Month: February 2020

Ben is awesome. He sent me a new board game for my birthday. It’s called Aeon’s End, and is similar to Dominion– my favorite game ever– with a few twists, including the fact that it’s cooperative. That alone means Pepper is willing to play it (she hates losing to me above nearly everything else in her life).

So we cracked open the box and learned how to play. There’s an initial game setup intended to teach the game to new players, which was nice.

When a game has this many cards and tokens, you know it’s a good one.

We were slaughtered the first two times we played. Apparently we’re missing something about the strategy. But we’ll keep playing. Thanks, Ben!

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble… it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
— Mark Twain

Everyone knows carrots are good for your eyesight, right?

Well, during World War II the British had advanced radar technology to the point where they could identify incoming German aircraft. But they didn’t want the Germans knowing about the technology, so the Ministry of Food (yes, that’s a real thing) fabricated propaganda stories that said the British pilots’ exceptional eyesight was because they ate a lot of carrots.

Why carrots? Because they grow in abundance in Great Britain, and the government wanted to encourage people to eat them. Also, they’re healthy.

Mission accomplished! Carrot consumption went up, and from that day forward, everyone thought carrots helped your vision.

While it’s true that the beta carotene in carrots is converted to vitamin A by your body, which in turn is helpful for eyesight, any substantial improvement would require consuming so many carrots that your skin would literally turn an orangish-yellow. And that amount of vitamin A may actually end up being unhealthy, because it can also cause liver problems.

So, don’t be so sure about things you’ve heard…

… because it turns out the story about the British carrot propaganda machine was made up, too. Oh, and there’s no proof Mark Twain actually said that, although it’s generally attributed to him.

Today’s lesson in how weird English is:

Words which are spelled the same but act as different parts of speech are typically pronounced with emphasis on different syllables. For example, “contract” is a noun and a verb. The former is pronounced CON-tract, while the latter is con-TRACT. A driver’s PER-mit will per-MIT you to operate a car. When you add-RESS an envelope, you usually write your ADD-ress in the corner. You might ob-JECT to an obscene OB-ject. A police officer probably sus-PECTs a SUS-pect. And so on. Note that nouns emphasize the first syllable, and verbs the second.

Also, words which are given different endings tend to change which syllable is emphasized. Take “photograph” for example; it’s pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable: PHO-to-graph. But add a “-y” and it becomes pho-TO-graph-y. Add an “-ic” and it’s pho-to-GRAPH-ic. Consider Einstein’s theory of rel-a-TI-vi-ty, which explains rel-a-ti-VIS-tic phenomenon between the REL-a-tive positions of things.

Oh, and of course there are plenty of exceptions to these not-quite-rules. Like many idiosyncrasies of English, this is one of those things you just have to know because you’re a native speaker; if you’re learning the language you may never get all the emphases right. Whee.

I guess I thought northern Montana would be cold in the winter. Apparently not… it’s currently 55 degrees in February.