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๐ Type A and Type B personality theory
Type A and Type B personality hypothesis describes two contrasting personality types. In this hypothesis, personalities that are more competitive, highly organized, ambitious, impatient, highly aware of time management and/or aggressive are labeled Type A, while more relaxed, less 'neurotic', 'frantic', 'explainable', personalities are labeled Type B.
The two cardiologists who developed this theory came to believe that Type A personalities had a greater chance of developing coronary heart disease. Following the results of further studies and considerable controversy about the role of the tobacco industry funding of early research in this area, some reject, either partially or completely, the link between Type A personality and coronary disease. Nevertheless, this research had a significant effect on the development of the health psychology field, in which psychologists look at how an individual's mental state affects physical health.
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- "Type A and Type B personality theory" | 2014-03-22 | 26 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Beerware License: Best Open Source License Ever.
Beerware is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek term for software released under a very relaxed license (beerware licensed software). It provides the end user with the right to use a particular program (or do anything else with the source code).
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- "Beerware License: Best Open Source License Ever." | 2008-08-06 | 14 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Hyperbolic Discounting
In economics, hyperbolic discounting is a time-inconsistent model of delay discounting. It is one of the cornerstones of behavioral economics and its brain-basis is actively being studied by neuroeconomics researchers.
The discounted utility approach states that intertemporal choices are no different from other choices, except that some consequences are delayed and hence must be anticipated and discounted (i.e., reweighted to take into account the delay).
Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward, by a factor that increases with the length of the delay. In the financial world, this process is normally modeled in the form of exponential discounting, a time-consistent model of discounting. A large number of psychological studies have since demonstrated deviations in instinctive preference from the constant discount rate assumed in exponential discounting. Hyperbolic discounting is an alternative mathematical model that agrees more closely with these findings.
According to hyperbolic discounting, valuations fall relatively rapidly for earlier delay periods (as in, from now to one week), but then fall more slowly for longer delay periods (for instance, more than a few days). For example, in an early study subjects said they would be indifferent between receiving $15 immediately or $30 after 3 months, $60 after 1 year, or $100 after 3 years. These indifferences reflect annual discount rates that declined from 277% to 139% to 63% as delays got longer. This contrasts with exponential discounting, in which valuation falls by a constant factor per unit delay and the discount rate stays the same.
The standard experiment used to reveal a test subject's hyperbolic discounting curve is to compare short-term preferences with long-term preferences. For instance: "Would you prefer a dollar today or three dollars tomorrow?" or "Would you prefer a dollar in one year or three dollars in one year and one day?" It has been claimed that a significant fraction of subjects will take the lesser amount today, but will gladly wait one extra day in a year in order to receive the higher amount instead. Individuals with such preferences are described as "present-biased".
The most important consequence of hyperbolic discounting is that it creates temporary preferences for small rewards that occur sooner over larger, later ones. Individuals using hyperbolic discounting reveal a strong tendency to make choices that are inconsistent over time โ they make choices today that their future self would prefer not to have made, despite knowing the same information. This dynamic inconsistency happens because hyperbolas distort the relative value of options with a fixed difference in delays in proportion to how far the choice-maker is from those options.
๐ Krukenberg procedure
The Krukenberg procedure, also known as the Krukenberg operation, is a surgical technique that converts a forearm stump into a pincer. It was first described in 1917 by the German army surgeon Hermann Krukenberg. It remains in use today for certain special cases but is considered controversial and some surgeons refuse to perform it.
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- "Krukenberg procedure" | 2018-09-10 | 56 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ Canal Defence Light
The Canal Defence Light (CDL) was a British "secret weapon" of the Second World War.
It was based upon the use of a powerful carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a tank. It was intended to be used during night-time attacks, when the light would allow enemy positions to be targeted. A secondary use of the light would be to dazzle and disorient enemy troops, making it harder for them to return fire accurately. The name Canal Defence Light was used to conceal the device's true purpose. For the same reason, in US service they were designated T10 Shop Tractor.
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- "Canal Defence Light" | 2015-10-14 | 33 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ List of military tactics
This page contains a list of military tactics.
The meaning of the phrase is context sensitive, and has varied over time, like the difference between "strategy" and "tactics".
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- "List of military tactics" | 2019-08-23 | 123 Upvotes 81 Comments
๐ Sir Douglas Nicholls
Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls, (9 December 1906 โ 4 June 1988) was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation.
Nicholls was the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted when he was appointed Knight Bachelor in 1972 (he was subsequently appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1977). He was also the first โ and to date the only โ Indigenous Australian to be appointed to vice-regal office, serving as Governor of South Australia from 1 December 1976 until his resignation on 30 April 1977 due to poor health.
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- "Sir Douglas Nicholls" | 2021-04-29 | 55 Upvotes 17 Comments
๐ Null Island
Null Island is a name for the area around the point where the prime meridian and the equator cross, located in international waters in the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) off the west African coast. In the WGS84 datum, this is at zero degrees latitude and longitude (0ยฐN 0ยฐE), and is the location of a buoy. The name 'Null Island' serves as both a joke based around the suppositional existence of an island there, and also as a name to which coordinates erroneously set to 0,0 are assigned in placenames databases in order to more easily find and fix them. The nearest land is a small islet offshore of Ghana, between Akwidaa and Dixcove at 4ยฐ45โฒ30โณN 1ยฐ58โฒ33โณW, 307.8ย nmi (354.2ย mi; 570.0ย km) to the north.
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- "Null Island" | 2023-08-03 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Null Island" | 2019-12-22 | 46 Upvotes 56 Comments
๐ English as She Is Spoke
O novo guia da conversaรงรฃo em portuguez e inglez, commonly known by the name English as She Is Spoke, is a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, with some editions crediting Josรฉ da Fonseca as a co-author. It was intended as a PortugueseโEnglish conversational guide or phrase book; however, as the "English" translations provided are usually inaccurate or incoherent, it is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour in translation.
The humour is largely a result of Carolino's indiscriminate use of literal translation; this causes many idiomatic expressions to be translated ineptly. For example, Carolino translates the Portuguese phrase chover a cรขntaros as "raining in jars", when an analogous English idiom is available in the form of "raining buckets".
It is widely believed that Carolino could not speak English, and that a FrenchโEnglish dictionary was used to translate an earlier PortugueseโFrench phrase book, O novo guia da conversaรงรฃo em francรชs e portuguรชs, written by Josรฉ da Fonseca. Carolino likely added Fonseca's name to the book without his permission in an attempt to give it some credibility. The PortugueseโFrench phrase book is apparently a competent work, without the defects that characterize English as She Is Spoke.
The title English as She Is Spoke was given to the book in its 1883 republication; this phrase does not actually appear in the original phrasebook, nor does the word "spoke."
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- "English as She Is Spoke" | 2023-01-02 | 46 Upvotes 12 Comments
- "English as She Is Spoke" | 2021-01-14 | 247 Upvotes 129 Comments
๐ Could folks please help me get DigitalOcean onto wikipedia? (deleted thrice)
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- "Could folks please help me get DigitalOcean onto wikipedia? (deleted thrice)" | 2014-04-18 | 38 Upvotes 41 Comments