Wikipedia Article of the Day

[Mr. Not]

Slow Light

Slow light is the propagation of an optical pulse or other modulation of an optical carrier at a very low group velocity. Slow light occurs when a propagating pulse is substantially slowed down by the interaction with the medium in which the propagation takes place.

In 1998, Danish physicist Lene Vestergaard Hau led a combined team from Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science which succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 meters per second, and researchers at UC Berkeley slowed the speed of light traveling through a semiconductor to 9.7 kilometers per second in 2004. Hau later succeeded in stopping light completely, and developed methods by which it can be stopped and later restarted. This was in an effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

In 2005, IBM created a microchip that can slow down light, fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.

[Mr. Not]

Wax

Waxes are a class of chemical compounds that are plastic (malleable) near ambient temperatures. They are also a type of lipid. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C (113 °F) to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents. All waxes are organic compounds, both synthetic and naturally occurring.

 

 

Commercial honeycomb foundation, made by pressing beeswax between patterned metal rollers.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Beeswax_foundation.jpg/220px-Beeswax_foundation.jpg

[Mr. Not]

Language Acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because nonhumans do not communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages.

 

Emergentist theories, such as MacWhinney's competition model, posit that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment. According to these theories, neither nature nor nurture alone is sufficient to trigger language learning; both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language. The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the end result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition. The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a more complex process than many believe.

 

http://brainconnection.brainhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/voice.jpg

[Mr. Not]

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Responses (ASMR)

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a neologism for a perceptual phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp, back, or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or cognitive stimuli. The nature and classification of the ASMR phenomenon is controversial, with strong anecdotal evidence to support the phenomenon but little or no scientific explanation or verified data.

 

Steven Novella, Director of General Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine and active contributor to topics involving scientific skepticism, wrote in his neuroscience blog about the lack of scientific investigation on ASMR, saying that functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation technologies should be used to study the brains of people who experience ASMR in comparison to people who do not experience ASMR. Novella discusses the concept of neurodiversity and mentions how the complexity of the human brain is due to developmental behaviors across the evolutionary time scale. He also suggests the possibility of ASMR being a type of pleasurable seizure or another way to activate the pleasure response.

Dr. Tom Stafford, a lecturer in psychology and cognitive sciences from the University of Sheffield, was quoted in The Independent, saying,

It might well be a real thing, but it's inherently difficult to research. The inner experience is the point of a lot of psychological investigation, but when you've got something like this that you can't see or feel, and it doesn't happen for everyone, it falls into a blind spot. It's like synaesthesia – for years it was a myth, then in the 1990s people came up with a reliable way of measuring it.

According to neurologist Edward J. O'Connor in the Santa Monica College newspaper The Corsair, an obstacle to accurately researching the ASMR phenomenon is that there may be no single stimulus which triggers ASMR for all individuals.

 

NOT(E): One of the sources cited for this page happened to be "Listening to Whisperers: Performance, ASMR Community and Fetish on YouTube", yet the wiki page itself only argued against ASMR being used for sexual gratification.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTJCQFE6u0

[Mr. Not]

Hotel

A hotel is an establishment that provides lodging paid on a short-term basis. Facilities provided may range from a basic bed and storage for clothing, to luxury features like en-suite bathrooms.

 

Facilities offering hospitality to travellers have been a feature of the earliest civilizations. In Greco-Roman culture hospitals for recuperation and rest were built at thermal baths. During the Middle Ages various religious orders at monasteries and abbeys would offer accommodation for travellers on the road.

The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe, possibly dating back to the rule of Ancient Rome. These would provide for the needs of travelers, including food and lodging, stabling and fodder for the traveler's horse(s) and fresh horses for the mail coach. Famous London examples of inns include the George and the Tabard. A typical layout of an inn had an inner court with bedrooms on the two sides, with the kitchen and parlour at the front and the stables at the back.

For a period of about 200 years from the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travelers (in other words, a roadhouse). Coaching inns stabled teams of horses for stagecoaches and mail coaches and replaced tired teams with fresh teams. Traditionally they were seven miles apart but this depended very much on the terrain.

 

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/1c/21/e3/depressing-room.jpg

Edited January 28, 2015 by Mr. Not

[Mr. Not]

Posthuman

Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that literally means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept addresses questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. "Posthumanism" is not to be confused with "transhumanism" (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.

