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🔗 Transport 🔗 Sweden

Dagen H (H day), today usually called "Högertrafikomläggningen" ("The right-hand traffic diversion"), was the day on 3 September 1967, in which the traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. The "H" stands for "Högertrafik", the Swedish word for "right traffic". It was by far the largest logistical event in Sweden's history.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Physics 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of science 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophers 🔗 Physics/Biographies 🔗 Ireland 🔗 University of Oxford 🔗 University of Oxford/University of Oxford (colleges)

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (UK: , US: ; German: [ˈɛɐ̯vɪn ˈʃʁøːdɪŋɐ]; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, was a Nobel Prize–winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for postulating the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term "quantum entanglement", and was the earliest to discuss it, doing so in 1932.

In addition, he wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book What Is Life? Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. He also paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient, and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion. He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is best known for his "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.

Spending most of his life as an academic with positions at various universities, Schrödinger, along with Paul Dirac, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 for his work on quantum mechanics, the same year he left Germany due to his opposition to Nazism. In his personal life, he lived with both his wife and his mistress which may have led to problems causing him to leave his position at Oxford. Subsequently, until 1938, he had a position in Graz, Austria, until the Nazi takeover when he fled, finally finding a long-term arrangement in Dublin where he remained until retirement in 1955. He died in Vienna of tuberculosis when he was 73.

🔗 United States 🔗 Television 🔗 Law 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Animation 🔗 Popular Culture 🔗 South Park 🔗 United States/American television 🔗 United States/Colorado 🔗 Star Wars 🔗 United States/Animation - American animation

In a jury trial, a Chewbacca defense is a legal strategy in which a criminal defense lawyer tries to confuse the jury rather than refute the case of the prosecutor. It is an intentional distraction or obfuscation.

As a Chewbacca defense distracts and misleads, it is an example of a red herring. It is also an example of an irrelevant conclusion, a type of informal fallacy in which one making an argument fails to address the issue in question. Often an opposing counsel can legally object to such arguments by declaring them irrelevant, character evidence, or argumentative.

The name Chewbacca defense comes from "Chef Aid", an episode of the American animated series South Park. The episode, which premiered on October 7, 1998, satirizes the O. J. Simpson murder trial—particularly attorney Johnnie Cochran's closing argument for the defense. In the episode, Cochran (voiced by Trey Parker) bases his argument on a false premise about the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. He asks the jury why a Wookiee like Chewbacca would want to live on Endor with the much smaller Ewoks when "it does not make sense". He argues that if Chewbacca living on Endor does not make sense—and if even mentioning Chewbacca in the case does not make sense—then the jury must acquit.

In the Simpson murder trial, the real Johnnie Cochran tried to convince jurors that a glove found at the crime scene, alleged to have been left by the killer, could not be Simpson's because it did not fit Simpson's hand. Because the prosecution relied on the glove as evidence of Simpson's presence at the scene, Cochran argued that the lack of fit proved Simpson's innocence: "It makes no sense; it doesn't fit; if it doesn't fit, you must acquit." "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" was a refrain that Cochran also used in response to other points of the case.

Alternative Title: Just because you have some money, that doesn't mean that you have to spend it.

In biology, the hallmarks of an aggressive cancer include limitless multiplication of ordinarily beneficial cells, even when the body signals that further multiplication is no longer needed. The Wikipedia page on the wheat and chessboard problem explains that nothing can keep growing forever. In biology, the unwanted growth usually terminates with the death of the host. Ever-increasing spending can often lead to the same undesirable result in organizations.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology

"I know that I know nothing" is a saying derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates himself was never recorded as having said this phrase, and scholars generally agree that Socrates only ever asserted that he believed that he knew nothing, having never claimed that he knew that he knew nothing. It is also sometimes called the Socratic paradox, although this name is often instead used to refer to other seemingly paradoxical claims made by Socrates in Plato's dialogues (most notably, Socratic intellectualism and the Socratic fallacy).

This saying is also connected or conflated with the answer to a question Socrates (according to Xenophon) or Chaerephon (according to Plato) is said to have posed to the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, in which the oracle stated something to the effect of "Socrates is the wisest person in Athens." Socrates, believing the oracle but also completely convinced that he knew nothing, was said to have concluded that nobody knew anything, and that he was only wiser than others because he was the only person who recognized his own ignorance.

🔗 Physics

Absolute hot is a theoretical upper limit to the thermodynamic temperature scale, conceived as an opposite to absolute zero.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing 🔗 Electronic music

Music Macro Language (MML) is a music description language used in sequencing music on computer and video game systems.

🔗 Classical Greece and Rome 🔗 Linguistics

A laconic phrase or laconism is a concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder. It is named after Laconia, the region of Greece including the city of Sparta, whose ancient inhabitants had a reputation for verbal austerity and were famous for their blunt and often pithy remarks.

🔗 France 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Middle Ages/History

The Bal des Ardents (Ball of the Burning Men) or Bal des Sauvages (Ball of the Wild Men) was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 in Paris at which Charles VI of France performed in a dance with five members of the French nobility. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by a spectator, Charles's brother Louis I, Duke of Orléans. Charles and another of the dancers survived. The ball was one of a number of events intended to entertain the young king, who the previous summer had suffered an attack of insanity. The event undermined confidence in Charles's capacity to rule; Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence and threatened to rebel against the more powerful members of the nobility. The public's outrage forced the king and his brother Orléans, whom a contemporary chronicler accused of attempted regicide and sorcery, to offer penance for the event.

Charles's wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, held the ball to honor the remarriage of a lady-in-waiting. Scholars believe the dance performed at the ball had elements of traditional charivari, with the dancers disguised as wild men, mythical beings often associated with demonology, that were commonly represented in medieval Europe and documented in revels of Tudor England. The event was chronicled by contemporary writers such as the Monk of St Denis and Jean Froissart, and illustrated in a number of 15th-century illuminated manuscripts by painters such as the Master of Anthony of Burgundy. The incident later provided inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's short story Hop-Frog.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Writing systems 🔗 Visual arts 🔗 Writing

A pencil ( ) is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand.

Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving a trail of solid core material that adheres to a sheet of paper or other surface. They are distinct from pens, which dispense liquid or gel ink onto the marked surface.

Most pencil cores are made of graphite powder mixed with a clay binder. Graphite pencils (traditionally known as "lead pencils") produce grey or black marks that are easily erased, but otherwise resistant to moisture, most chemicals, ultraviolet radiation and natural aging. Other types of pencil cores, such as those of charcoal, are mainly used for drawing and sketching. Coloured pencils are sometimes used by teachers or editors to correct submitted texts, but are typically regarded as art supplies, especially those with cores made from wax-based binders that tend to smear when erasers are applied to them. Grease pencils have a softer, oily core that can leave marks on smooth surfaces such as glass or porcelain.

The most common pencil casing is thin wood, usually hexagonal in section but sometimes cylindrical or triangular, permanently bonded to the core. Casings may be of other materials, such as plastic or paper. To use the pencil, the casing must be carved or peeled off to expose the working end of the core as a sharp point. Mechanical pencils have more elaborate casings which are not bonded to the core; instead, they support separate, mobile pigment cores that can be extended or retracted (usually through the casing's tip) as needed. These casings can be reloaded with new cores (usually graphite) as the previous ones are exhausted.