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🔗 China 🔗 Maps

Mao Kun map, usually referred to in modern Chinese sources as Zheng He's Navigation Map (simplified Chinese: 郑和航海图; traditional Chinese: 鄭和航海圖; pinyin: Zhèng Hé hánghǎi tú), is a set of navigation charts published in the Ming dynasty military treatise Wubei Zhi. The book was compiled by Mao Yuanyi in 1621 and published in 1628; the name of the map refers to his grandfather Mao Kun (Chinese: 茅坤; pinyin: Máo Kūn) from whose library the map is likely to have originated. The map is often regarded as a surviving document from the expeditions of Zheng He in addition to accounts written by Zheng's officers, such as Yingya Shenglan by Ma Huan, Xingcha Shenglan by Fei Xin, and Xiyang Fanguo Zhi by Gong Zhen. It is the earliest Chinese map to give an adequate representation of Southern Asia, Persia, Arabia and East Africa.

🔗 Game theory

The pirate game is a simple mathematical game. It is a multi-player version of the ultimatum game.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Aviation 🔗 France 🔗 France/Paris 🔗 Iran 🔗 Aviation/airport

Mehran Karimi Nasseri (Persian: مهران کریمی ناصری‎ pronounced [mehˈrɒn kæriˈmi nɒseˈri]; born 1946), also known as Sir Alfred Mehran, is an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 26 August 1988 until July 2006, when he was hospitalized. His autobiography was published as a book, The Terminal Man, in 2004. His story was the inspiration for the 2004 Steven Spielberg film The Terminal.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Biography/military biography 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Anti-war 🔗 Lutheranism 🔗 Pritzker Military Library 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Germany/Munich

Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) with her brother, Hans. For her actions, she was executed by guillotine. Since the 1970s, Scholl has been extensively commemorated for her anti-Nazi resistance work.

🔗 Computing

Excess-3, 3-excess or 10-excess-3 binary code (often abbreviated as XS-3, 3XS or X3), shifted binary or Stibitz code (after George Stibitz, who built a relay-based adding machine in 1937) is a self-complementary binary-coded decimal (BCD) code and numeral system. It is a biased representation. Excess-3 code was used on some older computers as well as in cash registers and hand-held portable electronic calculators of the 1970s, among other uses.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot be shown to have a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was first presented by philosopher John Searle in his paper, "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980. It has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of the argument is a thought experiment known as the Chinese room.

The argument is directed against the philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism, which hold that the mind may be viewed as an information-processing system operating on formal symbols. Specifically, the argument is intended to refute a position Searle calls strong AI: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."

Although it was originally presented in reaction to the statements of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, it is not an argument against the behavioural goals of AI research, because it does not limit the amount of intelligence a machine can display. The argument applies only to digital computers running programs and does not apply to machines in general.

🔗 Physics 🔗 Lists 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Time 🔗 Futures studies 🔗 Geology 🔗 Extinction 🔗 Solar System 🔗 Astronomy/Solar System

While the future can never be predicted with absolute certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which has revealed how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which predicts how life will evolve over time; and plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia.

All projections of the future of Earth, the Solar System, and the universe must account for the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or a loss of the energy available to do work, must rise over time. Stars will eventually exhaust their supply of hydrogen fuel and burn out. Close encounters between astronomical objects gravitationally fling planets from their star systems, and star systems from galaxies.

Physicists expect that matter itself will eventually come under the influence of radioactive decay, as even the most stable materials break apart into subatomic particles. Current data suggest that the universe has a flat geometry (or very close to flat), and thus will not collapse in on itself after a finite time, and the infinite future allows for the occurrence of a number of massively improbable events, such as the formation of Boltzmann brains.

The timelines displayed here cover events from the beginning of the 11th millennium to the furthest reaches of future time. A number of alternative future events are listed to account for questions still unresolved, such as whether humans will become extinct, whether protons decay, and whether the Earth survives when the Sun expands to become a red giant.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 Occupational Safety and Health

Aviation safety means the state of an aviation system or organization in which risks associated with aviation activities, related to, or in direct support of the operation of aircraft, are reduced and controlled to an acceptable level. It encompasses the theory, practice, investigation, and categorization of flight failures, and the prevention of such failures through regulation, education, and training. It can also be applied in the context of campaigns that inform the public as to the safety of air travel.

Aviation safety should not be confused with airport security which includes all of the measures taken to combat intentional malicious acts.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Computing 🔗 London 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Business 🔗 England 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophers 🔗 Philately 🔗 Biography/Core biographies

Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Considered by some to be a father of the computer, Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's Analytical Engine. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.

Parts of Babbage's incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London. In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked.