Irving Finkel wrote a fascinating book called The Ark Before Noah, which explained how the process worked. Hes also given some great talks about it which are available on YouTube.
There were many breakthrough steps in understanding Sumerian over about 100 years.
From what I remember, (and this is explained better on the wikipedia page for the Sumerian language), in 1838 somebody first decoded the cuneiform script by reading the Behistun inscription of Darius the Great in Western Iran. This was written in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian, all in the cuneiform script. The guy who deciphered it could understand modern Persian and so was able to descipher the Old Persian.
From there, others working on a published version of the inscription were able to decipher the Elamite and Akkadian languages. These were all Semitic. Sumerian is non-Semitic in origin, but used a similar writing system. I think the decoding of Sumerian built on this and took place over the next 100 years with many scholars making incremental breakthroughs.
[1] your screen name translates to "good/OK" in local Arabic so you can answer both "Who are you?" and "How are you?" with the same sentence. Think of the efficiency gains!
[2] very multilingual society - Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, Yiddish, French, (Amhari?), Aramaic + others
[3] safe (yes), cheap, good internet, tourist visa renewable every three months by crossing border
You might be right, and cheap is relative. I spent time there in 2007, which is a while ago. My money was in euro and I came from Ireland where cost of living was quite high. Both dollar and euro are now weaker against the shekel than in 2007, but I think it's still a good destination for someone from an area with high wages and comparatively strong currency.
1 Bed apartments can be had for between $500-$600/month and sharing is a lot cheaper than that.
I was quite active on CS and also joined bewelcome. Bewelcome never seemed to gain the critical mass necessary though - this would be a difficult problem for any new platform.
OP why not approach CS HQ.now that it's been funded maybe you could pitch the idea.
Kinda agree with that.
Still, it is a sign that creating another CS platform can be difficult, because of the fact that people have to move to a new service.
The big problem of CS currently is that they have done a lot to increase the number of CSers in the community (for $$ reasons). This means that a lot of people subscribers that do not (IMHO) share the same spirit as older members.
This is even the reason why bewelcome was created, as far as I know.
[1] tuition in UK&Ireland is nowhere near US levels. Plus in Ireland at least the fees can be paid for by the state if you meet income criteria
[2] many continental unis have courses instructed in english without any language requirements. Milan Polytechnic is changing all of its courses to english soon (this year or next).
In order to qualify for free tuition, there are a number of other factors to consider besides citizenship.A perios of residency in the specific member state will probably be required first
I've had a Quechua 70L for six years and a Berghaus 60L for four years. Both have stood up well to heavy use over the years.
If it's going to be on your back for long periods of time, get something with good back support, but bear in mind that this will make the bag bulkier and less useful as carry-on luggage with Ryanair etc.
Toulouse is quite a nice city with reasonable rents. I stayed in a lovely two bed apt there for €500/m in 2009. Quite a contrast to London. Airbus is a very big employer there, and presumably needs a few developers on the payroll. I ran into a few foreign engineers who worked there, few of whom spoke proper french
given that this is a meta thread, could somebody explain why all my posts end up on the News page rather than the Ask page. Is my karma too low to post the Ask page? I'm new
There is a correlation between testosterone levels and competitiveness. Exercise will increase your testosterone levels and this may increase your competitiveness
There were many breakthrough steps in understanding Sumerian over about 100 years.
From what I remember, (and this is explained better on the wikipedia page for the Sumerian language), in 1838 somebody first decoded the cuneiform script by reading the Behistun inscription of Darius the Great in Western Iran. This was written in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian, all in the cuneiform script. The guy who deciphered it could understand modern Persian and so was able to descipher the Old Persian.
From there, others working on a published version of the inscription were able to decipher the Elamite and Akkadian languages. These were all Semitic. Sumerian is non-Semitic in origin, but used a similar writing system. I think the decoding of Sumerian built on this and took place over the next 100 years with many scholars making incremental breakthroughs.