A thread for those questions you wouldn't dare ask in real life/normally!

Here's another language. I'm reasonably fluent in two other languages (French and Spanish). However, I find it practically impossible to speak French in Spain, or Spanish in France. But I'm Ok switching into either when I'm in the UK. My brain just can't cope with the a forrin language in the wrong country. Why is that?

"If you don't wash your hair every day, how do you stop it getting wet in the shower?"

I use a shower cap. Dead classy look.

Jesus didnt have children.
The bible is true.
As far as I can remember, 80% of the UK population believes that God exists.

praying.Depend on your definition of "work".
God can and does say no. God can make Christians wait.
God sometimes says yes to Christians.
God does not approve of testing God, so that would explain the study above.

You're both amazing. I love MN for these threads.

Verb = doing word.
Noun = a thing.
Adjective = describing word.

Thats a simple explanation.

From what I remember at school many years ago....

Verb - a "doing" word
Noun - a name for something (proper noun if it's an actual person or place name)
Adjective - a describing word

So, in the sentence "Maat walked the hairy dog"

Maat = Proper Noun
Walked = Verb
Hairy = Adjective
Dog = Noun

I hope that's right!

My really, really thick question is, please explain (in real layman's terms) what a verb, noun and and adjective are? name changes and kills self for such a heinous MN admission

Re: the shower question, I just tie it back. It might the odd drip, but it mostly stays dry.

People can not only see colours differently to each other, but you can be trained to spot very small differences too.

I used to work in a lab that was attached to a factory dyeing cloth and I'd have to dye samples to work out the "recipe" for the factory to bulk dye the fabric. The idea being that changing the amount of one colour a little bit would change the overall colour of the sample you were dyeing. I'd maybe dye 10 samples, each with the amounts of colour a little different, and then match up the samples against the test swatch when done, to see if one matched or to estimate how much to change the colours and try again.

If you don't wash your hair every day, how do you stop it getting wet in the shower?

kim147
Is the voice I hear on a recording the voice I sound like?

*I hear people's voices on recordings and they do sound like the person.

claraschu and hazelnutt sorry after I posted that about prayer I googled "evidence for prayer being successful" or something and found that 99% of the studies found it did nothing!

But by then I was late for work and didn't have time to post again. So apologies - and you are quite right.

Nishi - think Farely's answer makes sense, my dad speaks a number of languages fluently (learnt for business purposes) and if he has to explain how something works, he can do it much more clearly in the language he learnt it himself in (if that makes sense)

Many theologians do not interpret "virgin" as meaning Mary had never had sex, just that it was her first birth.

Nishi I doubt very much you are thick in English :o

My guess is that it has more to do with memory retrieval and the language that you used laying down that particular piece of information/data in the first place

Love the artficial womb idea BionicEmu

Or even just a spare for those last weeks of pregnancy when your back/legs/bladder have worn out, just transfer baby over and have a rest!

OK, I have a geeky bilingual question that I can't ask because it looks like I'm stealth boasting and I'm really not. I'm sort of bilingual, think in both langauges, dream mostly in English (1st language), rarely in my 2nd language. What irritates me is - why can I explain some things much better in my 2nd language than my first? For eg, DH was fixing that laptop and I warbled off a pretty technical explanation in my 2nd language, whereas if I'd tried to explain it in my 1st I would have gone "Errmm, dunno." Also, talking about things to people who don't speak my 2nd language, i try to say something in English but the word will have vanished and I'll only remember it in the 2nd language. Useless!

Why?? Am I just thick in English?

BalloonSlayer there is a study where prayer had no effect, but knowing that people were praying for you actually made you worse - Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients:

The sample comprised 1,802 patients in six hospitals in the USA. These patients were randomized into three groups: 604 were prayed for after being informed that they may or may not be prayed for, 597 were not prayed for after similarly being informed that they may or may not be prayed for and 601 were prayed for after being informed they would definitely be prayed for.

In the two groups that did not know for certain whether or not they were being prayed for, complications occurred in 52% of patients who received intercessory prayer and in 51% of those who did not. In contrast, complications occurred in a significantly larger proportion of patients (59%) who knew for certain that they were being prayed for.

The bible stuff is interesting, i had no idea that it was mostly metaphores.

Fascinating stuff about the mind too.

I read that every person you see in your dreams is a real person, you cant just 'make up' people in your mind, if you dream about somebody you dont know then it will be somebody you have encountered at some point in your life.

Something that I've been wondering for years:

Why hasn't some clever sciencey bod invented an artificial uterus yet? So if you go into premature labour the baby could just be transferred? Or even for if a woman had a hysterectomy at a young age, or if a woman has pre-existing health conditions that mean she needs to take medicines that could either damage a baby or cause major withdrawal problems when born?

For anyone that's interested a video link to the lady as she found her dog is here.

happy lady

My question is when/what did the pronouciation of the word Auction, suddenly started to be pronounced Ocktion?

agree wannabe

I thought it was widely accepted that most of the bible is full of metaphors and that none of this actually happened.

In any case, religion was nothing more than a method of controlling the masses.

"As regards distant cousins to Jesus himself.
Mary "was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit".
So we can assume that Jesus was not technically the child of Joseph. Was he technically the child of Mary, or was she just the womb for Jesus? I am not sure."

jesus had his own children though so ascendants wouldn't have to have been from his brothers.