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๐ Utsuro-Bune
Utsuro-bune (่่, 'hollow ship'), also Utsuro-fune, and Urobune, was an unknown object that allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan. When defining Utsuro-bune, the bune part means "boat" while Utsuro means empty, or hollow. Accounts of the tale appear in three texts: Toen shลsetsu (1825), Hyลryลซ kishลซ (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844).
According to legend, an attractive young woman aged 18-20 years old, arrived on a local beach aboard the "hollow ship" on February 22, 1803. Fishermen brought her inland to investigate further, but the woman was unable to communicate in Japanese. She was very different from anyone else there. The fishermen then returned her and her vessel to the sea, where it drifted away.
Historians, ethnologists and physicists such as Kazuo Tanaka and Yanagita Kunio have evaluated the "legend of the hollow boat" as part of a long-standing tradition within Japanese folklore. Alternatively, certain ufologists have claimed that the story represents evidence for a close encounter with extraterrestrial life.
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- "Utsuro-Bune" | 2021-04-29 | 98 Upvotes 19 Comments
๐ Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page
Donna Theo Strickland, (born 27 May 1959) is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gรฉrard Mourou, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification. She is a professor at the University of Waterloo.
She served as fellow, vice president, and president of The Optical Society, and is currently chair of their Presidential Advisory Committee. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
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- "Donna Strickland won her Nobel prize in Physics before she got a wikipedia page" | 2018-10-02 | 41 Upvotes 24 Comments
๐ List of device bandwidths
This is a list of interface bit rates, is a measure of information transfer rates, or digital bandwidth capacity, at which digital interfaces in a computer or network can communicate over various kinds of buses and channels. The distinction can be arbitrary between a computer bus, often closer in space, and larger telecommunications networks. Many device interfaces or protocols (e.g., SATA, USB, SAS, PCIe) are used both inside many-device boxes, such as a PC, and one-device-boxes, such as a hard drive enclosure. Accordingly, this page lists both the internal ribbon and external communications cable standards together in one sortable table.
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- "List of device bandwidths" | 2008-01-18 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Secretary Problem
The secretary problem is a problem that demonstrates a scenario involving optimal stopping theory. The problem has been studied extensively in the fields of applied probability, statistics, and decision theory. It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem.
The basic form of the problem is the following: imagine an administrator who wants to hire the best secretary out of rankable applicants for a position. The applicants are interviewed one by one in random order. A decision about each particular applicant is to be made immediately after the interview. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be recalled. During the interview, the administrator gains information sufficient to rank the applicant among all applicants interviewed so far, but is unaware of the quality of yet unseen applicants. The question is about the optimal strategy (stopping rule) to maximize the probability of selecting the best applicant. If the decision can be deferred to the end, this can be solved by the simple maximum selection algorithm of tracking the running maximum (and who achieved it), and selecting the overall maximum at the end. The difficulty is that the decision must be made immediately.
The shortest rigorous proof known so far is provided by the odds algorithm (Bruss 2000). It implies that the optimal win probability is always at least (where e is the base of the natural logarithm), and that the latter holds even in a much greater generality (2003). The optimal stopping rule prescribes always rejecting the first applicants that are interviewed and then stopping at the first applicant who is better than every applicant interviewed so far (or continuing to the last applicant if this never occurs). Sometimes this strategy is called the stopping rule, because the probability of stopping at the best applicant with this strategy is about already for moderate values of . One reason why the secretary problem has received so much attention is that the optimal policy for the problem (the stopping rule) is simple and selects the single best candidate about 37% of the time, irrespective of whether there are 100 or 100 million applicants.
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- "Secretary Problem" | 2014-03-04 | 90 Upvotes 64 Comments
๐ The Colditz Glider
The Colditz Cock was a glider built by British prisoners of war for an escape attempt from Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle) in Germany.
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- "The Colditz Glider" | 2017-07-23 | 47 Upvotes 7 Comments
๐ Isochronous Curves
A tautochrone or isochrone curve (from Greek prefixes tauto- meaning same or iso- equal, and chrono time) is the curve for which the time taken by an object sliding without friction in uniform gravity to its lowest point is independent of its starting point on the curve. The curve is a cycloid, and the time is equal to ฯ times the square root of the radius (of the circle which generates the cycloid) over the acceleration of gravity. The tautochrone curve is related to the brachistochrone curve, which is also a cycloid.
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- "Isochronous Curves" | 2018-09-09 | 224 Upvotes 62 Comments
๐ Massacre in Korea by Pablo Picasso
Massacre in Korea (French: Massacre en Corรฉe) is an expressionistic painting completed on 18 January 1951 by Pablo Picasso. It is Picasso's third anti-war painting and depicts a scene of a massacre of a group of naked women and children by a firing squad. It has been considered to be a condemnation of American intervention in the Korean War. The painting is exhibited in the Musรฉe Picasso in Paris.
๐ Dรผrer's Rhinoceros
Dรผrer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dรผrer in 1515. The image is based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon in 1515. Dรผrer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516. A live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until a second specimen, named Abada, arrived from India at the court of Sebastian of Portugal in 1577, being later inherited by Philip II of Spain around 1580.
Dรผrer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour, with a gorget at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate, and what appear to be rivets along the seams. He places a small twisted horn on its back and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros, although the Indian rhinoceros does have deep folds in its skin that can look like armor from a distance. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dรผrer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It has been said of Dรผrer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".
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- "Dรผrer's Rhinoceros" | 2021-09-09 | 68 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Kearny Fallout Meter
The Kearny fallout meter, or KFM, is an expedient radiation meter. It is designed such that someone with a normal mechanical ability would be able to construct it before or during a nuclear attack, using common household items.
The Kearny fallout meter was developed by Cresson Kearny from research performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and published in the civil defense manual Nuclear War Survival Skills (ISBNย 0-942487-01-X). The plans were originally released in Oak Ridge National Laboratory publication ORNL-5040, The KFM, A Homemade Yet Accurate and Dependable Fallout Meter and have been formatted in a newsprint-ready layout so that they may be quickly printed with accurate dimensions in local newspapers. It must be built from a correctly scaled copy of the plans; photocopies and printouts of digital copies may not be to scale.
๐ Wikirace - Wikipedia
Wikiracing is a game using the online encyclopedia Wikipedia which focuses on traversing links from one page to another. It has many different variations and names, including The Wikipedia Game, Wikipedia Maze, Wikispeedia, Wikiwars, Wikipedia Ball, and Litner Ball. External websites have been created to facilitate the game.
The Seattle Times has recommended it as a good educational pastime for children and the Larchmont Gazette has said, "While I don't know any teenagers who would curl up with an encyclopedia for a good read, I hear that a lot are reading it in the process of playing the Wikipedia Game".
The Amazing Wiki Race has been an event at the TechOlympics and the Yale Freshman Olympics.
The average number of links separating any Wikipedia page from the United Kingdom page is 3.67. Other common houserules such as not using the United States page increase the difficulty of the game.
As of July 2019, a website and game known as The Wiki Game has been created, allowing players to Wikirace against each other in a server, for more points and recognition on the server. The game reached more recognition as Internet stars such as Game Grumps played it on their channels. There is a version on the App Store as well, in which players can do a variety of Wikirace styles from their phone.
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- "Wikirace - Wikipedia" | 2010-02-01 | 38 Upvotes 7 Comments