Self-tutoring about antiquity: the tutor brings up the ancient unit of mass talent. Talent is a measure used for precious metals in the Old Testament – for instance, in 1 Kings 10.10. How much was a talent? Apparently, a talent, …
Tutoring English, homonyms can be a favourite topic. The tutor brings up the pair symbol and cymbal. cymbal: a metallic percussion instrument associated with drums and struck to make a hissing “crash” sound. symbol: a word that means something other …
More homonyms (or homophones): symbol and cymbal Read more »
Tutoring English, vocabulary is always interesting. The tutor mentions the obsure word lexical. lexical: referring to a word’s fundamental meaning in common usage, apart from grammar, etc. In my experience, the word lexical surfaces in computer science more than I’ve …
More self-tutoring about Perl: the tutor mentions another way to enable ‘say’ in Perl. In my post from Aug 15 I mention the Perl feature say and that, to enable it, a user might key use v5.10; below the she-bang …
Tutoring English, the language might be stripped down to “bare wires”. The tutor mentions the idea of morpheme. Any language has morphemes. A morpheme is an “atom” of the language – that is, a morpheme is a single-meaning element. The …
Self-tutoring about stress and health: the tutor explores some effects of cortisol. Back in my post from March 14 I bring up cortisol, Part 0. I observe therein that cortisol is released in response to stress. Cortisol, in turn, causes …
Tutoring computer science, new language ideas will always be noticed. The tutor mentions the Perl construct say. use v5.10; #Apparently you need this to use say. $var1=”Hey there:)”; say $var1; #same effect as print “$var1\n”; I’ve never known of say, …
Tutoring English, new vocabulary is always interesting. The tutor mentions the word specious. specious (adj): seeming true or genuine, but actually not. He wondered if the compliment was specious. Source: Mish, Frederick C. (editor). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 2004.
Tutoring English, vocabulary is always interesting. The tutor mentions the word impute. impute (verb): to put cause or blame on someone. The mess in the lounge was imputed to the previous night’s revelers. Source: Mish, Frederick C. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. …
Tutoring English, pronunciations can be interesting. The tutor checks two different ones for scone. As a kid, I heard scone pronounced scon; out west, I more often here scone. Apparently, both pronunciations are correct. Source: Barber, Katherine, et al (editors). …