Name a topic, a person, a place, a thing, anything at all, that has NOT been discussed (or at least mentioned) in the 3,000,000-plus posts on SDMB.
Sure it’s hard. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
What have you been sitting there wishing somebody else would finally post so you could respond to it?
Has anybody ever had much to say about the origin of the word “word” for instance? Sure, you can find the word “word” in a search, but has its origin been discussed and debated?
And how about the concept of what happens when tsetse flies mate? Do they go to sleep?
What’s that burning question that nobody seems to ask?
well hurm… how about the Mari? or better yet what where the common names found in the mari (Cheremis) peoples durring the Cheremis wars?
I do not think it has been covered yet. The Cheremis Wars were very bloody and only a footnote in russian history. Yet, I have always been rather interested in the whole topic.
Perhaps not origin, but its usage is being debated in Cafe Society right now in a thread on pop-cultural phrases (in the context “Word up!” or “Word to your mother”).
Why do we have the technology to send people into space to live for months, to be able to log into a box and talk to people all over the world, to cure diseases and illnesses, but we STILL cant figure out how to set the clock on our vcrs??
grr
Somehow, I don’t think the people who are actually out there sending people into space and curing diseases have any trouble with their VCR. As a corollary, I doubt anyone who can’t figure out their VCR clock is working at NASA or the NIH. Or at least very few. Therefore, the comparison is false.
Smeghead, my mother’s husband, who has been a computer geek since the 1960’s, cannot program a VCR to save his life. Or a cell phone – the HELL that ensues when he gets a new phone, arrrrgh…
I’ve come to the conclusion that consumer electronics are too easy for him. He can make mainframe computers sit up and beg, but VCRs are too obvious or something.
Sock monkey, the jury is still out, but more and more evidence supports the conclusion they are not rodents. Most notably is the research by Dr. Dan Graur of Tel Aviv University and his colleagues.
I am not scientifically savy enough to give you the DNA type evidence, but they do have different proteins in their blood from other rodents. Several key characteristics also distinguish cavies from others of the order rodentia:
First of all they cannot manufacture Vitamin C and have to obtain it from diet, or they get scurvy.
They have 4 front toes and 3 back toes, while other rodents have 5 front toes and 3-5 back toes.
No tail.
Herbivore ONLY. Most rodents are scavengers.
They are born with a full coat of hair, open eyes and able to run and eat food right from birth, while other rodents are born hairless, blind, and completely dependent on mother’s milk.
They are odorless and lack musk glands.
As I said, there is not yet a definitive answer, but more and more scientists are concluding that cavia porcellus (guinea pig) deserves an order of its own.
I’ve never owned a VCR that was so difficult I even had to read the instructions. Which is a good thing since I’ve bought all of them at pawn shops and they didn’t come with instructions.
Okay. You send a letter to, say, Japan. Or Russia. You write the address using the Latin alphabet, but it gets there anyway. Your correspondent writes back in English and puts the address on in Latin characters, and it goes through the Japanese (or Russian) post office.
I could write the Russian address in Cyrillic script. (I could not do it in Japanese, though.) But what would my local PO think? Would it get there? Would they have any idea which sorting bin to put it in? And what if I got one addressed in Cyrillic?
