To stay up to date you can also follow on Mastodon.

🔗 Italy 🔗 Music/Music genres 🔗 Roots music 🔗 A Cappella 🔗 Regional and national music

The cantu a tenòre (Sardinian: su tenòre, su cuncòrdu, su cuntràttu, su cussèrtu, s'agorropamèntu, su cantu a pròa; Italian: canto a tenore) is a style of polyphonic folk singing characteristic of the island of Sardinia (Italy's second largest island), particularly the region of Barbagia, though some other Sardinian sub-regions bear examples of such tradition.

In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed the cantu a tenore to be an example of intangible cultural heritage.

🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Languages

The word mamihlapinatapai is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It has been translated as "a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start" or "looking at each other hoping that the other will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do".

A romantic interpretation of the meaning has also been given, as "that look across the table when two people are sharing an unspoken but private moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed. An expressive and meaningful silence."

🔗 Lists 🔗 Geography 🔗 Rivers

This article lists rivers by their average discharge measured in descending order of their water flow rate. Here, only those rivers whose discharge is more than 2,000 m³/s (71,000 cu ft/s) are shown, as this list does not include rivers with a water flow rate of less than 2,000 m³/s (71,000 cu ft/s). It can be thought of as a list of the biggest rivers on earth, measured by a specific metric.

For context, the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool is 2,500 m³. The average flow rate at the mouth of the Amazon is sufficient to fill more than 83 such pools each second. The average flow of all the rivers in this list adds up to 1,192,134 m³/s.

🔗 Cognitive science

Cognitive grammar is a cognitive approach to language developed by Ronald Langacker, which hypothesizes that grammar, semantics, and lexicon exist on a continuum instead of as separate processes altogether. This approach to language was one of the first projects of cognitive linguistics. In this system, grammar is not a formal system operating independently of meaning. Rather, grammar is itself meaningful and inextricable from semantics.

Construction grammar is a similar focus of cognitive approaches to grammar. While cognitive grammar emphasizes the study of the cognitive principles that give rise to linguistic organization, construction grammar aims to provide a more descriptively and formally detailed account of the linguistic units that comprise a particular language.

Langacker first explicates the system of cognitive grammar in his seminal, two-volume work Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume one is titled "Theoretical Prerequisites", and it explores Langacker's hypothesis that grammar may be deconstructed into patterns that come together in order to represent concepts. This volume concentrates on the broad scope of language especially in terms of the relationship between grammar and semantics. Volume two is titled "Descriptive Application", as it moves beyond the first volume to elaborate on the ways in which Langacker's previously described theories may be applied. Langacker invites his reader to utilize the tools presented in Foundations' first volume in a wide range of, mainly English, grammatical situations.

🔗 Neuroscience

The frequency format hypothesis is the idea that the brain understands and processes information better when presented in frequency formats rather than a numerical or probability format. Thus according to the hypothesis, presenting information as 1 in 5 people rather than 20% leads to better comprehension. The idea was proposed by German scientist Gerd Gigerenzer, after compilation and comparison of data collected between 1976–1997.

🔗 California 🔗 Crime

The 1999 Loomis truck robbery was a robbery of a Loomis, Fargo & Co. semi-trailer truck on March 24, 1999, as it transported money from Sacramento, California to San Francisco. At some point during the transit, one or more robbers boarded the truck, cut a hole in the roof, removed approximately 2.3 million dollars, and exited the truck with the money, completely evading detection by the truck's driver and guards. The robbery was not discovered until after the truck arrived at its destination. No suspects were ever identified by authorities and the robbery is now a cold case. Even the exact tools and methods used by robber or robbers were never conclusively determined.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Education 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy

In philosophy, Wittgenstein's ladder is a metaphor set out by Ludwig Wittgenstein about learning. In what may be a deliberate reference to Søren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, the penultimate proposition of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (translated from the original German) reads:

6.54

   My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

   He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

Given the preceding problematic at work in his Tractatus, this passage suggests that, if a reader understands Wittgenstein's aims in the text, then those propositions the reader would have just read would be recognized as nonsense. From Propositions 6.4–6.54, the Tractatus shifts its focus from primarily logical considerations to what may be considered more traditionally philosophical topics (God, ethics, meta-ethics, death, the will) and, less traditionally along with these, the mystical. The philosophy presented in the Tractatus attempts to demonstrate just what the limits of language are—and what it is to run up against them. Among what can be said for Wittgenstein are the propositions of natural science, and to the nonsensical, or unsayable, those subjects associated with philosophy traditionally—ethics and metaphysics, for instance.

