Random Articles (Page 2)
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๐ Free beer
Free Beer, originally known as Vores รธl - An open source beer (Danish for: Our Beer), is the first brand of beer with an "open"/"free" brand and recipe. The recipe and trademark elements are published under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license.
The beer was created in 2004 by students at the IT University in Copenhagen together with artist collective Superflex, to illustrate how concepts of the FOSS movement might be applied outside the digital world. The "Free Beer" concept illustrates also the connection between the long tradition of freely sharing cooking recipes with the FOSS movement, which tries to establish this sharing tradition also for the "recipes" of software, the source code. The "Free beer" concept received an overall positive reception from international press and media for the political message, was presented on many exhibitions and conferences, and inspired many breweries in adopting the concept.
๐ London Bridge (Lake Havasu)
London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was built in the 1830s and formerly spanned the River Thames in London, England. It was dismantled in 1967 and relocated to Arizona. The Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure clad in the original masonry of the 1830s bridge, which was purchased by Robert P. McCulloch from the City of London. McCulloch had exterior granite blocks from the original bridge numbered and transported to America to construct the present bridge in Lake Havasu City, a planned community he established in 1964 on the shore of Lake Havasu. The bridge was completed in 1971 (along with a canal), and links an island in the Colorado River with the main part of Lake Havasu City.
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- "London Bridge (Lake Havasu)" | 2015-05-26 | 43 Upvotes 20 Comments
๐ Crookes Radiometer
The Crookes radiometer (also known as a light mill) consists of an airtight glass bulb containing a partial vacuum, with a set of vanes which are mounted on a spindle inside. The vanes rotate when exposed to light, with faster rotation for more intense light, providing a quantitative measurement of electromagnetic radiation intensity.
The reason for the rotation was a cause of much scientific debate in the ten years following the invention of the device, but in 1879 the currently accepted explanation for the rotation was published. Today the device is mainly used in physics education as a demonstration of a heat engine run by light energy.
It was invented in 1873 by the chemist Sir William Crookes as the by-product of some chemical research. In the course of very accurate quantitative chemical work, he was weighing samples in a partially evacuated chamber to reduce the effect of air currents, and noticed the weighings were disturbed when sunlight shone on the balance. Investigating this effect, he created the device named after him.
It is still manufactured and sold as an educational aid or for curiosity.
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- "Crookes Radiometer" | 2024-03-20 | 75 Upvotes 21 Comments
๐ An Automat is a fast food restaurant where foods and drink are served by vending machines.
An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drink are served by vending machines. The world's first automat was named Quisisana, which opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895.
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- "An Automat is a fast food restaurant where foods and drink are served by vending machines." | 2008-09-27 | 7 Upvotes 14 Comments
๐ Dialetheism
Dialetheism (from Greek ฮดฮน- di- 'twice' and แผฮปฮฎฮธฮตฮนฮฑ alแธtheia 'truth') is the view that there are statements that are both true and false. More precisely, it is the belief that there can be a true statement whose negation is also true. Such statements are called "true contradictions", dialetheia, or nondualisms.
Dialetheism is not a system of formal logic; instead, it is a thesis about truth that influences the construction of a formal logic, often based on pre-existing systems. Introducing dialetheism has various consequences, depending on the theory into which it is introduced. A common mistake resulting from this is to reject dialetheism on the basis that, in traditional systems of logic (e.g., classical logic and intuitionistic logic), every statement becomes a theorem if a contradiction is true, trivialising such systems when dialetheism is included as an axiom. Other logical systems, however, do not explode in this manner when contradictions are introduced; such contradiction-tolerant systems are known as paraconsistent logics. Dialetheists who do not want to allow that every statement is true are free to favour these over traditional, explosive logics.
Graham Priest defines dialetheism as the view that there are true contradictions. Jc Beall is another advocate; his position differs from Priest's in advocating constructive (methodological) deflationism regarding the truth predicate.
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- "Dialetheism" | 2024-02-07 | 15 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ Kola Superdeep Borehole
The Kola Superdeep Borehole (Russian: ะะพะปััะบะฐั ัะฒะตัั ะณะปัะฑะพะบะฐั ัะบะฒะฐะถะธะฝะฐ) is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. Boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest, SG-3, reached 12,262 metres (40,230ย ft; 7.619ย mi) in 1989 and is the deepest artificial point on Earth. The borehole is 23 centimetres (9ย in) in diameter.
In terms of true vertical depth, it is the deepest borehole in the world. For two decades it was also the world's longest borehole in terms of measured depth along the well bore, until it was surpassed in 2008 by the 12,289-metre-long (40,318ย ft) Al Shaheen oil well in Qatar, and in 2011 by the 12,345-metre-long (40,502ย ft) Sakhalin-I Odoptu OP-11 Well (offshore from the Russian island of Sakhalin).
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- "Kola Superdeep Borehole" | 2018-06-18 | 57 Upvotes 67 Comments
๐ Mafia (party game)
Mafia (also known as The Werewolves) is a social deduction game, created by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986. The game models a conflict between two groups: an informed minority (the mafiosi or the werewolves), and an uninformed majority (the villagers). At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned a role affiliated with one of these teams. The game has two alternating phases: first, a night role, during which those with night killing powers may covertly kill other players, and second, a day role, in which surviving players debate the identities of players and vote to eliminate a suspect. The game continues until a faction achieves its win condition; for the village, this usually means eliminating the evil minority, while for the minority this usually means reaching numerical parity with the village and eliminating any rival evil groups.
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- "Mafia (party game)" | 2016-05-09 | 29 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Dreamachine
The Dreamachine (a contraction of Dream Machine) is a stroboscopic flickering light art device that produces eidetic visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs' "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the Dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.
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- "Dreamachine" | 2022-09-02 | 60 Upvotes 36 Comments
๐ Semantic Satiation
Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at the word or phrase for a lengthy period of time) in place of repetition also produces the same effect.
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- "Semantic Satiation" | 2021-04-23 | 119 Upvotes 52 Comments
๐ Stanford Bunny
The Stanford bunny is a computer graphics 3D test model developed by Greg Turk and Marc Levoy in 1994 at Stanford University. The model consists of 69,451 triangles, with the data determined by 3D scanning a ceramic figurine of a rabbit. This figurine and others were scanned to test methods of range scanning physical objects.
The data can be used to test various graphics algorithms, including polygonal simplification, compression, and surface smoothing. There are a few complications with this dataset that can occur in any 3D scan data: the model is manifold connected and has holes in the data, some due to scanning limits and some due to the object being hollow. These complications provide a more realistic input for any algorithm that is benchmarked with the Stanford bunny, though by today's standards, in terms of geometric complexity and triangle count, it is considered a simple model.
The model was originally available in .ply (polygons) file format with 4 different resolutions.
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- "Stanford Bunny" | 2021-05-25 | 121 Upvotes 42 Comments