They have a word for that in Greek / Russian / Italien … (things you can’t say in English)
If you look at the statistics around the English language you’d think that we already have more than enough words in this ‘language of the World’. However as much as we like to think of English as the biggest and best of all the World languages, it turns out there’s just some things you can’t express in one word … but you can in other languages. Démerdeur (French); Koi no yokan (Japenese); Dreich (Scots); Litost (Czech)
Why Do We Get Pins & Needles?
Whether you are sitting still for hours, perhaps with your legs crossed, or wake up sleeping on your arm the “wrong way,” you have no doubt experienced pins and needles – sometimes referred to as your leg “falling asleep”. Though this pain soon alleviates itself – what is happening in your body to cause such an irritating sensation?
Reading Ancient ‘Unreadable’ Texts Lost for Centuries
Any Bibliophile will appreciate, or at least empathise (if you’ve never had the opportunity), the exquisite pleasure of gazing upon an ancient book or scroll and reading the words engraved on its pages hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Why is the Sky Blue?
Viewed from space the sun is supposedly a ‘peach pinkish’ colour, while the sunlight that hits the Earth is white. So why is the sky seen as being blue? In a Nutshell : The sky is blue because air scatters blue light but lets other colours pass straight through. In scientific terms, colour corresponds to a particular wavelength of light and so white is a mixture of all wavelengths of the different colours. The...
How Do Ants Tell Friend from Foe?
Ants can form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. They clearly work together in a highly organised way – but how do they communicate – how would they tell freind from foe?
Extra Senses – Beyond the ‘traditional five’
There’s one popular misteaching that seems to pervade : it’s our understanding of ‘the senses’ – and that is that there are only 5 of them. However if you really think about this subject a bit, its pretty obvious and quickly apparent that we have many more ways to sense the world
Why Does the Wind Blow?
Another thing that we take for granted because, “that just the way it works”, but how and why does the wind blow ?
The Warrior Monks Who Brought Banking to London
Today, London is the financial capital of the world and for good or ill the hub of global banking and finance. How banking started in the capital is every bit as intriguing and mysterious as the ways that modern international finance seems to work today. Basically we owe it all to a religious order of heavily armed warrior monks who set up London’s first bank some 900 years ago.
The Origins of the Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness, the largest by volume, of all the many lochs in Scotland, is possibly the most famous body of water in the world. The reason, of course, is what is claimed to lie in its deepest, darkest depths – The Loch Ness Monster!
Take Control of Your Dreams for Real : Lucid Dreaming
No this isn’t one of those infomercials or self-help articles saying “you too can achieve your dreams & life goals if you follow our 10 step programme … blah blah blah”. This is about lucid dreaming – the ability to conciously control your dreams whilst you sleep.
Is it possible to tell the sex of a Dinosaur?
They’ve all been dead for at least 65 million years, so just finding a dinosaur can seem like a minor miracle. But if you do manage to find one is it possible to tell it’s sex ?
Do Fish Get Thirsty?
You’d think that being surrounded by the stuff that slakes your thirst that you would never get thirsty – but is that the case – Do Fish get thirsty?<
The Language of Caesar : Latin Phrases Everyone Should Know
A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Despite this we use a lot of Latin phrases to this day. In this article we look at some of the more common Latin phrases that we should all know.
Red Hot Science – Teams wearing red are more likely to win
Psychology 101 : “Teams wearing red are more likely to win” – True or apocryphal observation ?