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🔗 Measurement

In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they are pure numbers with no associated units of measurement. Commonly used are parts-per-million (ppm, 10⁻⁶), parts-per-billion (ppb, 10⁻⁹), parts-per-trillion (ppt, 10⁻¹²) and parts-per-quadrillion (ppq, 10⁻¹⁵). This notation is not part of the International System of Units (SI) system and its meaning is ambiguous.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Economics 🔗 Systems 🔗 Systems/Cybernetics 🔗 Chile

Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971–1973 during the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer.

Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design, and featured innovative technology for its time: it included a network of telex machines (Cybernet) in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism, in "almost" real time, alerting the workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software (CHECO, for CHilean ECOnomic simulator) that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room (Opsroom) would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data, formulate feasible responses to emergencies, and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network.

The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer, and the system embodied his notions of organisational cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce in order to develop self-regulation of factories.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Military history 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Greece 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Biography/military biography 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Dance 🔗 Composers 🔗 Dance/Ballet 🔗 Classical music 🔗 Military history/Balkan military history 🔗 Biography/Musicians 🔗 Military history/European military history

Iannis Xenakis (also spelt as Yannis Xenakis) (Greek: Γιάννης (Ιάννης) Ξενάκης [ˈʝanis kseˈnacis]; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Greek-French composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalized citizen of France. He is considered an important post-World War II composer whose works helped revolutionize 20th-century classical music.

Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances.

Among his most important works are Metastaseis (1953–54) for orchestra, which introduced independent parts for every musician of the orchestra; percussion works such as Psappha (1975) and Pléïades (1979); compositions that introduced spatialization by dispersing musicians among the audience, such as Terretektorh (1966); electronic works created using Xenakis's UPIC system; and the massive multimedia performances Xenakis called polytopes, that were a summa of his interests and skills. Among the numerous theoretical writings he authored, the book Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (French edition 1963, English translation 1971) is regarded as one of his most important. As an architect, Xenakis is primarily known for his early work under Le Corbusier: the Sainte Marie de La Tourette, on which the two architects collaborated, and the Philips Pavilion at Expo 58, which Xenakis designed by himself.

🔗 Denmark 🔗 Folklore

The Elder Mother is an elder-guarding being in English and Scandinavian folklore known by a variety of names, such as the Danish Hyldemoer ("Elder-Mother") and the Lincolnshire names Old Lady and Old Girl.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Russia/demographics and ethnography of Russia 🔗 Lithuania 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Food and drink/Beverages 🔗 Beer

Kvass is a fermented cereal-based non-alcoholic or low alcoholic (0.5–1.0% or 1–2 proof) beverage with a slightly cloudy appearance, light-dark brown colour and sweet-sour taste. It may be flavoured with berries, fruits, herbs, honey

🔗 Mathematics

The shoelace formula or shoelace algorithm (also known as Gauss's area formula and the surveyor's formula) is a mathematical algorithm to determine the area of a simple polygon whose vertices are described by their Cartesian coordinates in the plane. The user cross-multiplies corresponding coordinates to find the area encompassing the polygon, and subtracts it from the surrounding polygon to find the area of the polygon within. It is called the shoelace formula because of the constant cross-multiplying for the coordinates making up the polygon, like tying shoelaces. It is also sometimes called the shoelace method. It has applications in surveying and forestry, among other areas.

The formula was described by Meister (1724–1788) in 1769 and by Gauss in 1795. It can be verified by dividing the polygon into triangles, and can be considered to be a special case of Green's theorem.

The area formula is derived by taking each edge AB, and calculating the area of triangle ABO with a vertex at the origin O, by taking the cross-product (which gives the area of a parallelogram) and dividing by 2. As one wraps around the polygon, these triangles with positive and negative area will overlap, and the areas between the origin and the polygon will be cancelled out and sum to 0, while only the area inside the reference triangle remains. This is why the formula is called the surveyor's formula, since the "surveyor" is at the origin; if going counterclockwise, positive area is added when going from left to right and negative area is added when going from right to left, from the perspective of the origin.

The area formula can also be applied to self-overlapping polygons since the meaning of area is still clear even though self-overlapping polygons are not generally simple. Furthermore, a self-overlapping polygon can have multiple "interpretations" but the Shoelace formula can be used to show that the polygon's area is the same regardless of the interpretation.

🔗 Mathematics

The medieval Cistercian numerals, or "ciphers" in nineteenth-century parlance, were developed by the Cistercian monastic order in the early thirteenth century at about the time that Arabic numerals were introduced to northwestern Europe. They are more compact than Arabic or Roman numerals, with a single glyph able to indicate any integer from 1 to 9,999.

Digits are based on a horizontal or vertical stave, with the position of the digit on the stave indicating its place value (units, tens, hundreds or thousands). These digits are compounded on a single stave to indicate more complex numbers. The Cistercians eventually abandoned the system in favor of the Arabic numerals, but marginal use outside the order continued until the early twentieth century.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Transhumanism

A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book (no longer available).

🔗 Novels

Celine's Laws are a series of three laws regarding government and social interaction attributed to the fictional character Hagbard Celine from Robert Anton Wilson's and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy. Celine, a gentleman anarchist, serves as a mouthpiece for Wilson's libertarian, anarchist and sometimes completely uncategorizable ideas about the nature of humanity. Celine's Laws are outlined in the trilogy by a manifesto titled Never Whistle While You're Pissing. Wilson later goes on to elaborate on the laws in his nonfiction book, Prometheus Rising, as being inherent consequences of average human psychology.

A piece entitled Celine's Laws appears in Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminati Papers, which features articles written by Wilson under the guise of many of his characters from The Illuminatus! Trilogy alongside interviews with the author himself. One article pulls from another, as well as from the original Trilogy.

Celine, in his manifesto, recognizes these are generalities, but also says that their basic principles can be used to find the source of every great decline and fall of nations, and goes on to claim they are as universal as Newton's Laws in applying to everything.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of religion

The self-referencing doomsday argument rebuttal is an attempt to refute the doomsday argument (that there is a credible link between the brevity of the human race's existence and its expected extinction) by applying the same reasoning to the lifetime of the doomsday argument itself.

The first researchers to write about this were P. T. Landsberg and J. N. Dewynne in 1997; they applied belief in the doomsday argument to itself, and claimed that a paradox results.