Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 China/Chinese history 🔗 China

The south-pointing chariot (or carriage) was an ancient Chinese two-wheeled vehicle that carried a movable pointer to indicate the south, no matter how the chariot turned. Usually, the pointer took the form of a doll or figure with an outstretched arm. The chariot was supposedly used as a compass for navigation and may also have had other purposes.

The ancient Chinese invented a mobile-like armored cart in the 5th century BC called the Dongwu Che (Chinese: 洞屋车). It was used for the purpose of protecting warriors on the battlefield. The Chinese war wagon was designed as a kind of mobile protective cart with a shed-like roof. It would serve to be rolled up to city fortifications to provide protection for sappers digging underneath to weaken a wall's foundation. The early Chinese war wagon became the basis of technologies for the making of ancient Chinese south-pointing chariots.

There are legends of earlier south-pointing chariots, but the first reliably documented one was created by the Chinese mechanical engineer Ma Jun (c. 200–265 CE) of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms. No ancient chariots still exist, but many extant ancient Chinese texts mention them, saying they were used intermittently until about 1300 CE. Some include information about their inner components and workings.

There were probably several types of south-pointing chariot which worked differently. In most or all of them, the rotating road wheels mechanically operated a geared mechanism to keep the pointer aimed correctly. The mechanism had no magnets and did not automatically detect which direction was south. The pointer was aimed southward by hand at the start of a journey. Subsequently, whenever the chariot turned, the mechanism rotated the pointer relative to the body of the chariot to counteract the turn and keep the pointer aiming in a constant direction, to the south. Thus the mechanism did a kind of directional dead reckoning, which is inherently prone to cumulative errors and uncertainties. Some chariots' mechanisms may have had differential gears, technology unseen since the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism.

🔗 Philately 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Infrastructure 🔗 Japan/Law and government

The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. When written in Japanese characters, addresses start with the largest geographical entity and proceed to the most specific one. When written in Latin characters, addresses follow the convention used by most Western addresses and start with the smallest geographic entity (typically a house number) and proceed to the largest. The Japanese system is complex and idiosyncratic, the product of the natural growth of urban areas, as opposed to the systems used in cities that are laid out as grids and divided into quadrants or districts.

🔗 Law 🔗 English Language

"The exception that proves the rule" (sometimes "the exception proves the rule") is a saying whose meaning is contested. Henry Watson Fowler's Modern English Usage identifies five ways in which the phrase has been used, and each use makes some sort of reference to the role that a particular case or event takes in relation to a more general rule.

Two original meanings of the phrase are usually cited. The first, preferred by Fowler, is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes ("proves") that a general rule exists. A more explicit phrasing might be "the exception that proves the existence of the rule." Most contemporary uses of the phrase emerge from this origin, although often in a way which is closer to the idea that all rules have their exceptions. The alternative origin given is that the word "prove" is used in the archaic sense of "test". In this sense, the phrase does not mean that an exception demonstrates a rule to be true or to exist, but that it tests the rule, thereby proving its value. There is little evidence of the phrase being used in this second way.

🔗 Radio Stations

United Biscuits Network (UBN) was an internal radio station serving the factories of United Biscuits (UB) in Britain that operated from 1970 to 1979.

In 1970 the BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasting in Britain, although there were a few offshore pirate radio broadcasters, such as Radio Caroline. At one time factories had sought to avoid unnecessary background sound, but during the Second World War psychologists found that light background music (muzak) increased productivity at times it was low, a trend that continued after the war. But as jobs became deskilled and ever more monotonous, muzak became less effective, and staff turnover increased. United Biscuits was affected by this trend; Hector Laing, the managing director in the 1960s, needed to reduce the costs of high staff turnover. Inspired by the success of the pirate stations, Laing hired suitable staff, bought state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment, and set up UBN at UB headquarters in Osterley, west London (later the headquarters of broadcaster Sky UK).

🔗 China/Chinese history 🔗 China 🔗 Central Asia 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Buddhism 🔗 Former countries

Loulan, also called Krorän or Kroraina (simplified Chinese: 楼兰; traditional Chinese: 樓蘭; pinyin: Lóulán; Uyghur: كروران, Кроран‎, ULY: Kroran) was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city along the Silk Road already known in the 2nd century BCE on the northeastern edge of the Lop Desert. The term Loulan is the Chinese transcription of the native name Krorän and is used to refer to the city near Lop Nur as well as the kingdom.

