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🔗 Mexico 🔗 Spain 🔗 Folklore 🔗 Tambayan Philippines

A folk legend holds that in October 1593 a soldier of the Spanish Empire (named Gil Pérez in a 1908 version) was mysteriously transported from Manila in the Philippines to the Plaza Mayor (now the Zócalo) in Mexico City. The soldier's claim to have come from the Philippines was disbelieved by the Mexicans until his account of the assassination of Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was corroborated months later by the passengers of a ship which had crossed the Pacific Ocean with the news. Folklorist Thomas Allibone Janvier in 1908 described the legend as "current among all classes of the population of the City of Mexico". Twentieth-century paranormal investigators giving credence to the story have offered teleportation and alien abduction as explanations.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Business 🔗 Politics 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Politics/Corporatism

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.

Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the "ingroup" produces an "illusion of invulnerability" (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the "ingroup" significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the "outgroup"). Furthermore, groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the "outgroup". Members of a group can often feel peer pressure to "go along with the crowd" in fear of rocking the boat or of what them speaking up will do to the overall to how their teammates perceive them. Group interactions tend to favor, clear and harmonious agreements and it can be a cause for concern when little to no new innovations or arguments for better policies, outcomes and structures are called to question. (McLeod). Groupthink can often be referred to as a group of “yes men” because group activities and group projects in general make it extremely easy to pass on not offering constructive opinions.

Some methods that have been used to counteract group think in the past is selecting teams from more diverse backgrounds, and even mixing men and women for groups (Kamalnath). Groupthink can be considered by many to be a detriment to companies, organizations and in any work situations. Most positions that are senior level need individuals to be independent in their thinking. There is a positive correlation found between outstanding executives and decisiveness (Kelman). Groupthink also prohibits an organization from moving forward and innovating if no one ever speaks up and says something could be done differently.

Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, faulty group structure, and situational context (e.g., community panic) play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.

Groupthink is a construct of social psychology, but has an extensive reach and influences literature in the fields of communication studies, political science, management, and organizational theory, as well as important aspects of deviant religious cult behaviour.

Groupthink is sometimes stated to occur (more broadly) within natural groups within the community, for example to explain the lifelong different mindsets of those with differing political views (such as "conservatism" and "liberalism" in the U.S. political context ) or the purported benefits of team work vs. work conducted in solitude. However, this conformity of viewpoints within a group does not mainly involve deliberate group decision-making, and might be better explained by the collective confirmation bias of the individual members of the group.

Most of the initial research on groupthink was conducted by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University. Janis published an influential book in 1972, which was revised in 1982. Janis used the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed invasion of Castro's Cuba in 1961) and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as his two prime case studies. Later studies have evaluated and reformulated his groupthink model.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

Viewtron was an online service offered by Knight-Ridder and AT&T from 1983 to 1986. Patterned after the British Post Office's Prestel system, it started as a videotex service requiring users to have a special terminal, the AT&T Sceptre. As home computers became important in the marketplace, the development focus shifted to IBM, Apple, Commodore and other personal computers.

Viewtron differed from contemporary services like CompuServe and The Source by emphasizing news from The Miami Herald and Associated Press and e-commerce services from JCPenney and other merchants over computer-oriented services such as file downloads or online chat. Intended to be "the McDonald's of videotex," Viewtron was specifically targeted toward users who would be apprehensive about using a computer.

Viewtron also offered airline schedules from the Official Airline Guide (OAG), real estate research from Century 21, e-cards from Hallmark, product information from Consumer Reports, educational software from Scott Foresman, online auctions, financial services from American Express and EF Hutton, as well as limited online banking services as part of a research program into the uses and costs of banking online that included 20 US and Canadian banks.

At its height, Viewtron was operated in at least 15 cities by various newspaper companies. After six years of research and an investment reportedly in excess of $50 million, Viewtron never turned a profit, and, despite its developer's forecasts of breaking even in two years, Knight Ridder did not expect it ever would be profitable. AT&T had invested over $100 million in the project, but was forced to write off that investment as part of its court-ordered breakup. Viewtron closed on March 31, 1986, after an attempt by the Independent Commodore Users Group to buy the service failed.

A feature tying Viewtron to local newspapers was envisioned, with printed text instructing users how to access further information online, but it was never implemented.

