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🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Philosophy/Modern philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Metaphysics 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy 🔗 Folklore

In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by the likes of Heraclitus and Plato by ca. 500-400 BC.

🔗 California

Early on the morning of May 16, 1946, a U.S. Army B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft crashed into White's Hill (also known locally as "White Hill") near Fairfax, California. Two men were killed and six seriously injured. There were reports that the B-17 was carrying nuclear weapons materials for the Operation Crossroads tests at Bikini atoll, but these reports were not confirmed. However, due to the behavior and activities of the military authorities at the crash site and the reports of several credible witnesses, including several of the crewmembers, questions about the plane's cargo remain.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Smithsonian Institution-related 🔗 Smithsonian Institution

The Goodyear Inflatoplane was an inflatable experimental aircraft made by the Goodyear Aircraft Company, a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, well known for the Goodyear blimp. Although it seemed an improbable project, the finished aircraft proved to be capable of meeting its design objectives, although orders were never forthcoming from the military. A total of 12 prototypes were built between 1956 and 1959, and testing continued until 1972, when the project was finally cancelled.

🔗 Politics 🔗 Anti-war 🔗 Globalization

Global Peace Index (GPI) measures the relative position of nations' and regions' peacefulness. The GPI ranks 172 independent states and territories (99.7 percent of the world's population) according to their levels of peacefulness. In the past decade, the GPI has presented trends of increased global violence and less peacefulness. It also increases the world peace program in the world.

The GPI is a report produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) and developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and think tanks with data collected and collated by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Index was first launched in May 2009, with subsequent reports being released annually. In 2015 it ranked 165 countries, up from 121 in 2007. The study was conceived by Australian technology entrepreneur Steve Killelea, and is endorsed by individuals such as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, archbishop Desmond Tutu, former President of Finland and 2008 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, economist Jeffrey Sachs, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson and former United States president Jimmy Carter. The updated index is released each year at events in London, Washington, DC; and at the United Nations Secretariat in New York.

The 2019 GPI indicates Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal, Austria and Denmark to be the most peaceful countries and Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, and Iraq to be the least peaceful. Long-term findings of the 2017 GPI include a less peaceful world over the past decade, a 2.14 per cent deterioration in the global level of peace in the past decade, growing inequality in peace between the most and least peaceful countries, a long-term reduction in the GPI Militarization domain, and a widening impact of terrorism, with historically high numbers of people killed in terrorist incidents over the past 10 years.

🔗 United States 🔗 United States/Arizona 🔗 London Transport

London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was built in the 1830s and formerly spanned the River Thames in London, England. It was dismantled in 1967 and relocated to Arizona. The Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure clad in the original masonry of the 1830s bridge, which was purchased by Robert P. McCulloch from the City of London. McCulloch had exterior granite blocks from the original bridge numbered and transported to America to construct the present bridge in Lake Havasu City, a planned community he established in 1964 on the shore of Lake Havasu. The bridge was completed in 1971 (along with a canal), and links an island in the Colorado River with the main part of Lake Havasu City.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Ships 🔗 Mills

A rotor ship is a type of ship designed to use the Magnus effect for propulsion. The ship is propelled, at least in part, by large powered vertical rotors, sometimes known as rotor sails. German engineer Anton Flettner was the first to build a ship that attempted to tap this force for propulsion, and ships using his type of rotor are sometimes known as Flettner ships.

The Magnus effect is a force acting on a spinning body in a moving airstream, which produces a force perpendicular to both the direction of the airstream and the axis of the rotor.

🔗 Books 🔗 Sociology

The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Cognitive science

Pandemonium architecture is a theory in cognitive science that describes how visual images are processed by the brain. It has applications in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. The theory was developed by the artificial intelligence pioneer Oliver Selfridge in 1959. It describes the process of object recognition as a hierarchical system of detection and association by a metaphorical set of "demons" sending signals to each other. This model is now recognized as the basis of visual perception in cognitive science.

Pandemonium architecture arose in response to the inability of template matching theories to offer a biologically plausible explanation of the image constancy phenomenon. Contemporary researchers praise this architecture for its elegancy and creativity; that the idea of having multiple independent systems (e.g., feature detectors) working in parallel to address the image constancy phenomena of pattern recognition is powerful yet simple. The basic idea of the pandemonium architecture is that a pattern is first perceived in its parts before the "whole".

Pandemonium architecture was one of the first computational models in pattern recognition. Although not perfect, the pandemonium architecture influenced the development of modern connectionist, artificial intelligence, and word recognition models.

🔗 Amateur radio

A QSL card is a written confirmation of either a two-way radiocommunication between two amateur radio or citizens band stations; a one-way reception of a signal from an AM radio, FM radio, television or shortwave broadcasting station; or the reception of a two-way radiocommunication by a third party listener. A typical QSL card is the same size and made from the same material as a typical postcard, and most are sent through the mail as such.

QSL card derived its name from the Q code "QSL". A Q code message can stand for a statement or a question (when the code is followed by a question mark). In this case, 'QSL?' (note the question mark) means "Do you confirm receipt of my transmission?" while 'QSL' (without a question mark) means "I confirm receipt of your transmission."