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🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Environment 🔗 Disaster management

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a theoretical scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.

🔗 California 🔗 Law

The Mulford Act was a 1967 California bill that repealed a law allowing public carrying of loaded firearms. Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford, and signed into law by governor of California Ronald Reagan, the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching. They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.

Assembly Bill 1591 was introduced by Don Mulford (R) from Oakland on April 5, 1967, and subsequently co-sponsored by John T. Knox (D) from Richmond, Walter J. Karabian (D) from Monterey Park, Frank Murphy Jr. (R) from Santa Cruz, Alan Sieroty (D) from Los Angeles, and William M. Ketchum (R) from Bakersfield. AB-1591 was made an “urgency statute” under Article IV, §8(d) of the Constitution of California after “an organized band of men armed with loaded firearms [...] entered the Capitol” on May 2, 1967; as such, it required a 2/3 majority in each house. It passed the Assembly (controlled by Democrats, 42:38) at subsequent readings, passed the Senate (controlled by Democrats, 20:19) on July 26 by 29 votes to 7, and was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on July 28, 1967. The law banned the carrying of loaded weapons in public.

Both Republicans and Democrats in California supported increased gun control, as did the National Rifle Association of America. Governor Ronald Reagan, who was coincidentally present on the capitol lawn when the protesters arrived, later commented that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that guns were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."

The bill was signed by Reagan and became California penal code 25850 and 171c.

🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Yorkshire

The Heslington Brain is a 2,600-year-old human brain found inside a skull buried in a pit in Heslington, Yorkshire, in England, by York Archaeological Trust in 2008. It is the oldest preserved brain ever found in Eurasia, and is believed to be the best-preserved ancient brain in the world. The skull was discovered during an archaeological dig commissioned by the University of York on the site of its new campus on the outskirts of the city of York. The area was found to have been the site of well-developed permanent habitation between 2,000–3,000 years before the present day.

A number of possibly ritualistic objects were found to have been deposited in several pits, including the skull, which had belonged to a man probably in his 30s. He had been hanged before being decapitated with a knife and his skull appears to have been buried immediately. The rest of the body was missing. Although it is not known why he was killed, it is possible that it may have been a human sacrifice or ritual murder.

The brain was found while the skull was being cleaned. It had survived despite the rest of the tissue on the skull having disappeared long ago. After being extracted at York Hospital, the brain was subjected to a range of medical and forensic examinations by York Archaeological Trust which found that it was remarkably intact, though it had shrunk to only about 20% of its original size. It showed few signs of decay, though most of its original material had been replaced by an as yet unidentified organic compound, due to chemical changes during burial.

According to the archaeologists and scientists who have examined it, the brain has a "resilient, tofu-like texture". It is not clear why the Heslington brain survived, although the presence of a wet, anoxic environment underground seems to have been an essential factor, and research is still ongoing to shed light on how the local soil conditions may have contributed to its preservation.

🔗 Electronics 🔗 Electrical engineering

A thyratron is a type of gas-filled tube used as a high-power electrical switch and controlled rectifier. Thyratrons can handle much greater currents than similar hard-vacuum tubes. Electron multiplication occurs when the gas becomes ionized, producing a phenomenon known as a Townsend discharge. Gases used include mercury vapor, xenon, neon, and (in special high-voltage applications or applications requiring very short switching times) hydrogen. Unlike a vacuum tube (valve), a thyratron cannot be used to amplify signals linearly.

In the 1920s, thyratrons were derived from early vacuum tubes such as the UV-200, which contained a small amount of argon gas to increase its sensitivity as a radio signal detector, and the German LRS relay tube, which also contained argon gas. Gas rectifiers, which predated vacuum tubes, such as the argon-filled General Electric "Tungar bulb" and the Cooper-Hewitt mercury-pool rectifier, also provided an influence. Irving Langmuir and G. S. Meikle of GE are usually cited as the first investigators to study controlled rectification in gas tubes, about 1914. The first commercial thyratrons appeared circa 1928.

The term "thyratron" is derived from Ancient Greek "θύρα" ("thyra"), meaning "door" or "valve". The term "thyristor" was further derived from a combination of "thyratron" and "transistor". Since the 1960s thyristors have replaced thyratrons in most low- and medium-power applications.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Social and political philosophy 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of science 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Theoretical Linguistics 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophers 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of language 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Philosophy/Metaphysics 🔗 Linguistics/Philosophy of language 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy 🔗 Atheism 🔗 Biography/Peerage and Baronetage

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he also confessed that his sceptical nature had led him to feel that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense." Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics, the quintessential work of classical logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system) and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.

Russell was a prominent anti-war activist and he championed anti-imperialism. Occasionally, he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the atomic monopoly had passed and he decided he would "welcome with enthusiasm" world government. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, Russell concluded that war against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was a necessary "lesser of two evils" and criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".

