Learning new things....

[Flybye]

I am 37 and just figured out about 7 months ago that banana is not spelled BANNANA - thanks to pop singing :p
And I now know what salient means.
And I thought commencement meant "end".

and I have a high gpa :p:p:o:o:o:o:o:o

In the interest of boredom and mental expansion.....what new things have you learned?

***this thread inspired by a Home Depot woman somewhere in the USA who did not know what Pilates was :)

[Trek420]

***this thread inspired by a Home Depot woman somewhere in the USA who did not know what Pilates was :)

Yeah, probably the same Home Depot gal who made me a key "Yeah! I can make you a spare house key! :) :) :)"

And I get a call from my dog sitter while I'm waiting in line to board the plane "hi I'm at your home, the key won't work, won't turn and won't come OUT of the lock :eek:"

Yeah, that Home Depot.

I've learned to check your spare key before you give them to someone.

[DebW]

When I was in 6th grade I learned that Warshington didn't really have an R in it.

I'm always clueless when it comes to popular culture. I plead total ignorance when people talk about movies, singers, celebrities. And I don't really know what Pilates are either (some kind of exercise, right?). Is it pronounces like "pilot" or something else?

[kermit]

I was writing a report the other night and had to look up the word "forward". As in please forward this report. It just wasn't there. Is there an R somewhere? A true blond moment.

[redrhodie]

And I don't really know what Pilates are either (some kind of exercise, right?). Is it pronounces like "pilot" or something else?

Soft i in Pilates. It's named for its founder, Joe Pilates.

[Trek420]

Soft i in Pilates. It's named for its founder, Joe Pilates.

Why didn't they call it "Joe"? ;)

[oxysback]

Why didn't they call it "Joe"? ;)

Because "I'm going to do pilates" sounds a LOT better than "I'm going to do Joe." :eek:

[Aggie_Ama]

Thankfully I was not still drinking my soda when I read Oxy's post. I just finally got why people use deer blinds the other day. DH does hunt but prefers the "stalking" method as it is more exercise. Plus he only hunts on his Oma's ranch which is a lovely 1,500+ acres and a nice stroll.

I really thought deer blinds were for laziness not to be "blind" to the deer. I mean truly I thought the purpose was a place to plant your butt and nothing more. Even though I have been corrected I still think I am right.

Proud MOB taught me what an Epee was, I feel so worldly this morning. :p

Trek- Those key machines are actually terrible. Not necessarily user error, it was one of the most returned items at Lowe's.

[Zen]

I learned

King
Phillip
Curses
Our
Funky
Green
Salad

from watching the Cosby show and i was prompted to learn what a Venn diagram is by watching Jon Stewart.

for those of you wondering about the funky green salad-
kingdom, phylum, class,order,family, genus, species

Right now I'm trying to fully understand cognitive dissonance. I must have heard that somewhere on TV too :p

[HoosierGiant]

I learned

King
Phillip
Curses
Our
Funky
Green
Salad



When we were studying taxonomy I taught my girls

Kids
Prefer
Cheese
Over
Fried
Green
Spinach

[sfa]

Because "I'm going to do pilates" sounds a LOT better than "I'm going to do Joe." :eek:

I dunno. Joe might disagree.

[Aggie_Ama]

I learned

King
Phillip
Curses
Our
Funky
Green
Salad

from watching the Cosby show and i was prompted to learn what a Venn diagram is by watching Jon Stewart.

for those of you wondering about the funky green salad-
kingdom, phylum, class,order,family, genus, species

Right now I'm trying to fully understand cognitive dissonance. I must have heard that somewhere on TV too :p


Your whole post gave me weird flash backs to college. I must take a nap now, I am fatigued.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I was in my 30's when I discovered that silos at dairy farms were not used for storing milk. :eek: :D

It seems to me that about 1/3 of all new made keys these days don't work, so I always check new keys immediately when I get home.

[Zen]

I used to think seals (the kind that swim in the ocean) were made of rubber. But I was 4 years old.

