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🔗 Environment 🔗 Books 🔗 Futures studies 🔗 Molecular Biology 🔗 Molecular Biology/Genetics

The Population Bomb is a 1968 book co-authored by former Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich and former Stanford senior researcher in conservation biology Anne H. Ehrlich. From the opening page, it predicted worldwide famines due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" existed in the mid-20th century baby boom years, but the book and its authors brought the idea to an even wider audience.

The book has been criticized since its publication for an alarmist tone, and over the subsequent decades, for inaccurate assertions and failed predictions. For instance, regional famines have occurred since the publication of the book, but not world famines. The Ehrlichs themselves still stand by the book despite the flaws identified by its critics, with Paul stating in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future," despite having predicted catastrophic global famines that never came to pass. They believe that it achieved their goals because "it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future."

🔗 Espionage 🔗 Germany 🔗 Politics 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Germany/GDR

Zersetzung (pronounced [t͡sɛɐ̯ˈzɛt͡sʊŋ] , German for "decomposition" and "disruption") was a psychological warfare technique used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) to repress political opponents in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Zersetzung served to combat alleged and actual dissidents through covert means, using secret methods of abusive control and psychological manipulation to prevent anti-government activities. Among the defining features of it was the widespread use of offensive counterespionage methods as a means of repression. People were commonly targeted on a pre-emptive and preventive basis, to limit or stop activities of political dissent and cultural incorrectness that they may have gone on to perform, and not on the basis of crimes they had actually committed. Zersetzung methods were designed to break down, undermine, and paralyze people behind "a facade of social normality" in a form of "silent repression".

Erich Honecker's succession to Walter Ulbricht as First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in May 1971 saw an evolution of "operational procedures" (Operative Vorgänge) conducted by Stasi away from the overt terror of the Ulbricht era towards what came to be known as Zersetzung ("Anwendung von Maßnahmen der Zersetzung"), which was formalized by Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures in January 1976. The Stasi used operational psychology and its extensive network of between 170,000 and over 500,000 informal collaborators (inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) to launch personalized psychological attacks against targets to damage their mental health and lower chances of a "hostile action" against the state. Among the collaborators were youths as young as 14 years of age.

The use of Zersetzung is well documented due to Stasi files published after the Berlin Wall fell, with several thousands or up to 10,000 individuals estimated to have become victims, 5,000 of whom sustained irreversible damage. Special pensions for restitution have been created for Zersetzung victims.

🔗 Mathematics

In geometry, a 65537-gon is a polygon with 65,537 (2¹⁶ + 1) sides. The sum of the interior angles of any non–self-intersecting 65537-gon is 11796300°.

🔗 Systems

Chartjunk consists of all visual elements in charts and graphs that are not necessary to comprehend the information represented on the graph, or that distract the viewer from this information.

Markings and visual elements can be called chartjunk if they are not part of the minimum set of visuals necessary to communicate the information understandably. Examples of unnecessary elements that might be called chartjunk include heavy or dark grid lines, unnecessary text, inappropriately complex or gimmicky font faces, ornamented chart axes, and display frames, pictures, backgrounds or icons within data graphs, ornamental shading and unnecessary dimensions.

Another kind of chartjunk skews the depiction and makes it difficult to understand the real data being displayed. Examples of this type include items depicted out of scale to one another, noisy backgrounds making comparison between elements difficult in a chart or graph, and 3-D simulations in line and bar charts.

The term chartjunk was coined by Edward Tufte in his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte wrote:

The interior decoration of graphics generates a lot of ink that does not tell the viewer anything new. The purpose of decoration varies—to make the graphic appear more scientific and precise, to enliven the display, to give the designer an opportunity to exercise artistic skills. Regardless of its cause, it is all non-data-ink or redundant data-ink, and it is often chartjunk.

The term is relatively recent and is often associated with Tufte in other references.

The concept is analogous to Adolf Loos's idea that ornament is a crime.

🔗 Ecology

The Lotka–Volterra equations, also known as the Lotka–Volterra predator–prey model, are a pair of first-order nonlinear differential equations, frequently used to describe the dynamics of biological systems in which two species interact, one as a predator and the other as prey. The populations change through time according to the pair of equations: $${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}{\frac {dx}{dt}}&=\alpha x-\beta xy,\\{\frac {dy}{dt}}&=-\gamma y+\delta xy,\end{aligned}}}$$

where

• the variable x is the population density of prey (for example, the number of rabbits per square kilometre);
• the variable y is the population density of some predator (for example, the number of foxes per square kilometre);
• ${\displaystyle {\tfrac {dy}{dt}}}$ and ${\displaystyle {\tfrac {dx}{dt}}}$ represent the instantaneous growth rates of the two populations;
• t represents time;
• The prey's parameters, α and β, describe, respectively, the maximum prey per capita growth rate, and the effect of the presence of predators on the prey death rate.
• The predator's parameters, γ, δ, respectively describe the predator's per capita death rate, and the effect of the presence of prey on the predator's growth rate.
• All parameters are positive and real.

The solution of the differential equations is deterministic and continuous. This, in turn, implies that the generations of both the predator and prey are continually overlapping.

The Lotka–Volterra system of equations is an example of a Kolmogorov population model (not to be confused with the better known Kolmogorov equations), which is a more general framework that can model the dynamics of ecological systems with predator–prey interactions, competition, disease, and mutualism.

🔗 Astronomy

A Messier marathon is an attempt, usually organized by amateur astronomers, to find as many Messier objects as possible during one night. The Messier catalogue was compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier during the late 18th century and consists of 110 relatively bright deep-sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters).

🔗 History 🔗 Economics 🔗 Politics 🔗 Trade 🔗 Politics/Libertarianism

Mercantilism is a nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. In other words, it seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources for one-sided trade.

The concept aims to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies may have contributed to war and motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.

Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy. Before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization. Some commentators argue that it is still practised in the economies of industrializing countries in the form of economic interventionism.

With the efforts of supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization to reduce tariffs globally, non-tariff barriers to trade have assumed a greater importance in neomercantilism.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Books

The UNIX-HATERS Handbook is a semi-humorous edited compilation of messages to the UNIX-HATERS mailing list. The book was edited by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise and Steven Strassmann and published in 1994.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 New Jersey 🔗 National Register of Historic Places

The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, in Holmdel Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, functioned for 44 years as a research and development facility, initially for the Bell System and later Bell Labs. The centerpiece of the campus is an Eero Saarinen–designed structure that served as the home to over 6,000 engineers and researchers. This modernist building, dubbed "The Biggest Mirror Ever" by Architectural Forum due to its mirror box exterior, was the site of a Nobel Prize discovery, the laser cooling work of Steven Chu.

Restructuring of the company's research efforts reduced the use of the Holmdel Complex, and in 2006 the building was put up for sale. The building has undergone renovations into a multi-purpose living and working space, dubbed Bell Works by its redevelopers. Since 2013 it has been operated by Somerset Development, who redeveloped the building into a mixed-use office for high-tech startup companies. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. A number of movies, television programs, and commercials have been filmed at Bell Works, including Severance, The Crowded Room, and Law & Order: Organized Crime.

🔗 Greece 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Languages

The Greek language question (Greek: το γλωσσικό ζήτημα, to glossikó zítima) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.