Random Articles (Page 6)
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π Norwegian butter crisis (2011)
The Norwegian butter crisis began in late 2011 with an acute shortage of butter and inflation of its price across markets in Norway. The shortage caused soaring prices and stores' stocks of butter ran out within minutes of deliveries. According to the Danish tabloid B.T., Norway was gripped by smΓΈr-panik ("butter panic") as a result of the butter shortage.
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- "Norwegian butter crisis" | 2022-04-20 | 15 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Norwegian butter crisis (2011)" | 2015-05-20 | 176 Upvotes 111 Comments
π Lumpers and Splitters
Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumperβsplitter problem occurs when there is the desire to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological taxa and so on. A "lumper" is an individual who takes a gestalt view of a definition, and assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is an individual who takes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.
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- "Lumpers and Splitters" | 2015-12-29 | 25 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Magnetocapacitance
Magnetocapacitance is a property of some dielectric, insulating materials, and metalβinsulatorβmetal heterostructures that exhibit a change in the value of their capacitance when an external magnetic field is applied to them. Magnetocapacitance can be an intrinsic property of some dielectric materials, such as multiferroic compounds like BiMnO3, or can be a manifest of properties extrinsic to the dielectric but present in capacitance structures like Pd, Al2O3, and Al.
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- "Magnetocapacitance" | 2020-04-26 | 20 Upvotes 6 Comments
π A function that represents all primes
In number theory, a formula for primes is a formula generating the prime numbers, exactly and without exception. No such formula which is efficiently computable is known. A number of constraints are known, showing what such a "formula" can and cannot be.
Discussed on
- "A function that represents all primes" | 2019-10-05 | 16 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Cybiko
The Cybiko is a Russian handheld computer introduced in the United States by David Yang's company Cybiko Inc. as a retail test market in New York on April 2000, and rolled out nationwide in May 2000. It is designed for teens, featuring its own two-way radio text messaging system. It had over 430 "official" freeware games and applications. Because of the text messaging system, it features a rubber QWERTY keyboard. An MP3 player add-on with a SmartMedia card slot was made for the unit as well. The company stopped manufacturing the units after two product versions and only a few years on the market. Cybikos can communicate with each other up to a maximum range of 100 metres (300 feet). Several Cybikos can chat with each other in a wireless chatroom. By the end of 2000, the Cybiko Classic sold over 500,000 units.
π Parable of the Broken Window
The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist FrΓ©dΓ©ric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See" ("Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.
The parable seeks to show how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are unseen or ignored. The belief that destruction is good for the economy is consequently known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy.
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- "Parable of the Broken Window" | 2023-08-20 | 21 Upvotes 15 Comments
π Biology and political orientation
A number of studies have found that biology can be linked with political orientation. This means that biology is a possible factor in political orientation but may also mean that the ideology a person identifies with changes a person's ability to perform certain tasks. Many of the studies linking biology to politics remain controversial and unreplicated, although the overall body of evidence is growing.
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- "Biology and political orientation" | 2020-04-27 | 17 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Elephant intelligence
Elephant cognition is the study of animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. With a mass of just over 11Β lb (5Β kg), an elephant's brain has more mass than that of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twenty times those of a typical elephant, a whale's brain is barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. In addition, elephants have a total of 300 billion neurons. Elephant brains are similar to humans' and many other mammals' in terms of general connectivity and functional areas, with several unique structural differences. The elephant cortex has as many neurons as a human brain, suggesting convergent evolution.
Elephants manifest a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and communication. Further, evidence suggests elephants may understand pointing: the ability to nonverbally communicate an object by extending a finger, or equivalent. It is thought they are equal with cetaceans and primates in this regard. Due to such claims of high intelligence and due to strong family ties of elephants, some researchers argue it is morally wrong for humans to cull them. Aristotle described the elephant as "the animal that surpasses all others in wit and mind."
Discussed on
- "Elephant intelligence" | 2008-03-05 | 32 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."
Curry's paradox is a paradox in which an arbitrary claim F is proved from the mere existence of a sentence C that says of itself "If C, then F", requiring only a few apparently innocuous logical deduction rules. Since F is arbitrary, any logic having these rules proves everything. The paradox may be expressed in natural language and in various logics, including certain forms of set theory, lambda calculus, and combinatory logic.
The paradox is named after the logician Haskell Curry. It has also been called LΓΆb's paradox after Martin Hugo LΓΆb, due to its relationship to LΓΆb's theorem.
Discussed on
- "Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."" | 2008-05-01 | 23 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Dancing Plague of 1518
The Dancing Plague of 1518, or Dance Epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks.
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- "Dancing Plague of 1518" | 2023-04-10 | 192 Upvotes 84 Comments