Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Business 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Denmark

Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 – 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering and queueing theory.

By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Erlang had created the field of telephone networks analysis. His early work in scrutinizing the use of local, exchange and trunk telephone line usage in a small community to understand the theoretical requirements of an efficient network led to the creation of the Erlang formula, which became a foundational element of modern telecommunication network studies.

🔗 Judaism 🔗 Writing systems 🔗 Kabbalah

Gematria (; Hebrew: גמטריא or gimatria גימטריה, plural גמטראות or גימטריאות, gimatriot) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumerical cipher. The letters of the alphabets involved have standard numerical values, but a word can yield several values if a cipher is used.

According to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), isopsephy, based on the Milesian numbering of the Greek alphabet developed in the Greek city of Miletus, was part of the Pythagorean tradition, which originated in the 6th century BCE. The first evidence of use of Hebrew letters as numbers dates to 78 BCE; gematria is still used in Jewish culture. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures, derived from or inspired by either Greek isopsephy or Hebrew gematria, and include Arabic abjad numerals and English gematria.

The most common form of Hebrew gematria is used in the Talmud and Midrash, and elaborately by many post-Talmudic commentators. It involves reading words and sentences as numbers, assigning numerical instead of phonetic value to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. When read as numbers, they can be compared and contrasted with other words or phrases – cf. the Hebrew proverb נכנס יין יצא סוד (nichnas yayin yatza sod, lit. 'wine entered, secret went out', i.e. "in vino veritas"). The gematric value of יין ('wine') is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of סוד ('secret', ס=60; ו=6; ד=4)‎.

Although a type of gematria system ('Aru') was employed by the ancient Babylonian culture, their writing script was logographic, and the numerical assignments they made were to whole words. Aru was very different from the Milesian systems used by Greek and Hebrew cultures, which used alphabetic writing scripts. The value of words with Aru were assigned in an entirely arbitrary manner and correspondences were made through tables, and so cannot be considered a true form of gematria.

Gematria sums can involve single words, or a string of lengthy calculations. A short example of Hebrew numerology that uses gematria is the word חי (chai, lit. 'alive'), which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the mispar gadol table shown below) add up to 18. This has made 18 a "lucky number" among the Jewish people. Donations of money in multiples of 18 are very popular.

In early Jewish sources, the term can also refer to other forms of calculation or letter manipulation, for example atbash.

🔗 Military history/United States military history

🔗 Books 🔗 Maps

An Atlas of Fantasy, compiled by Jeremiah Benjamin Post, was originally published in 1973 by Mirage Press and revised for a 1979 edition by Ballantine Books. The 1979 edition dropped twelve maps from the first edition and added fourteen new ones. It also included an introduction by Lester del Rey.

To remain of manageable size, the Atlas excludes advertising maps, cartograms, most disproportionate maps, and alternate history ("might have been") maps, focusing instead on imaginary lands derived from literary sources. It purposefully omits "one-to-one" maps such as Thomas Hardy's Wessex (which merely renames places in southwest England), but includes Barsetshire and Yoknapatawpha County, which are evidently considered to be sufficiently fictionalized. The emphasis is on science fiction and fantasy, though Post suggests there exist enough mystery fiction maps to someday create The Detectives' Handy Pocket Atlas. Other maps were omitted due to permission costs or reproduction quality.

The maps are reproduced from many sources, and an Index of Artists is included.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic

Buridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it dies of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision between the hay and water. A common variant of the paradox substitutes two identical piles of hay for the hay and water; the ass, unable to choose between the two, dies of hunger.

The paradox is named after the 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes. Although the illustration is named after Buridan, philosophers have discussed the concept before him, notably Aristotle, who used the example of a man equally hungry and thirsty, and Al-Ghazali, who used a man faced with the choice of equally good dates.

A version of this situation appears as metastability in digital electronics, when a circuit must decide between two states based on an input that is in itself undefined (neither zero nor one). Metastability becomes a problem if the circuit spends more time than it should in this "undecided" state, which is usually set by the speed of the clock the system is using.

🔗 Spaceflight

NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, is a NASA analog mission that sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in Aquarius underwater laboratory, the world's only undersea research station, for up to three weeks at a time in preparation for future space exploration.

Aquarius is an underwater habitat 3.5 miles (5.6 km) off Key Largo, Florida, in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It is deployed on the ocean floor next to deep coral reefs 62 feet (19 m) below the surface.

