{"id":64,"date":"2006-11-20T22:22:04","date_gmt":"2006-11-20T20:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/?p=64"},"modified":"2006-11-20T22:22:04","modified_gmt":"2006-11-20T20:22:04","slug":"i-am-as-smart-as-a-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/2006\/11\/20\/i-am-as-smart-as-a-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"I am as smart as a horse!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arabic script is a difficult thing for a westerner to pick up later in life. (Well at least for this westerner).<\/p>\n<p>The alphabet looks like a<a title=\"pretty squiggles\" href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/writing\/arabic.gif\"> bunch of squiggles with dots.<\/a> And the only differentiator between some letters and others is how many dots and\/or whether the dots are above or below the letter.<\/p>\n<p>So when I write a word during my Arabic lessons, I am never quite sure how many dots to put and where to put them.<\/p>\n<p>And we have all seen the horse that can do arithmetic. Its trainer will say:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>how much is 2+2<\/li>\n<li>the horse will clop 4 times<\/li>\n<li>how much is 2 +3<\/li>\n<li>the horse will clop 5 times.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>One theory on this is that the trainer is tense while the horse is clopping and relaxes when the horse reaches the correct number of clops and the horse &#8220;senses&#8221; this and stops.<\/p>\n<p>I am sure you can see where this is going.<\/p>\n<p>So I write a letter and I know it needs some level of dot-ing. I move my hand to the top of the letter and cast a sideways glance at my tutor&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nope<\/strong>! not above <em>below<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p>I move my hand below the letter and I put one dot and look at my tutor..<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOPE<\/strong>! <em>2 dots<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The trainer, err, tutor relaxes.<\/p>\n<p>I am a very clever horse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arabic script is a difficult thing for a westerner to pick up later in life. (Well at least for this westerner). The alphabet looks like a bunch of squiggles with dots. And the only differentiator between some letters and others is how many dots and\/or whether the dots are above or below the letter. So [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}