To ask you to post the most intellectual thing you have learned recently?

[ethelfleda]

I dont care what subject it is about or how specific or random it may seem. I'm just in the mood to soak up some knowledge! I've been doing a lot of free course on the openlearn website and some of them are fascinating and I feel my self esteem is increasing just through learning. I didn't get the chance to study past GCSE level when I was younger and I have always regretted it.

I will start:

That I think in art history, it can almost be considered a hindrance to try and relate the artist's work with details of their life. This can discount many other factors influencing their work such as patronage or available materials and can cause you to read a painting 'incorrectly' - that is not in the manner in which it was intended'

[Basta]

Modus ponens / modus tollens.

[ThisIsntMeHonestGuv]

Studies have shown that more often than not, loneliness is a precursor to depression and not, as has commonly been thought, the other way around.

[ErrolTheDragon]

What is an "intellectual thing"?

I think people are taking it to mean 'clever stuff'. Which may be another person's trivia.
What is an intellectual? According to Jean-Paul Sartre, 'The Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern them.'.

[PutYourBackIntoit]

I learnt that the ambient temperature of space is 2.something Kelvin. Brrrrrrrr.
It is believed that it's not zero Kelvin because there's still some radiation heat left over from the formation of our solar system. I learnt this from my sons year 1 reading book

[StorminaBcup]

blueshoes - sort of. I used to be an pensions investment accountant when swaps, futures and credit default swaps were emerging.

It's basically a pool of debt; some of it good (I.e. government backed for instance, that will never ever fail; the triple AAA), and some of it bad (the triple BBB's for instance; loans given to people with unreliable employment). The interest paid of the loans are divided in tranches; the most reliable loans (the AAA's) receives their payout first and the BBB's get theirs last. It masked the bad debt to investors as they still received payment so it looked secure. It's only when the A's started failing that it collapsed. A bit like a pyramid; the ones at the top only get paid if there's money coming in from the bottom, the interest payment on the loan for example. If there's no money coming in the whole thing collapses.

[StorminaBcup]

Sorry - just realised you didn't actually ask for an explanation

[MalloryLaurel]

Screaming, I've wondered about the poo dance. He also will find the longest grass to poo on, even if he has to poo up a bank of grass!

[ScreamingValenta]

I read that tech evolves so quickly that there is a small possibility that we are in fact stimulants featuring in a hologram in order to entertain our future descendants - but I acknowledge that's more crackpot than intellectual

Or, it's an episode of Red Dwarf .

[ScreamingValenta]

MalloryLaurel I wondered for ages. It's still useful during house-training!

[onemorecupofcoffeefortheroad]

Further to TheGr3atEscapez post about 3D printing not only did NASA recently email a wrench into space for an astronaut working on the international Space Station when he needed a tool he didn’t have (they email the plan for the wrench as axset of instructions. It works like an ink jet printer spraying out hardening resin and if you do that over and over again to the same pattern it builds up a 3d actual wrench). But also ... get this ... there are ways being developed of building replacement human organs in the same way by spraying Livin tissue in a matrix - it’s called bioprinting.

[ethelfleda]

Thank you for posting these! Really interesting!

Did you know that in rennaisance Italy, some artists would pretend they were mad in order to impress patrons with their genius? It was thought that the artist as a melancholic, bohemian outsider actually originates back to Aristotle attributing these characteristics to poets. Ever since, we have seen artists this was and may even project this image on to them unfairly. This is one problem of the biographical monograph and it's attempt to decipher paintings.

[ethelfleda]

kary oooh what book are you reading? I haven't got to the impressionists yet... however did learn about the Pre-raphaelites recently and actually, they were out into the countryside to paint before the impressionists did - although with very different effects as their Art was much more naturalistic (in fact, students of botany at the time were implored to study the flowers in some of the pre-raphaelite paintings as they were so close to true life)
Really looking forward to learning about impressionist though!

[ethelfleda]

my phone has littered that with spelling mistakes!!

[NeverLovedElvis]

cough I have rubbish spatial awareness too. I think that if we had been raised in a society where more value is placed on it, through the culture and language, we would have developed the necessary skills as children.

It's a bit like chopsticks vs cutlery. I'm nearly 40 and never learned to use chopsticks as a child and now find them very difficult. If I'd been born in Japan and taught to use them as a toddler I'd find it easy. They're not inherently more difficult to use than cutlery- it's just a matter of being raised in a culture that values a particular skill.

[speakout]

I am really struggling to understand what an "intellectual thing " Is.

When you manage to read the back a baked beans can?
Or understand calculus or string theory?

[Pingipinguin]

I actually learned this thanks to Love Island
You can't see things in 3D further than 3 metres away

[PurpleRobe]

Not intellectual as such. But certainly one of the most interesting and disturbing things I've learnt about recently is BLACK SALVE.

Only click the link if you are not squeamish

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_salve

[CigarsofthePharoahs]

The moon has a small molten core. I'd assumed it was solid rock all the way through, but it's not.
Uranus is the coldest planet in our solar system, despite not being the furthest away. Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune all emit more heat than they receive from the sun, but Uranus does not. It is almost lying on its side and has a ring system which is made of much bigger objects than Saturn's rings. It has a rocky core and a mantle layer described as "hot ice".
I find it fascinating that all four of the gas giant planets in our system are mostly made of hydrogen and helium and yet they are all quite different.

[Apehouse]

This is just weird trivia, but still. In Madagascar it’s good form to dig up your dead relatives and dance with them. Known as famadihana.

[Coldhandscoldheart]

Looked up the meaning of diaspora. It does not mean what I (vaguely) thought it meant.

[ThistleAmore]

@NeverLovedElvis:

I have rubbish spatial awareness too. I think that if we had been raised in a society where more value is placed on it, through the culture and language, we would have developed the necessary skills as children.

I both agree and disagree.

I have excellent spatial awareness: I can look at a space for a fraction of a second and instantly tell you what will fit into it and how (although being neither a mathematician or an engineer, I lack the tools to demonstrate this on a whiteboard!). I can reverse park on a postage stamp, I play team ball sports and can catch and throw with pinpoint accuracy etc. I have a curiously accurate aim that makes some people a bit uneasy...

These are innate skills - I don't know why I can do them, or how I carry them out (often more proficiently than most people), I just can. However, I do agree that socialisation/expectations related to certain skills can enhance them in people who are not naturally skilled.

In other news, and more in keeping with the OP's thread, rats don't have gallbladders.

[LadyOdd]

Tag is Touch and Go lol but seriously been reading up about recent discoveries in fusion.

[LadyOdd]

I love iflsceince as it gives you a little taster and you can go research it more elsewhere www.iflscience.com/physics/

[ErrolTheDragon]

You can't see things in 3D further than 3 metres away

That may be the practical limit of stereoscopic depth perception (which is probably what you meant) but there are many other cues which operate over longer range and don't require binocular vision. If you look over a landscape or cloudscape it doesn't look 2 dimensional.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception