Random Facts that you find interesting

tiny · Jan 30, 2018

Marka said:
I believe that it's a slightly lighter green one on the left circle (the same position of the blue one, on the right-hand circle)... I'm quite sleep-deprived now however; I've had a pretty remarkable ability to see slight color variations.

:eek!: ... We have a witch amongst us! How did you get that?

As a side-note the image above is a compressed JPEG, so colour-accuracy and consistency isn't spot-on. I don't know if that makes it any easier/harder to spot the odd-one-out, or how monitor settings affect things, but... Wow...

Marka said:
What's particularly odd is... On a bright sunlit day; alternating which eye that I have open, I see more blue-hues and richer greens in one - the other seems more receptive to shades of yellows and reds (browns will be richer in depth)... Go figure... -Marka

I have the same thing. I asked my optician about it, and he explained that I have quite severe astigmatism (where the eyeball is shaped more like a rugby ball than a football). Astigmatism changes the angles at which light enters the eye.
The astigmatism in my right eye is much worse, so the difference in colour-perception between the eyes is noticeable in bright sunlight.

Makubird · Jan 30, 2018

tiny said:
:eek!: ... We have a witch amongst us! How did you get that?

As a side-note the image above is a compressed JPEG, so colour-accuracy and consistency isn't spot-on. I don't know if that makes it any easier/harder to spot the odd-one-out, or how monitor settings affect things, but... Wow...

OK, now I see it too. But only after setting the brightness of my iPad at high level and enlarging the picture.
I always set brightness at a very low level to save batteries

tiny · Jan 30, 2018

Sapphyre said:
Actually, a few lucky women are tetrachromatic! They can't see ultraviolet, but have a second "red" cone cell with a sufficiently different peak absorption frequency, and can therefore easily distinguish hues that look identical to almost everyone else. Check it out!

Cooool!

Sapphyre said:
That is certainly curious. According to this test I have very good color perception, but the green squares in the video you linked appeared identical to me. I have to wonder whether it is truly their language that alters their ability to distinguish colors, or perhaps natural selection has shifted the peak absorption frequencies of their cone cells?

According to this paper, it sounds like humans are born with an instinctive sense of colour-separation, where our ability to distinguish colours is initially based on how distinct the wavelengths of light are. As we learn the words for colour, our ability to distinguish colours becomes more based on the distinctions for the words we use.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...and_category_acquisition_in_Himba_and_English

It makes sense if you understand how the brain creates memories. Essentially, events are "tagged" with perceptual attributes, and the new memory is associated with previous memories with similar attributes -- much like indexing in a computer database.

If you have two mental categories for what we would call "green", then your brain needs to make that distinction at the point of encoding in order to recall the colour "accurately" according to the definitions of the native language. Having to do that every time you see a "green" thing should (if it's actually possible to perceive the greens distinctly) train your brain and make that process faster.

This article backs up that idea, but claims that the effects of language on colour perception disappear when a person is concurrently performing a verbal task, and that language primarily affects our perception of colours in the right visual field.

http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/tics2.pdf

Does language affect perception? As noted above, several studies suggest that the answer is ‘yes’, at least in connection with color. These studies have shown that there is 'categorical perception' (CP: faster or more accurate discrimination of stimuli that straddle a category boundary) for color, and that differences in color category boundaries between languages predict where CP will occur. Moreover, several of these studies, and others have shown that color CP disappears with a concurrent verbal interference task, confirming that color CP is language based.

However, this straightforward Whorfian answer - and the yes-or-no framing of the very question ‘does language affect perception?’ - obscure an interesting possibility: that language might affect half of perception. Specifically, language might be expected to shape perception primarily in the right visual field (RVF), and much less if at all in the left visual field (LVF). This expectation follows from the observations that the left hemisphere (LH) of the brain is dominant for language, and that the visual fields project contralaterally to the brain. On this view, half of our perceptual world might be viewed through the lens of our native language, and half viewed without such a linguistic filter.

Sapphyre said:
Also, for those fascinated by color, don't miss the Impossible Colors! ^.^Impossible for trichromatic humans, anyway…

Oww! That makes my eyeballs ache! I don't really see any new colours, though... :-/

- - - Updated - - -

Slomo said:
Yeah, it's clearly a light blue, where the other ones are all a dark green. It sticks out like a sore thumb, can't miss it. Circle on the right, about the 10 o'clock position.

And the circle on the left...?

Makubird said:
OK, now I see it too. But only after setting the brightness of my iPad at high level and enlarging the picture.
I always set brightness at a very low level to save batteries

Makubird said:
Does anyone see the three dotted squares in the circles? They clearly stand out from the background

Whaaaa...? :think:

... No...

Another witch! How many more among us?!

Makubird · Jan 30, 2018

Here's another test:
Who can see the cute little rabbit below?
Hint: it helps to wear sunglasses...

Makubird · Jan 30, 2018

Marka said:
Interesting! You and, Sapphyre are the only other persons that I've ever known about, who sees the color differential like that... When I've inquired about it - I usually get "that's funny/weird; no". My optometrist, didn't seem to offer anything more than about general asymmetrical aspects. Then again - how many other people go around doing such peculiar (nerdy?) things as alternating blinking, one's eyes? Like the flashing lateral lights of a rail-road crossing signal... Camera-one, camera-two, camera-one, camera-two...

Hi Marka,
That makes me number three. I can remember that I discovered the color differential when I was a small child. Nobody believed me and I never started about it again until today :smile1: I only have a very small astigmatism so that can't be the explanation. Either we are very lucky to meet each other as very rare cases with this visual anomaly (on a forum for people with a very strange interest in diapers), or this is more common than we think but most people never notice or never talk about it.

Marka said:
Below what, dear? link or, image? :dunno:

In the open space. It is a test. Only a few people are able to see the rabbit that hides in the background.
Doesn't work for people who are on antipsychotics however, they don't have to try.

Slomo · Jan 31, 2018

You guys have to remember a LOT of people visit this site on their smart phones (myself included). We aren't going to be able to see subtle color changes like this, and not because of our own vision acuity.

Ravensteel · Jan 31, 2018

I have a history degree so I can spend all day listing on historical facts. One of my favorites that most people don't know though is that Genghis Khan was not the warlords name it was in fact Chinggis Khaan.

tiny · Jan 31, 2018

Ravensteel said:
I have a history degree so I can spend all day listing on historical facts. One of my favorites that most people don't know though is that Genghis Khan was not the warlords name it was in fact Chinggis Khaan.

"Ghengis Khan" and "Chinggis Khaan" are just transliterations from Mongolian script. In Turkish, his name is written as "Cengiz Han".

None of these are actually his real name. But they're probably easier to pronounce, since his real name was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cinggis_qagan.svg

Ravensteel · Feb 2, 2018

tiny said:
"Ghengis Khan" and "Chinggis Khaan" are just transliterations from Mongolian script. In Turkish, his name is written as "Cengiz Han".

None of these are actually his real name. But they're probably easier to pronounce, since his real name was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cinggis_qagan.svg

Actually it's about pronunciation and Chinggis Khaan is how the name is pronounced in native Mongolian. You could make the argument that his name has hundreds of different pronunciations based upon the region of the language. But Chinggis Khaan is the pronunciation in Mongolian and as you would imagine they would have the most accurate depiction of his name. Chinggis Khaan is revered and near worshipped in Mongolia. He is essentially the George Washington of his country. I imagine there are also hundreds of pronunciations of George Washington. So imagine how irritating that would be if someone from another country tried to tell you how to pronounce George Washington and even made the popular pronunciation different than the native one. Would probably piss you off. This is how the issue was described to me by my Mongolian history professor at UNCW. Now I don't know you but I'm going to assume you know less about Mongolian history than she did.

tiny · Feb 2, 2018

tiny said:
None of these are actually his real name. But they're probably easier to pronounce, since his real name was...

Ravensteel said:
Actually it's about pronunciation...

That's exactly what I said... :dunno:

Ravensteel said:
... and Chinggis Khaan is how the name is pronounced in native Mongolian.

No -- that's a modern English transliteration of proto-Mongolic script.

Besides, Latin characters have no universal pronunciation. Different societies use different phonemes (discrete sounds) in their language. Even within the Latin alphabet, think of the difference between the sound a double-L makes in English, Spanish and Welsh (in words like "really", "llamo" and "llawryf"). And none of those LL sounds has a directly equivalent phoneme in the other languages.

