Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Aug 18, 2017 2:01 pm

I have spent the last couple of days in a town called Næstved on the Danish island Sjælland (Zealand), and for the first time in a long time I have stayed in a Youth Hostel - the two hotels in the town were too expensive.

There is a small linguistic particuliarity here concerning the name of this kind of institution. Many languages use names based on youth - from Dutch Jeugdherberg over German Jugendherberge to French Auberge de Jeunesse. Well, nowadays such places tend to play down the age criterion since most of their clients aren't exactly young any more. But the Nordic languages for some reason have used use another set of names which are even less realistic. For instance in Danish we call such places "vandrerhjem" ("wanderer's home"), as if their clients spent their days walking from town to town on their feet like the weirdos on the Spanish Camino and needed some kind of place to rest their sore feet, But I doubt that this category has ever been numerous - already when my family and I used such places in the 60s and 70s most guests would come by bicycle or car, or they would come walking, but only from the nearest bus stop.

Back in the old days you would also be sleeping in sex segregated dormitories, but already in the 60s many 'vandrerhjem' introduced socalled family rooms, and nowadays most of the Danish ones have dropped the unpopular spartan dormitories ... but reception is still only open in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon, and you generally also have to bring you own bedlinen or hire a set, and then you stuff the pillows and duvets of the hostel into the linen. At least they have dropped the requirement to carry a special card (actually a small booklet with room for stamps).

GE: Ich machte während der 70er Jahren sechs Interrailreisen. Auf meiner erste Reise in 1972 schlief ich im Durchschnitt so etwas wie jeder zweite Nacht in Jugendherberge - die restliche Nächte habe ich sie nicht gefunden oder sie waren voll, und ich habe nicht geschlafen. Das hat grundsätzlich nicht funktioniert: nach etwa 20 Tagen war ich pleite und müde und fuhr nach Hause. Für meine Nächste Fahrt wollte ich dieses wiederliche debâcle nicht wieder erleben und habe deshalb Plätze für jeder zweite Nacht gebucht - die restliche Nächten könnte ich dann improvisieren, dachte ich. Aber so ging es nicht: ich hätte zuerst eine Woche in England und Schotland verbracht. Die Ambiente dort waren mitunter fast 'cosy' als man dort sagt, und einige der Wirte waren excentrisch genug um unterhaltsam zu sein, wie der Typ in Shrewsbury der jede Morgen seine Gäste mit lieblicher Dudelsackmusiek erweckte. Un jeder Morgen mußte man einen 'duty' tun, wie z.B. den Boden zu fegen oder aufräumen. Ich konnte damit leben.

Davon kam ich nach Koblenz und schlief zuerst in der Herberge im Ehrenbreitstein: Das war was anders - wie eine Mischung von Militärdienst und Klosterleben. Und Frühstuck zu nehmen war obligatorisch. Ich habe dann kurzerhand alle die folgende nächte storniert, mit Ausnahme von Augsburg wo das Frühstück freiwillig war. Während die nächste 6½ Interrailfahrten habe ich dann fast ausschließlich in den Zügen geschlafen und die Jugendherberge boycottiert. Bis dieser Woche...

RU: У меня не было телевизора в комнате, поэтому вместо этого я решил судоку и прочитал иностранные тексты. Один набор текстов состоял из займов из Википедии на германском, латинском и греческом языках - все тексты рассказывали о Северном море. Другой набор текстов из Lifandi Visinda на исландском языке касался различных психологических способностей, включая функцию памяти. И русский текст был объяснением Википедии черной энергии. Но я недавно написал о эту тему на каком-то языке.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Aug 27, 2017 10:59 pm

From the days in glorious Næstved I continued to one week in the Netherlands, where I had booked four nights in Amsterdam and three in Eindhoven. Now, most readers will understand why you visit a town like Amsetrdam, but Eindhoven??