Curiously, the penultimate proposition of the Tractatus, proposition 6.54, states that once one understands the propositions of the Tractatus, one will recognize that they are nonsensical (unsinnig), and that they must be thrown away. Proposition 6.54, then, presents a difficult interpretative problem. If the so-called picture theory of language is correct, and it is impossible to represent logical form, then the theory, by trying to say something about how language and the world must be for there to be meaning, is self-undermining. This is to say that the picture theory of language itself requires that something be said about the logical form sentences must share with reality for meaning to be possible. This requires doing precisely what the picture theory of language precludes. It would appear, then, that the metaphysics and the philosophy of language endorsed by the Tractatus give rise to a paradox: for the Tractatus to be true, it will necessarily have to be nonsense by self-application; but for this self-application to render the propositions of the Tractatus nonsense (in the Tractarian sense), then the Tractatus must be true.

Other philosophers before Wittgenstein, including Zhuang Zhou, Schopenhauer and Fritz Mauthner, had used a similar metaphor.

In his notes of 1930 Wittgenstein returns to the image of a ladder with a different perspective:

I might say: if the place I want to get could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now.
Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me.

🔗 United States 🔗 United States/Texas 🔗 U.S. Roads/U.S. Route 66

Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, US. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm.

The installation consists of ten Cadillacs (1949–1963) buried nose-first in the ground. Installed in 1974, the cars were either older running, used or junk cars — together spanning the successive generations of the car line — and the defining evolution of their tailfins. The cars are inclined at the same angle as the pyramids at Giza.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics

Local regression or local polynomial regression, also known as moving regression, is a generalization of the moving average and polynomial regression. Its most common methods, initially developed for scatterplot smoothing, are LOESS (locally estimated scatterplot smoothing) and LOWESS (locally weighted scatterplot smoothing), both pronounced . They are two strongly related non-parametric regression methods that combine multiple regression models in a k-nearest-neighbor-based meta-model. In some fields, LOESS is known and commonly referred to as Savitzky–Golay filter (proposed 15 years before LOESS).

LOESS and LOWESS thus build on "classical" methods, such as linear and nonlinear least squares regression. They address situations in which the classical procedures do not perform well or cannot be effectively applied without undue labor. LOESS combines much of the simplicity of linear least squares regression with the flexibility of nonlinear regression. It does this by fitting simple models to localized subsets of the data to build up a function that describes the deterministic part of the variation in the data, point by point. In fact, one of the chief attractions of this method is that the data analyst is not required to specify a global function of any form to fit a model to the data, only to fit segments of the data.

The trade-off for these features is increased computation. Because it is so computationally intensive, LOESS would have been practically impossible to use in the era when least squares regression was being developed. Most other modern methods for process modeling are similar to LOESS in this respect. These methods have been consciously designed to use our current computational ability to the fullest possible advantage to achieve goals not easily achieved by traditional approaches.

A smooth curve through a set of data points obtained with this statistical technique is called a loess curve, particularly when each smoothed value is given by a weighted quadratic least squares regression over the span of values of the y-axis scattergram criterion variable. When each smoothed value is given by a weighted linear least squares regression over the span, this is known as a lowess curve; however, some authorities treat lowess and loess as synonyms.

🔗 Caribbean 🔗 Football 🔗 Caribbean/Barbados 🔗 Grenada

On January 27, 1994, the national football teams of Barbados and Grenada played against each other as part of the qualification round for the 1994 Caribbean Cup. Barbados won 4-2 in extra time. In the last minutes of regular time, both teams attempted to score own goals. The result has been described as "one of the strangest matches ever".

In the 1994 Caribbean Cup, the tournament organisers implemented a variant of the golden goal rule: the first goal scored in extra-time not only won the match, but was also worth two goals. Barbados needed to win the match by a margin of at least two goals to qualify for the final tournament over Grenada. Barbados led the game 2-0 until Grenada scored at the 83rd minute, bringing the score to 2-1. Barbados then deliberately scored an own goal, tying the game at 2-2, to force extra-time so that they could take advantage of the golden goal rule to achieve their needed two-goal margin. This resulted in an unusual situation: for the last three minutes of the match, Grenada tried to score in both goals. Either outcome (3–2 on points, or 2–3 via goal difference) would have advanced them to the finals, while Barbados had to defend both goals. Ultimately, Barbados was able to prevent Grenada from scoring, forcing extra-time. Barbados then scored the golden goal to win the match.

The outcome of the match was criticised by Grenadian coach James Clarkson, who felt that his team had been unfairly prevented from advancing to the finals. However, given the fact that the unusual tournament rules had not been broken, FIFA cleared Barbados of any wrongdoing.