5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday. Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means. The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us. A Language Where You’re Not the Center of the World English speakers and others are highly egocentric when it comes to orienting themselves in the world. Linguist Guy Deustcher says that Guugu Ymithirr speakers have a kind of “internal compass” that is imprinted from an extremely young age. A Language Where Time Flows East to West For the Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, the passage of time was intimately tied to the cardinal directions. Not so in Yélî Dnye.
Cabinet de Curiosités Ahhh Maison&Objet ! J’adore m’y rendre au moins une fois par an. Découvrir de nouvelles marques, faire de nouvelles rencontres : c’est toujours top ! Pour cette cession de janvier 2015 donc, retour en images sur mes petits coups de coeur. Chez &Klevering, beaucoup de jolies choses notamment du côté de la tendance tropicale. Chez Miss Print, on craque pour ces imprimés colorés. Immense coup de coeur pour la stand Objet de Curiosité. Côté vaisselle, ces belles couleurs sont chez Rina Menardi. Une de mes découvertes de cette année, la maison TANE. Ici, une ambiance cosy et chic signée D’argentat… Les lampadaires sont juste canons ! Dans un style beaucoup plus moderne, j’ai trouvé très chouettes les suspensions et les systèmes de rangements de chez Iris Hantverk. Encore de la vaisselle colorée : c’est chez Ekobo cette fois. Du design végétal dans un esprit très japonisant, c’est chez Aquaphyte. Pour les couleurs et les textures, Arcade Paris. Crédit photo : Céline Alata pour FrenchyFancy
Try Re-constructing the Samples of Popular Producers' Beats Is Beirut the codeswitching capital of the world? At this high-end organic farmer’s market in downtown Beirut, buyers and sellers speak a mishmash of languages, usually Arabic and English or French. Just trying to pay for juice I have to switch back and forth from English to Arabic. The stand clerk starts in Arabic, “Here you go,” before switching in English, “these two [juices]?” Pia Bou Khater is at the market with me. Codeswitching this way is one of the characteristics that defines life in Beirut for visitors and for many Lebanese. “When I'm interacting with people, like buying things or trying to bargain, I rarely switch,” Pia explains. Multilingualism the way Pia knows it isn’t uncommon in Beirut. But that’s not the only reason she used “merci.” But another linguist, Lina Choueri, says the regular mixing of the three languages in everyday life actually didn’t happen until much later. Choueri’s dad’s generation just communicated in Arabic. Back at the market Pia agrees with Choueri’s dad.
Uchronia: The Alternate History List How does Shazam work - Coding Geek Have you ever wondered how Shazam works? I asked myself this question a few years ago and I read a research article written by Avery Li-Chun Wang, the confounder of Shazam, to understand the magic behind Shazam. The quick answer is audio fingerprinting, which leads to another question: what is audio fingerprinting? When I was student, I never took a course in signal processing. To really understand Shazam (and not just have a vague idea) I had to start with the basics. I’ll start with the basics of music theory, present some signal processing stuff and end with the mechanisms behind Shazam. Since it’s a long and technical article (11k words) feel free to read each part at different times. A sound is a vibration that propagates through air (or water) and can be decrypted by ears. A vibration can be modeled by sinusoidal waveforms. Pure tones vs real sounds A pure tone is a tone with a sinusoidal waveform. Its frequency: the number of cycles per second. pure sinewave at 20 Hz Musical Notes
Why Do Most Languages Have So Few Words for Smells? Describe a banana. It's yellow, perhaps with some green edges. When peeled, it has a smooth, soft, mushy texture. It tastes sweet, maybe a little creamy. And it smells like... well, it smells like a banana. Every sense has its own “lexical field,” a vast palette of dedicated descriptive words for colors, sounds, tastes, and textures. All of our other scent descriptors are really descriptions of sources: We say that things smell like cinnamon, or roses, or teen spirit, or napalm in the morning. Some scientists have taken this as evidence that humans have relegated smell to the sensory sidelines, while vision has taken center-field. But not all of us. “These terms are really very salient to them,” she says. For example, ltpit describes the smell of a binturong or bearcat—a two-meter-long animal that looks like a shaggy, black-furred otter, and that famously smells of popcorn. These terms don't refer to general qualities that are the dominion of other senses, like edibility.
Living with the Tibetan Mastiffs - the 200lbs 'bear dogs' HUGE dogs with coats that make them look like bears are being produced at a kennel which claims to offer the “dog of your dreams”. Aleksandr and Nina Khilyk run Kinu Liutas Kennels, a Ukraine-based business that’s home to some of the most unusual looking dogs in the world. The couple specialise in the Tibetan Mastiff – an ancient breed notable for their large frames and extremely hairy coats. Nina told Barcroft Studios: “The Tibetan Mastiff is one of the most ancient breeds in the world. They're flawless guards, excellent friends and companions. Did Kevin From ‘Home Alone’ Grow Up to Be Jigsaw? A Deadly Serious Investigation « The holiday season is upon us, and you know what that means: rampant consumerism. Hordes of sheeple leaving their families to queue for hours in front of big-box stores across the nation in hopes of scoring cheap electronics without being crushed to death. The dystopian horror of mass transit hubs. The inevitable gaining of 15 to 20 pounds of ham, turkey, and pie weight. And, of course, constant re-airings of holiday entertainment such as Home Alone, Chris Columbus’s 1990 classic about young Kevin McCallister — played by a cherubic Macaulay Culkin — who spends a solitary Christmas in a vast Winnetka mansion after his family, in a rush, accidentally forgets to bring him along on a trip to Paris. As the rich are wont to do, I guess. Home Alone launched young Macaulay Culkin to international hang-out-with–Michael Jackson–level fame. Home Alone’s impact on modern holiday culture cannot be overstated. I’ve been working on this theory for several years, researching, poring over the film.
Why is English so weirdly different from other langu... English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking. There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. More weirdness? Why is our language so eccentric? English started out as, essentially, a kind of German. The first thing that got us from there to here was the fact that, when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (and also Frisians) brought their language to England, the island was already inhabited by people who spoke very different tongues. I should make a qualification here.
13 more things that dont make sense Cookies on the New Scientist website close Our website uses cookies, which are small text files that are widely used in order to make websites work more effectively. To continue using our website and consent to the use of cookies, click away from this box or click 'Close' Find out about our cookies and how to change them Log in Your login is case sensitive I have forgotten my password close My New Scientist Look for Science Jobs 13 more things that don't make sense (Image: Loungepark / The Image Bank / Getty) Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us. Axis of evil Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern Dark flow Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed Eocene hothouse Tens of millions of years ago, the average temperature at the poles was 15 or 20 °C. Fly-by anomalies Hybrid life Morgellons disease
13 Passenger Diesel Van 2005 Ford F450 condition: goodcylinders: 8 cylindersfuel: dieselodometer: 162440paint color: whitesize: full-sizetitle status: cleantransmission: automatictype: bus 6.OL Diesel with new high pressure oil pump. do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers post id: 5119903033 posted: email to friend ♥ best of [?]