NASA has used it since 2001 for a series of space exploration simulation missions, usually lasting 7 to 14 days, with space research mainly conducted by international astronauts. The mission had cost about 500 million U.S. dollars. The crew members are called aquanauts (as they live underwater at depth pressure for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface), and they perform EVAs in the underwater environment. A technique known as saturation diving allows the aquanauts to live and work underwater for days or weeks at a time. After twenty four hours underwater at any depth, the human body becomes saturated with dissolved gas. With saturation diving, divers can accurately predict exactly how much time they need to decompress before returning to the surface. This information limits the risk of decompression sickness. By living in the Aquarius habitat and working at the same depth on the ocean floor, NEEMO crews are able to remain underwater for the duration of their mission.

For NASA, the Aquarius habitat and its surroundings provide a convincing analog for space exploration. Much like space, the undersea world is a hostile, alien place for humans to live. NEEMO crew members experience some of the same challenges there that they would on a distant asteroid, planet (i.e. Mars) or Moon. During NEEMO missions, the aquanauts are able to simulate living on a spacecraft and test spacewalk techniques for future space missions. Working in space and underwater environments requires extensive planning and sophisticated equipment. The underwater condition has the additional benefit of allowing NASA to "weight" the aquanauts to simulate different gravity environments.

Until 2012, Aquarius was owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the National Undersea Research Center (NURC) at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington as a marine biology study base.

Since 2013, Aquarius is owned by Florida International University (FIU). As part of the FIU Marine Education and Research Initiative, the Medina Aquarius Program is dedicated to the study and preservation of marine ecosystems worldwide and is enhancing the scope and impact of FIU on research, educational outreach, technology development, and professional training. At the heart of the program is the Aquarius Reef Base.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing 🔗 Musical Instruments 🔗 Electronic music 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Science and technology

UTAU is a Japanese singing synthesizer application created by Ameya/Ayame. This program is similar to the VOCALOID software, with the difference being it is shareware instead of under a third party licensing.

🔗 Department of Fun

An article about or described by any of the following can be safely assumed to fit into the set of unnecessary articles:

1. You, your family, or the organization you work for.
2. Your band, which has only sold 47 copies of its one album. Even if you think it will sell 48. Or maybe 49! Or, if you get really lucky, you can pay off the record store owner so that he may buy one and your sales will have gone up to fifty!!! Keep dreamin', brotha.
3. Your imaginary friend or your imaginary friends that don't even exist.
4. The religion, language or even country that you made up with your friends in school one day.
5. The street you live on, unless it is on a Monopoly board. But since it is highly unlikely that you live on a Monopoly game board, we suggest that you not even try.
6. Any one of the 16 distinct regions in the Pokémon video game series or lieking mudkipz, or hering dat someon lieks mudkipz. Remember, not everyone is a Pokémon fanatic.
7. A stunt or trick only you have ever attempted, probably unsuccessfully.
8. Any movie you made yourself which has never been seen by more people at one time than can fit in your basement. Even if you have a really big basement.
9. Individual songs that have never been released as a single nor seen radio play, unless they're twenty minutes long or have led to a phone number becoming unusable or even have questioned the essence of music itself.
10. "(Anything) in popular culture." Anything at all.
11. Likewise "Hysterical Realism in the Works of (insert neither hysterical nor realistic author here)".
12. Your dormitory, university residence, or any suite therein.
13. Stuff nobody but that guy who changes his Spock ears more often than his underpants cares about, or the equivalent thereto. For example, a song about a custom map of a video game, unless you are famous and the song managed to release as a single.
14. Anything about which you cannot be buggered to write one complete sent
15. Subjects that cannot be studied, or the knowledge of which amounts only to the fact that it pertains to another topic. A favourite line from a movie or catchy lyric, a potent phrase used in argument, juicy facts of interest to fans, a punch-line or zinger; these are all very interesting, but usually all that can be informatively written about topic "X" is: "X is a _______ found in _______."
16. Just about everything listed on Wikipedia:Millionth topic pool.
17. For that matter, Wikipedia:Millionth topic pool.
18. Anything about your cat or dog and how cute it is (or your hamster, degu, or chinchilla).
19. Exploding Whales, or indeed Exploding Wales, or even Exploding Wales. Or blowing up any other animals, for example, exploding mice, or even exploding Velociraptor, for that matter. Most things that implode are pretty much off the list too, with a few exceptions.
20. Anything written under the influence of recreational substances or while tired and emotional.
21. An article about another article, written after the use of aforementioned substances.
22. A fork of an existing article for the sole purpose of adding some humor.
23. The weather in London. Not even a redirect. (Wowee).
24. Your guild in World of Warcraft or similar time wasters. Just because you have no life a personally fascinating hobby doesn't mean you get to tell the world about it. And don't write about this guy in your guild who wiped your raid, either.
25. Something you just saw on YouTube and, possibly, laughed at.
26. Something you just put on YouTube.
27. An article that haz badly grammar and/or speelling. Including, bad punctuation!!
28. Any meme, no matter how popular or important.
29. Anything you don't know the title of.
30. Your wiki or blog. It's probably not internationally famous. If it is, well go ahead, but let's face it; your blog of cute cats is not internationally famous (three readers is not fame).
31. Your new invention or research paper that will change the world. It will undoubtedly fail.
32. Anything about your cat named Bubba or your dog named Max. No one cares. Trust us.
33. Your nomination for the Noble (or even Nobel) Peace Prize.
34. Anything about how you were abducted by aliens.
35. An article on the dream you had last night. No matter how long you describe it, it will never be interesting: Even if dreaming that you were the inventor of the chalk board who had to overcome obstacles from the evil book binding lobbyists deeply moved you to tears upon waking up.
36. An article on the person that knocked on your door while you was writing the article about your dream last night, causing you to forget about the dream (but I’ll be honest, I feel for you).
37. An article about Wikpiedia, Wikipaedia, Wiokipedia, Wikipeedia, Wikipeadia, or any other Wikis that appear to be Wikipedia but aren't.
38. An article about the media response to the Wikipedia article about the barely notable thing that shouldn't even have an article (recursivity has its limits, even here).
39. The difference between Hoagy Carmichael and Stokely Carmichael.
40. An entry promoting your hilarious web series about Wikipedia.
41. Recreating this dumb list.
42. Anything about hashtags. #IHateHashtags
43. Anything about how fat you are or how much weight you're losing (trust us; no one cares).
44. Headlight flashing – I know, it's preposterous, even for Wikipedia. But when you're done laughing and/or crying, follow the link. It really exists.
45. Assumptions about the conclusions of scientific publications that you have seen the titles of, but not read.
46. Your self-published book.
47. McGannahan Skjellyfetti.
48. An article about your friend's latest selfie. Or, for that matter, selfie stick. They are banned in most places anyway.
49. Lists of times at which commercial breaks occurred during a sporting event.
50. Your personal opinions about your boyfriend or girlfriend.
51. An article on discussing the differences between you and your close friends. It does not matter to most people in the world.
52. An article about how Tyson Foods is run by a bunch of chicken fuckers because the main article is protected from vandalism by the legions of Internet trolls.
53. Yet another list of Google doodles.
54. A new sex position that you and your boys theory-crafted one night.
55. Times Scooby-Doo has defied the laws of reality.
56. A list of celebrity couples names for couples that you wish would get together but as of now haven't.
57. Your stupid esoteric programming language you made up to 'test the boundaries of computer programming language design'.
58. Any article related to odorous gas clouds, but particularly smelly farts.
59. Your youtube channel, unless you have millions of fangirls.
60. Your opinion and/or fascination about outer space, even if there are lots of unusual exoplanets out there. Yes, we know. They're weird. No need to tell us that.
61. Your opinion on time traveling to have dinner with the members of Bone Symphony or Bone Thugs-n-Harmony or Boney M. or The Right Honourable Bonar Law
62. The time you laughed about someone eating a red 5-pound gummy skull while wearing a jetpack while driving a limousine at 5 a.m. on a Tuesday in August 2018.
63. An article that uses templates to perform math for no apparent reason besides your entertainment
64. Your anus and how it had very good funny time with girl.
65. The time you laughed at someone living in Fortnite (Chapter 1), even though I get that they were eaten by a Black hole. Oh well, they came back!
66. Posting a video of yourself saying the n-word.
67. Posting an image of yourself falling off the Burj Khalifa.
68. Singing any Cardi B song.
69. Posting 69 (nice) useless messages made by bored editors of Wikipedia.
70. Your low-effort school play of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"
71. A list of times you pinged @everyone on your Discord server.

🔗 Technology

Deep borehole disposal (DBD) is the concept of disposing high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors in extremely deep boreholes instead of in more traditional deep geological repositories that are excavated like mines. Deep borehole disposal seeks to place the waste as much as five kilometres (3.1 mi) beneath the surface of the Earth and relies primarily on the thickness of the natural geological barrier to safely isolate the waste from the biosphere for a very long period of time so that it should not pose a threat to humans and the environment. The concept was originally developed in the 1970s, but in 2014 a proposal for a first experimental borehole was proposed by a consortium headed by Sandia National Laboratories.

The waste would be put into the lower mile of such a hole, within crystalline rock to isolate it from the environment. The upper two miles of the borehole would be filled with protective layers including asphalt, bentonite, concrete and crushed rock that are expected to protect the environment during geologic time, and the hole would be lined with steel casing.

A pair of proposed test boreholes in the United States were cancelled due to public opposition and lack of funding in 2016 and 2017.