It was here the Philips company was founded in 1891, and there actually is a Philips museum there. The town also has a football team, which won a few masterships in a long gone past era, an airport mainly used by budget carriers and a museum for modern art and a prehistoric village, though these aren't even mentioned in the sorry excuse for a guide book I carried along. Actually its neighbour town to the West (Tilburg) is only mentioned (in a box) because a bunch of people apparently congregate there once every year to get thoroughly stoned, whereas the one to the North (het Hertogenbosch, more often called de Bosch) fares better due to some historic buildings. Luckily all three towns have good tourist information offices, and luckily we have the internet to supplement the scant information in the guide books about this part of the Netherlands.

But there is worse to come. The guide book I'm referring to is the 2013 edition of Lonely Planet, a series which originated as a rewrite of the personal travel notes from a trip through Eastern Asia performed by a couple with somewhat hippyish leanings and opinions. And they may have become more streamlined with time and now cover most of the planet, but still retain some of the original flavour. Unfortunately that means that they have a blind spot concerning zoological gardens, which happen to be one of my main reasons for travelling. All guide book series have their focus areas and some blind spots. Frommers' were for the rich snobs, the Blue Guide would detail the content of each room in the major museums but not how to get there, and, well, Lonely Planet hates zoos. The book I brought along did mention Artis zoo in Amsterdam, but basically told the reader to forget about the animals and just enjoy the trees. The big and thoroughly respectable Burgers' zoo in Arnhem isn't even mentioned, even though its neighbour, a fine open air museum, is. And its counterpart in Rotterdam, the Blijdorp zoo (one of the best in Europe) isn't even mentioned, and since it conveniently is located North of the central station you could stay for weeks in the town without ever suspecting that it is there. A whole bunch of excellent zoos from Amersfoort to Emmen which I visited around New Year 2013-14 aren't even mentioned. Surprise? No, not really.

So why did I book three nights in Eindhoven? Well, luckily there are other information sources than LP, and I went there expressly to visit the cornucopia of zoos that surrounds the town. HA ha, got that-- LP???

DU: De eerste zoo was de moeilijkste: Dierenrijk nabij Nuenen (ten oosten van Eindhoven). Ik had de toeristische informatie VVV gevraagd over het dichtstbijzijnde openbaar vervoer daartoe, en de dame had 9292.nl gebruikt om me de relevante buslijn te vinden. Maar de instellingen wonden haar, en ik werd geadviseerd om een bus 231 te nemen die niet dichter bij de zoo kwam dan ca. 6 km. Maar in het midden passeerde ik de bushaltes voor een lokale bus die veel logischer was (no. 16). Zo deze tag en 's morgens heb ik de museën van den Bosch bezoekt, en na middag ben ik zo om 6 + x + 3 km gelopen om het Dierenrijk te bezoeken.

De volgende dag bezochte ik een dierentuin ten zuidwesten van Eindhoven genoemt Veldhofen (na een nabijgelegen dorp), en gelukkig u kunt ga daar met en combinatie van twee bussen, no. 403 en no. 292. Deze dierentuin is door vogels gedomineerd, vooral papegaaien. En in de namiddag nam ik de trein naar de stad Best and minibus ervan naar de derde dierentuin in de bestelling - en zou men zich kunnen verwennen om dat deze institutie zich Best Zoo noemt? Ze is klein en gezellig enh lid van een vereniging voor kleine en gezellige dierentuinen.

Nog een dag later nam ik de trein naar Tilburg, de stad wat LP koos helemaal niet te beschrijven. Hier hadde ik een ander lid van de organisatie voor kleine en gezellige dierentuinen ontdekt aan het westelijke einde van de stad, genaamd De Oliemeulen. Het komt waarschijnlijk uit een reptielencollectie, maar er is nu ook dieren buiten. En er was een roofvogel show dat de schrijvers van de LP zouden hebben gehaat. Maar als de roofvogels de show hateten, zouden ze gewoon weigeren deel te nemen. En in de middag heb ik een groot safari park Beekse Bergen bezocht, waar u mee kunt doen aan bootsafari's, jeepsafari's, zelfstandig wandeln of autotour's in uw eigen auto (de eerste twee zijn inbegrepen in de toelatingsprijs, van € 24). En natuurlijk word het niet genoemt in LP. Voor mij als dierentuin-bezoeker zou het LP te vertrouwen zijn alsof je gaat op een restauranttour met een groep veganen en laat ze over het menu beslissen - er zou iets belangrijkes missen: jouw bifstuk!

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby tarvos » Mon Aug 28, 2017 4:28 pm

Tilburg is verder ook niet zo interessant, dat is een Legostad met de slechtste universiteit van Nederland. Den Bosch is wel leuk.

En ze heten veganisten in het Nederlands. :p
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Aug 29, 2017 4:34 pm

OK, veganists... which actually is a funny choice of word. The word "vegan" was apparently invented by Donald Watson in 1944 and used as part of the name of the "Vegan Society". Why this word got the extension "-ist" in Dutch beats me...

Apart from that I have not studied languages at all since my previous messages. When I return from a trip somewhere I always prioritize getting some order in to my photos and writing a belated travelogue so that I don't forget where I have been and what I did - and this took the whole day yesterday. I did bring five science mags home from the Netherlands which I expect to read later this week, and during the trip I also reread a number of printouts in several languages about scientific themes - rereading used material during travels is less tiring and saves you the trouble of carrying dictionaries along. But I also found time to listen to a lot of Dutch, and at the end I almost could understand it fluently. But not well enough to eavesdrop in the bus or with irritating noise (such as music) in the background. The Dutch generally try to steer the conversations towards English (or in some cases German), and sometimes they clearly get a shock several seconds after you have said something because it suddenly occurs to them that you actually said a sentence in comprehensible Dutch ... which they of course can't dechifer before they stop trying to figure out what it would have meant if it had been in English. But once we got through that first confusion we could generally converse with few or no problems.

DU: Zo heb ik in het Prehistorische Dorp in Eindhoven besproken met een dame in batavisch-romeinisch kleding wat er gebeurde met de bevolking na de terugtrekking van de Romeinen. Het aantal inwoners viel zover bekend drastisch, en ze dacht eerst dat het slechts een gevolg was van de chaotische situatie. Maar chaos alleen is niet de neiging om mensen te stoppen zich te voorplanten. Er zijn meestal oorlog of epidemieën noodig, maar in de 'donkere eeuwen' is er ook gebeurd dat hele volkeren gewoon hun hele habengut verpakt hebben en ergens anders hun karren hebben aangedreven. Zo wat gebeurde in de 5e eeuw, waar een vulkanische uitbarsting in Zuidoost-Azië een aantal jaren met misgroei in Europa veroorzaakte - maar hier discuteëren we de situatie in de periode 200-400.

Er zijn niet zo veel skeletten gevonden dat oorlog of pest waarschijnlijke verklaringen lijken op goede uitleg (behalve als de reductie is gebeurd door en romeinse volkerenmoord reeds na de batavisch opstand van 90 n.Chr), dus mijn gok is dat de mensen ergens anders heen zijn gegangen - misschien Groot-Brittannië, wat zou helpen om de geweldige snelle en volledige taalverandering daar na de latere Saksische-Anglische-Jutische invasie te vertalen (een invasie waarin de Friezen volgens Gildas en Beda blijkbaar niet hebben deelgenomen). Maar eigenlijk bestaat er geen betrouwbare informatie over dit onderwerp. Bovendien heb ik nog steeds geen nauwkeurige en gedetailleerde wetenschappelijk uitleg gevonden voor de bewering dat engels meer vergelijkbaar zijn met Friesisch dan met de andere oude talen van de ingvaeonisch sfeer.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Aug 30, 2017 6:11 pm

I have just written about Kaj Bom's Danish slang dictionary in the thread about spoonerisms, but most slang expressions are not spoonerisms. Since that thread cause me to reread some parts of the book I hve been inspired to sully the pages of this otherwise squeekingly clean forum by quoting some of his examples - and the ones you see below are NOT the most dirty ones...

Let's first focus on musical instruments:

For some reason this otherwise unblushingly bawdy book explains "spille på kødfløjte" ('playing the meat flute') as whistling.. I know another more common interpretation, but I won't write it here. The oboe is according to Bom a "mumlegøg" ('mumble cuckoo'), the clarinet is either a "lakridsrør" ('liquorice tube') or a "skrigetræ" ('screaming wood'') and the bassoon is not even mentioned, which must be due do lack of knowledge in the general population since it definitely is weird enough to deserve a slang name. On the other hand the saxophone (which is made of metal, but has the same kind of mouth piece as the clarinets) is wellknown enough to be taunted, with "tågehorn" as one of the more friendly terms ('fog horn'). I suppose the name refers to the days where smoking was allowed in pubs, but maybe also to the sound.

According to Bom the brass is collectively called "vandkander" (pitchers or watering cans), and a trombone with a quart valve (which makes a tenor instrument able to emulate a bass instrument) is a "basun med tarmslyng" ('trombone with volvulus'). Actually I have never heard the expression "vandkander" about the brass - the normal nickname is "bliktøj" ('tin goods'), and the music group plays while walking is called "messing suppe" ('brass soup'). The group includes the French horn (Waldhorn in German, therefore "gevalthorn" in half-German half-Danish) and the trumpet, which somewhat surprisingly hardly is mentioned (considering how much noise it can make). A trombone with valves is quite officially called a "trækbasun" (though maybe it once was a slang expression), which has inspired the Danish to form the name "træk-og-slip-basun" (referring to a toilet with a chain mechanism, 'draw-and-let-go'). The tuba is just mentioned as a "hut-hat", clearly an onomapoeietikon, but the old baryton horn is called a "kringlehorn" after the pastry it looks like.

The backpibe is called a "jamresæk" ('wailing sack') and a mouth organ "mundharmonika" is among other things called a "spytorgel" ('spit organ' or even worse: "snotorgel" - 'snot organ') or "tuberkelklaver" .. and no, the Danish word "tuberkel" does not refer to something on some kind of plant, but to a small boil cause by tuberculosis, so the correct translation would be something like "tuberculosis boil piano". Or like the harmonium it is called a "jammerkommode" ('lamenting chest of drawers/bureau').

The timpani are called "gryder" or "suppegryder" (soup cauldrons), which seems quite logical due to the shape, and the cymbals are the "grydelåg" ('pot lids'). In Danish they are called "bækkener", which already is halfway a joke since the utensil used to help urinating hospital patients has the same name, and so has the part of a human skeleton situated between the stomach and the legs. At this point I can't resist the temptation to refer to the non-existant section of Donizetti's opera "La Fille du Regiment", 'The daughter of the Regiment') called "bækkenpartiet af regimentets datter" (literally the ' pelvic region of the daughter of the regiment').

The string section is dominated by two groups of violins, also known as "finkeliner" or "jamreskinker" (wailing hams)" or, slightly more creatively, as "kattens sidste skrig" ('the last scream of the cat'). It should of cause be 'the last scream of the sheep' if you still use gut strings. The cello is "kæresten med træbenet" ('the girlfriend with the wooden leg'), and the double bass is a "brumbasse" (='bumble bee', but "brumme" in Danish means growl or hum, and a "basse" is - among other things, including 'Danish' pastry - a big fat thing) or a "hundehus" ('dog house') or a "klædeskab" (=the piece of furniture known as a 'wardrobe'). The piano is a "hakkebræt" (alluding to the piece of wood or plactic where you chop vegetables), but the irony is this also is the perfectly serious name of an old (or contemporary Hungarian) musical instrument known as a cimbalom. It can also somewhat disparagingly be called a "spilledåse", and again this is the correct and serious name of a musical instrument, namely a mechanical contraption which can play music when you wind it up.

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And now to something completely different. I have started out reading my new load of Dutch sci mags when I went to the town center to get my photos developed (or whatever they call it nowadays, where the whole thing is done by a printer and not in an oldfashioned darkroom with smelly and dangerous chemicals). One of the articles treats the topic of drones - are they a blessing or a threat? Since you have already been treated to a lot of Dutch lately I'll do the comment in something related, namely Afrikaans:

AF: Die probleem met drones is dat hulle eintlik gevaarlik kan wees - 't is nie 'n geval nie dat hulle deur militêre word gebruik in oorlogsgebiede, en ons kan binnekort 'n oplewing in hul gebruik deur terroriste kommen. 'N drone voor een landende 747 kan dit laten afbreken, en daarom het baie lande hul gebruik naby lughawens heeltemal gebaar. Soos Nederland. Eintlik is daar ook 'n nie-drone-sone oor Amsterdam. Kan jy sien die Hollanders 'n verbod op die vlieg van iets wat ook grap is respekteer? En nog 'n ding wat kan word gebruik vir die vervoer van pizza's en hash aan gretig wagtend kliënte??

Ek dink dit sal nodig wees om lugverdediging op te rig met die reg om drones dood te maak wat tot 'n einde gekom het. 'N stap eindig dit kan 'n vereiste wees vir alle drones om voortdurend hul ligging aan 'n sentrale rekenaar via draadlose telefonie te rapporteer, maar vandag kan jy boukits koop om drones te kry wat nie die reëls respecteer nie. En hulle sal die terroriste gebruik.

PS: Die artikel in Kijk noem hierdie bekommernisse, maar is anders baie positief. En in elk geval, hierdie klein Janus-kop-dimmers sal kommen, of ons dit wil of nie. En dan kan jy ook maar good wat nuttige gebruike van hulle vind.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Sep 01, 2017 5:13 pm

Here in 2017 my hometown has been selected as one of two 'cultural capitals' of Europe. But quite frankly, apart from a few banners I haven't seen anything yet that couldn't have been done without that honourable title, and I have participated in absolutely zero events that referred to it. In this week we also have our annual festival week, and normally the best thing is the medieval market of a Southern neighbour town which for some inscrutable reason normally is placed in the same week as 'we' celebrate our festival week. Not this year - they did it while I was on holiday in the Netherlands. For once there is/was something which I really liked in our own festival, namely an exhibition of street art. It is a crime when braindead youngsters spray our trains and city walls, and there is mostly no art at all about their acts of malicious damage - but some of the people with spray cans actually CAN do real art, and if they do it in legal places I have nothing against it. Actually, some of it is so good that even I am impressed by it, and I do see similarities to my own painting style - these paintings are just much much larger and done not with oil paint, but with spray cans.

The rest...well...

From the spray painting exhibition I continued to our local monster library, where I read a book about Evald Tang Kristensen (1843 – 1929), a Danish folklore collector who walked around on the moors in central Jutland and elicited traditional song and folktales from the old people, who might be the last ones who remembered them.

JUTISH: Se, te a tøwtes at det ku ha wårnn skægger å skryw de hiel å Jysk, mæn det forstår I wall itt (å æ kan helle inte skryw det ornligt) så a låver å law en öwwersættels å lægg den nienfor. Men altsååå: ham der Tang stolpert å si platfutter rundt å æ jysk heej å snakket mæ di gammel som endnu itt hae glemt der' gammel sånng å æventyr (eller gå'n fræ dær minn), å så skrew han 'et nier så æ finger glöjet mens te att di snakket å snakket. Han skrew det itt på rejn dialekt, men på normaldansk mæ nåwe jysk blanden i.