We even need "phonetic alphabets" to describe the phonemes that make up a word in different accents and dialects of the same language! British English pronunciation of Latin characters is notably different to American English, for example: I say tomato, you say tur-may-tow. :smile:

http://www.phonemicchart.com/

Latin characters alone cannot convey a proto-Mongolian pronunciation... or any particular pronunciation at all. It has famously been argued that the spelling of the word "fish" should be changed to "ghoti"...

gh as in enough
o as in women
ti as in nation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

Ravensteel said:
You could make the argument that his name has hundreds of different pronunciations based upon the region of the language. But Chinggis Khaan is the pronunciation in Mongolian and as you would imagine they would have the most accurate depiction of his name. Chinggis Khaan is revered and near worshipped in Mongolia. He is essentially the George Washington of his country. I imagine there are also hundreds of pronunciations of George Washington. So imagine how irritating that would be if someone from another country tried to tell you how to pronounce George Washington and even made the popular pronunciation different than the native one. Would probably piss you off. This is how the issue was described to me by my Mongolian history professor at UNCW. Now I don't know you but I'm going to assume you know less about Mongolian history than she did.

I know nothing about Mongolian history or the quality of teaching at UNCW, but... this is linguistics. Either your professor was wrong or you mistakenly remember what she told you. :dunno:

A similar thing happened with the woman we used to call "Boudicea"... which is a Latinised version of a Celtic name. Her name has also been transliterated as Boadicea, Buddug and Boudicca. The latter being the most commonly accepted transliteration to modern English.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/boudica/boadicea.html

Ravensteel · Feb 3, 2018

tiny said:
That's exactly what I said... :dunno:

No -- that's a modern English transliteration of proto-Mongolic script.

Besides, Latin characters have no universal pronunciation. Different societies use different phonemes (discrete sounds) in their language. Even within the Latin alphabet, think of the difference between the sound a double-L makes in English, Spanish and Welsh (in words like "really", "llamo" and "llawryf"). And none of those LL sounds has a directly equivalent phoneme in the other languages.

We even need "phonetic alphabets" to describe the phonemes that make up a word in different accents and dialects of the same language! British English pronunciation of Latin characters is notably different to American English, for example: I say tomato, you say tur-may-tow. :smile:

http://www.phonemicchart.com/

Latin characters alone cannot convey a proto-Mongolian pronunciation... or any particular pronunciation at all. It has famously been argued that the spelling of the word "fish" should be changed to "ghoti"...

gh as in enough
o as in women
ti as in nation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

I know nothing about Mongolian history or the quality of teaching at UNCW, but... this is linguistics. Either your professor was wrong or you mistakenly remember what she told you. :dunno:

A similar thing happened with the woman we used to call "Boudicea"... which is a Latinised version of a Celtic name. Her name has also been transliterated as Boadicea, Buddug and Boudicca. The latter being the most commonly accepted transliteration to modern English.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/boudica/boadicea.html

Oh yes I forget that everyone is an expert on the internet. So yes, you random internet person who admits you know nothing about Mongolian history, somehow knows the accurate pronunciation more so than a Mongolian historian?

Again you arguing that there are multiple pronunciations based upon dialect is irrelevant. Your point regarding Linguistics and there origin in no way negate or counter my argument .The point being that is how it is pronounced in it's a native Mongolian. By the Mongolian people who consider him a founding father. A quick periphery internet search can prove this by the simple fact that they name many popular landmarks after him.

tiny · Feb 3, 2018

Ravensteel said:
Oh yes I forget that everyone is an expert on the internet. So yes, you random internet person who admits you know nothing about Mongolian history, somehow knows the accurate pronunciation more so than a Mongolian historian?

Perhaps. Why is that so unbelievable? :giggles:

Chinggis didn't use the Latin alphabet. From what I've read, modern Mongolians typically use Cyrillic or Mongolian script (and rarely Latin) for writing. Is that right?

Maybe a future American civilisation with a different alphabet will say that Donald Trump's name is actually /\K# [.^^ or something. But that doesn't really make it his name -- it's a transliteration of his name.

