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🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software

The Oberon System is a modular, single-user, single-process, multitasking operating system written in the programming language of the same name. It was originally developed in the late 1980s at ETH Zürich. The Oberon System has an unconventional visual text user interface instead of a conventional CLI or GUI. This "TUI" was very innovative in its time and influenced the design of the Acme text editor for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system.

The latest version of the Oberon System, Project Oberon 2013, is still maintained by Niklaus Wirth and a number of collaborators but older ETH versions of the Oberon Systems have been orphaned. The Oberon System also evolved into the multi-process, SMP-capable Bluebottle operating system, with a zooming user interface.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of religion 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Philosophy/Metaphysics

Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind, concerning the relation of mind to matter. These theories take the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".

Neutral monism has gained prominence as a potential solution to theoretical issues within the philosophy of mind, specifically the mind–body problem and the hard problem of consciousness. The mind–body problem is the problem of explaining how mind relates to matter. The hard problem is a related philosophical problem targeted at physicalist theories of mind specifically: the problem arises because it is not obvious how a purely physical universe could give rise to conscious experience. This is because physical explanations are mechanistic: that is, they explain phenomena by appealing to underlying functions and structures. And, though explanations of this sort seem to work well for a wide variety of phenomena, conscious experience seems uniquely resistant to functional explanations. As the philosopher David Chalmers has put it: "even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?" The hard problem has motivated Chalmers and other philosophers to abandon the project of explaining consciousness in terms physical or chemical mechanisms (only 56.5% of philosophers are physicalists, according to the most recent PhilPapers survey).

With this, there has been growing demand for alternative ontologies (such as neutral monism) that may provide explanatory frameworks more suitable for explaining the existence of consciousness. It has been accepted by several prominent English-speaking philosophers, such as William James and Bertrand Russell.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Books 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Continental philosophy

Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence.

Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original. Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.

🔗 Computing

A quine is a computer program which takes no input and produces a copy of its own source code as its only output. The standard terms for these programs in the computability theory and computer science literature are "self-replicating programs", "self-reproducing programs", and "self-copying programs".

A quine is a fixed point of an execution environment, when the execution environment is viewed as a function transforming programs into their outputs. Quines are possible in any Turing complete programming language, as a direct consequence of Kleene's recursion theorem. For amusement, programmers sometimes attempt to develop the shortest possible quine in any given programming language.

The name "quine" was coined by Douglas Hofstadter, in his popular science book Gödel, Escher, Bach, in honor of philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), who made an extensive study of indirect self-reference, and in particular for the following paradox-producing expression, known as Quine's paradox:

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Modern philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Continental philosophy

The Art of Being Right: 38 Ways to Win an Argument (also The Art of Controversy, or Eristic Dialectic: The Art of Winning an Argument; German: Eristische Dialektik: Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten; 1831) is an acidulous, sarcastic treatise written by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In it, Schopenhauer examines a total of thirty-eight methods of showing up one's opponent in a debate. He introduces his essay with the idea that philosophers have concentrated in ample measure on the rules of logic, but have not (especially since the time of Immanuel Kant) engaged with the darker art of the dialectic, of controversy. Whereas the purpose of logic is classically said to be a method of arriving at the truth, dialectic, says Schopenhauer, "...on the other hand, would treat of the intercourse between two rational beings who, because they are rational, ought to think in common, but who, as soon as they cease to agree like two clocks keeping exactly the same time, create a disputation, or intellectual contest."

🔗 Time 🔗 Switzerland 🔗 Trains 🔗 Trains/Stations

The Swiss railway clock was designed in 1944 by Hans Hilfiker, a Swiss engineer and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) employee, together with Moser-Baer, a Swiss clock manufacturer, for use by the SBB as a station clock. In 1953, Hilfiker added a red second hand in the shape of the baton used by train dispatch staff., giving the clock its current appearance.

🔗 Agriculture 🔗 England 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Measurement

Yan Tan Tethera or yan-tan-tethera is a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Northern England and some other parts of Britain. The words are numbers taken from Brythonic Celtic languages such as Cumbric which had died out in most of Northern England by the sixth century, but they were commonly used for sheep counting and counting stitches in knitting until the Industrial Revolution, especially in the fells of the Lake District. Though most of these number systems fell out of use by the turn of the twentieth century, some are still in use.

I have edited thousands of articles so that they do not contain the phrase "comprised of". Edit summaries for those edits usually refer to this page.

This page explains the purpose of these edits and the project in general.

🔗 Japan 🔗 Paranormal 🔗 Baseball 🔗 Japan/Japanese baseball 🔗 Japan/Mythology

The Curse of the Colonel (Japanese: カーネルサンダースの呪い, romanisation: Kāneru Sandāsu no Noroi) refers to a 1985 Japanese urban legend regarding a reputed curse placed on the Japanese Kansai-based Hanshin Tigers baseball team by the ghost of deceased KFC founder and mascot Colonel Sanders.

The curse was said to be placed on the team because of the Colonel's anger over treatment of one of his store-front statues, which was thrown into the Dōtonbori River by celebrating Hanshin fans before their team's victory in the 1985 Japan Championship Series. As is common with sports-related curses, the Curse of the Colonel was used to explain the team's subsequent 18-year losing streak. Some fans believed the team would never win another Japan Series until the statue had been recovered. They have appeared in the Japan Series three times since then, losing in 2003, 2005 and 2014.

Comparisons are often made between the Hanshin Tigers and the Boston Red Sox, who were said to be under the Curse of the Bambino until they won the World Series in 2004. The "Curse of the Colonel" has also been used as a bogeyman threat to those who would divulge the secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices that result in the unique taste of his chicken.

🔗 Psychology

Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. It examines the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, childhood, group dynamics, mechanisms of psychic defense, dreams, and creativity are primary areas of research. It works to combine the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Work in the field has been done in the areas of childhood, creativity, dreams, family dynamics, overcoming adversity, personality, political and presidential psychobiography. There are major psychohistorical studies of studies of anthropology, art, ethnology, history, politics and political science, and much else.