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🔗 International relations 🔗 France 🔗 Law 🔗 Politics 🔗 Basque 🔗 Islands 🔗 Spain

Pheasant Island (French: Île des Faisans/Île de la Conférence, Spanish: Isla de los Faisanes, Basque: Konpantzia) is an uninhabited river island in the Bidasoa river, located between France and Spain, whose administration alternates between both nations.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Physics 🔗 Rocketry

The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, classical rocket equation, or ideal rocket equation is a mathematical equation that describes the motion of vehicles that follow the basic principle of a rocket: a device that can apply acceleration to itself using thrust by expelling part of its mass with high velocity can thereby move due to the conservation of momentum.

${\displaystyle \Delta v=v_{\text{e}}\ln {\frac {m_{0}}{m_{f}}}=I_{\text{sp}}g_{0}\ln {\frac {m_{0}}{m_{f}}}}$

where:

${\displaystyle \Delta v\ }$ is delta-v – the maximum change of velocity of the vehicle (with no external forces acting).

${\displaystyle m_{0}}$ is the initial total mass, including propellant, also known as wet mass.

${\displaystyle m_{f}}$ is the final total mass without propellant, also known as dry mass.

${\displaystyle v_{\text{e}}=I_{\text{sp}}g_{0}}$ is the effective exhaust velocity, where:

${\displaystyle I_{\text{sp}}}$ is the specific impulse in dimension of time.

${\displaystyle g_{0}}$ is standard gravity.

${\displaystyle \ln }$ is the natural logarithm function.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military biography

"My Trial as a War Criminal" is a 1949 short story by atomic physicist Leo Szilard. Szilard had played a leading role in the Manhattan Project, and in the story he imagines the kind of show trial he might have had if he had been prosecuted in a manner similar to the Nuremberg Trials. Szilard earlier drafted the letter Albert Einstein signed, to Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting the US develop the military uses of nuclear power, and later the petition unsuccessfully advocating against the use of nuclear weapons.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Military history/French military history 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Rocketry 🔗 Military history/European military history

The S3 was a French land-based Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, equipped with a single 1.2-megatonne thermonuclear warhead. In France it is called an SSBS, for Sol-Sol Balistique Stratégique, or Ground-Ground Strategic Ballistic Missile.

🔗 United States 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 United States/Washington - Seattle 🔗 United States/Washington

The Seattle windshield pitting epidemic is a phenomenon which affected Bellingham, Seattle, and other communities of Washington state in April, 1954; it is considered an example of a mass delusion. It was characterized by widespread observation of previously unnoticed windshield holes, pits and dings, leading residents to believe that a common causative agent was at work. It was originally thought to be the work of vandals but the rate of pitting was so great that residents began to attribute it to everything from sand flea eggs to nuclear bomb testing.

Originating in Bellingham in March, police initially believed the work to be vandals using BB guns. However the pitting was soon observed in the nearby towns of Sedro Woolley and Mount Vernon and by mid-April, appeared to have spread to the town of Anacortes on Fidalgo Island.

Within a week, the news and the so-called "pitting epidemic" had reached metropolitan Seattle. As the newspapers began to feature the story, more and more reports of pitting were called in. Motorists began stopping police cars to report damage. Car lots and parking garages reported particularly severe attacks.

Several hypotheses for the widespread damage were postulated:

• Some thought that a new million-watt radio transmitter at nearby Jim Creek Naval Radio Station was producing waves that caused physical oscillations in glass;
• Some believed it to be the work of cosmic rays;
• Some reported seeing glass bubbles form right before their eyes, believing it to be the work of sand fleas.

By April 15, close to 3,000 windshields had been reported as affected. Mayor Allan Pomeroy contacted Washington Governor Arthur B. Langlie, then President Dwight D. Eisenhower asking for assistance.

Finally, Sergeant Max Allison of the Seattle police crime laboratory stated that the pitting reports consisted of "5 per cent hoodlum-ism, and 95 per cent public hysteria." By April 17, the pitting suddenly stopped.

The "Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic" as it is called has become a textbook case of collective delusion (not "mass hysteria" as reported). Although natural windshield pitting had been going on for some time, it was only when the media called public attention to it that people actually looked at their windshields and saw damage they had never noticed before.

🔗 Biography

Jonathan Gillette, known by the pseudonym why the lucky stiff (often abbreviated as _why), is a writer, cartoonist, artist, and programmer notable for his work with the Ruby programming language. Annie Lowrey described him as "one of the most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers" in the world. Along with Yukihiro Matsumoto and David Heinemeier Hansson, he was seen as one of the key figures in the Ruby community.

_why made a presentation enigmatically titled "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever" at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention. It explored how to teach programming and make the subject more appealing to adolescents. _why gave a presentation and performed with his band, the Thirsty Cups, at RailsConf in 2006.

On 19 August 2009, _why's accounts on Twitter and GitHub and his personally maintained websites went offline. Shortly before he disappeared, why the lucky stiff tweeted, "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

_why's colleagues have assembled collections of his writings and projects.

Later his website briefly went back online with a detailed explanation of his plans for the future.

🔗 Computer science

In computer science, the shunting-yard algorithm is a method for parsing mathematical expressions specified in infix notation. It can produce either a postfix notation string, also known as Reverse Polish notation (RPN), or an abstract syntax tree (AST). The algorithm was invented by Edsger Dijkstra and named the "shunting yard" algorithm because its operation resembles that of a railroad shunting yard. Dijkstra first described the Shunting Yard Algorithm in the Mathematisch Centrum report MR 34/61.

Like the evaluation of RPN, the shunting yard algorithm is stack-based. Infix expressions are the form of mathematical notation most people are used to, for instance "3 + 4" or "3 + 4 × (2 − 1)". For the conversion there are two text variables (strings), the input and the output. There is also a stack that holds operators not yet added to the output queue. To convert, the program reads each symbol in order and does something based on that symbol. The result for the above examples would be (in Reverse Polish notation) "3 4 +" and "3 4 2 1 − × +", respectively.

The shunting-yard algorithm was later generalized into operator-precedence parsing.

🔗 Transport 🔗 Cycling

The Idaho stop is the common name for laws that allow cyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign, and a red light as a stop sign. It first became law in Idaho in 1982, but was not adopted elsewhere until Delaware adopted a limited stop-as-yield law, the "Delaware Yield", in 2017. Arkansas was the second state to legalize both stop-as-yield and red light-as-stop in April 2019. Studies in Delaware and Idaho have shown significant decreases in crashes at stop-controlled intersections.

🔗 Amateur radio

A QSL card is a written confirmation of either a two-way radiocommunication between two amateur radio or citizens band stations; a one-way reception of a signal from an AM radio, FM radio, television or shortwave broadcasting station; or the reception of a two-way radiocommunication by a third party listener. A typical QSL card is the same size and made from the same material as a typical postcard, and most are sent through the mail as such.

QSL card derived its name from the Q code "QSL". A Q code message can stand for a statement or a question (when the code is followed by a question mark). In this case, 'QSL?' (note the question mark) means "Do you confirm receipt of my transmission?" while 'QSL' (without a question mark) means "I confirm receipt of your transmission."

🔗 United States 🔗 Netherlands

The American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA, Title 2 of Pub.L. 107–206 (text) (pdf), H.R. 4775, 116 Stat. 820, enacted August 2, 2002) is a United States federal law that aims "to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party." Introduced by U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and U.S. Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) it was an amendment to the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act for Further Recovery From and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States (H.R. 4775). The amendment passed 75-19 (S.Amdt 3597.) The bill was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on August 2, 2002.