from printing (where everything is reversed making a q look like a p and vice versa).

hamish_mctavish

rjsterry said:

Minding your ps and qs also comes from printing (where everything is reversed making a q look like a p and vice versa).

Why would that come to mean an instruction to be polite? I always understood that it derived from Pleases and ThanQous

briantrumpet

hamish_mctavish said:

rjsterry said:

Minding your ps and qs also comes from printing (where everything is reversed making a q look like a p and vice versa).

Why would that come to mean an instruction to be polite? I always understood that it derived from Pleases and ThanQous

That looks unlikely...

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/mind-your-ps-and-qs.html

rjsterry

hamish_mctavish said:

rjsterry said:

Minding your ps and qs also comes from printing (where everything is reversed making a q look like a p and vice versa).

Why would that come to mean an instruction to be polite? I always understood that it derived from Pleases and ThanQous

In the sense that you should take extra care to choose your words carefully. The phrase still has the emphasis on taking extra care in US usage.

womack

Michael Jackson's son is called Blanket!

rjsterry

We have three words for the first three whole numbers: one, two and three. Old English had... lots.

briantrumpet

That Nicholas Parsons' wife, Denise Bryer, who has just died, was the voice of Little Weed.

Hated that programme.

briantrumpet

That to file with a raspy thing comes from the old Germanic word to scratch (a surface), but to file documents comes from the French word for wire, 'fil' (and thence 'filament'), so originally to 'string on a thread', and by extension, to get in a specific order for storage.

To string upon a thread (obsolete); to place (documents) on a file; to place (papers) in consecutive order for preservation and reference

orraloon

That the Majestic wine store in Calais has closed. Dropped in past on Thursday, not been there for some years, almost empty, just a few pallets in the middle of the floor. It closed on the Friday.

Another brexshit bonus. Trade dropped way off. As individual allowance in the now non-free movement of goods into dUK is 18 bottles per person, volumes way down, excluding the effect of low transit visitor numbers wot wiv the C-word.

pinno

orraloon said:

That the Majestic wine store in Calais has closed. Dropped in past on Thursday, not been there for some years, almost empty, just a few pallets in the middle of the floor. It closed on the Friday.

Another brexshit bonus. Trade dropped way off. As individual allowance in the now non-free movement of goods into dUK is 18 bottles per person, volumes way down, excluding the effect of low transit visitor numbers wot wiv the C-word.

Migrants not making up the numbers?

orraloon

Britney Spears turns 40 on Thursday. 😳 Toxic.

DeVlaeminck

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Expect the gender argument to flare up in the Olympics. I think there is a former man turned woman competing as a woman in the weightlifting.

Rich over on Pro Race came up with the most sensible solution to this where in sport you have a female category open only to those born female and an open category for everyone else.

So that is logical but really misses why the men go through the transition to women in the first place - they want to be recognised by the world as women, not as former men, if that make sense.

That is what the tension is around.

Sure but there has to be an acknowledgement that leads to unfair advantage in a sporting environment. Having a non-gender related 'open' category seems the only thing close to a solution. The alternative is you don't allow people to compete outside of the sex they were born as or sport just becomes meaningless.

Right, I'm not saying it's right, i tend to lean towards the solution that you mentioned, but that cuts across the heart of what trans identity is about.

For some of these people the idea that society will never separate them from whatever sex they were born is genuinely traumatic and causes problems - hence all the faff around pronouns etc.

I can't really identify with it but if you dig into it, that is the reality.

Now, some of the solutions activists for them propose seem to me anyway to really infringe on the right or general cultural space of women (including sports!!!) and some of it really goes down a rabbit hole that doesn't really recognise the physical and biological realities of different sexes.

Anyway, there's no solution where someone isn't upset by it.

I have generally veered away from the discussion as it is probably the most toxic one I have ever come across - if you thought Brexit was bad this is 100x worse.

Not a thread I've frequented hence the throw back but isn't this basically the position UK sport (or whatever it is called) have come to - that it's impossible to fully reconcile trans rights around inclusiveness with allowing biological women to compete on a level playing field - and individual sports will have to choose which is more important.

Pross

DeVlaeminck said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Expect the gender argument to flare up in the Olympics. I think there is a former man turned woman competing as a woman in the weightlifting.

Rich over on Pro Race came up with the most sensible solution to this where in sport you have a female category open only to those born female and an open category for everyone else.

So that is logical but really misses why the men go through the transition to women in the first place - they want to be recognised by the world as women, not as former men, if that make sense.

That is what the tension is around.

Sure but there has to be an acknowledgement that leads to unfair advantage in a sporting environment. Having a non-gender related 'open' category seems the only thing close to a solution. The alternative is you don't allow people to compete outside of the sex they were born as or sport just becomes meaningless.

Right, I'm not saying it's right, i tend to lean towards the solution that you mentioned, but that cuts across the heart of what trans identity is about.

For some of these people the idea that society will never separate them from whatever sex they were born is genuinely traumatic and causes problems - hence all the faff around pronouns etc.

I can't really identify with it but if you dig into it, that is the reality.

Now, some of the solutions activists for them propose seem to me anyway to really infringe on the right or general cultural space of women (including sports!!!) and some of it really goes down a rabbit hole that doesn't really recognise the physical and biological realities of different sexes.

