Random Articles (Page 6)
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
๐ Dรฉformation professionnelle
Dรฉformation professionnelle (French:ย [defษสmasjษฬ pสษfษsjษnษl], professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader or humane perspective. It is often translated as "professional deformation", though French dรฉformation can also be translated as "distortion". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world. Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel observed, "Every specialist, owing to a well-known professional bias, believes that he understands the entire human being, while in reality he only grasps a tiny part of him."
As a term in psychology, it was likely coined by the Belgian sociologist Daniel Warnotte or Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin.
Discussed on
- "Dรฉformation professionnelle" | 2009-05-22 | 44 Upvotes 27 Comments
๐ Hadacol
Hadacol was a patent medicine marketed as a vitamin supplement. Its principal attraction, however, was that it contained 12 percent alcohol (listed on the tonic bottle's label as a "preservative"), which made it quite popular in the dry counties of the southern United States. It was the product of four-term Louisiana State Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Democrat from Erath in Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana. He was not a medical doctor, nor a registered pharmacist, but had a strong talent for self-promotion. Time magazine once described him as "a stem-winding salesman who knows every razzle-dazzle switch in the pitchman's trade".
Discussed on
- "Hadacol" | 2019-03-16 | 38 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Teasmade
A teasmade is a machine for making tea automatically, which was once common in the United Kingdom and some British Commonwealth countries. Teasmades generally include an analogue alarm clock and are designed to be used at the bedside, to ensure tea is ready first thing in the morning. Although crude versions existed in Victorian times, they only became practical with the availability of electric versions in the 1930s. They reached their peak in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, since when their use has declined, but they are now enjoying a revival, partly as a retro novelty item.
The name teasmade is an example of a genericised trademark, now commonly used to refer to any automatic tea-making appliance.
๐ Coulomb explosion
Coulombic explosions are a mechanism for transforming energy in intense electromagnetic fields into atomic motion and are thus useful for controlled destruction of relatively robust molecules. The explosions are a prominent technique in laser-based machining, and appear naturally in certain high-energy reactions.
Discussed on
- "Coulomb Explosion" | 2024-07-25 | 62 Upvotes 19 Comments
- "Coulomb explosion" | 2015-03-09 | 94 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ Ghoti
Ghoti is a creative respelling of the word fish, used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.
Discussed on
- "Ghoti" | 2020-06-20 | 317 Upvotes 239 Comments
๐ ISO week date
The ISO week date system is effectively a leap week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) since 1988 (last revised in 2004) and, before that, it was defined in ISO (R) 2015 since 1971. It is used (mainly) in government and business for fiscal years, as well as in timekeeping. This was previously known as "Industrial date coding". The system specifies a week year atop the Gregorian calendar by defining a notation for ordinal weeks of the year.
The Gregorian leap cycle, which has 97 leap days spread across 400 years, contains a whole number of weeks (20871). In every cycle there are 71 years with an additional 53rd week (corresponding to the Gregorian years that contain 53 Thursdays). An average year is exactly 52.1775 weeks long; months (โ1โ12 year) average at exactly 4.348125 weeks.
An ISO week-numbering year (also called ISO year informally) has 52 or 53 full weeks. That is 364 or 371 days instead of the usual 365 or 366 days. The extra week is sometimes referred to as a leap week, although ISO 8601 does not use this term.
Weeks start with Monday. Each week's year is the Gregorian year in which the Thursday falls. The first week of the year, hence, always contains 4 January. ISO week year numbering therefore slightly deviates from the Gregorian for some days close to 1 January.
A precise date is specified by the ISO week-numbering year in the format YYYY, a week number in the format ww prefixed by the letter 'W', and the weekday number, a digit d from 1 through 7, beginning with Monday and ending with Sunday. For example, the Gregorian date Monday 23 December 2019 corresponds to Monday in the 52nd week of 2019, and is written 2019-W52-1 (in extended form) or 2019W521 (in compact form). The ISO year is slightly offset to the Gregorian year; for example, Monday 30 December 2019 in the Gregorian calendar is the first day of week 1 of 2020 in the ISO calendar, and is written as 2020-W01-1 or 2020W011.
Discussed on
- "ISO week date" | 2019-12-26 | 141 Upvotes 84 Comments
๐ Full employment theorem
In computer science and mathematics, a full employment theorem is a term used, often humorously, to refer to a theorem which states that no algorithm can optimally perform a particular task done by some class of professionals. The name arises because such a theorem ensures that there is endless scope to keep discovering new techniques to improve the way at least some specific task is done.
For example, the full employment theorem for compiler writers states that there is no such thing as a provably perfect size-optimizing compiler, as such a proof for the compiler would have to detect non-terminating computations and reduce them to a one-instruction infinite loop. Thus, the existence of a provably perfect size-optimizing compiler would imply a solution to the halting problem, which cannot exist. This also implies that there may always be a better compiler since the proof that one has the best compiler cannot exist. Therefore, compiler writers will always be able to speculate that they have something to improve. A similar example in practical computer science is the idea of no free lunch in search and optimization, which states that no efficient general-purpose solver can exist, and hence there will always be some particular problem whose best known solution might be improved.
Similarly, Gรถdel's incompleteness theorems have been called full employment theorems for mathematicians. In theoretical computer science this field of study is known as Kolmogorov complexity, or the smallest program which outputs a given string.
Tasks such as virus writing and detection, and spam filtering and filter-breaking are also subject to Rice's theorem.
Discussed on
- "Full employment theorem" | 2010-12-24 | 58 Upvotes 20 Comments
๐ De Bono's Six Thinking Hats
Six Thinking Hats was written by Dr. Edward de Bono. "Six Thinking Hats" and the associated idea parallel thinking provide a means for groups to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way, and in doing so to think together more effectively.
In 2005, the tool found some use in the United Kingdom innovation sector, where it was offered by some facilitation companies and had been trialled within the United Kingdom's civil service.
Discussed on
- "De Bono's Six Thinking Hats" | 2010-07-02 | 24 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Crush, Texas
Crush, Texas was a temporary "city" established as the site of a one-day publicity stunt in the U.S. state of Texas in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the MissouriโKansasโTexas Railroad (popularly known as the "Katy", from its "M-K-T" initials), conceived the idea in order to demonstrate a staged train wreck as a public spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site were offered at the reduced rate of US$2 (equivalent to $61.46 in 2019) from any location in Texas.
As a result, an estimated 40,000 peopleโmore people than lived in the state's second-largest city at the timeโattended the exhibition on Tuesday, September 15, 1896. The event planned to showcase the deliberate head-on collision of two unmanned locomotives at high speed; unexpectedly, the impact caused both engine boilers to explode, resulting in a shower of flying debris that killed two people and caused numerous injuries among the spectators.
Discussed on
- "Crush, Texas" | 2017-11-27 | 179 Upvotes 40 Comments
๐ Ithaca Hours
The Ithaca HOUR is a local currency formerly used in Ithaca, New York and was one of the longest-running local currency systems, though it is now no longer in circulation. It has inspired other similar systems in Madison, Wisconsin; Santa Barbara, California; Corvallis, Oregon; and a proposed system in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. One Ithaca HOUR is valued at US$10 and is generally recommended to be used as payment for one hour's work, although the rate is negotiable.