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π Plant Blindness
Plant blindness is an informally-proposed form of cognitive bias, which in its broadest meaning, is a human tendency to ignore plant species. This includes such phenomena as not noticing plants in the surrounding environment, not recognizing the importance of plant life to the whole biosphere and to human affairs, a philosophical view of plants as an inferior form of life to animals and/or the inability to appreciate the unique features or aesthetics of plants.
The term was coined by the botanists and biology educators J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schussler in their 1999 publication 'Preventing Plant Blindness'. Scientists have suggested that the reason some people don't notice plants is because plants are stationary and similarly coloured, although other research has suggested that plant blindness is affected by cultural practices. A US study looked at how plants and animals are perceived using "attentional blink" (the ability to notice one of two rapidly presented images). The study showed that participants were more accurate in detecting animals in images, rather than plants. The researchers also suggested possible strategies for characterizing and overcoming zoo-centrism.
According to the BBC journalist Christine Ro, plant blindness is potentially linked to nature deficit disorder, which she construes is causing what she claims is reduced funding and fewer classes for botany.
The term was coined in 1999 by botanists James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler.
Discussed on
- "Plant Blindness" | 2021-02-18 | 61 Upvotes 29 Comments
π Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
Who put Bella down the Wych Elm? is graffiti that appeared in 1944 following the 1943 discovery by four children of the skeletonised remains of a woman inside a wych elm in Hagley Wood, Hagley (located in the estate of Hagley Hall), in Worcestershire, England. The victimβwhose murder is approximated to have occurred in 1941βremains unidentified, and the current location of her skeleton and autopsy report is unknown.
Discussed on
- "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?" | 2021-02-15 | 21 Upvotes 3 Comments
π List of Leaf Vegetables
This is a list of vegetables which are grown or harvested primarily for the consumption of their leafy parts, either raw or cooked. Many plants with leaves that are consumed in small quantities as a spice such as oregano, for medicinal purposes such as lime, or used in infusions such as tea, are not included in this list.
Discussed on
- "List of Leaf Vegetables" | 2021-02-14 | 38 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Banned in Boston
"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, to describe a literary work, song, motion picture, or play which had been prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, Boston officials had wide authority to ban works featuring "objectionable" content, and often banned works with sexual content or foul language. This even extended to the $5 bill from the 1896 "Educational" series of banknotes featuring allegorical figures which were partially nude.
Discussed on
- "Banned in Boston" | 2021-02-14 | 100 Upvotes 79 Comments
π One address is home to 285,000 US businesses, including Apple and Google
The Corporation Trust Center, 1209 North Orange Street, is a single-story building located in the Brandywine neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware, USA, operated by CT Corporation, a subsidiary of Dutch multinational services firm Wolters Kluwer. This is CT Corporation's location in the state of Delaware for providing "registered agent services." In 2012 it was the registered agent address of at least 285,000 separate businesses.
Many companies are incorporated in Delaware for its business-friendly General Corporation Law and it was estimated in 2012 that 9.5 billion dollars of potential taxes had not been levied over the past decade, due to an arrangement known as the "Delaware loophole." Companies formed in Delaware are required to have an address in the state at which process may be served. Therefore, Delaware entities with no physical office in the state must have a registered agent with a Delaware address. Notable companies represented by CT at this location include Google, American Airlines, Apple Inc., General Motors, The Coca-Cola Company, Walmart, Yum! Brands, Verizon, and about 430 of Deutsche Bank's more than 2,000 subsidiary companies and special purpose companies. Both Former President of the United States Donald Trump, and his opponent in the 2016 United States presidential election, Hillary Clinton, have registered companies at the center.
Discussed on
- "One address is home to 285,000 US businesses, including Apple and Google" | 2021-02-11 | 24 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Pravetz Computers
Pravetz (ΠΡΠ°Π²Π΅Ρ in the original Cyrillic, series 8 and series 16) were Bulgarian computers, manufactured mainly in the town of Pravetz. Some components and software were produced in Stara Zagora, Plovdiv, and other Bulgarian cities.
Discussed on
- "Pravetz Computers" | 2021-02-11 | 171 Upvotes 50 Comments
π List of Generic and Genericized Trademarks
The following three lists of generic and genericized trademarks are:
- marks which were originally legally protected trademarks, but have been genericized and have lost their legal status due to becoming generic terms,
- marks which have been abandoned and are now generic terms
- marks which are still legally protected as trademarks, at least in some jurisdictions
Discussed on
- "List of Generic and Genericized Trademarks" | 2021-02-11 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Cable Bacteria
Cable bacteria are filamentous bacteria that conduct electricity across distances over 1Β cm in sediment and groundwater aquifers. Cable bacteria allow for long distance electron transport, which connects electron donors to electron acceptors, connecting previously separated oxidation and reduction reactions. Cable bacteria couple the reduction of oxygen or nitrate at the sediment's surface to the oxidation of sulfide in the deeper, anoxic, sediment layers.
Discussed on
- "Cable Bacteria" | 2021-02-10 | 22 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Crash-Only Software
Crash-only software refers to computer programs that handle failures by simply restarting, without attempting any sophisticated recovery. Correctly written components of crash-only software can microreboot to a known-good state without the help of a user. Since failure-handling and normal startup use the same methods, this can increase the chance that bugs in failure-handling code will be noticed, except when there are leftover artifacts, such as data corruption from a severe failure, that don't occur during normal startup.
Crash-only software also has benefits for end-users. All too often, applications do not save their data and settings while running, only at the end of their use. For example, word processors usually save settings when they are closed. A crash-only application is designed to save all changed user settings soon after they are changed, so that the persistent state matches that of the running machine. No matter how an application terminates (be it a clean close or the sudden failure of a laptop battery), the state will persist.
Discussed on
- "Crash-Only Software" | 2021-02-08 | 10 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Society for Preventing Parents from Naming Their Children Jennifer
The Society for Preventing Parents from Naming Their Children Jennifer (SPPNTCJ) was a popular and sometimes controversial website that contributed to early web culture, online from 1996 to 2000. The SPPNTCJ home page was created and updated by Jennifer Farwell, one of the three founding members of the SPPNTCJ. Other founding members were Jennifer Rich and Jennifer Ang.
The SPPNTCJ began as an inside joke on an email discussion list that both Farwell and Rich subscribed to, which included five or more Jennifers who actively posted at that time. One of the Jennifers tossed out the comment that there should be "a society for preventing parents from naming their children Jennifer." The idea took off, and Farwell created the SPPNTCJ's website. It welcomed more than 2 million visitors while online.
During its run, the SPPNTCJ was noted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Yahoo! Internet Life magazine, Thunder Bay Television News, 580 CKPR radio program Tech Talk, California State University, Chico, SignsOnSanDiego.com, WebMD and more. It received several Internet "cool site" acknowledgments, from Cool Central, Seven Wonders, Twoeys, Fallen Thinkers, and Secret Einstein.
Discussed on
- "Society for Preventing Parents from Naming Their Children Jennifer" | 2021-02-08 | 19 Upvotes 7 Comments