EN: And now as promised a translation:

LA: Aestimavi festivius esset istud in lingua Jutlandica scribere, sed infeliciter probiliter est multas lectorum non capabiles esse patriis sermonem intelligere mei (et certe non in orthographia mea!), ergo vobis facio translationem. Ut supra dixi, Evaldus Tang Kristianifilius pede tesca jutlandica parcurrit ut cantus fabulasque antiquas colligere apud senices qui forsitan ultimi erant qui eas meminissent. Vita pauperis in tesco durissima erat hoc tempore, et magis vita homines senicis qui saepe aegroti et claudi et omnino fatigati erant post vitam laboris manibus exercitis. Evaldus pede ambulavat quia non equum vel carrum habebat, sed etiam ut confidentiam pauperum rusticorum obtineret. Feliciter constitutionem corporis fortem habebat et vitam longam proposito suo omnino dedicare potuit.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Sep 04, 2017 7:40 pm

I have visited my family with the usual result: very little study time. I did however manage to read some more Dutch sci mags. One named Psychology contained answers to 101 common questions, but my general impression was that psychology still is a long way from becoming an exact science. The other was Wetenschap in Beeld's special edition about the 10 biggest scientific mysteries, and it was so captivating that I probably will read it twice. The questions are:

"is er leven in de ruimte?"
Well, almost certainly, but it took some quite unlikely accidents to create a planet in the Goldilock sphere that has had a reasonably stable orbit and climate for a very long time. With less favourable conditions - like extreme temperature fluctuations or brutal radiation - terrestrian life might still have appeared, but the likelihood of advanced organisms would have been much smaller. There are still so many planets out there that life almost certainly exists on billions of them, but the likelihood of just one of them being reasonably close to us may be quite small.

There are three articles concerning this theme: one about possible signals from intelligent life 'out there', one about possible life on at least one Jupiter Moon (Europa) and one about ways to contact extraterrestrials. I find the upcoming missions to Europa well motivated, but have lost faith in the Seti project, which after some 50 years just has yielded one single puzzling signal, which wasn't ever repeated. It's a waste of time, and sending out signals ourselves is just stupid. We have already sent TV signals to our potentially closest neighbours, and that's already a security risk - although (luckily) an extremely minor one.

"Kunnen we wonen op Mars?"
Oh yes, we could definitely send four suicide candidates up there with a fungus that would provide food for them (and a toilet to provide food for the fungus), and maybe they could extract some of the water which undeniable is stored up there and find ways to drink it without getting stomach pain- but it would just be cheaper to send them to the nearest lunatic asylum on a one-way ticket.

"How reizen we naar andere zonnestelsels?"
Simple answer: we don't. It would demand something like a warp drive or access to wormholes or other ways to exploit the concept of curved space, and so far we haven't any realistic way to do either. Wormholes (linking far regions of the univers through black holes or other nasty things) have been studied for some time, and it seems that they have a tendency to collapse even in the most generous models unless you use immense amounts of energy. And warp drive (where the spaceship itself produce deformations of spacetime) is so far just two empty words in an old sci fi series intended for the consumption by naive teenagers.

"Is tijdreizen mogelijk?"
The exact question raised is: "kun je naar vroeger reizen en je opa doden?" (can you travel back in time and kill your grandfather?). Well, it's a bit complicated. In principle Einstein's time space doesn't demand that time has a forwards direction, and there are already models for quantum mechanical events where the direction is reverted. The problem is that this possibility in practice doesn't extend to macroscopic objects. The univers is basically a system consisting of probability wawes, and for small objects this can lead to funny situations, like being in another place than expected (or not having a specific location yet). But the bigger an object the less likely it is that it isn't where you expect it to be if you use a scale comparable to its own size. Something similar may be said about time: the likelihood of an apple accidentally flying back into the tree top whence it came is minimal. For a subatomic particle it can't be excluded.

