Gallic Conquests

A brief history of Europe through the eyes of Asterix and his friends.
Speaker: Ananth
Venue: Brewhaha

Why are we good?

Slide deck here.

Presenter: Deepak Rajanna

Venue: Brewhaha

Bibliography

1. Origins of Virtue – Matt Ridley

2. The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins

3. Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

Logic

“Logic” presented by Shreyas Srinivasan

Slide deck here.

The other talk in today’s session was “Biological Rhythms” by Avani Shukla.

Words English Ought To Borrow

English has a long history of absorbing words from other languages
For eg.
Déjà vu , à la carte – from French.
Safari – from Swahili.
Blighty (from vilāyatī), Catamaran (from kattumaram), Bungalow – From Indian languages.
Kayak – from an inuit language.
Schadenfreude, Weltschmerz , Zeitgeist – from German.

…and here are words that should be borrowed just for their charm.
Papiervampier (Afrikaans, literal- paper vampire) – Stapler
Zapper – Dutch for remote control
Schmutz – Yiddish for dirt, filth.

… these have no equivalents
Gigirongak – Malay for a gap between teeth.
Ethhari – Kannada for the process of mixing coffee decoction with hot milk by pouring it from one cup to the other. (one-meter south indian filter coffee 🙂 )
Bakku-shan – Japanese for a woman who looks good only from behind.
Treppenwitz/ L’esprit de l’éscalier
Backpfeifengesicht – German for “face that cries out for a fist in it”.

… this one ought to have been mentioned in the talk
Ohrwurm – German (literally Earworm) for a tune that gets stuck in the head.

Other interesting ones here.