Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

The earth is expanding and we don't know why
Let us taunt the geologists now with an idea that many of them consider to be nonsense.
The Expanding Earth Hypothesis goes back to at least 1933, a time when the Continental Drift Hypothesis was accorded the same sort of ridicule. Now, Continental Drift is enthroned; and ironically many of its strongest proponents are vehemently opposed to the Expanding Earth, ignoring the lessons of history.
The data that suggest that the earth has expanded significantly over geological time come from the pleasant pastime of continent fitting. If one takes the pieces of continental and oceanic crust and tries to fit them together at various times over the past several hundred million years, taking into account the production of crust at the midocean ridges, the fit gets worse and worse as one works backward in time. Great gaps (or "gores") appear between the pieces of crust which geologists believed existed at these periods. (Of course, one can play this puzzle-piece game only at passive continent-ocean boundaries where the oceanic crust has not slid under the continental crust. The South Atlantic is a good place to work.)
These embarrassing, grotesque gaps can be made to disappear almost as if by magic by assuming that the earth was smaller in the past. This seems, on the surface, to be a crazy idea. Why would an entire planet swell up like a balloon? Hugh Owen answers in this way:
"The geological and geophysical implications of such Earth expansion are so profound that most geologists and geophysicists shy away from them. In order to fit with the reconstruction that seems to be required, the volume of the Earth was only 51 per cent of its present value, and the surface area 64 per cent of that of the present day, 200 million years ago. Established theory says that the Earth's interior is stable, an in ner core of nickel iron surrounded by an outer layer that behaves like a fluid. Perhaps we are completely wrong and the inner core is in some state nobody has yet imagined, a state that is undergoing a transition from a high-density state to a lower density state, and pushing out the crust, the skin of the Earth, as it expands."

(Owen, Hugh; "The Earth Is Expanding and We Don't Know Why, "New Scientist, p. 27, November 22, 1984.)

I've always been fascinated by all aspects of language and so I've opened up a messageboard to share my interest with other people.

It's called Pen And Tongue.

Here's the first discussion I've started:

Apart from Scots (if considered to be a separate language), no language shares any degree of mutual intelligibility with English. This hasn't always been the case though; before the Norman Conquest and the influence that French subsequently had on the language, English and Frisian [a language spoken in Friesland in the Netherlands] were quite similar, and sailors could understand many phrases in each other's language. However, over the centuries the two languages have drifted apart, English under the influence of French, and Frisian modified by Dutch.

Despite these increasing differences, Frisian is still the closest language to English; however, English is no longer the closest language to Frisian - both Dutch and Low German are now closer. Thus, a state of asymmetry of mutual intelligibility now exists between English and Frisian.

I'd like to open a discussion about asymmetry of mutual intelligibility between other languages. Has anyone got any information.

By the way, Dutch is the second closest language to our own; yet we use the phrase 'speaking Double Dutch' when describing something we don't understand. How ironic.

UAE father of 78 eyes new brides for century target

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying.

"After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century."

The United Arab Emirates newspaper splashed its front page with a picture of Abdul Rahman surrounded by his children, the eldest of whom is 36 years old and the youngest of whom is 20 days old. Two of his current three wives are also pregnant.

Abdul Rahman said his large family lived in 15 houses. He supports them with his military pension and the help of the government of Ajman, one of seven emirates that comprise the UAE, which includes the Gulf trade and tourism hub of Dubai.

Islam allows men to marry up to four women at a time, though most marry only one. The UAE is a Muslim country but is home to migrants from around the world.