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Old December 7th, 2013 #141
Alex Linder
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Came across a new word in Missouri Conservationist this month. It refers to leaves that stay on deciduous trees through the winter, all brown and dry.

marcescence

"The retention over winter of old, dead leaves is known as marcescence. In Missouri it is common among trees such as pin oaks, shingle oaks, young oaks of other species, and American beech in southeast Missouri." (Missouri Conservationist, December 2013, p. 5)

Probably not a word I'll remember well enough to use. Mainly because it's not immediately obvious how to pronounce it. Also, would have to think fairly hard for a humorous application - nope, it came to me. Old man's marcescent appendage - like for withered, dead cock. Or woman's drooping tits. Still, a little surprised have never come across this word before. Hell, maybe I will use it.

Ah, even better - use it for brain. Your aged enemy has marcescent brain. You prove yours is young and sharp by using a word no one has ever heard of. While insulting him. Excellent if you can work some alliteration. Marcescent Mel, Mike, Marv, Milton. Or, best, Mark. Marc, short for marcescent.

Might be good in a punching combo with 'anile,' which is a word many don't know, essentially the female version of senile. For comedic purposes particularly well deployed against old men, of course.
 
Old December 28th, 2013 #142
varg
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I'm not sure if this speed reading trick actually works but I thought it was interesting

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikei..._head_when_im/

Quote:
www.spreeder.com

"Speed reading is the art of silencing subvocalization. Most readers have an average reading speed of 200 wpm, which is about as fast as they can read a passage out loud. This is no coincidence. It is their inner voice that paces through the text that keeps them from achieving higher reading speeds. They can only read as fast as they can speak because that's the way they were taught to read, through reading systems like Hooked on Phonics.

However, it is entirely possible to read at a much greater speed, with much better reading comprehension, through silencing this inner voice. The solution is simple - absorb reading material faster than that inner voice can keep up.

In the real world, this is achieved through methods like reading passages using a finger to point your way. You read through a page of text by following your finger line by line at a speed faster than you can normally read. This works because the eye is very good at tracking movement. Even if at this point full reading comprehension is lost, it's exactly this method of training that will allow you to read faster"
Quote:
[–]Streptinac 5 points 2 hours ago (5|0)

Psychology student here.

It is generally accepted that short-term memory is divided into several parts. This is called the working memory model, because memory is an active process and not just a passive store. For simplicity, I'll focus on the main three:

The central executive is the main processing unit of your brain. Think of it like the CPU and cache memory. It can hold about 1 or 2 items at a time and makes sense of them for you. It's where our higher order functions are thought to take place. There have been a few case studies that show it may be fully or partially located in the frontal lobes (patients with damage to these areas suffer problems with switching between tasks, planning and organising information, and do very badly on the Stroop test[1] .)

The phonological loop is a store for auditory and verbal data (sounds and words). It has a capacity of about 7 items, or roughly what it is possible for you to say in 2 seconds. It is very important in reading because we process words as sounds rather than pictures. For example, repeat the word 'one, one, one' out loud to yourself while reading a few sentences of text. This is called an articulatory suppression task. It will occupy your phonological loop, distracting your 'inner voice', and you will find that you will not remember what you have just read.

If you are using your inner voice to read then you will only be able to read as fast as you can speak the information. However if you are just using the central executive then you can read much faster, but you will be less able to comprehend what you just read.

(And just to complete the trio

The visuo-spatial sketchpad (or 'inner eye') is where we store pictures and spatial data. We can tell that it is separate from the phonological loop because there have been case studies where people have damaged one but not the other. Also, while performing an articulatory suppression task, participants in studies are still able to work with visual data almost as well as normal. This is why it is (relatively) safe to talk while driving, but being distracted by a screen or movement is very dangerous.
 
Old January 1st, 2014 #143
Roger Bannon
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Was aware that this happens a lot, wasn't aware that it has an official name.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Quote:
Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies[1][2]) is an assertion made by Mike Godwin in 1990[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."[2][3] In other words, Godwin said that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
 
Old January 17th, 2014 #144
Alex Linder
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from a woman's comment on JC Penney story..."sephora" - it's some kind of french cosmetics brand

Sephora
1,847,158 followers on Google+
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Sephora is a French brand and chain of cosmetics stores founded in Paris in 1970.

 
Old January 17th, 2014 #145
Alex Linder
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Betadine - another new one to me. Came across this in some book.