In 2008, PCWorld magazine named Viewtron to a list of the biggest project failures in information technology (IT) history.

🔗 History 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Early Modern warfare 🔗 European history

The "General Crisis" is the term used by some historians to describe the period of widespread conflict and instability that occurred from the early 17th century to the early 18th century in Europe and in more recent historiography in the world at large. The concept is much debated by historians; there is no consensus.

The term was coined by Eric Hobsbawm in his pair of 1954 articles entitled "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" published in Past and Present.

🔗 Evolutionary biology 🔗 Ecology

Motion camouflage is camouflage which provides a degree of concealment for a moving object, given that motion makes objects easy to detect however well their coloration matches their background or breaks up their outlines.

The principal form of motion camouflage, and the type generally meant by the term, involves an attacker's mimicking the optic flow of the background as seen by its target. This enables the attacker to approach the target while appearing to remain stationary from the target's perspective, unlike in classical pursuit (where the attacker moves straight towards the target at all times, and often appears to the target to move sideways). The attacker chooses its flight path so as to remain on the line between the target and some landmark point. The target therefore does not see the attacker move from the landmark point. The only visible evidence that the attacker is moving is its looming, the change in size as the attacker approaches.

Camouflage is sometimes facilitated by motion, as in the leafy sea dragon and some stick insects. These animals complement their passive camouflage by swaying like plants in the wind or ocean currents, delaying their recognition by predators.

First discovered in hoverflies in 1995, motion camouflage by minimizing optic flow has been demonstrated in another insect order, dragonflies, as well as in two groups of vertebrates, falcons and echolocating bats. Since bats hunt at night, they cannot use camouflage. Instead they use an efficient homing strategy called constant absolute target direction. It has been suggested that anti-aircraft missiles could benefit from similar techniques.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Film 🔗 Film/Filmmaking 🔗 Russia/science and education in Russia 🔗 Russia/performing arts in Russia 🔗 Film/Soviet and post-Soviet cinema

The Kuleshov effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Animals

The M44 cyanide device (also called a cyanide gun or cyanide trap) is used for the killing of coyotes, feral dogs, and foxes. It is made from four parts: a capsule holder wrapped with cloth or other soft material, a small plastic capsule containing 0.88 grams of sodium cyanide, a spring-powered ejector, and a 5-7 inch stake. To install the trap, the stake is first driven down into the ground, and then the capsule is put in the holder, screwed onto the cocked ejector, and secured to the stake. The wrapped capsule holder is smeared with scented bait to attract coyotes and make them bite and pull on it. (The use of a bite-and-pull action makes the trap less likely to be set off by non-canine wildlife.) When the trap is triggered, the spring propels a dose of sodium cyanide into the animals's mouth, and the sodium cyanide combines with water in the mouth to produce poisonous cyanide gas. In addition to the cyanide, the capsule contains Day-Glo fluorescent particle marker (orange in capsules used by the Wildlife Services, and yellow in capsules prepared for other users).

🔗 Writing systems

Scriptio continua (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as scriptura continua or scripta continua, is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritics, or distinguished letter case. In the West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions used word dividers to separate words in sentences; however, Classical Greek and late Classical Latin both employed scriptio continua as the norm.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Death 🔗 Occupational Safety and Health 🔗 India 🔗 Medicine/Toxicology

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the small towns located near the plant.

Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. In 2008, the government of Madhya Pradesh had paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The cause of the disaster remains under debate. The Indian government and local activists argue that slack management and deferred maintenance created a situation where routine pipe maintenance caused a backflow of water into a MIC tank, triggering the disaster. Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) argues water entered the tank through an act of sabotage.

The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1989, UCC paid $470 million (equivalent to $845 million in 2018) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to Eveready Industries India Limited (EIIL), which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Eveready ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster.

Civil and criminal cases filed in the United States against UCC and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster, were dismissed and redirected to Indian courts on multiple occasions between 1986 and 2012, as the US courts focused on UCIL being a standalone entity of India. Civil and criminal cases were also filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC, UCIL and UCC CEO Anderson. In June 2010, seven Indian nationals who were UCIL employees in 1984, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. All were released on bail shortly after the verdict. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed.

🔗 India 🔗 Board and table games

Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game and type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them. The form prevalent in Odisha is Ganjapa.