According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards." Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques

 

http://images.canberratimes.com.au/2013/07/15/4571161/LR-taylor-729-20130715105751556318-620x349.jpg

[Mr. Not]

Biomimetics

Biomimetics or biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. The terms biomimetics and biomimicry come from Ancient Greek: bίος (bios), life, and μίμησις (mīmēsis), imitation, from μιμεῖσθaι (mīmeisthai), to imitate, from μῖμος (mimos), actor. A closely related field is bionics.

Living organisms have evolved well-adapted structures and materials over geological time through natural selection. Biomimetics has given rise to new technologies inspired by biological solutions at macro and nanoscales. Humans have looked at nature for answers to problems throughout our existence. Nature has solved engineering problems such as self-healing abilities, environmental exposure tolerance and resistance, hydrophobicity, self-assembly, and harnessing solar energy.

 

Biomimetics could in principle be applied in many fields. Because of the complexity of biological systems, the number of features that might be imitated is large. Some examples of biomimetic applications at various stages of development from prototypes to technologies that might become commercially usable include:

• Aircraft wing design and flight techniques inspired by birds and bats
  
• Climbing robots, boots and tape mimicking geckos feet and their ability for adhesive reversal
  
• Nanotechnology surfaces that recreate properties of shark skin
  
• Treads on tires inspired by the toe pads of tree frogs
  
• Self-sharpening teeth found on many animals, copied to make better cutting tools
  
• Protein folding used to control material formation for self-assembled functional nanostructures
  
• The light refracting properties of butterfly wings are harnessed to provide improved digital displays and everlasting color
  

Biomimetically applying the eye of the fly:

http://i.imgur.com/z7kmmyD.gif

[Mr. Not]

Twain Harte, California

Twain Harte is a census-designated place (CDP) in Tuolumne County, California, United States. The population was 2,226 at the 2010 census, down from 2,586 at the 2000 census. Its name is derived from the last names of two famous authors who lived in California, Mark Twain and Bret Harte. Twain Harte is both a summer and winter vacation community situated at the transition zone between the oak forest of the California foothills and the mixed pine and fir forest of the Sierra Nevada. Summers are warm during the day and the nights are generally mild; making Twain Harte a pleasant escape from the long, hot summers of the California Central Valley. Winters can be very cool with snow occurring several times during the season. Winter sports venues are located nearby at Leland High Sierra Snowplay near Strawberry (snow tubing), Long Barn Lodge & Ice Skating Rink, and Dodge Ridge Ski Area near Pinecrest are all along Highway 108, plus the Badger Pass Ski Area in nearby Yosemite Park.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/93/Twain_Harte_CA.jpg/250px-Twain_Harte_CA.jpg

 

 

Cabin where Twain wrote "Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", Jackass Hill, Tuolumne County.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Mark_Twain_Cabin_Exterior_MVC-082X.jpg

[Mr. Not]

Cosmic year (Chinese astrology)

According to Jeung San Do, the universe generates and cultivates life through a cyclic process of birth, growth, harvest, and rest (生長殮藏). This is closely related to the fluctuation and interplay of the two polar energies, yin and yang and its cycle appeared in daily, yearly, and cosmically. 129,600 calendar years make up one Cosmic year and it was discovered by Shao Yung.

[HomesickAlien]

Keep this damn thread going!

[jefeltner11]

:bump:

[jefeltner11]

Keep this damn thread going!

Seriously, this is cool.

[HomesickAlien]

Keep this damn thread going!

Seriously, this is cool.

 

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/3572096/theoddone-o.gif

[jefeltner11]

Keep this damn thread going!

Seriously, this is cool.

 

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/3572096/theoddone-o.gif

response.exe has stopped working

[HomesickAlien]

RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES

 

Richard Evans Schultes, a swashbuckling scientist and influential Harvard University educator who was widely considered the preeminent authority on hallucinogenic and medicinal plants, died in 2001 in Boston. He was 86 and lived in Waltham, a Boston suburb.

 

Dr. Schultes was often called the father of ethnobotany, the field that studies the relationship between native cultures and their use of plants. Over decades of research, mainly in Colombia's Amazon region, he documented the use of more than 2,000 medicinal plants among Indians of a dozen tribes.

