nrg_alpha Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 So I stumbled upon this site, (general bizarre and humorous content I suppose) and when I clicked on the '12 Hilarious Tombstones', I had a good chuckle on the first one lol Plenty of home page links I'm sure some of you will find interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 Sad, a misc. topic without any posts on it...Pity post!!! Anyways, I must say the waterfall one is much better than the one you linked to. That tidal-ice wave looks so awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 Hehe yeah some stuff on there is pretty funny. Didn't see the waterfall one though. *Looks through it again* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 Not a waterfall but an ocean wave? I don't know what its called exactly. http://www.oddee.com/item_96726.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 Ooooo nifty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burnside Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 http://www.oddee.com/item_96669.aspx The woman who called 911 because McDonald's didn't have McNuggets Angered that her local McDonald's was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food "emergency." Latreasa Goodman, 27, called police to complain that a cashier would not give her a refund. When cops responded to the restaurant, Goodman told them, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one." She was arrested and the Police pressed charges for misusing the 911 system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted June 27, 2009 Author Share Posted June 27, 2009 Sad, a misc. topic without any posts on it...Pity post!!! Anyways, I must say the waterfall one is much better than the one you linked to. That tidal-ice wave looks so awesome! Hehe.. wouldn't be the first time there's a thread without any participation in it Thanks for the pity though lol Yeah, there are too many links to post, as the site has a huge collection of them.. on a more positive note, I really enjoyed this link about people with extraordinary gifts (especially the one about Daniel Tammet, the mathematical savant who can not only do math calculations in his head, but can also learn a completely new language in a week!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcombs_31 Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 I watched a special on him and the sonar kid on the science channel. I thought that learning a new language in a week is just completely amazing aside from the incredible math skills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 I read that site until like 4 in the morning last night.... x.x Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted June 27, 2009 Share Posted June 27, 2009 What does it mean to have "learned a language"? Being able to cope with situations you would face as a tourist? Being able to read children literature? Being able to hold everyday conversations in the language? Reading mainstream literature? Being able to speak/read/write "like" a native? Participating in high level university lectures or academic discussions? Reading law texts, which are often known to be very difficult to read? How about phonetics? Sometimes you might see someone who communicates excellently using written language, but whose pronunciation fails miserably. Are you speaking with a foreign accent, do you use the "standard" pronunciation (for those languages where it is applicable) or have you adopted one of the native accents? As a native speaker of Danish I can (often) identify where people using the native accents are from. There is also imagery, and the distinction between the literal and non-literal interpretations hereof. I once saw a person on TV who, when you for instance told him to "pull himself together", he would attempt doing that literally. His brain simply did not have the capacity to understand imagery and always interpreted it in the literal sense. That is a pretty essential skill, which can only be learned by experience (i.e. "how are the natives using them?") assuming of course you have a normal brain. What about the many different styles of the language? Like formal/academic/"street"/slang/childlike/youth/elder/etc. If a 4-year-old asks why things fall when you drop them, reading aloud from a university textbook on physics doesn't do much good. If you speak in a formal and very convoluted manner amongst your friends you would probably be regarded as an idiot, but using street language in a job application probably wouldn't land you an interview either. The ability to identify and apply these different styles is pretty important as well. In other words knowledge of sociolinguistics, the study of language usage by different social groups and in different social contexts, is important. The ability to know when a particular type of style is expected to be used matters. Of course if people know your proficiency in that language is not so good you'll be given a longer leash, but if you're bad enough to be awarded that handicap, are you good enough at that language yet? I'm quite skeptical about this "learned a language in a week" thing. How was it tested? What kind of methodology did they use? How did they define "knowing"/"speaking" a language? What kind of level would be acceptable to consider it a success? In particular, the thing that concerns me regarding this is methodology. Given that he (allegedly) learned it within a week, it's likely that his skills still remained in short term memory. How would he fare after a couple of months, or even a year? Would he still be able to communicate efficiently in that language? I'm quite confident I wouldn't forget how to speak Danish, but other languages with which I have not had the time and experience to get them equally deeply rooted in my brain would be more easily forgotten. Another thing to factor in is what languages he already knew. If you're a native speaker of Spanish, learning Italian would be much easier than learning Russian, simply because Spanish and Italian, both being romance languages, share many linguistic features and have a common vocabulary with words that share the same etymology. When scientists sometimes discover something that already is widely believed to be true, you might hear people making comments such as "I could have told them so", "They spend time/money on that?", "Thank you, Captain Obvious" and so on. What these people fail to realize is the difference between what you just think is true (i.e. without any compelling evidence) and what actually is true. People once used to believe that the world is flat (because, you know, that's obvious as you can "see" it). It turns out that with the knowledge we currently have, that is not a possibility. Being able to confirm a hypothesis is just as important as being able to reject one. As for his math skills? Was he just crazy at mental arithmetic, or could he actually comprehend advanced mathematical topics? Savants and autistic persons are often severely restricted in their way of thinking, which means that whatever special abilities they have are useless except they make subjects for psychologists to study. As for the site that was linked to, I'll check that out a little later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted June 27, 2009 Author Share Posted June 27, 2009 That's quite the rhetoric, Dan To which degree has he 'learned' a language? Who knows.. it doesn't go into too much detail in that regard. Assuming he has attained enough knowledge to be considered fluent enough in writing, reading and speaking, and can hold a conversation with the locals in question and understand correctly what's being said respond correctly, I would think that is fair enough to have learned a language (that's juts my opinion - and yes, that's assuming he has achieved all that). English is my native tongue, but I have far from mastered it.. I guess it all depends on how someone defines 'learning a new language'. I never met him, nor any other savant TBH. Perhaps people are skeptical because it defies logic to be able to absorb that much info and retain / make use of it so quickly (and rightfully so I suppose). Bottom line, until I meet one and see first hand his/her capabilities, I can only formulate an opinion 'from the sidelines' so to speak. While their capacities may be hard to believe, it doesn't automatically them rule out (not in my book anyway). As for the math, yeah, who knows what degree of complexity he's capable of. He might only be able to perform certain calculations but can't do anything much with it. Again, who knows... Either way, if its true what the video shows, that's it's impressive enough IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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