The kingdom was renamed Shanshan (鄯善) after its king was assassinated by an envoy of the Han dynasty in 77 BCE; however, the town at the northwestern corner of the brackish desert lake Lop Nur retained the name of Loulan. The kingdom included at various times settlements such as Niya, Charklik, Miran, and Qiemo. It was intermittently under Chinese control from the early Han dynasty onward until its abandonment centuries later. The ruins of Loulan are near the now-desiccated Lop Nur in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, and they are now completely surrounded by desert.

🔗 United States 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 United States/Military history - U.S. military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Physics 🔗 Women's History 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Tennessee 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Physics/History 🔗 Science

The Calutron Girls were a group of young women, mostly high school graduates who joined the World War II efforts in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1945.

Although they were not allowed to know at the time, they were monitoring dials and watching meters for a calutron, a mass spectrometer that separates uranium isotopes. The enriched uranium was used to make the first atomic bomb.

Calutron Girls were trained and employed at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Wartime labor shortages forced the Tennessee Eastman Corporation to hire women to work at the Y-12 plant.

According to Gladys Owens, one of the few Calutron Girls, a manager at the facility once told them: "We can train you how to do what is needed, but cannot tell you what you are doing. I can only tell you that if our enemies beat us to it, God have mercy on us!"

🔗 Novels 🔗 Slovenia

Alamut is a novel by Vladimir Bartol, first published in 1938 in Slovenian, dealing with the story of Hassan-i Sabbah and the Hashshashin, and named after their Alamut fortress. The maxim of the novel is "Nothing is an absolute reality; all is permitted". This book was one of the inspirations for the video game series Assassin's Creed.

Bartol first started to conceive the novel in the early 1930s, when he lived in Paris. In the French capital, he met with the Slovene literary critic Josip Vidmar, who introduced him to the story of Hassan-i Sabbah. A further stimulation for the novel came from the assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia perpetrated by Croatian and Bulgarian radical nationalists, on the alleged commission of the Italian fascist government. When it was originally published, the novel was sarcastically dedicated to Benito Mussolini.

🔗 Robotics 🔗 Transhumanism

In aesthetics, the uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object's resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. "Valley" denotes a dip in the human observer's affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica's human likeness.

Examples can be found in robotics, 3D computer animations, and lifelike dolls among others. With the increasing prevalence of virtual reality, augmented reality, and photorealistic computer animation, the "valley" has been cited in the popular press in reaction to the verisimilitude of the creation as it approaches indistinguishability from reality. The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers.

🔗 Sociology 🔗 Urban studies and planning

In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place"). Examples of third places include churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks. In his book The Great Good Place (1989), Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

Robert Putnam addressed issues related to third place, but without using the term, in Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (1995, 2000).

🔗 Women 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/History 🔗 Japan/Culture 🔗 Japan/Law and government 🔗 Feminism

Feminism in Japan began with women's rights movements that date back to antiquity. The movement started to gain momentum after Western thinking was brought into Japan during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Japanese feminism differs from Western feminism in that less emphasis is placed on individual autonomy.

Prior to the late 19th century, Japanese women were bound by the traditional patriarchal system where senior male members of the family maintain their authority in the household. After the reforms brought by Meiji Restoration, women's status in Japanese society also went through series of changes. Trafficking of women was restricted, women were allowed to request divorces, and both boys and girls were required to receive elementary education. Further changes to women's status came about in the aftermath of World War II. Women received the right to vote, and a section of the new constitution drafted in 1946 was dedicated to guarantee gender equality.

In 1970, in the wake of the anti–Vietnam War movements, a new women's liberation movement called ūman ribu (woman lib) emerged in Japan from the New Left and radical student movements in the late 1960s. This movement was in sync with radical feminist movements in the United States and elsewhere, catalyzing a resurgence of feminist activism through the 1970s and beyond. The activists forwarded a comprehensive critique of the male-dominated nature of modern Japan, arguing for a fundamental change of the political-economic system and culture of the society. What distinguished them from previous feminist movements was their emphasis on sexual liberation (性の解放, sei no kaihō). They did not aim for equality with men, but rather focused on calling for men's liberation from the oppressive aspects of a patriarchal and capitalist system.

In 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The Japanese government ratified it in 1985.