[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[der Mouse]

> [...]; we must all have heard the story of the illinois legislature
> that tried to cut through the mathematical wrangling about pi by
> declaring it to be 3...

Actually, "as five-fourths to four", I think, which makes it 3.2.

Not that that makes it any more (or less) sensible, of course.

> brain scans have shown that people who grew up polyglot use the same
> language center for all their languages, but people who learn
> languages when older use a different part of the brain for the new
> tongue.  i wonder if this takes learning method into account...

I suspect there's also a healthy dose of individual variation involved.
I have one friend who is fluent in something like eight western
European tongues and can get by in all but one of the rest.  (The
exception is, IIRC, Hungarian.)  I believe at least some of those were
learnt as an adult.

As contrasted with me, who's lived in Montreal for twenty-six-plus
years and still has trouble with spoken French unless it's spoken
unusually slowly and/or distinctly. :-/

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