Svartalf

Is there a way to know who put a 'dislike' on an answer I gave? I deem that important because if it is the asker of the question, I had better take it back or reformulate it, whereas if it's a rival answerer, or just a kibitzer, I can leave it as it is, and go on regarding it as a useful contribution.

So I hear that the descendents of Ham were Cursed to be "hewers of wood and carriers of water", but that's not in Genesis 9. Where does this aspect of the story come from?

I find it strange. In English, a manager is somebody who oversees a team and has a high position.

Yet, when I read Japanese manga, I see the word used to designate a glorified janitor and general dogsbody that cleans, tidies, and generally acts as a servant to other people. (like in a school club or communal dwelling)

Why is the word used to translate such a position, in total opposition to what the word means our side?

Embassies do, but is it the with consulates?

I don't get it... I'm watching this US tv show, and they give a number of ingredients, including corn (obviously maize, not wheat) meal, and the solution was pizza.

Last time I checked, you use real corn (wheat) for the pizza dough, and what indian corn would go on top would be kernels... so where does corn meal go in US pizzas?

I have upgraded my computer from Win XP to Win 7, and I can't play Medieval II Total War because, while the game seems to be working (at least the starting menus seem to) it won't display the mouse pointer.

I know that looking for patches won't help, because I tried installing them, as well as the Kingdoms extension, that was made after every known patch, and it didn't help any.

I know of Empire and Shogun II TW, but am not very interested in the former, and seriously daunted by the latter, which seems to be A LOT harder, especially when you suck at the RTS part of the game, so I really would like to be able to play MIITW specifically.

Anybody know what is missing and how I should get it, or if it's actually there and what I could fiddle to get it to display?

Why do they use tritium instead of the more readily available deuterium, or normal hydrogen?

So I've seen a reference to a "whaler shark" on the news, but when looking it up, I come up with no answer, or answers leading to several different shark species, and I would like to know if there is one "typical" or "common" whaler shark species, or what's the common denominator between the various species that can be called so.

So I have IE8 (8.0.7600.16385 to be precise), and my machine runs home windows 7 ... and it refuses to display any pages that require the flash player plug in, nevermind that I DID load and install flash player 10, and that the computer has been turned off and rebooted since.

Other browsers don't seem to have problems, but I still prefer to use IE for all my yahoo related business.

Where does the problem come from? Is there a solution?

Can somebody remind me what had changed in the XVth century, as compared to the earlier middle ages (was literacy more prevalent or something?) to make Gutenberg even think that a more economic and (once a proof was 100% proofed) reliable way to make books than hand copying would be a desirable, let alone profitable thing?

It's well known that adult cats tend to be lactose intolerant, so many of them should not have milk at all.

Yet, we have all this imagery of the milk loving and craving cat.

Where does it come from? why is it so prevalent?

I'm in contact with Japanese people, but my name is completely unpronounceable by Japanese phonetics, so instead of having them mangle it, I want to translate it. Instead of trancribing it into katakana, I put it into kanji... I'm just not sure how those kanji would sound together.

the kanji used are

- "above" (ue)

- and "vehicle road" (shadô)

I'm painfully aware that the one is a kun reading and the other an on reading... so I know I have something awkward omewhere. How do I get it straight and turn my French name into soething y Japanese friendswill find familia and easy to pronounce?

Ok, so everybody knows about Merlin sticking a sword in the stone for Arthur to draw out later.

I just noticed the same motif in the Völsunga saga with Sigmund drawing Gram (or Balmung/Nothung depending on the version) out of the tree where Odin had stuck it.

Are there more instances of that kind of legend?

I mean ceramic or porcelain ones... I put just any dishware there without thinking (providd there's o metal surfaces), but I wonder how I should know what ware can be put there, and what can't, and what's different between the two... could be important since I got any number of old hand me downs in my dish cabinet and among my plates.

I'm fed up, my IE7 keeps crashing and making a bother of itself, I'm going back to 6, or forgetting IE altogether...

Trouble is

a) the control panel nor the start menu even show that program, and don't allow access for uninstall

b) it's installed at such a weird place that I don't dare go at it the butcher way

c) I can't even install IE 6 again and kill the links to 7... buT I keep being told the more recent install prevents installing the older version...

Please don't suggest I switch to other browsers, I already use like, 4 of them, but keep IE for specific uses at which it used to be better than the others.

Is there an easy solution?

How come that i'm told that the Turkish word for "black" is "siyah" (presumably an Arabic loan), when all the old Turkish words with "black" use "kara"? (as in the Karakorum mountains, the karakul sheep used to make karakalpak caps or the karagöz theater)

When and why did the change happen?

Just checking a standard of spy movies etc... you just jab a hypodermic into the person, meaning it has to be an intramuscular injection, as you cannot find a vein that way, and in goes the fast acting sleep drug

.Are there anesthetic drugs that can be administered that way?

I know for fact that the tradition according to which werewolves were invulnerable to ordinary weapons is quite ancient, having read allusions to it in renaissance era books.

But I wonder when the legend of their being particularly vulnerable to silver started. For the bullet, of course, it means no earlier than the 1500s, when man portable firearms started being reasonably common. But are there legends about silvered blades? Or is the silver bullet an artefact of hollywood folklore?

Please give sources or indications to help me verify your statements.

J'ai toujours trouvé ça étrange, des chinois (ou viets etc) offrant un alcool japonais... et je trouve ça encore plus étrange depuis que je sais ce qui est vraiment servi et ce qu'est le vrai saké.

I'm trying to do a reality check on some tales I've heard, and can't find detailed enough maps of the place on the net to get to the level of detail needed (especially since so many former settlements in the area have disappeared due to depopulation during the famine)