Things I want to remember.

Filed under Notes.

Smallest countries

1. Vatican City, 0.2 sq. mi.
2. Monaco, 0.7 sq. mi.
3. Nauru, 8.5 sq. mi.
4. Tuvalu, 9 sq. mi.
5. San Marino, 24 sq. mi.
6. Liechtenstein, 62 sq. mi.
7. Marshall Islands, 70 sq. mi.
8. Saint Kitts and Nevis, 104 sq. mi.
9. Seychelles, 107 sq. mi.
10. Maldives, 115 sq. mi.
11. Malta, 122 sq. mi.
12. Grenada, 133 sq. mi.
13. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 150 sq. mi.
14. Barbados, 166 sq. mi.
15. Antigua and Barbuda, 171 sq. mi.
16. Andorra, 180 sq. mi.
17. Palau, 191 sq. mi.

About.com

Portable People Meter

Responding to requests from its customers—radio broadcasters, ad agencies and advertisers—that expressed their interest in the collection of more accurate ratings data, Arbitron introduced the Portable People Meter (PPM) service in 2007. The PPM is a wearable portable device much like a pager or cell phone, that electronically gathers inaudible codes that identify the source of a broadcast, such as a radio station. Arbitron recruits and compensates a cross section of consumers to wear the meter for an average of one year and up to two years.

[Wikipedia]

Bar / bear

Q: Hola, quería saber el significado de esta frase que escuche en la película The Big Lebowsky:

Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.

¿Que quiere decir exactamente bar en ese contexto?

Gracias por vuestro interés

A: Creo que quieres decir bear, no bar. Bear significa oso, y el dicho quiere decir que algunos días vences los obstáculos en la vida y otros días te vencen a ti.

[WordReference]

Burj Dubai

The building has returned the title of Earth’s tallest free-standing structure to the Middle East—a title not held by the region since 1311 when Lincoln Cathedral in England surpassed the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which had held the title for almost four millennia.

[Wikipedia]

Inferior Fish

“Why I Don’t Miss Bluefin Sushi”:

[P]rior to about the 1920s, no self-respecting Japanese person would eat any kind of tuna at all if they could possibly avoid it. Tuna was so despised in Japan that all tuna species qualified for an official term of disparagement: gezakana, or “inferior fish.”

In the old days in Japan, if you had no choice but to eat tuna you’d do everything you could do get rid of the bloody metallic taste of the fresh red meat. One trick was to bury the tuna in the ground for four days so that the muscle would actually ferment, which led to tuna being called by the nickname shibi—literally, “four days.”