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🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics

A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. "Garden path" refers to the saying "to be led down [or up] the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Fowler describes such sentences as unwittingly laying a "false scent".

Such a sentence leads the reader toward a seemingly familiar meaning that is actually not the one intended. It is a special type of sentence that creates a momentarily ambiguous interpretation because it contains a word or phrase that can be interpreted in multiple ways, causing the reader to begin to believe that a phrase will mean one thing when in reality it means something else. When read, the sentence seems ungrammatical, makes almost no sense, and often requires rereading so that its meaning may be fully understood after careful parsing.

🔗 United States 🔗 Law

Hedges v. Obama was a lawsuit filed in January 2012 against the Obama administration and members of the U.S. Congress by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges, challenging the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA). The legislation permitted the U.S. government to indefinitely detain people "who are part of or substantially support Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the United States". The plaintiffs contended that Section 1021(b)(2) of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on "suspicion of providing substantial support" to groups engaged in hostilities against the U.S. such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban respectively that the NDAA arms the U.S. military with the ability to imprison indefinitely journalists, activists and human-rights workers based on vague allegations.

A federal court in New York issued a permanent injunction blocking the indefinite detention powers of the NDAA but the injunction was stayed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals pending appeal by the Obama Administration. On July 17, 2013, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court's permanent injunction blocking the indefinite detention powers of the NDAA because the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to challenge the indefinite detention powers of the NDAA. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on April 28, 2014, leaving the Second Circuit decision intact.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software

86-DOS is a discontinued operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system in 1980.

86-DOS had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. The system was licensed and then purchased by Microsoft and developed further as MS-DOS and PC DOS.

🔗 Comics 🔗 Belgium

Ligne claire (French for "clear line", pronounced [liɲ klɛʁ]; Dutch: klare lijn) is a style of drawing created and pioneered by Hergé, the Belgian creator of The Adventures of Tintin. It uses clear strong lines sometimes of varied width and no hatching, while contrast is downplayed as well. Cast shadows are often illuminated, and the style often features strong colours and a combination of cartoonish characters against a realistic background. All these elements together can result in giving comics drawn this way a flat aspect. The name was coined by Joost Swarte in 1977.

WikiReader was a project to deliver an offline, text-only version of Wikipedia on a mobile device. The project was sponsored by Openmoko and made by Pandigital, and its source code has been released.

The project debuted an offline portable reader for Wikipedia in October 2009. Updates in multiple languages were available online and a twice-yearly offline update service delivered via Micro SD card was also available at a cost of $29 per year. WikiReader versions of the English Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktionary and Project Gutenberg can be installed together on a user-supplied 16 GB Micro SDHC memory card. Unlike Wikipedia itself, the device features parental controls.

The device can also run programs written in the Forth programming language; a simple calculator program is included.

In late 2014, the WikiReader website and project itself were shut down and abandoned for unknown reasons. Existing WikiReaders no longer receive updates to their database. Devices, professionally produced updates, and homegrown updates continue to be available from the secondary markets (e.g. eBay and Amazon), as well as from community efforts centered around the WikiReader subreddit.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Politics 🔗 Tennessee 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Journalism 🔗 Georgia (U.S. state) 🔗 Conservatism

Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945) is an American politician, business executive, syndicated columnist, and Tea Party activist.

Cain grew up in Georgia and graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He then graduated with a master's degree in computer science at Purdue University, while also working full-time for the U.S. Department of the Navy. In 1977, he joined the Pillsbury Company where he later became vice president. During the 1980s, Cain's success as a business executive at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him as chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, in which capacity he served from 1986 to 1996.

Cain was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from 1989 to 1991. He was deputy chairman, from 1992 to 1994, and then chairman until 1996, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In 1995, he was appointed to the Kemp Commission, and in 1996, he served as a senior economic adviser to Bob Dole's presidential campaign. From 1996 to 1999, Cain served as president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association.

In May 2011, Cain announced his presidential candidacy. By the fall, his proposed 9–9–9 tax plan and debating performances had made him a serious contender for the Republican nomination. In November, however, his campaign faced allegations of sexual misconduct—all denied by Cain—and he announced its suspension on December 3.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Novels/Short story

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.

It won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales.

🔗 Computing

A stack-oriented programming language is one that relies on a stack machine model for passing parameters. Several programming languages fit this description, notably Forth, RPL, PostScript, BibTeX style design language and many assembly languages (on a much lower level).

Stack-oriented languages operate on one or more stacks, each of which may serve a different purpose. Thus, programming constructs in other programming languages may need to be modified for use in a stack-oriented system. Further, some stack-oriented languages operate in postfix or Reverse Polish notation, that is, any arguments or parameters for a command are stated before that command. For example, postfix notation would be written 2, 3, multiply instead of multiply, 2, 3 (prefix or Polish notation), or 2 multiply 3 (infix notation).

A proxy firm (also a proxy advisor, proxy adviser, proxy voting agency, vote service provider or shareholder voting research provider) provides services to shareholders (in most cases an institutional investor of some type) to vote their shares at shareholder meetings of, usually, quoted companies.

The typical services provided include agenda translation, provision of vote management software, voting policy development, company research, and vote administration including vote execution. According to their websites, not all firms provide voting recommendations and those that do may simply execute client voting instructions.

The votes executed are called "Proxy Votes" because the shareholder usually does not attend the meeting and instead sends instructions - a proxy appointment - for a third party, usually the chairman of the meeting to vote shares in accordance with the instructions given on the voting card.