 

Tall, muscular, wearing a pith helmet, he hiked and paddled through Amazonia for months at a time. He collected more than 24,000 plant specimens. More than 120 species bear his name, as does a 2.2 million-acre tract of protected rain forest in Colombia, Sector Schultes, which the government there set aside in 1986.

 

But more than a real-life Indiana Jones, Dr. Schultes was a pioneering conservationist who raised alarms in the 1960's -- long before environmentalism became a worldwide concern -- that the rain forests and their native cultures were in danger of disappearing under the onslaught of modern industry and agriculture. He reminded his Harvard students that more than 90 tribes had become extinct in Brazil alone over the first three-quarters of the 20th century.

 

Receiving a full scholarship to Harvard, Mr. Schultes wrote an undergraduate paper on the mind-altering properties of peyote, based on research he undertook with the Kiowa Indians in Oklahoma who ingested the hallucinogen in ceremonies to commune with their ancestors. For his doctoral thesis, also at Harvard, he chose the plants used by the Indians of Oaxaca, a southern state of Mexico. In his research there, he came across a species of morning glory seeds that contained a natural form of LSD.

 

Dr. Schultes's research into plants that produced hallucinogens like peyote and ayahuasca made some of his books cult favorites among youthful drug experimenters in the 1960's. His findings also influenced cultural icons like Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs and Carlos Castaneda, writers who considered hallucinogens as the gateways to self-discovery.

 

http://poguemahone.es/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/RichardEvansSchultes.jpg

 

http://www.davyking.com/SchultesCrop.jpg

[HomesickAlien]

SILENT TREATMENT

 

Silent treatment (often referred to as the silent treatment) is verbal silence imposed onto another. It may range from just sulking to malevolent, abusive controlling behaviour. It may be a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse in which displeasure, disapproval and contempt is exhibited through nonverbal gestures while maintaining verbal silence. Clinical psychologist Harriet Braiker identifies it as a form of manipulative punishment.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Rxbv7jE.jpg

[HomesickAlien]

4chan

 

4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Users generally post anonymously, with the most recent posts appearing above the rest. 4chan is split into various boards with their own specific content and guidelines. Registration is not required, nor is it possible (except for staff).

 

Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for posting pictures and discussing manga and anime, as the site was modeled on Japanese imageboards. The site quickly became popular and expanded, though much of 4chan's content still features otaku, anime, and other Japanese cultural influences.

 

The site has been linked to Internet subcultures and activism, most notably Project Chanology. 4chan users have been responsible for the formation or popularization of Internet memes such as lolcats, Rickrolling, "Chocolate Rain", Pedobear and many others. The site's "Random" board, also known as "/b/", was the site's first forum, and is the one that receives the most traffic. As its name suggests, the Random board has minimal rules on posted content. Gawker once jokingly claimed that "reading /b/ will melt your brain". The site's anonymous community and culture have often provoked media attention. For media planners, this enterprise is "further proof that creativity is everywhere and new media is less accessible" to advertisement agencies.

 

4chan has been instrumental in hijacking Internet destinations for pranks, so that, for example, images of Rick Astley appeared instead of the page that was searched for; the coordination of attacks against other websites and Internet users; and reactions to threats of violence that have been posted on the site. The Guardian once summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile... brilliant, ridiculous and alarming."

 

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a587/Sean81A/s8pf9_zpsihvzr3k0.jpg

Edited March 17, 2015 by substancewithoutstyle

[HomesickAlien]

REPUBLIC OF MOLOSSIA

 

Molossia, also known as the self-proclaimed Republic of Molossia, is a micronation, founded by Kevin Baugh and headquartered solely from his home near Dayton, Nevada. The Republic of Molossia has claimed itself a nation within the United States, however it is not officially recognized as a country by the United Nations nor any major powers.

 

It consists of Baugh's house (known as the Government House), about 0.001 acres (4 m2) in size, as well as 1.3 acres (5,000 m2) of surrounding property, enclaved by Nevada. It formerly claimed a property in Pennsylvania as well. Originally established as a childhood project in 1977, Molossia subsequently evolved into a territorial entity in the late 1990s.

 

http://40.media.tumblr.com/165a1738cdb02ed7e5c6163f4ca28b88/tumblr_mlvcf4BrfC1qzikspo1_500.jpg

 

http://www.molossia....countryeng.html