MetaFilter posts tagged with royal

Yes, the same port that fell into the ocean off Jamaica

Christ, what an asshole — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:50:37 -0800

port-royal - Musicians from Genova, Italy who specialize in a distinct blend of cinematic guitars and synthesizers. Experience rather than merely listen:
jeka, roliga timmen, putin vs. valery (NSFW), anya: sehnsucht, bahnhof zoo, stasi, flares pt. 3

On royal curiosity and language deprivation experiments

voltairemodern — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:23:23 -0800

Frederick...made linguistic experiments on the vile bodies of hapless infants, "bidding foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." Emperor Frederick II was not alone in his curiosity on this score: Both Psammetichus I (664-610 BCE) and James V (1513-1542 CE) also organized their own versions of the experiment. We tend to think of such research as having been abandoned wholesale by the time of the 20th century, though there have been cases of “feral children”, even very recently. (And other, similarly cruel experiments have been performed, for example, in an attempt to discover the source of stuttering.) Yet the grandiose questions about language that perplexed both the royal “scientists” organizing such experiments as well as the more contemporary scientists studying feral children, remain largely unanswered. This indicates to some that "the forbidden experiment may belong to a...group of experimental problems that persistently seem meaningful but are not."

National Library of New Zealand

hama7 — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:57:39 -0800

National Library Of New Zealand.

Plants can recognize siblings

christopherious — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:53:14 -0800

According to a new study in Biology Letters (Royal Society journal), plants respond competitively when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but when placed in a pot with their siblings are more accomodating. PDF, HTML.

A new era for France?

homodigitalis — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:58:00 -0800

Goodbye Jacques! Today french voters will get rid of Chirac - charmingly called "The Bulldozer". Although he was not as bad as Silvio, France is in dire need of economic reform - something Frau Merkel has already started in Germany. So who will win this important election? Meet the candidates: Royal, Sarkozy and Bayrou.

CatherineB — Fri, 31 May 2002 05:13:01 -0800

Pip Tattersall is the first woman to win the Green Beret of the Royal Marines, but she still can't fight in combat. Is the British army ignoring thousands of years of history, or is Martin van Creveld right?

Slithy_Tove — Sat, 04 May 2002 04:24:34 -0800

The Grand Canyon, up close and personal. Start with the series of photos titled 'Royal Arch Trip'. [more inside]