Transliteration is the process of transforming the arbitrary glyphs of one written language into the arbitrary glyphs of another, with the aim of accurately transcoding pronunciation. So, whether we write "Genghis" or "Chinggis" is determined by what is considered the most accurate pronunciation.

There would need to be perfect phonemic parity between ancient proto-Mongolian script and modern Mongolian Latin glyphs for it to be possible to transliterate whilst preserving pronunciation. Is there...?

And, whilst we might accept the modern Mongolian Latin transliteration as being the "academically accepted" one (which I don't dispute)... how can anyone today (whether Mongolian or not) truly claim that any Latin transliteration is an objectively "correct" one...?

For example... how would you transliterate the glottal stop of proto-Mongolian script into the Latin alphabet?

I've heard that the Latin "g" is used to depict a glottal stop in Mongolian. Is this what has led academics and modern Mongolians to prefer the use of "ch" rather than "gh" at the start of Chinggis'/Genghis' name...?

Aaaaaanyway, I also discovered that Ghengis/Chinggis's real name was something like "Temujin". Ghengis Khan was actually a title bestowed upon him that means "universal emperor".

Similarly with Mahatma Ghandi: his real name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and "Mahatma" was a title meaning "high souled" or "venerable". :smile:

Maxx said:
Jingizz Can or Jenga's Kin... we all know who the guy was, and an awful lot of people in that part of the world are his direct descendants, but does it really matter how his name was pronounced, spelled, or signed a thousand years ago?

Oh, I don't know -- I actually found Ravensteel's point quite interesting. I wasn't aware that "Chinggis" was now considered a more accurate transliteration than "Genghis"... and it piqued my interest enough to ramble on like a pedantic smartarse for ages. :-/

But yeah... moving swiftly on! Any more interesting facts out there...? :smile1:

SpAzpieSweeTot · Feb 4, 2018

Marka said:
I believe that it's a slightly lighter green one on the left circle (the same position of the blue one, on the right-hand circle)... I'm quite sleep-deprived now however; I've had a pretty remarkable ability to see slight color variations. What's particularly odd is... On a bright sunlit day; alternating which eye that I have open, I see more blue-hues and richer greens in one - the other seems more receptive to shades of yellows and reds (browns will be richer in depth)... Go figure... -Marka

she beat me to it. Same color, different depth. Thank you, my dear Autie brain!

Slomo · Feb 5, 2018

Another interesting fact.

The planets in our solar system have never before aligned in a straight line, and never will. This is because they all have different tilts, and where one planet will intersect with one other planet, that intersection point is going to be different for all the other planets.

In fact, it's been over 1000 years since all the planets were even in the same sky (from the view point of earth).

Makubird · Feb 5, 2018

Buttered bread

Closer to home:

When you -accidentally- drop your buttered slice of bread from the table, there is an 81% chance that it will land with the buttered side down. This is actually scientifically proven. It has to do with the height of the table. The slice can only make a half rotation when it is falling to the floor. When you toss the bread in the air the chances are just 50-50.

If you hate to clean up the mess every morning, the best thing to do is to invest in a higher table, approx 8 ft high.

Slomo · Feb 6, 2018

Makubird said:
Closer to home:

When you -accidentally- drop your buttered slice of bread from the table, there is an 81% chance that it will land with the buttered side down. This is actually scientifically proven. It has to do with the height of the table. The slice can only make a half rotation when it is falling to the floor. When you toss the bread in the air the chances are just 50-50.

If you hate to clean up the mess every morning, the best thing to do is to invest in a higher table, approx 8 ft high.

Not exactly. Mythbusters tested this out by tossing toast and buttered toast off a roof.

Buttered side does end up face down most of the time (I forget what the percentage was), but not always. Their best guess was the weight of the butter lowered the center of mass enough so it would land face down more often.

Though yes, at low drop heights the rotation of the buttered toast is a major factor.

Makubird · Feb 6, 2018

Slomo said:
Not exactly. Mythbusters tested this out by tossing toast and buttered toast off a roof.

My post was not about bread falling from a roof, but bread falling from a breakfast table. The researchers also showed that it is not the butter that makes the bread fall butter side down.
They actually won an Ig Nobel prize

Random Facts that you find interesting

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