Thursday, December 02, 2004
On this day:

Suggestion to Dan Rather/CBS News: Learn Choctaw

From Marginal Revolution:

A group of British scientists has come up with a brain-taxing spin on the
old formula of 100 things to do before you die.

The group - which includes the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins,
astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield and the inventor
James Dyson - urges us all to take samples of our DNA, measure the speed of
light with chocolate, and solve the mathematical mystery of the number
137.

The list, compiled by New Scientist magazine, suggests booking to see
Galileo's middle finger (preserved in Florence) or ordering liquid nitrogen to
make the "world's smoothest ice-cream" at home.

Another option is learning Choctaw, a language with two past tenses -
one for giving information that is definitely true, the other for passing on
material taken without checking from someone else
.