Random Articles

Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

πŸ”— The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

πŸ”— Literature

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a descriptive list which was first proposed by Georges Polti in 1895 to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. Polti analyzed classical Greek texts, plus classical and contemporaneous French works. He also analyzed a handful of non-French authors. In his introduction, Polti claims to be continuing the work of Carlo Gozzi, who also identified 36 situations.

πŸ”— Asterism (Typography)

πŸ”— Typography

In typography, an asterism, ⁂, is a typographic symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle, which is used for a variety of purposes. The name originates from the astronomical term for a group of stars.

The asterism was originally used as a type of dinkus in typography, though increasingly rarely. It can also be used to mean "untitled" or author or title withheld – as seen, for example, in some editions of Album for the Young by composer Robert Schumann (β„– 21, 26, and 30). In meteorology, an asterism in a station model indicates moderate snowfall.

πŸ”— Kevinism

πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Anthroponymy

In German, Kevinismus ("Kevinism") is the negative preconception German people have of Germans with trendy, exotic-sounding first names considered to be an indicator of a low social class. The protypical example is Kevin, which like most such names came to Germany from Anglo-American culture. Sometimes Chantalismus ("Chantalism") is used as a female equivalent, from the French name Chantal.

Discussed on

πŸ”— War Powers Resolution

πŸ”— United States/U.S. Government πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Law πŸ”— United States History πŸ”— U.S. Congress πŸ”— Military history/National militaries πŸ”— Vietnam πŸ”— Project-independent assessment

The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. ch. 33) is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution. It provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization", or in case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces".

The bill was introduced by Clement Zablocki, a Democratic congressman representing Wisconsin's 4th district. The bill had bipartisan support and was co-sponsored by a number of U.S. military veterans. The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds each of the House and Senate, overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon.

It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past. However, Congress has disapproved all such incidents, and no allegations have resulted in successful legal actions taken against a president.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak

πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Environment πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Disaster management πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Occupational Safety and Health πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

On 2 April 1979, spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a Soviet military research facility near the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Yekaterinburg). The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in approximately 100 deaths, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed the deaths on consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat. All medical records of the victims were removed to hide serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention. The accident is sometimes referred to as "biological Chernobyl".

Discussed on

πŸ”— Seven Bridges of KΓΆnigsberg

πŸ”— Mathematics πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Germany/Prussia

The Seven Bridges of KΓΆnigsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1736 laid the foundations of graph theory and prefigured the idea of topology.

The city of KΓΆnigsberg in Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) was set on both sides of the Pregel River, and included two large islandsβ€”Kneiphof and Lomseβ€”which were connected to each other, or to the two mainland portions of the city, by seven bridges. The problem was to devise a walk through the city that would cross each of those bridges once and only once.

By way of specifying the logical task unambiguously, solutions involving either

  1. reaching an island or mainland bank other than via one of the bridges, or
  2. accessing any bridge without crossing to its other end

are explicitly unacceptable.

Euler proved that the problem has no solution. The difficulty he faced was the development of a suitable technique of analysis, and of subsequent tests that established this assertion with mathematical rigor.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Exorbitant Privilege

πŸ”— Economics

The term exorbitant privilege (privilège exorbitant in French) refers to the benefits the United States has due to its own currency (the US dollar) being the international reserve currency. For example, the US would not face a balance of payments crisis, because their imports are purchased in their own currency. Exorbitant privilege as a concept cannot refer to currencies that have a regional reserve currency role, only to global reserve currencies.

Academically, the exorbitant privilege literature analyzes two empirical puzzles, the position puzzle and the income puzzle. The position puzzle refers to the difference between the (negative) U.S. net international investment position (NIIP) and the accumulated U.S. current account deficits, the former being much smaller than the latter. The income puzzle is that despite a deeply negative NIIP, the U.S. income balance is positive, i.e. despite having much more liabilities than assets, earned income is higher than interest expenses.

Discussed on

πŸ”— George Stinney: youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Criminal Biography πŸ”— African diaspora πŸ”— United States/South Carolina

George Junius Stinney, Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944), was an African American child who was convicted, in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial, of murdering two white girls, ages 7 and 11, in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was executed by electric chair in June 1944. Stinney is the youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed.

A re-examination of the Stinney case began in 2004, and several individuals and Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. His conviction was overturned in 2014, 70 years after he was executed when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.

Discussed on

πŸ”— The hairy ball theorem

πŸ”— Mathematics

The hairy ball theorem of algebraic topology (sometimes called the hedgehog theorem in Europe) states that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on even-dimensional n-spheres. For the ordinary sphere, or 2‑sphere, if f is a continuous function that assigns a vector in R3 to every point p on a sphere such that f(p) is always tangent to the sphere at p, then there is at least one p such that f(p) = 0. The theorem was first stated by Henri PoincarΓ© in the late 19th century, and first proven in 1912 by Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer.

The theorem has been expressed colloquially as "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" or "you can't comb the hair on a coconut".

Discussed on

πŸ”— Project Longshot: 100 Year probe mission to Alpha Centauri

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Spaceflight πŸ”— United States/Military history - U.S. military history πŸ”— Physics

Project Longshot was a conceptual interstellar spacecraft design. It would have been an unmanned probe, intended to fly to and enter orbit around Alpha Centauri B powered by nuclear pulse propulsion.

Discussed on