This unique complex was discovered at the Industrial Toxicology Laboratories in Philadelphia by H. A. Shelanski and M. V. Shelanski.[2] They carried out tests in vitro to demonstrate anti-bacterial activity, and found that the complex was less toxic in mice than tincture of iodine. Human clinical trials showed the product to be superior to other iodine formulations.[3]

It was first sold in 1955, and has since become the universally preferred iodine antiseptic.[3]
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #146
Lucian A.
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I just learned that 'indie rock' is not, in fact, from Indiana.
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #147
Donnie in Ohio
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucian A. View Post
I just learned that 'indie rock' is not, in fact, from Indiana.
Seymour's finest, John Mellencamp. He was rock before he was pop before he was total shit.
__________________
"When US gets nuked and NEMO is uninhabitable, I will make my way on foot to the gulf and live off red snapper and grapefruit"- Alex Linder
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #148
Bardamu
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The business about allowing frozen meat to thaw out slowly in the refrigerator, as opposed to on your counter or table, is not true.

The key to good coffee is to grind just before you brew. That and proper measurement are the 2 most important preparations for a good cup, or pot, of coffee.

Excess carbohydrates for dinner will disturb your sleep.

Eating too late will create a drag on your energy the next day.
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #149
varg
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bardamu View Post
The business about allowing frozen meat to thaw out slowly in the refrigerator, as opposed to on your counter or table, is not true.
What about it? Letting raw meat thaw at room temperature and collect bacteria is good?
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #150
Bardamu
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Quote:
Originally Posted by varg View Post
What about it? Letting raw meat thaw at room temperature and collect bacteria is good?
You know you are going to cook it, right?
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #151
varg
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bardamu View Post
You know you are going to cook it, right?
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/qu...nd-then-cooked
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #152
Bardamu
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varg, If you are worried about that by all means do not put your meat out to thaw. People have been cooking meat for a very long time. Much longer than refrigeration has been around. My mother always put food out on the counter to thaw. I always did up until a few years ago, when people started slow thawing, not for reasons of bacteria, but for reasons of supposed better conditioned meat. I went back to the out-on-the-counter for reasons of convenience since I found the taste to not be different. Never for reasons of the meat going bad in a mere 8 hours. Not even fish will do that from a frozen state, provided it is not getting ready to turn when it went into the freezer.

I cook a lot because I'm hypoglycemic and need lots of protein. I spend a lot of time preparing food. Never have I got sick from what you are worried about. In my experience (almost 60 years) meat is ruined by bacteria when it stinks. Do not cook stinky meat. Until that happens you will rarely if ever have a bad experience because of what you are afraid of. You can probably, on average, leave meat out for 2 days or longer before it goes high, and it will tell you it is high quite directly. Fish is a different story.

All this is not to say that you, personally, don't have a particularly sensitive stomach, and have to be more careful.
 
Old February 8th, 2014 #153
Lucian A.
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And here I thought I was a germophobe.
 
Old March 8th, 2014 #154
Roger Bannon
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http://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Quote:
Cunningham's Law states, "the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."

The law is named after Ward Cunningham, father of the wiki. According to the law's author (Steven McGeady), Wikipedia has become the most widely known proof of this law.

This is the internet equivalent of the French saying "pręcher le faux pour savoir le vrai" (preach the falsehood to know the truth).

This is the simplest most accurate explanation of the phenomenon being described; People online generally don't want to be helpful, but they do want to be smartest person in the "room".
 
Old March 8th, 2014 #155
Roger Bannon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Bannon View Post
Was aware that this happens a lot, wasn't aware that it has an official name.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
I wonder if enough people began posting this link on comment sections where this occurs, would it eventually cause it to stop? Making the act of posting such cliché.
 
Old April 10th, 2014 #156
Lucian A.
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Just learned that a new york jew invented bittorrent.

Experiencing conflicting feelings tonight, and I don't like it.
 
Old April 10th, 2014 #157
Alex Linder
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Bannon View Post
This is a really good one. The French have a lot of subtle cool things like this.
 
Old April 10th, 2014 #158
David Langdon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Bannon View Post
Yeah that's quality!
 
Old April 20th, 2014 #159
cillian
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I didn't know christianity was popular in china.

China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-15-years.html
 
Old April 21st, 2014 #160
Fico
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cillian View Post
I didn't know christianity was popular in china.

China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-15-years.html
Peoples are saturated by materialism and they only can find hope in God. Only who are dangerous for China is Chatolic priests because they are agents from other country which can speak for interests of themselves. Interesting would be on wich way would North Korea acted in this situation.

Last edited by Fico; April 22nd, 2014 at 06:07 AM.
 
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