Random Articles (Page 6)

Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Ganjifa

🔗 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.

Discussed on

🔗 The lifetime tooth decay vaccine is now available (in Honduras)

🔗 Pharmacology 🔗 Dentistry

A caries vaccine is a vaccine to prevent and protect against tooth decay. Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) has been identified as the major etiological agent of human dental caries. The development of a vaccine for tooth decay has been under investigation since the 1970s. In 1972, a caries vaccine was said to be in animal testing in England, and that it would have begun human testing soon. However, intrinsic difficulties in developing it, coupled with lack of strong economic interests, are the reasons why still no such vaccine is commercially available today. Several types of vaccines are being developed at research centres, with some kind of caries vaccines being considered to diminish or prevent dental caries' impact on young people.

Discussed on

🔗 Ready Player One – what Oculus + FB will look like?

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game, the discovery of which would lead him to inherit the game creator's fortune. Cline sold the rights to publish the novel in June 2010, in a bidding war to the Crown Publishing Group (a division of Random House). The book was published on August 16, 2011. An audiobook was released the same day; it was narrated by Wil Wheaton, who was mentioned briefly in one of the chapters.Ch. 20 In 2012, the book received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association division of the American Library Association and won the 2012 Prometheus Award. A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released on March 29, 2018.

Discussed on

🔗 Gombe Chimpanzee War

🔗 Africa 🔗 Africa/Tanzania 🔗 Primates

The Gombe Chimpanzee War was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania lasting from 1974 to 1978. The two groups were once unified in the Kasakela community. By 1974, researcher Jane Goodall noticed the community splintering. Over a span of eight months, a large party of chimpanzees separated themselves into the southern area of Kasakela and were renamed the Kahama community. The separatists consisted of six adult males, three adult females and their young. The Kasakela was left with eight adult males, twelve adult females and their young.

During the four-year conflict, all males of the Kahama community were killed, effectively disbanding the community. The victorious Kasakela then expanded into further territory but were later repelled by another community of chimpanzees.

Discussed on

🔗 Scriptio continua

🔗 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.

Discussed on

🔗 Cyclogyro

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Aviation/rotorcraft

The cyclogyro, or cyclocopter, is an aircraft configuration that uses a horizontal-axis cyclorotor as a rotor wing to provide lift and sometimes also propulsion and control. In principle, the cyclogyro is capable of vertical take off and landing and hovering performance like a helicopter, while potentially benefiting from some of the advantages of a fixed-wing aircraft.

The cyclogyro is distinct from the Flettner airplane which uses a cylindrical wing rotor to harness the Magnus effect.

Discussed on

🔗 Bullshit Jobs

🔗 Books 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Anarchism

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that argues the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes universal basic income as a potential solution.

The book is an extension of a popular essay Graeber published in 2013, which was later translated into 12 languages and whose underlying premise became the subject of a YouGov poll. Graeber subsequently solicited hundreds of testimonials of meaningless jobs and revised his case into a book that was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2018.

Discussed on

🔗 Flocken Elektrowagen

🔗 Environment 🔗 Automobiles 🔗 Environment/Green vehicle

The Flocken Elektrowagen is a four-wheeled electric car designed by Andreas Flocken (1845–1913), manufactured in 1888 by Maschinenfabrik A. Flocken in Coburg. It is regarded as the first real electric car.

Discussed on

🔗 “Massive Cannibalism” During China’s Cultural Revolution

🔗 Death 🔗 China 🔗 Socialism

The Guangxi Massacre (simplified Chinese: 广西大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 廣西大屠殺; pinyin: Guǎngxī Dàtúshā), or Guangxi Cultural Revolution Massacre (广西文革大屠杀; 廣西文革大屠殺; Guǎngxī Wéngé Dàtúshā), was a series of events involving lynching and direct massacre in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The official record shows an estimated death toll from 100,000 to 150,000. Methods of slaughter included beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, disemboweling, and more. In certain areas including Wuxuan County and Wuming District, massive human cannibalism occurred even though no famine existed; according to public records available, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and at least thousands of people participated in the cannibalism. Other researchers have pointed out that in a county alone, 421 people had been eaten, and there were reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi.

After the Cultural Revolution, people who were involved in the massacre or cannibalism received only minor punishments during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period; in Wuxuan County where at least 38 people were eaten, fourteen participants were prosecuted, receiving up to 14 years in prison, while ninety-one members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were expelled from the party and thirty-nine non-party officials were either demoted or had a salary cut. Although the cannibalism was sponsored by local offices of Communist Party and militia, no direct evidence suggests that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership including Mao Zedong endorsed the cannibalism or even knew of it.

Discussed on

🔗 Functional Fixedness - The Candle Problem

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Cognitive science

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology that emphasizes holistic processing. Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as being a "mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem". This "block" limits the ability of an individual to use components given to them to complete a task, as they cannot move past the original purpose of those components. For example, if someone needs a paperweight, but they only have a hammer, they may not see how the hammer can be used as a paperweight. Functional fixedness is this inability to see a hammer's use as anything other than for pounding nails; the person couldn't think to use the hammer in a way other than in its conventional function.

When tested, 5-year-old children show no signs of functional fixedness. It has been argued that this is because at age 5, any goal to be achieved with an object is equivalent to any other goal. However, by age 7, children have acquired the tendency to treat the originally intended purpose of an object as special.

Discussed on