Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 United States 🔗 Numismatics 🔗 Numismatics/American currency 🔗 U.S. Congress

The United States Gold Reserve Act of January 30, 1934 required that all gold and gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve be surrendered and vested in the sole title of the United States Department of the Treasury. It also prohibited the Treasury and financial institutions from redeeming dollar bills for gold, established the Exchange Stabilization Fund under control of the Treasury to control the dollar’s value without the assistance (or approval) of the Federal Reserve, and authorized the president to establish the gold value of the dollar by proclamation.

Immediately following passage of the Act, the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. This price change incentivized gold miners globally to expand production and foreigners to export their gold to the United States, while simultaneously devaluing the U.S. dollar by increasing inflation. The increase in gold reserves due to the price change resulted in a large accumulation of gold in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, much of which was stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The increase in gold reserves increased the money supply, lowering real interest rates which in turn increased investment in durable goods.

A year earlier, in 1933, Executive Order 6102 had made it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens to own or trade gold anywhere in the world, with exceptions for some jewelry and collector's coins. These prohibitions were relaxed starting in 1964 – gold certificates were again allowed for private investors on April 24, 1964, although the obligation to pay the certificate holder on demand in gold specie would not be honored. By 1975 Americans could again freely own and trade gold.

🔗 United States 🔗 Computing 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Microsoft 🔗 United States/American television

“Where do you want to go today?” was the title of Microsoft’s second global image advertising campaign. The broadcast, print and outdoor advertising campaign was launched in November 1994 through the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign had Microsoft spending $100 million through July 1995, of which $25 million would be spent during the holiday shopping season ending in December 1994.

Tony Kaye directed a series of television ads filmed in Hong Kong, Prague and New York City that showed a broad range of people using their PCs. The television ads were first broadcast in Australia on November 13, the following day in both the United States and Canada, with Britain, France and Germany seeing the spots in subsequent days. An eight-page print ad described the personal computer as “an open opportunity for everybody” that “[facilitates] the flow of information so that good ideas—wherever they come from—can be shared”, and was placed in mass-market magazines including National Geographic, Newsweek, People, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated.

The New York Times described the campaign as taking “a winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technology”. However, the Times reported in August 1995 that the response to Microsoft’s campaign in the advertising trade press had been “lukewarm” and quoted Brad Johnson of Advertising Age as stating that “Microsoft is on version 1.0 in advertising. Microsoft is not standing still. It will improve its advertising.” Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, then the firm’s executive vice president, acknowledged that the response to the campaign had been “chilly”.

In June 1999, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its nearly five-year-long relationship with Wieden+Kennedy, shifting $100 million (~$166 million in 2022) in billings to McCann Erickson Worldwide Advertising in a split that was described by The New York Times as mutual. Dan Wieden, president and chief creative officer of the advertising agency, characterized the relationship with Microsoft as “intense” and said that it had “run its course”.

🔗 United States 🔗 Business 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Food and drink/Beverages

Between 1886 and 1959, the price of a 6.5-oz glass or bottle of Coca-Cola was set at five cents, or one nickel, and remained fixed with very little local fluctuation. The Coca-Cola Company was able to maintain this price for several reasons, including bottling contracts the company signed in 1899, advertising, vending machine technology, and a relatively low rate of inflation. The fact that the price of the drink was able to remain the same for over seventy years is especially significant considering the events that occurred during that period, including the founding of Pepsi, World War I, Prohibition, changing taxes, a caffeine and caramel shortage, World War II, and the company's desire to raise its prices. Much of the research on this subject comes from "The Real Thing": Nominal Price Rigidity of the Nickel Coke, 1886–1959, a 2004 paper by economists Daniel Levy and Andrew Young.

🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Etymology

This is a list of etymologies proposed for the word OK or okay. The majority can be easily classified as false etymologies, or possibly folk etymologies. H. L. Mencken, in The American Language, lists serious candidates and "a few of the more picturesque or preposterous". Allen Walker Read surveyed a variety of explanations in a 1964 article titled The Folklore of "O. K." Eric Partridge described O.K. as "an evergreen of the correspondence column."

🔗 France 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Catholicism

Cluny Abbey (French: [klyni]; formerly also Cluni, or Clugny) is a former Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was dedicated to St Peter.

The abbey was constructed in the Romanesque architectural style, with three churches built in succession from the 4th to the early 12th centuries. The earliest basilica was the world's largest church until the St. Peter's Basilica construction began in Rome.

Cluny was founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in 910. He nominated Berno as the first abbot of Cluny, subject only to Pope Sergius III. The abbey was notable for its stricter adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict, whereby Cluny became acknowledged as the leader of western monasticism. The establishment of the Benedictine Order was a keystone to the stability of European society that was achieved in the 11th century. In 1790 during the French Revolution, the abbey was sacked and mostly destroyed, with only a small part surviving.

Starting around 1334, the Abbots of Cluny maintained a townhouse in Paris known as the Hôtel de Cluny, which has been a public museum since 1843. Apart from the name, it no longer possesses anything originally connected with Cluny.

🔗 Computer science

In computer science, a succinct data structure is a data structure which uses an amount of space that is "close" to the information-theoretic lower bound, but (unlike other compressed representations) still allows for efficient query operations. The concept was originally introduced by Jacobson to encode bit vectors, (unlabeled) trees, and planar graphs. Unlike general lossless data compression algorithms, succinct data structures retain the ability to use them in-place, without decompressing them first. A related notion is that of a compressed data structure, in which the size of the data structure depends upon the particular data being represented.

Suppose that ${\displaystyle Z}$ is the information-theoretical optimal number of bits needed to store some data. A representation of this data is called:

• implicit if it takes ${\displaystyle Z+O(1)}$ bits of space,
• succinct if it takes ${\displaystyle Z+o(Z)}$ bits of space, and
• compact if it takes ${\displaystyle O(Z)}$ bits of space.

For example, a data structure that uses ${\displaystyle 2Z}$ bits of storage is compact, ${\displaystyle Z+{\sqrt {Z}}}$ bits is succinct, ${\displaystyle Z+\lg Z}$ bits is also succinct, and ${\displaystyle Z+3}$ bits is implicit.

Implicit structures are thus usually reduced to storing information using some permutation of the input data; the most well-known example of this is the heap.

🔗 Mathematics

The probabilistic method is a nonconstructive method, primarily used in combinatorics and pioneered by Paul Erdős, for proving the existence of a prescribed kind of mathematical object. It works by showing that if one randomly chooses objects from a specified class, the probability that the result is of the prescribed kind is strictly greater than zero. Although the proof uses probability, the final conclusion is determined for certain, without any possible error.

This method has now been applied to other areas of mathematics such as number theory, linear algebra, and real analysis, as well as in computer science (e.g. randomized rounding), and information theory.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Poetry

"First they came ..." is the poetic form of a post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergy—including, by his own admission, Niemöller himself—following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in the English language. It deals with themes of persecution, guilt, repentance, and personal responsibility.

🔗 Dogs 🔗 Psychology

Intelligent disobedience occurs where a service animal trained to help a disabled person goes directly against the owner's instructions in an effort to make a better decision. This behavior is a part of the dog's training and is central to a service animal's success on the job. The concept of intelligent disobedience has been in use and a common part of service animals' training since at least 1936.