[Aquila]

King
Phillip
Came
Over
For
Good
Sex

all the best mnemonics appeal to our prurient interests.:rolleyes:

After 25 years, I can still do cranial nerves, too.

[OakLeaf]

Keys from my local hardware stores always work. Maybe they spring for better machines, maybe it's just the operators spend more time and attention on them. But that's one thing I'll go there first for, no matter how many things I need from the big box store that the LHS doesn't stock.

It took me years to come up with a mnemonic to remember which pole of a battery to disconnect first from the charger. It's still a pretty lame one (pLus Loosens Last - best I could do), but I absolutely could not remember that without a mnemonic, no matter how many times I did it.

[Zen]

but I absolutely could not remember that without a mnemonic, no matter how many times I did it.

Heh.
The twelve cranial nerves
OLd OPie OCcasionally TRochs TRIG And Feels VEry GLOomy, VAGUe, And HYPOGLOSSAL

[solobiker]

Hey what about..lets see if I can remember this



Some
Old
Hippie

Caught
Another
Hippie

Taking
Opium
Away

[SlowButSteady]

Dang, I just learned that I learned every thing the hard way in college instead of using mnemonics.

[divingbiker]

all the best mnemonics appeal to our prurient interests.:rolleyes:

Well, there's always

Bad
Boys
Rape
Our
Young
Girls
But
Violet
Gives
Willingly

or the slightly tamer version

Bad
Boys
Rape
Our
Young
Girls
Behind
Viney
Garden
Walls

to remember the colors of the wires in electricity. Flashback to college, whoa.

[Tuckervill]

Ick.

Karen

[tc1]

Bad
Beer
Rots
Our
Young
Guts
But
Vodka
Goes
Well

Obersvant readers may note that is the colors of the rainbow, plus black and brown at the start and white at the end. Sometimes referred to as Roy G Biv, used as a pseudonym by more than one person.

Jesus
Christ
Made
Seattle
Under
Protest
(for Seattle downtown named streets, running south to north)

And as for pilates, the soft i note helps. But not enough. Is it pi-lattes or pi-lats? Pi-lottas? Pinatas?:rolleyes:

[OakLeaf]

Americans pretty universally pronounce it Pih-LAH-teez.

But since Joseph Pilates was German... I don't even know how German pronunciation rules apply to an unaccented final syllable like that.

[malkin]

What was the topic of this thread?

[OakLeaf]

What was the topic of this thread?

:D:D Same as all the other ones I think :rolleyes:

[crazycanuck]

I've learnt that as a future planner one will have to learn to read 185 pages + for Revised local structure plans etc & figure out how to comment on them quickly..:eek: :o .

*bangs head on desk*

Should you be bored, have a look at the Port Coogee Revised Local Structure Plan. Very interesting for Perth though!!!

Onwards...
A few years ago I thought there was a bridge between Tassie & the mainland :o

[Crankin]

I finally learned that *a lot* is two words, AFTER I started teaching English.
I never heard of any of those mnemonics. They must be science related ;).

King Phillip, was the leader of a vicious Native American rebellion that killed thousands in MA in the 1600s. That probably accounts for the variation in the first mnemonic that Red Rhodie stated.
Of course, I didn't learn about King Phillip, until I had to teach a unit on Native Americans of the northeast. And I went to elementary school here, where in the 60's at least, we assumed there were never any Native Americans in Massachusetts.

[Tuckervill]

I learned that the word judgment only has one e.

Karen

[alpinerabbit]

Originally Posted by oxysback
Because "I'm going to do pilates" sounds a LOT better than "I'm going to do Joe." I dunno. Joe might disagree.
That made me snort ...

[bouncybouncy]

I just learned what horse tallow is...:o

[Aggie_Ama]

I learned that the word judgment only has one e.

Karen

I did not know this until the fall when I was convinced the TV had it wrong and I looked it up.

