2012

I think that a bit of humor has never hurt anyone, have a nice day =)

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo da Vinci
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"El más noble placer es la alegría de comprender." - Leonardo da Vinci

Family Accidentally Discover Church Under Home

An inquisitive family have uncovered a bizarre church which has been hidden under their Victorian home in Shropshire for 100 years.

The Farla family made the discovery while investigating what was under a metre-long rectangle metal grid in their hallway.

The hole under the grid was just big enough for son Gareth, 20, to squeeze down and see what was under their living room.

And he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the dark chapel complete with a large wooden cross on the floor.

But that was nothing compared the the shock the rest of the family got when he followed a staircase in the chapel and came out of a cupboard in the dining room.

There was also large chest which was filled with old newspapers dating back to the early 1900's and old wine and sherry bottles.

Speaking of the find Matthew Lathan, who also managed to squeeze down, said: "We only discovered it because we were drunkenly fooling around and decided to have a look at what was beneath the grid - It was amazing.

"The first thing we came across in the middle of the basement was an old, open chest and in it were old newspapers and bottles dating back to the 1930s.

"There were also some sort of brick seats around the walls which looked like something you might find in a church."

It's thought the room dates back to the 1700s and could have been used as a clandestine Catholic church.

This is what I consider a personal paradise =)
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Esto es lo que yo considero un paraíso personal =)

News: Australian physicist spots dictionary error

Source: Yahoo! News

University of Queensland academic Stephen Hughes found that entries for the word 'siphon' incorrectly said atmospheric pressure is the force that allows the device to move liquids from one place to another, having first spotted the error in the Oxford English Dictionary last year.

"It is gravity that moves the fluid in a siphon, with the water in the longer arm pulling the water up the shorter arm," he said.

"An extensive check of online and offline dictionaries did not reveal a single dictionary that correctly referred to gravity being the operative force in a siphon," he added.

He said a spokeswoman for the Oxford English Dictionary had told him he was the first person to question said definition, which dated from 1911 and had been written by non-scientists. She said his views would be taken into account as they updated the entire reference book, (which, according to their website, is now up to letter R).

A siphon is a tube -- often u- or v-shaped -- that is used to move liquids from one container to another. It is commonly used to drain fish tanks or petrol tanks.

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Discussion:

At times I'd be reading over some entries in the dictionary and pondered about the text's accuracy... I mean, have you ever wondered whether there'd be errors, and how many could there be, in a reference text of such magnitude? (And the idea that they could've remained unnoticed for so long o.o)

Even with constant revisions through the years, there's still room for human error... (Especially when it comes to scientific misconceptions).