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🔗 Novels 🔗 Children's literature 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Novels/Short story

"The Toynbee Convector" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy magazine in 1984, the story was subsequently featured in a 1988 short story collection also titled The Toynbee Convector.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing

Yabasic (Yet Another BASIC) is a free, open-source BASIC interpreter for Microsoft Windows and Unix platforms. Yabasic was originally developed by Marc-Oliver Ihm. From version 2.77.1, the project adopted the MIT License and the source code was moved to GitHub to encourage others to participate in its development.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing 🔗 Electronic music

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

🔗 Professional sound production 🔗 Record Production 🔗 The Beatles 🔗 Pop music

The Wall of Sound (also called the Spector Sound) is a music production formula developed by American record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios, in the 1960s, with assistance from engineer Larry Levine and the conglomerate of session musicians later known as "the Wrecking Crew". The intention was to exploit the possibilities of studio recording to create an unusually dense orchestral aesthetic that came across well through radios and jukeboxes of the era. Spector explained in 1964: "I was looking for a sound, a sound so strong that if the material was not the greatest, the sound would carry the record. It was a case of augmenting, augmenting. It all fit together like a jigsaw."

A popular misconception holds that the Wall of Sound was created simply through a maximum of noise and distortion, but the method was actually more nuanced. To attain the Wall of Sound, Spector's arrangements called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling or tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer tone. For example, Spector often duplicated a part played by an acoustic piano with an electric piano and a harpsichord. Mixed well enough, the three instruments would then be indistinguishable to the listener.

Among other features of the sound, Spector incorporated an array of orchestral instruments (strings, woodwind, brass and percussion) not previously associated with youth-oriented pop music. Reverb from an echo chamber was also highlighted for additional texture. He characterized his methods as "a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids". The combination of large ensembles with reverberation effects also increased the average audio power in a way that resembles compression. By 1979, the use of compression had become common on the radio, marking the trend that led to the loudness war in the 1980s.

The intricacies of the technique were unprecedented in the field of sound production for popular music. According to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who used the formula extensively: "In the '40s and '50s, arrangements were considered 'OK here, listen to that French horn' or 'listen to this string section now.' It was all a definite sound. There weren't combinations of sound and, with the advent of Phil Spector, we find sound combinations, which—scientifically speaking—is a brilliant aspect of sound production."

🔗 Technology 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computer science

Reversible computing is a model of computing where the computational process to some extent is time-reversible. In a model of computation that uses deterministic transitions from one state of the abstract machine to another, a necessary condition for reversibility is that the relation of the mapping from (nonzero-probability) states to their successors must be one-to-one. Reversible computing is a form of unconventional computing.

🔗 United States 🔗 United States/North Carolina 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 United States/Military history - U.S. military history 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry

The 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash was an accident that occurred near Goldsboro, North Carolina, on 23 January 1961. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The pilot in command, Walter Scott Tulloch, ordered the crew to eject at 9,000 feet (2,700 m). Five crewmen successfully ejected or bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely, another ejected, but did not survive the landing, and two died in the crash. Information declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came very close to detonating.

🔗 Computer science 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Languages

Attempto Controlled English (ACE) is a controlled natural language, i.e. a subset of standard English with a restricted syntax and restricted semantics described by a small set of construction and interpretation rules. It has been under development at the University of Zurich since 1995. In 2013, ACE version 6.7 was announced.

ACE can serve as knowledge representation, specification, and query language, and is intended for professionals who want to use formal notations and formal methods, but may not be familiar with them. Though ACE appears perfectly natural – it can be read and understood by any speaker of English – it is in fact a formal language.

ACE and its related tools have been used in the fields of software specifications, theorem proving, text summaries, ontologies, rules, querying, medical documentation and planning.

Here are some simple examples:

1. Every woman is a human.
2. A woman is a human.
3. A man tries-on a new tie. If the tie pleases his wife then the man buys it.

ACE construction rules require that each noun be introduced by a determiner (a, every, no, some, at least 5, ...). Regarding the list of examples above, ACE interpretation rules decide that (1) is interpreted as universally quantified, while (2) is interpreted as existentially quantified. Sentences like "Women are human" do not follow ACE syntax and are consequently not valid.

Interpretation rules resolve the anaphoric references in (3): the tie and it of the second sentence refer to a new tie of the first sentence, while his and the man of the second sentence refer to a man of the first sentence. Thus an ACE text is a coherent entity of anaphorically linked sentences.

The Attempto Parsing Engine (APE) translates ACE texts unambiguously into discourse representation structures (DRS) that use a variant of the language of first-order logic. A DRS can be further translated into other formal languages, for instance AceRules with various semantics, OWL, and SWRL. Translating an ACE text into (a fragment of) first-order logic allows users to reason about the text, for instance to verify, to validate, and to query it.

🔗 Biography 🔗 France 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Biography/military biography 🔗 Military history/French military history 🔗 Military history/Napoleonic era 🔗 Military history/European military history

Tarrare (c. 1772 – 1798), sometimes spelled Tarare, was a French showman and soldier, noted for his unusual eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents could not provide for him, and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled France in the company of a band of thieves and prostitutes, before becoming the warm-up act to a travelling charlatan; he would swallow corks, stones, live animals and a whole basketful of apples. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.

At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. With military rations, though quadrupled, unable to satisfy his large appetite, he would eat any available food from gutters and refuse heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. He was hospitalised due to exhaustion and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet, he was of normal size and appearance, and showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.

General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Tarrare could not speak German, and on his first mission was captured by Prussian forces, severely beaten and underwent a mock execution before being returned to French lines.

Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that would cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum, tobacco pills, wine vinegar and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors could not keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. After being suspected of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital. He reappeared four years later in Versailles with a case of severe tuberculosis, and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment 🔗 Journalism

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American polymath: scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his writing career. In an obituary in gizmodo, he is described as "a tireless ambassador for the future."

Pournelle is particularly known for writing hard science fiction, and received multiple awards for his writing. In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators, most notably Larry Niven. Pournelle served a term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, he contributed to the computer magazine Byte, writing from the viewpoint of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, “We do this stuff so you won’t have to.” He created one of the first blogs, entitled "Chaos Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology, space technology, and science fiction.

Pournelle was also known for his paleoconservative political views, which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of the Reagan Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what would become the Strategic Defense Initiative.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Aviation/Soviet aviation

The Lun-class ekranoplan is a ground effect vehicle (GEV) designed by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev in 1975 and used by the Soviet and Russian navies from 1987 until sometime in the late 1990s.

It flew using the lift generated by the ground effect of its large wings when within about four metres (13 ft) above the surface of the water. Although they might look similar to regular aircraft, and have related technical characteristics, ekranoplans like the Lun are not aircraft, seaplanes, hovercraft, nor hydrofoils. Rather, "ground effect" is a distinct technology. The International Maritime Organization classifies these vehicles as maritime ships.

The name Lun comes from the Russian word for harrier.