Raising Boys

What’s your ‘brain sex’ ID? October 31, 2005

My Sex ID test result says I may have a balanced female-male brain. Balanced. That seems the safest thing to be. I would have preferred falling in the category of women who “think more like men” as opposed to men with “women’s brains”.

The test, “series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series”, has six categories and each must be answered within a specific time period. A ruler comes in handy because a portion of the test requires measuring the length of the ring and index fingers.

Radcliffe talks about growing up, Harry Potter films

“Harry Potter” on growing up.

Halloween suicide October 30, 2005

Strange news in time for Halloween. A suicide mistaken for a prank.

Know your age in dog years

Want to know what the moon’s phase was when you were born? Try this birthday calculator. You just enter your birthdate and it will tell what day you were born, how many days, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds old you are, your birthstone, your birth tree and of course the shape of the moon on that day.

The moon was waxing crescent on the day of my birth, according to the calculator, which also said I am 4.89706457925636 dog years old as of 12:35 p.m. today.

171 languages spoken in the Philippines

While searching for answers to 20 questions in an Internet scavenger hunt that my online journalism teacher Dr. Elliot King assigned to the class two or three weeks ago, I found this Wikipedia entry about the Philippines.

A total of 171 native languages are spoken in the country. Except for English, Spanish, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Chabacano, all of the languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family.

There are 12 native languages with at least one million native speakers: Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Kinaray-a, Maranao, Maguindanao, and Tausug. These are spoken natively by more than 90% of the population.

The entry cited as its source ethnologue.com, a website owned by SIL International, which “studies, documents, and assists in developing the world’s lesser-known languages.” The entry on the Philippines in ethnologue.com was based on a 2000 study conducted by the organization.
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Thieves steal Harry Potter’s “flying car” October 29, 2005

Thieves have stolen the Ford Anglia used as Harry Potter’s “flying” car in the Chamber of Secrets film, according to an Inq7.net article. The car was taken from under a tarpaulin at South West Film Studios in St. Agnes, Cornwall, southwest England.