🔗 Urban studies and planning

Marchetti's constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting each day, which is approximately one hour. It is named after Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti, though Marchetti himself attributed the "one hour" finding to transportation analyst and engineer Yacov Zahavi. Marchetti posits that although forms of urban planning and transport may change, and although some live in villages and others in cities, people gradually adjust their lives to their conditions (including location of their homes relative to their workplace) such that the average travel time stays approximately constant. Ever since Neolithic times, people have kept the average time spent per day for travel the same, even though the distance may increase due to the advancements in the means of transportation. In his 1934 book Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford attributes this observation to Bertrand Russell:

Mr. Bertrand Russell has noted that each improvement in locomotion has increased the area over which people are compelled to move: so that a person who would have had to spend half an hour to walk to work a century ago must still spend half an hour to reach his destination, because the contrivance that would have enabled him to save time had he remained in his original situation now—by driving him to a more distant residential area—effectually cancels out the gain.

A related concept is that of Zahavi, who also noticed that people seem to have a constant "travel time budget", that is, "a stable daily amount of time that people make available for travel." David Metz, former chief scientist at the Department of Transport, UK, cites data of average travel time in Britain drawn from the British National Travel Survey in support of Marchetti's and Zahavi's conclusions. The work casts doubt on the contention that investment in infrastructure saves travel time. Instead, it appears from Metz's figures that people invest travel time saved in travelling a longer distance, a particular example of Jevons paradox described by the Lewis–Mogridge position. Because of the constancy of travel times as well as induced travel, Robert Cervero has argued that the World Bank and other international aid agencies evaluate transportation investment proposals in developing and rapidly motorizing cities less on the basis of potential travel-time savings and more on the accessibility benefits they confer.

🔗 Computing 🔗 BBC 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Retailing

"Computer says no" is a catchphrase first used in the British sketch comedy television programme Little Britain in 2004. In British culture, the phrase is used to criticise public-facing organisations and customer service staff who rely on information stored on or generated by a computer to make decisions and respond to customers' requests, often in a manner which goes against common sense. It may also refer to a deliberately unhelpful attitude towards customers and service-users commonly experienced within British society, whereby more could be done to reach a mutually satisfactory outcome, but is not.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Finance & Investment 🔗 Economics 🔗 Numismatics

The everything bubble refers to the correlated impact of monetary easing by the Federal Reserve (and followed by the ECB and the BOJ), on asset prices in most asset classes, namely equities, housing, bonds, many commodities, and even exotic assets such as cryptocurrencies and SPACs. The term is related to the Fed put, being the tools of direct and indirect quantative easing that the Fed used to execute the monetary easing, and to modern monetary theory, which advocates use of such tools, even in non-crisis periods, to create economic growth through asset price inflation. The term first came in use during the chair of Janet Yellen, but it is most associated with the subsequent chair of Jerome Powell, and the 2020–2021 period of the coronavirus pandemic.

The everything bubble was not only notable for the simultaneous extremes in valuations recorded in a wide range of asset classes and the high level of speculation in the market, but also that this was achieved in a period of recession, high unemployment, trade wars, and political turmoil – leading to a realization that it was uniquely a central bank creation, with concerns on the independence and integrity of market pricing, and on the Fed's impact on wealth inequality.

Bloomberg attributed Powell's maintenance of monetary stimulus into 2021 (the final year of his first term as Fed chair), in spite of warnings of unprecedented levels of market risk and speculation, to his fear of repeating the crash in Q4 2018 when he started quantitative tightening; thus extending the bubble.

High up on his [President Biden] list, and sooner rather than later, will be dealing with the consequences of the biggest financial bubble in U.S. history. Why the biggest? Because it encompasses not just stocks but pretty much every other financial asset too. And for that, you may thank the Federal Reserve.

🔗 Africa 🔗 Egypt 🔗 Africa/Sudan

Bir Tawil (Egyptian Arabic: بير طويل, romanized: Bīr Ṭawīl, lit. 'tall water well', [biːɾ tˤɑˈwiːl]) is a 2,060 km² (795.4 sq mi) area of land along the border between Egypt and Sudan, which is uninhabited and claimed by neither country. When spoken of in association with the neighbouring Halaib Triangle, it is sometimes referred to as the Bir Tawil Triangle, despite the area's quadrilateral shape; the two "triangles" border at a quadripoint.

Its terra nulliuscode: lat promoted to code: la status results from a discrepancy between the straight political boundary between Egypt and Sudan established in 1899, and the irregular administrative boundary established in 1902. Egypt asserts the political boundary, and Sudan asserts the administrative boundary, with the result that the Hala'ib Triangle is claimed by both and Bir Tawil by neither. In 2014, author Alastair Bonnett described Bir Tawil as the only place on Earth that was habitable but was not claimed by any recognised government.

🔗 Mathematics

In number theory, a weird number is a natural number that is abundant but not semiperfect.

In other words, the sum of the proper divisors (divisors including 1 but not itself) of the number is greater than the number, but no subset of those divisors sums to the number itself.