As for the grandfather paradox: it is sometimes loosely assumed (or hoped) that it would be excluded because it would be against simple logic to permit it. But it isn't: in a many-worlds scenario it would theoretically be possible to move back in time and stab your progenitor. Then you might be inexistant in the resulting world (maybe the one which you were supposed to return to, and then you would have a problem), but you would still be existing in worlds on the timeline where you sagely stayed in your own time AND in the ones following the one where you left for your time travel AND returned with the help of your homemade tardis. However there is one more aspect which isn't mentioned in the article, namely that the many worlds model also might apply to travels backwards in time - and then you would in all likelihood be murdering the potential grandfather of some other version of yourself, causing a new timeline where you didn't exist and a ghost mysteriously murdered a person, and this would lead to a time line where you didn't exist - but haha, that wouldn't the world where you initiated your time trip so no logical rule would be broken. Seen from your current timeline you would just disappear without a trace and the rest of the world would continue unchanged without you. All the changes would happen in another univers which your current friends and family can't access.

Do I think that time travels for macroskopic objects is possible? No - or rather, the likelihood of succes would be so close to zero that you can disregard it. Don't go.

I should now comment on the next section: "How ontstond het leven op aarde", but this message is already far too long, so you'll get that tomorrow. Or you would have got it last week (in another world where I had read "Wetenschap in Beeld" before "Psychology").

PS: some of the boxes in the painting below are botched projections of fourdimensional boxes (which of course have threedimensional walls), and the hand is moving in two space dimensions and one temporal one. And the butterflies couldn't care less.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Sep 05, 2017 1:36 pm

Let's carry on with comments to Wetenschap in Beeld. Yesterday I promised to write about the four articles concerning paleontology. The section "Hoe ontstond het leven op Aarde" contains two articles, the first of which discusses in all seriousness the possibility that terrestrial life was imported from Mars, the second informs us that "Onderzoekers maken meercellig leven". After that an article about the missing links in the prehistory of us humans, and it mainly discusses the species Homo Naledi (which I already mentioned here in March 2016) and the fourth one discusses why the big Ice age animals seem to disappear from any location that becomes infected by human beings.

And lo and behold, I have also written about the first life on Earth several times before. For example I bought a translated book by Freeman Dyson named "Originile vieții" during a trip to Romania in March 2017 about precisely this subject, and wrote a couple of words about it. And ...

RO: ..sunt foarte multe elemente din carte care se găsesc și în acest articol deja. Mesajul constă în faptul că acele părți ale unei celule care asigură propagarea și părțile care furnizează produsul alimentar nu trebuie să apar la același loc simultan sau în același timp, și bula în afară (format din substanțe grase (lipide)) poate să aibă o treia proveniență.

Există totuși un aspect pe care nu l-am cunoscut, și anume că procesele care permit formarea ARN (englez: RNA) funcționează cel mai bine în prezența elementului bor. Ceea ce ma surprins este faptul ca primul gând al omului de știinta citat a fost acela de a cauta acest element in meteoritii de pe Marte, unde el a zambit la găsirea cantitati minimale. Bah! De ce nu le-au căutați in primul rÎnd pe planeta Terra? Se mai spune mai departe că molibden oxidat beneficiază formarei ribozei, care face parte din ARN. Dar această substanță se pare că nu se găsește într-un mediu umed. Deci, omul de știință exclamă: Marte era total uscat, așa că trebuie să vină de acolo. Acum sunt confuz: de fiecare dată când văd pe cineva care susține că a existat o viață pe Marte, el sau ea a subliniat că în copilăria planetei să avea mai multă apă decât acum. Deci nu a fost destul de uscat?

DU: De kunst van het vormen van multicellulaire organismen is geopenbaard: Je neemt een stapel enkelvoudige algen en uitsorteert de algen die de neiging tonen samen te klontern. Na 73 generaties ervan vonden de evolutionisten Ratcliff en Travisano een algen die niet alleen clusterte maar de clusters in dezelfde buitenste ader behield - en dit is helder het begin van multicellulaire organismen. Aan de bovenkant van pagina 59 wordt terloops het schepsel Volvox getoond wat als voorbeeld in die natuur van dit proces kan dienen.

