Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic sauvant with some of the most outstanding artistic ability ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...Wiltshire&aq=f

I couldn't turn this documentary off when I watched it, quite remarkable

not interesting articles per se, but maybe still interesting

longest pages on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:LongPages

bizarre array of subjects

1. List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters ‎[390,810 bytes]
2. Line of succession to the British throne ‎[390,768 bytes]
3. Timeline of United States inventions ‎[386,577 bytes]
4. Licensed and localized editions of Monopoly ‎[357,788 bytes]
5. History of Poland ‎[345,329 bytes]

That is pretty incredible, just shows what the human brain can do. Maybe one day people will be able to tap in to it's full capacity

The vibrator was invented in 1869 to treat "female hysteria" lol.

Very interesting, thanks.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, basically the guy is the human google earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU

1818 Profile lathe

* A lathe is an adjustable horizontal metal rail and a tool rest, between the material and the operator which accommodates the positioning of shaping tools. With wood, it is common practice to press and slide sandpaper against the still-spinning object after shaping it to smooth the surface. As the first of its kind, Thomas Blanchard of Middlebury, Connecticut, invented the profile lathe in 1818, intended for the mass duplication of woodworking.[47]

amazing

Then 188 years later some dude decided to put one in an apartment. GG Thomas Blanchard

Love that story. Completely legal.

good read, this part was especially sick i thought

In after myself.

For some reason, i found stuff like this really interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_me..._meal_requests

lol. I was playing cards w/ someone one night and that topic came up, called it the changing of the guard.

"James Edward Smith requested a lump of dirt, which was denied. He settled for a small cup of yogurt.[14]"

Ricky Ray Rector: Steak, fried chicken, cherry Kool-Aid, and a pecan pie — which he did not eat, because he said he was saving it for later. [3]

Awesome.

Ringer Edwards

From the last meal thread:

Ringer Edwards requested chicken and beer. He escaped execution as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese military when his meal request could not be obtained.

Dude sounds pretty badass.

Just got done watching it. Twoo notes:

1. I couldnt find one with English subtitles as two people always spoke french and I did not understand a word they said. Do you guys watch it with subtitles? Or do you understand French? Or just go without knowing what they said?

2. The whole 2 minutes about him having sex and cheating on his girlfriend right after the incident is pretty lol worthy....It was out of nowhere, but i cant really think of anything else thats as big as a pussy magnet as walking across the air a half mile up

"A meme (pronounced /miːm/, rhyming with "cream") is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena."

"The term Internet meme, pronounced meem, is used to describe a concept that spreads quickly via the Internet."

If nothing else, this thread has saved me from the embarrassment of using the word in real life and rhyming it with hem. I have no idea how long I've been familiar with the term, but I would guess two or three years. I've only read it, and maybe used it in a post. I'm pretty sure I've never said it in conversation, nor heard anyone else do so. I never thought about where the word comes from, but I guess I assumed it was from French or something, and hence had a short e.

I wonder how many are like I was and know what meme means, or at least could give several examples, have seen it and maybe even used it themselves but have neither said nor heard it and are only guessing at the pronunciation. I can't think of any other words like that. There are obviously abbreviations and crap like smileys that people may use in speech to be funny, as well as things specific to a given site like forum or usernames. I mean words that are used all over the internet that people rarely use in speech.

I went on a binge a while ago reading pages on linguistics and phonology. Here are a few I remember finding interesting:

Cockney rhyming slang. Cockneys are working-class Londoners, apparently mostly in the East End. I don't think the Cockney accent is super common, at least anyone you meet probably wouldn't have it. That could just be selection since it's a working-class accent with a negative stigma. In any case, I think most Americans are probably at least somewhat familiar with it. If someone is making fun of people from England and instead of trying to sound, uh, posh they go for horrid then they are probably doing a bad Cockney accent*. Here's an example from Family Guy. Hopefully I'm not too far off with that.

It's mostly local, but apparently there are a couple words we use that might be based on it:




* Scouse sounds worse (NSFW language) but it's tough to imitate, even poorly, unless it's specifically George Harrison.

Don't know about that, sorry. Came from the tv. I suppose you could find subtitles somewhere since it shouldn't be that rare of a film.

Haha, yeah, i agree. It really came out of nowhere, but i guess they put it in for the "he did something illegal and became a celebrity"-angle.

Definitely one of the sickest human beings alive. I couldn't believe the size of the tokyo drawing he did too.

Yeah - they had his cell at the museum. Here are a few pictures of it.

Oh, forgot the phonology stuff.

The most interesting thing is probably to look at the page on the dialect or accent where you're from or elsewhere that you have a connection to. Here is the North American English regional phonology. Here is a page on regional vocabulary. For people in the UK and Ireland, you should be able to find your region or city here. Here are the pages for Australia, New Zealand and South African English.

It might be a bit tough to understand some of it, especially those without word examples, if you are like me and not familiar with the phonetic alphabet. IMO it's worth taking a few seconds to look at the IPA chart for English dialects. There were a few things that I either hadn't noticed people there doing, including myself, or that I didn't notice were odd. For example, for me rang and rain have the same vowel sound and I pronounce leg and egg layg and ayg.

It's probably meh otherwise, but if you too have gotten into arguments with more than one English person because they denied adding an r to the end of words that end with uh, then you will enjoy this page on the linking and intrusive r in non-rhotic dialects. It is also discussed on the main page about the difference between rhotic, those that pronounce the r in card, and non-rhotic accents. I think it goes beyond the case where the next word starts with a vowel, because I have definitely had an Englishman tell me "I don't say Americker, I say Americker."

You probably have to be really in the mood to nerd out, but here is the phonological history of English. It goes through, with a lot of examples, how pronunciation has changed over time. The really old sections make no sense, but I found a lot it from the Chaucer section on interesting.

Saddam Hussein declined their offers of chicken and cigarettes. lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversa...une_(2005_film)