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🔗 France 🔗 Military history 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Military history/Fortifications 🔗 Military history/French military history 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Military history/Medieval warfare 🔗 Metalworking 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Woodworking 🔗 Project-independent assessment

Guédelon Castle (Château de Guédelon) is a castle currently under construction near Treigny, France. The castle is the focus of an experimental archaeology project aimed at recreating a 13th-century castle and its environment using period technique, dress, and material.

In order to fully investigate the technology required in the past, the project is using only period construction techniques, tools, and costumes. Materials, including wood and stone, are all obtained locally. Jacques Moulin, chief architect for the project, designed the castle according to the architectural model developed during the 12th and 13th centuries by Philip II of France.

Construction started in 1997 under Michel Guyot, owner of Château de Saint-Fargeau, a castle in Saint-Fargeau 13 kilometres away. The site was chosen according to the availability of construction materials: an abandoned stone quarry, in a large forest, with a nearby pond. The site is in a rural woodland area and the nearest town is Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to the northeast.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Numismatics 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Indonesia 🔗 Japan 🔗 Military history/Asian military history 🔗 Military history/Japanese military history

Japanese invasion money, officially known as Southern Development Bank Notes (Japanese: 大東亜戦争軍票 Dai Tō-A Sensō gunpyō, "Greater East Asia War military scrip"), was currency issued by the Japanese Military Authority, as a replacement for local currency after the conquest of colonies and other states in World War II. In February 1942 in Japan, laws were passed establishing the Wartime Finance Bank and the Southern Development Bank. Both institutions issued bonds to raise funds. The former loaned money primarily to military industries, but also to a wide range of other ventures, including hydroelectric generators, electric power companies, shipbuilding and petroleum. The latter provided financial services in areas occupied by the Japanese military, and Southern Development Bank notes were in fact used as de facto military scrip. In December 1942, the outstanding balance of Southern Development Bank notes stood at more than 470 million; in March 1945, more than 13 billion.

Already engaged in war with China, in 1940 the Japanese expanded the scope of their military operations in Asia and finally entered the Second World War in late 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan invaded various Asian countries, occupying vast territories and setting up military administrations.

Beginning with the capture of the Philippines, the Japanese military confiscated all hard currency, both on a federal and individual level, replacing it with locally printed notes bearing a proclamation of military issue. All notes bore the name of the Imperial Japanese government, and some notes proclaimed the "promises to pay the bearer on demand". Called “Mickey Mouse Money" by local Filipinos, it was valueless after the overthrow of the Japanese, and tons of it were burned. Japanese troops were ordered to destroy bank records and any remaining currency prior to capitulation.

With the end of World War II, the currency circulated bearing the Japanese name immediately lost any value it once possessed and was discarded en masse. Money that was issued included the Philippines, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak (now Malaysia), Singapore, Brunei, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and some areas of Oceania (New Guinea and the Solomon and Gilbert islands). Large amounts of the currency were obtained by Allied forces and civilians at the end of the war; many were kept as wartime souvenirs, and are now in both private and museum collections.

🔗 Law 🔗 Lists

A 999-year lease, under historic common law, is an essentially permanent lease of property. The lease locations are mainly in Britain, its former colonies, and the Commonwealth.

A former colony, the Republic of Mauritius (The Raphael Fishing Company Ltd v. The State of Mauritius & Anor (Mauritius) [2008] UKPC 43 (30 July 2008)) established legal precedent on 30 July 2008 in respect of a 'permanent lease' on St. Brandon.

🔗 Computing

The Canon Cat was a task-dedicated, desktop computer released by Canon Inc. in 1987 at a price of US$1,495. On the surface it was not unlike the dedicated word processors popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but it was far more powerful and incorporated many unique ideas for data manipulation.

🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Aviation/aircraft engine 🔗 Ships

A toroidal propeller is a type of propeller that is ring-shaped with each blade forming a closed loop. The propellers are significantly quieter at audible frequency ranges, between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, while generating comparable thrust to traditional propellers. In practice, toroidal propellers reduce noise pollution in both aviation and maritime transport.

🔗 Visual arts

A cyclorama is a panoramic image on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to give viewers standing in the middle of the cylinder a 360° view, and also a building designed to show a panoramic image. The intended effect is to make viewers, surrounded by the panoramic image, feel as if they were standing in the midst of the place depicted in the image.