AF: Homo naledi hette 'n brein die grootte van 'n oranje, maar relatief moderne hande en voete. Dit sal dus eerder onintelligent wees, maar dit maakt 't moeilik om te verstaan hoe 'n groter versameling bene van hierdie spesies in 'n bykans ontoeganklike grot gevind wees. Die grot was so smal dat de chefpaleontolog Lee Berger te vet was om die bene self uit te grawe, en hy het dos 'n korps van skrale jonge dames gehuur met die regte lyfdoelwitte vir hierdie taak. Daar is geen bene van ander diere in nie, en daar is geen bewyse van oorstroming nie. En dit is moeilik om te verstaan hoe so 'n dom wesens een begrafnis rite zou hebben, en evenmin uitvoer aan die einde van 'n koue en smal grot, 30 meter onder de grond.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby DaveBee » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:32 pm

I was watching a Polyglot Conference speech earlier: The Age Factor in Foreign language acquisition and 9m30s into the video Mr Keeley cited a 2005 paper by one 'Iverson' on the brain's ability to pick up foreign sounds, is that you?
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:56 pm

Unfortunately not - my weakest faculty has always been speaking, and my progressively more and more advanced age hasn't changed that. I do believe that I'm quite good at listening and catching different sounds, but not to an extent where I have felt the urge to publish anything on a scientific level about it.

Apart from that: I have preciously little to report from the last couple of days, and the reason is that I have been working hard on another acoustic task, namely the one of completing the theme catalogue for my private music collection. I'm not quite finished with this herculean task, but the end is nigh, and therefore I have speeded up in order to get it done. And as a consequence I haven't had time to study languages.

GER: Im Zusammenhang mit dieser Aufgabe lausche ich natürlich sehr viel Musik, und als ich früher geschrieben habe, bin ich satt immer wieder dieselbe Komponisten und dieselbe Werke zu hören. Ich habe mich deshalb bestrebt, eine Sammlung mit viele Raritäten von weniger bekannten Komponisten aufzubauen, die ein besseres Schicksal verdient hätten. Und es sind vorwiegend Werke von solche Leute, die ich zurzeit höre, weil ich schon lange die Themen für das Standardrepertoire niedergeschrieben habe.

Zum Beispiel habe ich neulich so etwas wie eine Stunde mit Opern-Parafrasen von Thalberg verbracht. Es gibt viele Komponisten, die solche bearbeitungen vorgenommen haben (als Fantasien oder Thema mit Variationen), mit Liszt Ferenc als der meist bekannte, und daß schöne in dieser Genre ist, daß man damit nicht nötig hat, die Opern zu hören. Auch für die Zeitgenossen Thalbergs war es natürlich schwierig ihre Lieblings-Opernthemen zu hören, aber Klavierausgaben haben zum Teils dieses Problem gelöst. Die Werke von Leute wie Thalberg und Liszt waren doch vermutlich viel zu virtuous für durchschnittliche Amateurpianisten.

Gestern habe ich mehrere Werke von Niederlandische Komponisten durchgehört, und man könnte denken, daß dies in Zusammenhang mit meiner neulichen Reise dorthin stehe, aber nein - ich habe die Werken von Leute wie Diepenbrock, Wagenaar und Vermeulen vor einiger Zeit zusammengerafft, aber weil sie auf Dateien gennant Vermeulen 1A und 1B gesammelt sind, bin ich erst jetzt dazu gekommen - ich nehme mir die Dateien in alphabetischer ordnung vor. Heute habe ich ausnahmsweise viele Werke von einem bekannten Komponist durchgehört, nähmlich Antonio Vivaldi - aber meistens seiner Konzerte für viele Solisten oder keine Solisten - NICHT die üblichen vier Jahreszeiten. Und nach Vivaldi Musik von Leute mit W, wie Felix Weingartner, Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse und Grace Mary Williams.

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