Anyway, there's no solution where someone isn't upset by it.

I have generally veered away from the discussion as it is probably the most toxic one I have ever come across - if you thought Brexit was bad this is 100x worse.

Not a thread I've frequented hence the throw back but isn't this basically the position UK sport (or whatever it is called) have come to - that it's impossible to fully reconcile trans rights around inclusiveness with allowing biological women to compete on a level playing field - and individual sports will have to choose which is more important.

I've always liked the suggestion Rich came up with in Pro Race. You have two categories in sport - women and open where people of any gender can compete. It obviously isn't perfect and the 'open' category at elite level for most sports is almost certainly going to remain male but I think it is a close as anyone is ever going to get to addressing the situation without introducing a load of gender based categories (similar to what they do in disability sport).

pinno

DeVlaeminck said:

[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]

I guess they didn't go up last season.

pinno

Pross said:

DeVlaeminck said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Expect the gender argument to flare up in the Olympics. I think there is a former man turned woman competing as a woman in the weightlifting.

Rich over on Pro Race came up with the most sensible solution to this where in sport you have a female category open only to those born female and an open category for everyone else.

So that is logical but really misses why the men go through the transition to women in the first place - they want to be recognised by the world as women, not as former men, if that make sense.

That is what the tension is around.

Sure but there has to be an acknowledgement that leads to unfair advantage in a sporting environment. Having a non-gender related 'open' category seems the only thing close to a solution. The alternative is you don't allow people to compete outside of the sex they were born as or sport just becomes meaningless.

Right, I'm not saying it's right, i tend to lean towards the solution that you mentioned, but that cuts across the heart of what trans identity is about.

For some of these people the idea that society will never separate them from whatever sex they were born is genuinely traumatic and causes problems - hence all the faff around pronouns etc.

I can't really identify with it but if you dig into it, that is the reality.

Now, some of the solutions activists for them propose seem to me anyway to really infringe on the right or general cultural space of women (including sports!!!) and some of it really goes down a rabbit hole that doesn't really recognise the physical and biological realities of different sexes.

Anyway, there's no solution where someone isn't upset by it.

I have generally veered away from the discussion as it is probably the most toxic one I have ever come across - if you thought Brexit was bad this is 100x worse.

Not a thread I've frequented hence the throw back but isn't this basically the position UK sport (or whatever it is called) have come to - that it's impossible to fully reconcile trans rights around inclusiveness with allowing biological women to compete on a level playing field - and individual sports will have to choose which is more important.

I've always liked the suggestion Rich came up with in Pro Race. You have two categories in sport - women and open where people of any gender can compete. It obviously isn't perfect and the 'open' category at elite level for most sports is almost certainly going to remain male but I think it is a close as anyone is ever going to get to addressing the situation without introducing a load of gender based categories (similar to what they do in disability sport).

I guess 'Open' would be a category that would be for trans only or else it would be open to abuse.
[Though, how many would actually compete in it?]

Pross

pinno said:

Pross said:

DeVlaeminck said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Pross said:

rick_chasey said:

Expect the gender argument to flare up in the Olympics. I think there is a former man turned woman competing as a woman in the weightlifting.

Rich over on Pro Race came up with the most sensible solution to this where in sport you have a female category open only to those born female and an open category for everyone else.

So that is logical but really misses why the men go through the transition to women in the first place - they want to be recognised by the world as women, not as former men, if that make sense.

That is what the tension is around.

Sure but there has to be an acknowledgement that leads to unfair advantage in a sporting environment. Having a non-gender related 'open' category seems the only thing close to a solution. The alternative is you don't allow people to compete outside of the sex they were born as or sport just becomes meaningless.

Right, I'm not saying it's right, i tend to lean towards the solution that you mentioned, but that cuts across the heart of what trans identity is about.

For some of these people the idea that society will never separate them from whatever sex they were born is genuinely traumatic and causes problems - hence all the faff around pronouns etc.

I can't really identify with it but if you dig into it, that is the reality.

Now, some of the solutions activists for them propose seem to me anyway to really infringe on the right or general cultural space of women (including sports!!!) and some of it really goes down a rabbit hole that doesn't really recognise the physical and biological realities of different sexes.

Anyway, there's no solution where someone isn't upset by it.

I have generally veered away from the discussion as it is probably the most toxic one I have ever come across - if you thought Brexit was bad this is 100x worse.

Not a thread I've frequented hence the throw back but isn't this basically the position UK sport (or whatever it is called) have come to - that it's impossible to fully reconcile trans rights around inclusiveness with allowing biological women to compete on a level playing field - and individual sports will have to choose which is more important.

I've always liked the suggestion Rich came up with in Pro Race. You have two categories in sport - women and open where people of any gender can compete. It obviously isn't perfect and the 'open' category at elite level for most sports is almost certainly going to remain male but I think it is a close as anyone is ever going to get to addressing the situation without introducing a load of gender based categories (similar to what they do in disability sport).

I guess 'Open' would be a category that would be for trans only or else it would be open to abuse.
[Though, how many would actually compete in it?]

No would be anyone other than those born female so effectively what would now be the men's event.