User talk:Aaron McDaid/Christo

Hi Chris, we could use this page to talk rubbish about various bits and pieces. See below:

Custard
See Custard, which links to Non-Newtonian_fluid. It seems to be true.

Carol Vorderman
She's 45. Carol Vorderman

lapine
It is indeed to do with wolves. I couldn't find anything more official than that, such as a dictionary.

gizzum/gizm/jizzum/jizm
I haven't found anything authoritative, but I'm starting to think that Gordy was right with the 'j' instead of 'g'. And 'z' instead of 's'.

Brit control of their own nukes
I was (probably) wrong. According to Vanguard_class_submarine the US don't have a veto on UK nukes. However, I must point out that my theory was that the US could be supplying the UK with duds. The warheads (as opposed to the missile) are described as being "UK-built", but even that doesn't tell us much because I remember somewhere reading that the US supply kit-missiles which the UK assemble.

More research needed.

bien-pensant (sp?)
I think 'bien-pensant' came up in Countdown or something. It literally translates as something like 'good thinking', but I think it means 'overly optimistic thinking', and is used to describe political viewpoints such as "Everything is OK, we don't need to change anything" particularly when things aren't in fact OK.

It's a phrase I've seen many times over the years, but I want to find an authoritative definition.

runned
According to Cambridge and Collins, runned and ranned are not valid words.

I must check out eaten and ate. And find out how to predict what derived words are and are not allowed. And how to read IPA.

encased
encased is valid, according to Collins for use in Scrabble, and hence Countdown. So I would have got 7, even though Dictionary Corner didn't mention encased.

broad
I think broad can mean any woman, not just mothers. It's often derogatory and can mean prostitute.

House Of Cards actor on Daily Mail DVD?
I can't find anything here: Ian_Richardson. It may not have been him. Here's the Daily Mail telling us about their DVDs, we should cross reference those with all the House of Cards actors.

apes
We (apes et cetera) are all Primates.

Kingdom: Animalia -> Phylum:Chordata -> Class:Mammalia -> Order:Primates

There's a subclass and a superorder in between mammals and primates but I don't think they're important.

Now the interesting bit, how do things split up with the primates and where to we fit in.

Put simply:
 * along with the chimps, gorillas and orangutans, we're the Great Apes (a Family in the classification system).
 * add in the Lesser Apes and you get the Apes (Superfamily:Hominoidea).
 * add in some monkeys and macaques and bonobos (the Old World monkeys I think), and you get the Catarrhini.
 * then add in the New World Monkeys, then the tarsiers, then the lemurs, and then you'll have all the primates,

Primates `-Haplorrhini |      `-Simians (Simiiformes) "higher primates" |      |       `-Catarrhini |      |       |       `-Apes (Hominoidea) |      |       |       |       `-Great Apes  (Hominidae):   (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans). |      |       |       |       `-Lesser Apes (Hylobatidae): (gibbons) |      |       |       `-Cercopithecoidea: Old World monkeys (various other monkeys, macaques, and bonobos and all sorts) |      |       `-Platyrrhini: New World monkeys (marmosets,capuchins,squirrel monkeys,spider monkeys etc.) |      `Tarsiiformes (tarsiers, we don't care about any more detail) ` Strepsirrhini (lemurs et cetera, we don't care about any more detail)

Monkeys turn up all over the place. The word 'monkey' is probably a useless word now or something.