🔗 Human rights 🔗 History 🔗 Military history 🔗 Crime 🔗 Death 🔗 China 🔗 Politics 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Law Enforcement 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Military history/Asian military history 🔗 Military history/Chinese military history 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography

The Tiananmen Square protests, also known as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: 六四事件; pinyin: liùsì shìjiàn) in China, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: 天安门大屠杀; pinyin: Tiān'ānmén dà túshā), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: 八九民运; pinyin: Bājiǔ mínyùn) or the Tiananmen Square Incident (Chinese: 天安门事件; pinyin: Tiān'ānmén shìjiàn).

The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Among the CCP's top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law. They mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.

The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of CCP rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

🔗 Palaeontology 🔗 Amphibians and Reptiles 🔗 Mammals

Dimetrodon ( (listen) or , meaning "two measures of teeth") is an extinct genus of non-mammalian synapsids that lived during the Cisuralian (Early Permian), around 295–272 million years ago (Ma). It is a member of the family Sphenacodontidae. The most prominent feature of Dimetrodon is the large neural spine sail on its back formed by elongated spines extending from the vertebrae. It walked on four legs and had a tall, curved skull with large teeth of different sizes set along the jaws. Most fossils have been found in the southwestern United States, the majority coming from a geological deposit called the Red Beds of Texas and Oklahoma. More recently, fossils have been found in Germany. Over a dozen species have been named since the genus was first described in 1878.

Dimetrodon is often mistaken for a dinosaur or as a contemporary of dinosaurs in popular culture, but it became extinct some 40 million years before the first appearance of dinosaurs. Reptile-like in appearance and physiology, Dimetrodon is nevertheless more closely related to mammals than to modern reptiles, though it is not a direct ancestor of mammals. Dimetrodon is assigned to the "non-mammalian synapsids", a group traditionally called "mammal-like reptiles". This groups Dimetrodon together with mammals in a clade (evolutionary group) called Synapsida, while placing dinosaurs, reptiles and birds in a separate clade, Sauropsida. Single openings in the skull behind each eye, known as temporal fenestrae, and other skull features distinguish Dimetrodon and mammals from most of the earliest sauropsids.

Dimetrodon was probably one of the apex predators of the Cisuralian ecosystems, feeding on fish and tetrapods, including reptiles and amphibians. Smaller Dimetrodon species may have had different ecological roles. The sail of Dimetrodon may have been used to stabilize its spine or to heat and cool its body as a form of thermoregulation. Some recent studies argue that the sail would have been ineffective at removing heat from the body due to large species being discovered with small sails and small species being discovered with large sails, essentially ruling out heat regulation as its main purpose. The sail was most likely used in courtship display with methods such as threatening rivals or showing off to potential mates.

🔗 Economics

The Alchian–Allen effect was described in 1964 by Armen Alchian and William R Allen in the book University Economics (now called Exchange and Production). It states that when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.

Suppose, for example, that high-grade coffee beans are $3/pound and low-grade beans $1.50/pound; in this example, high-grade beans cost twice as much as low-grade beans. Now add a per-pound international shipping cost of $1. The effective prices are now $4 and $2.50; high-grade beans now cost only 1.6 times as much as low-grade beans. This reduced ratio of difference will induce distant coffee-buyers to now choose a higher ratio of high-to-low grade beans than local coffee-buyers.

The effect has been studied as it applies to illegal drugs and it has been shown that the potency of marijuana increased in response to higher enforcement budgets, and there was a similar effect for alcohol in the U.S. during Prohibition. This effect is called iron law of prohibition.

Another example is that Australians drink higher-quality Californian wine than Californians, and vice versa, because it is only worth the transportation costs for the most expensive wine.

Colloquially, the Alchian–Allen theorem is also known as the “shipping the good apples out” theorem (Thomas Borcherding), or as the “third law of demand.”

🔗 Biography 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Politics 🔗 Philosophy/Social and political philosophy 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophers 🔗 India 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 India/Bihar 🔗 Philosophy/Eastern philosophy 🔗 Hinduism 🔗 India/Indian history workgroup 🔗 India/Patna

Chanakya (IAST: Cāṇakya, pronunciation ) was an ancient Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor. He is traditionally identified as Kauṭilya or Vishnugupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise, the Arthashastra, a text dated to roughly between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE. As such, he is considered the pioneer of the field of political science and economics in India, and his work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics. His works were lost near the end of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century CE and not rediscovered until the early 20th century.

Chanakya assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in his rise to power. He is widely credited for having played an important role in the establishment of the Maurya Empire. Chanakya served as the chief advisor to both emperors Chandragupta and his son Bindusara.