[GLC1968]

I just learned that it's no longer correct to type two spaces after a period ending a sentence! Showing my age - I still do and it's a habit I'll probably never break.

I also learned how to make codling moth traps this weekend and that lemon scented ammonia still smells nothing like lemons. :p

[divingbiker]

I just learned that it's no longer correct to type two spaces after a period ending a sentence! Showing my age - I still do and it's a habit I'll probably never break.

Really? Who gave "them" permission to do that?:eek::eek::eek:

[solobiker]

I just learned that it's no longer correct to type two spaces after a period ending a sentence! Showing my age - I still do and it's a habit I'll probably never break.




Wow, that is news to me. I am still going to do it out of spite:D

[OakLeaf]

Spell checkers will fix it for you. I had to learn to stop that since I do a lot of transcribing.

That custom ended with "proportional spacing" - before PCs even. It goes back to typewriters with fixed width fonts.

[Tuckervill]

To confuse things even more, if you have a Blackberry, and you put two spaces after a sentence in an email, it automatically adds the period and capitalizes the next letter. So, even if I WANTED to change to the one space after a period, I couldn't do it on my BB (unless I wanted to give up this feature).

Karen

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I too like how two spaces look after a period. But I do most of my writing online, and most blogs/forums, etc now eliminate the extra space anyway, so I'm wasting effort.
I'm not liking it, but since I've started my dulcimer blog, in the name of efficiency I'm retraining myself slowly lately. :(

[Flybye]

as for the period space space

I have learned that I can hit "ctrl a" to highlight an entire paper, then do a find and replace all

find period space space
replace with period space

HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Guess I showed them!

[OakLeaf]

I'm guessing that if you're using Courier or another "retro" fixed width font, you should still insert two spaces after a period. The purpose of doing that was to create enough space for the reader to see the end of the sentence.

[Aint Doody]

I was forty years old before I learned to spell scissors with "s" instead of "z"--scizzors.

[andtckrtoo]

I had always learned the colors of the light spectrum as Roy G Biv (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet). I learned today that there are other ways to keep it straight.

[Flybye]

I had always learned the colors of the light spectrum as Roy G Biv (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet). I learned today that there are other ways to keep it straight.

No way :eek:
How?:confused::D:rolleyes::o:cool:

[Flybye]

I was forty years old before I learned to spell scissors with "s" instead of "z"--scizzors.

See - that is what I am talking about bannana!!

[Aggie_Ama]

You know what makes me laugh is how something you learned that you found trivial sticks with you. When I was in college I took editing and writing from this professor with a reputation of being a pain in the butt however I really loved the old man (he was in his 80's in 2001-2003 when I had him). His sense of humor just made sense, I loved his lectures and the work wasn't bad. I ended up taking editing, one writing and one history of Journalism class with him.

So a couple things from Dr. Starr really stuck like what a Serif and Sans Serif font is, how palatino is a visually appealing font to him (which I now use for work by choice :p) and how you should use the exclamation point unless you want the sentence to be read as a scream. I can't help using the exclamation but I always blush and remember him reading someone's work yelling every sentence they used an exclamation on. He would be ashamed at my lack of proper punctuation and laziness on proof reading for this board. :o

[OakLeaf]

It's only been within the last 10 years that I learned that "miniscule" and "minuscule" are both proper spellings. I'd thought it was only the latter.

And I've always liked Palatino, too. It was my font of choice when I was self-employed.

[HoosierGiant]

No way :eek:
How?:confused::D:rolleyes::o:cool:

Funny you should ask...

The book I finished this morning contained the following mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow:

Rowntree's
Of
York
Give
Best
In
Value

The author is from York and lived in Edinburgh at the time of publication, so I'm sure that memory device has more relevance for those residing "across the pond", but I love a good coincidence. :)

[crazycanuck]

Did you know there's a discombobulation room at the Cincinatti (if my memory serves me right) Airport? We (ian & i )didn't even know the word existed until it was mentioned on the ABC's "word watch"