The Things You Learn

Proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks. Here are some random things I learned today. And you'd think that at my old age, I'd already know everything I need to know!

Apparently a peanut is technically not a nut. It is a legume. This is why I watch Food Network and Alton Brown.

While working on an index for my freelance project, I learned that beta decay is a type of radioactive decay. Really? My knowledge of science is questionable, though. When I took science in college, I took a geology class. I'll take rocks, earthquakes, and volcanoes (from a distance) any day. No chemistry--the thought of explosions, acid, and scalding burns scare me. And I never liked the stale scent of formaldehyde (thank God for spellcheck) in a biology class. In college I also took a physical anthropology class. But give me something old and dead and I'm happy. Hence my love of Classics.

And here is something I already knew, but I thought I would share it with the rest of you. This is what I received in my Word of the Day e-mail (with some commentary I added for fun).

According to a story, probably apocryphal, former US Vice President Dan Quayle once said, "I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have is that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." I don't know why but I can hear Bush saying the same stupid thing.

Latin is a dead language. No people speak it as their everyday language. Really? Sometimes I do...
The area south of the US is called Latin America because most of the people down there speak Spanish or Portuguese, both derived from Latin.

Latin took its name from Latium, a region in ancient Italy. Various dialects of Latin eventually blossomed into the Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, while Latin itself faded away. IT'S NOT DEAD YET!!!

Fortunately, you don't have to travel to Latin America to use this week's terms from Latin. They have been borrowed into English and are now part of the language.

de novo (day NO-vo) adverb: Anew; from the beginning.

[From Latin de novo (from new).]

There is your lesson for the day...