Re: Lua Workshop 2012

[Alexander Gladysh <agladysh@...>]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 01:07, William Ahern <william@25thandclement.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 02:48:41AM +0400, Alexander Gladysh wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 23:54, Wesley Smith <wesley.hoke@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Besides, it's typical for conferences to rotate continents.
>>
>> Oh, well, lets do it in Asia[1] then. I know a venue in Omsk[2],
>> southwestern Siberia, Russia. :-)

>> [1] Surprisingly Asia is a continent in English. Not so in Russian.
>
> Not surprising. There's no agreed upon notion of what constitutes a
> "continent". Like "race" it's a psuedo-scientific construct which emerged
> long ago. This is a fun video:
>
>        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34#!

Good one, thanks.

> What are Russian school children taught? I grew up thinking there were 7
> continents, until I met a girl from S. America who claimed there were only
> 5. (I have no memory how that topic came up.)

Russian school children, in my time, were taught that, in modern
geological epoch there are:

Six continents: Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, South America,
North America.

Six parts of the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania,
Antarctica, America.

Alexander.