2010/06/19

2009/02/26

“When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word of what someone says, he or she states that it’s ‘Greek to me’. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it ’sounds like Chinese’. I’ve been told the Korean equivalent is ’sounds like Hebrew’,” says Yuval Pinter (here on the excellent Languagelog). Which begs the question: “Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph?” Well apparently there has, even if only perfunctorily, and the result is this cartogram....

2010/09/09

Strong currents, extreme depths, and the distance from land and medical facilities have always made diving the Andrea Doria a hazardous endeavor. It is even more so today. The Doria is not the dive that it used to be. The hull is collapsing badly, and the top of the wreck is now below 190 ft. Many of the places that divers used to visit have deteriorated beyond recognition. Gimbel's hole, once the famous entry to the inside of the wreck, is now no more than a closed-off depression. Every year, as the hull sinks further into itself, the dive becomes deeper, more dangerous, and more pointless. Once the "Mount Everest of Shipwreck Diving", the heyday of the Andrea Doria is over. I have never been there, and have no desire to go, but I know a lot of people who have, including some of the most experienced....

2010/09/09

SMS Emden was a light cruiser of the Imperial German Navy in World War I. The Emden raided Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean early in the war, sinking or capturing thirty Allied merchant vessels and warships before being run aground by her captain to prevent her from sinking, after engaging more powerful HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos....

2010/09/09

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