Random Articles (Page 4)
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π Alan L. Hart
Alan L. Hart (born Alberta Lucille Hart, October 4, 1890Β β July 1, 1962) was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer and novelist. He was in 1917β18 one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy in the United States, and lived the rest of his life as a man. He pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and helped implement TB screening programs that saved thousands of lives.
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- "Alan L. Hart" | 2020-05-02 | 43 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Goethe's Theory of Colors
Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840. The book contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.
The work originated in Goethe's occupation with painting and mainly exerted an influence on the arts (Philipp Otto Runge, J.Β M.Β W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Wassily Kandinsky). The book is a successor to two short essays entitled "Contributions to Optics".
Although Goethe's work was rejected by physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have concerned themselves with it, including Thomas Johann Seebeck, Arthur Schopenhauer (see: OnΒ Vision and Colors), Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolf Steiner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt GΓΆdel, and Mitchell Feigenbaum.
Goethe's book provides a catalogue of how colour is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases. Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of colour, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Philosophers have come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goetheβa subject analyzed at length by Wittgenstein in his comments on Goethe's theory in Remarks on Colour.
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- "Goethe's Theory of Colors" | 2015-12-20 | 34 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (also known as Oswald the Rabbit, Oswald Rabbit, and Ozzie) is an animated cartoon character created in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures. He starred in several animated short films released to theaters from 1927 to 1938. Twenty-seven animated Oswald shorts were produced at the Walt Disney Studio. After Universal took control of Oswald's character in 1928, Disney created Mickey Mouse as a replacement to Oswald.
In 2003, Buena Vista Games pitched a concept for an Oswald-themed video game to then-Disney President and future-CEO Bob Iger, who became committed to acquiring the rights to Oswald. In 2006, The Walt Disney Company acquired the trademark of Oswald (with NBCUniversal effectively trading Oswald for the services of Al Michaels as play-by-play announcer on NBC Sunday Night Football).
Oswald returned in Disney's 2010 video game, Epic Mickey. The game's metafiction plot parallels Oswald's real-world history, dealing with the character's feelings of abandonment by Disney and envy toward Mickey Mouse. He has since appeared in Disney theme parks and comic books, as well as two follow-up games, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion. Oswald made his first appearance in an animated production in 85 years through his cameo appearance in the 2013 animated short Get a Horse! He was the subject of the 2015 feature film Walt Before Mickey. Oswald also appears as a townsperson in Disney Infinity 2.0. In 2022, Oswald appeared in a new short produced by Disney. He also has a cameo appearance in Once Upon a Studio.
In January 2023, the copyrights on several of the original Oswald shorts, as well as the character, expired. Those films and the character are now in the public domain. In 2024, it was announced that the character will appear in Oswald: Down the Rabbit Hole, an upcoming horror film directed by Lilton Stewart III, starring Ernie Hudson as the titular character.
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- "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" | 2025-06-15 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Italian Brainrot
Italian brainrot is a series of surrealist Internet memes that emerged in early 2025 characterized by absurd photos of AI-generated creatures with pseudo-Italian names. The phenomenon quickly spread across social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, owing to its combination of synthesized "Italian" voiceovers, grotesque, funny visuals, and nonsensical narrative.
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- "Italian Brainrot" | 2025-05-31 | 12 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Panopticon
The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.
Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour. The architecture consists of a rotunda with an inspection house at its centre. From the centre the manager or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison. It is his prison that is now most widely meant by the term "panopticon".
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- "Panopticon" | 2023-10-28 | 33 Upvotes 15 Comments
- "Panopticon" | 2020-01-14 | 92 Upvotes 42 Comments
- "Panopticon" | 2014-06-30 | 38 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Dial Box (Computer Peripheral)
A dial box is a computer peripheral for direct 3D manipulation e.g. to interactively input the rotation and torsion angles of a model displayed on a computer screen. Dial boxes were common input tools in the first years of interactive 3D graphics and they were available for Silicon Graphics (SGI) or Sun Microsystems and sold with their workstations. Currently they have been replaced by standard computer mouse interaction techniques.
Standard dial box has 8 dials mounted on a plate. The plate is set upright with the help of a stand and usually located next to the computer screen for convenient access. The connection to a computer is made via the serial port (RS-232).
One of the fields of application for dial boxes was molecular graphics.
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- "Dial Box (Computer Peripheral)" | 2023-05-28 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π The fire that has been burning for 56 years
The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962. Its original cause is still a matter of debate. It is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90Β m) over an 8-mile (13Β km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15Β km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years. It has caused most of the town to be abandoned: the population dwindled from around 1,500 at the time the fire started to 7 in 2013, and most of the buildings have been levelled.
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- "Pennsylvania town coal mine has been on fire since 1962" | 2021-02-07 | 60 Upvotes 35 Comments
- "The fire that has been burning for 56 years" | 2018-12-13 | 12 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Unsolved Problems in Economics
This is a list of some of the major unsolved problems, puzzles, or questions in economics. Some of these are theoretical in origin and some of them concern the inability of orthodox economic theory to explain an empirical observation.
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- "Unsolved Problems in Economics" | 2022-05-17 | 157 Upvotes 237 Comments
π Republic of Molossia β A Micronation in the US
The Republic of Molossia, also known as Molossia, is a micronation claiming sovereignty over 1.28 acres of land near Dayton, Nevada. The micronation has not received recognition from any of the member states of the United Nations. It was founded by Kevin Baugh. On April 16, 2016, Baugh hosted a tour of Molossia, sponsored by the website Atlas Obscura. He continues to pay property taxes on the land to Storey County (the recognized local government), although he calls it "foreign aid". He has stated "We all want to think we have our own country, but you know the U.S. is a lot bigger".
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- "Republic of Molossia β A Micronation in the US" | 2022-08-31 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Charrette
A charrette (American pronunciation: ), often Anglicized to charette or charet and sometimes called a design charrette, is an intense period of design or planning activity.
The word charrette may refer to any collaborative session in which a group of designers draft a solution to a design problem.
While the structure of a charrette varies, depending on the design problem and the individuals in the group, charrettes often take place in multiple sessions in which the group divides into sub-groups. Each sub-group then presents its work to the full group as material for further dialogue. Such charrettes serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people. The general idea of a charrette is to create an innovative atmosphere in which a diverse group of stakeholders can collaborate to "generate visions for the future".
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- "Charrette" | 2021-09-16 | 54 Upvotes 20 Comments