TIL: Today I Learned

[HoloDoc]

A student in one of my freshman English classes last year shared my last name. The other students started the year off with a joke about how she was ostensibly my daughter (no) and then started calling me "Daddy [last name]" (noooooooooooo).

It was mostly a stick to beat their fellow student with, and they stopped using it in my class because I got annoyed and told them off for it, but their Earth Science teacher told me that they still referred to me as "Daddy [last name]" during her class as late as the second half of the school year.

This might be even creepier than my situation. Although at least said freshman probably didn't send you naked pics of herself unsolicited, unlike both the people I mentioned.

It's what you do with the oxygen you breathe that matters more than who breathed it before.

I do harmless things like read, write, and cuddle my cat. The only genocides I've ever committed have been in my Civ games.

If Hitler had Civ, millions could have been saved.

 

[Dachs]

This might be even creepier than my situation. Although at least said freshman probably didn't send you naked pics of herself unsolicited, unlike both the people I mentioned.

That's gross. No. Nothing even remotely like that.

 

[HoloDoc]

That's gross. No. Nothing even remotely like that.

There is a reason this girl no longer works with me. And why that guy was viciously beaten by another guy he did that to. The charges were dropped because the magistrate felt it was clear provocation, which is questionable, but meh. You keep teaching long enough, all this crap will eventually happen.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

A few months ago I was in the same boat and had to buy an essay to get a good grade.

Not cool.

I used to have a home typing business, and most of my clients were students from the local college and sometimes the universities (some of my clients did me the honor of contacting me after they went on to university, saying they didn't want to trust their papers to anyone else - since I'd been the typist who'd dealt with them for the previous 2-4 years).

On a few occasions I was asked to write original material. One occasion was right in front of the student association secretary - a guy offered me $25 to write his term paper. I told him, "That would get both of us expelled. So no. And even if it didn't, whatever I write is MINE. I don't let anyone else take credit for my words."

Another time it was a guy in the science fiction club on campus - asked me to write his English essay for him. I told him off and said to write it himself, because plagiarism/buying papers would get him kicked out.

There was another client who asked, "Do you guarantee me an A"? I told her no, I couldn't. I said that if her instructor thought her paper was worth an A, that's what she would get. If it wasn't worth an A, she would get whatever the instructor decided. The only thing I guaranteed was that I would do the very best job I possibly could, to ensure her paper was accurate as she'd written it, proofread, and correctly formatted. As it turns out, she was an "A" student and was my client for 3 years.

So I don't have a lot of respect for the underground essay/paper trade.

 

[Lexicus]

I had an English teacher in HS who was awesome...she told me that I was better than a lot of students because even though I frequently wouldn't turn in work, I would just be like "yeah I didn't do that" instead of resorting to cheating, like paying someone to write a paper.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about exploding head syndrome. It's considerably less mindblowing (sorry...) than you'd expect. It's just hearing loud noises when falling asleep or waking up.

 

[Phrossack]

Oh yeah try crunchy PB and Jelly with bacon on your burger. Mmhmm it's so good

I had it for the first time when @Joecoolyo, @Phrossack* and I met up in St Louis

* I can't remember what he changed his name too. I also think he rage quit the site

Actually, I didn't change anything! I have been gone a few years, though

 

[Ajidica]

Actually, I didn't change anything! I have been gone a few years, though

Please stay! You can mention Poland again without fear of the post-storm you unleashed!

 

[Takhisis]

I dunno. Eastern Europe isn't a particularly peaceful place right now.

 

[Ajidica]

Well, he can mention Poland without fear of the Mongolian Horde questionable use of DNA Haplogroups to demonstrate a point nobody cares about and might be a bit racist ruining the thread.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL: The Gary Hart campaign of 1988 fell apart when he was caught having an affair on a boating trip aboard the "Monkey Business". Well, it seems that Lee Atwater, who ran the Bush campaign at that time, orchestrated the whole event to take Hart down. Atwater made a death bed confession to this at the time democratic counterpart in 1991. That guy kept it a secret until he thought he was dying last year. Then he told Hart.

So had those dirty tricks not prevailed....Would Hart have beat Bush? Would Clinton been elected? Would Bush 2 have ever run? could Obama have won if W had not been president?

 

[Takhisis]

Thirty years later Hart's campaign doesn't look like a winner, but I don't know how it was at the moment.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Thirty years later Hart's campaign doesn't look like a winner, but I don't know how it was at the moment.

The Democrats settled for Michael Dukakis. Hart certainly wouldn't have done any worse. I'd say at the time he was recognizably the biggest threat. That would be why the Bush campaign took him out.

 

[The_J]

Today I learned that a big grouip of people (apparently like 30%, although the guy told me 60%) can not taste a specific bitter compound. This seems to depend on a single gene, and if you have a defective variant, you'll just not taste this type of bitter.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylthiocarbamide

 

[Takhisis]

The Democrats settled for Michael Dukakis. Hart certainly wouldn't have done any worse. I'd say at the time he was recognizably the biggest threat. That would be why the Bush campaign took him out.

Oh right, it's the time when Reagan was conning the US electorate into voting for him no matter what he did. So any Republican would have won by having the incubent's advantage at the time, is that what you're saying?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Oh right, it's the time when Reagan was conning the US electorate into voting for him no matter what he did. So any Republican would have won by having the incubent's advantage at the time, is that what you're saying?

Well, sort of. The Republicans were very skilled at eliminating the better candidates through the course of the primaries, so if nothing else their targeting Hart indicates they considered his chances better than Dukakis'. Whether he would really have stood a chance in the general is still dubious though, because, yeah, faith in Reagan was still bizarrely high at that point.

 

[Takhisis]

Or maybe they were just trying to bring down as many candidates as possible. As was brought up recently, Newt Gingrich's idea of treating all other parties (mostly the Democrats) as an enemy to be destroyed had already taken hold by then.
The only good thing we got out of it was a lot of good memes starring Dan Quayle and Two Bad Neighbours.

 

[sophie]

TIL the Romance word for "spoon" (Sp. cuchara, Fr. cuillère, It. cucchiaio, etc.) descends from Lat. cochlear, which is formed of cochlea ("snail" or "snail's shell") +-ar (neuter noun-forming suffix). Don't really understand how that works.

The English word, spoon, comes from a Germanic root meaning "a flake" or "a piece of chipped wood"

The German and Dutch (and Low German/Plautdietsch/Yiddish) words (Löffel and lepel, etc.) come from a Germanic root meaning "to lick, to lap", and of course is a cognate with our verb "to lap". That one is a bit easier to wrap my head around.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL the Romance word for "spoon" (Sp. cuchara, Fr. cuillère, It. cucchiaio, etc.) descends from Lat. cochlear, which is formed of cochlea ("snail" or "snail's shell") +-ar (neuter noun-forming suffix). Don't really understand how that works.

Perhaps an empty snail shell was used to scoop food from a dish.

 

[Traitorfish]

Out of curiosity, I looked up "spoon" in Scottish Gaelic. Turns out it's "spàin".

Zero points for guessing that etymology.