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🔗 Technology 🔗 Physics 🔗 Color 🔗 Chemistry 🔗 Science

Vantablack is a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom and is one of the darkest substances known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light (at 663 nm if the light is perpendicular to the material).

The name is a compound of the acronym VANTA (vertically aligned nanotube arrays) and the color black.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

Not to be confused with SuperDrive, a trademark used by Apple Computer for various disk drive products or the Super Disc, CD addon for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

The SuperDisk LS-120 is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm (3.5 in), 1.44 MB floppy disk. The SuperDisk hardware was created by 3M's storage products group Imation in 1997, with manufacturing chiefly by Matsushita.

The SuperDisk had little success in North America; with Compaq, Gateway and Dell being three of only a few OEMs who supported it. It was more successful in Asia and Australia, where the second-generation SuperDisk LS-240 drive and disk was released. SuperDisk worldwide ceased manufacturing in 2003.

🔗 Books 🔗 Mongols

The Tartar Relation (Latin: Hystoria Tartarorum, "History of the Tartars") is an ethnographic report on the Mongol Empire composed by a certain C. de Bridia in Latin in 1247. It is one of the most detailed accounts of the history and customs of the Mongols to appear in Europe around that time.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 California 🔗 Politics 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment 🔗 Politics/American politics 🔗 Journalism 🔗 California/Southern California 🔗 California/Inland Empire

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist.

He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a reputation for investigative writing. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.

The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was correct on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing, and production of the series. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.

Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004.

The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial. Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims.

🔗 Computing

SETL (SET Language) is a very high-level programming language based on the mathematical theory of sets. It was originally developed at the New York University (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in the late 1960s, by a group including (Jack) Jacob T. Schwartz, R.B.K. Dewar, and E. Schonberg. Schwartz is credited with designing the language.

🔗 United States 🔗 Law 🔗 Marketing & Advertising

Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp. 2d 116, (S.D.N.Y. 1999), aff'd 210 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2000), more widely known as the Pepsi Points case, is an American contract law case regarding offer and acceptance. The case was brought in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1999; its judgment was written by Kimba Wood.

In 1996, PepsiCo began a promotional loyalty program, in which customers could earn Pepsi Points; these points could, in turn, be traded for physical items. A television commercial for the loyalty program displayed the commercial's protagonist flying a McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II vertical take off jet aircraft to school, valued at $37.4 million at the time, which could be redeemed for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. The plaintiff, John Leonard, discovered a loophole in the promotion, allowing him to purchase Pepsi Points at 10¢ per point. Leonard promptly delivered a check for $700,008.50 to PepsiCo, attempting to purchase the jet. PepsiCo initially refuted Leonard's offer, citing the humorous nature of the offer in the advertisement. Leonard then sued PepsiCo, Inc. in an effort to enforce the offer and acceptance perceived by Leonard to be made in the advertisement. In her judgment, Wood sided with PepsiCo, noting the frivolous and improbable nature of landing a fighter jet in a school zone that was portrayed by the protagonist. PepsiCo would re-release the advertisement, valuing the jet at 700,000,000 Pepsi Points.

🔗 China

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī-shì shí shī shǐ) is a short narrative poem written in Classical Chinese that is composed of 92 characters in which every word is pronounced shi ([ʂɻ̩]) when read in present-day Standard Mandarin, with only the tones differing.

The poem was written in the 1930s by the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao as a linguistic demonstration. The poem is coherent and grammatical in Classical Chinese, but the loss of older sound combinations in Chinese over the centuries has greatly increased the number of Chinese homophones, making Classical Chinese difficult to understand in oral speech. In Mandarin, the poem is incomprehensible when read aloud, since only four syllables cover the entire 92 words of the poem. The poem is less incomprehensible—but still not very intelligible—when read in other varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese, in which it has 22 different syllables, or Hokkien Chinese, in which it has 15 different syllables.

The poem is an example of a one-syllable article, a form of constrained writing possible in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, where tonal contours expand the range of meaning for a single syllable.