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🔗 Psychology

Bedtime procrastination or revenge bedtime procrastination is a psychological phenomenon in which people stay up later than they desire in an attempt to have control over the night because they perceive themselves (perhaps subconsciously) to lack influence over events during the day.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Computer Security 🔗 Computer Security/Computing

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.

The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the phone handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world. To ease the creation of these tones, electronic tone generators known as blue boxes became a staple of the phreaker community. This community included future Apple Inc. cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

The blue box era came to an end with the ever-increasing use of computerized phone systems which allowed telecommunication companies to discontinue the use of in-band signaling for call routing purposes. Instead, dialing information was sent on a separate channel which was inaccessible to the telecom customer. By the 1980s, most of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in the US and Western Europe had adopted the SS7 system which uses out-of-band signaling for call control (and which is still in use to this day). Phreaking has since become closely linked with computer hacking.

🔗 Economics 🔗 Books 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Anthropology

IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a 2002 book by psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen. The authors argue that differences in national income (in the form of per capita gross domestic product) are correlated with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ). They further argue that differences in average national IQs constitute one important factor, but not the only one, contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth.

The book has drawn widespread criticism from other academics. Critiques have included questioning of the methodology used, the incompleteness of the data, and the conclusions drawn from the analysis. The 2006 book IQ and Global Inequality is a follow-up to IQ and the Wealth of Nations by the same authors.

🔗 Energy

An energy slave is that quantity of energy (ability to do work) which, when used to construct and drive non-human infrastructure (machines, roads, power grids, fuel, draft animals, wind-driven pumps, etc.) replaces a unit of human labor (actual work). An energy slave does the work of a person, through the consumption of energy in the non-human infrastructure.

🔗 Brazil 🔗 Portugal 🔗 Catholicism 🔗 Indigenous peoples of the Americas 🔗 Brazil/History of Brazil 🔗 Spain 🔗 South America 🔗 South America/Paraguay

The Jesuit reductions were a type of settlement for indigenous people specifically in the Rio Grande do Sul area of Brazil, Paraguay and neighbouring Argentina in South America, established by the Jesuit Order early in the 17th century and wound up in the 18th century with the banning of the Jesuit order in several European countries. Subsequently, it has been called an experiment in "socialist theocracy" or a rare example of "benign colonialism".

In their newly acquired South American dominions, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires had adopted a strategy of gathering native populations into communities called "Indian reductions" (Spanish: reducciones de indios) and Portuguese: redução (plural reduções). The objectives of the reductions were to impart Christianity and European culture. Secular as well as religious authorities created "reductions".

The Jesuit reductions were Christian missions that extended successfully in an area straddling the borders of present-day Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina (the triple frontera) amongst the Guaraní peoples. The reductions are often called collectively the Río de la Plata missions. The Jesuits attempted to create a "state within a state" in which the native peoples in the reductions, guided by the Jesuits, would remain autonomous and isolated from Spanish colonists and Spanish rule. A major factor attracting the natives to the reductions was the protection they afforded from enslavement and the forced labour of encomiendas.

Under the leadership of both the Jesuits and native caciques, the reductions achieved a high degree of autonomy within the Spanish colonial empire. With the use of native labour, the reductions became economically successful. When the incursions of Brazilian Bandeirante slave-traders threatened the existence of the reductions, Indian militias were set up, which fought effectively against the Portuguese colonists. However, directly as a result of the Suppression of the Society of Jesus in several European countries, including Spain, in 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from the Guaraní missions (and the Americas) by order of the Spanish king, Charles III. So ended the era of the Paraguayan reductions. The reasons for the expulsion related more to politics in Europe than the activities of the Jesuit missions themselves.

The Jesuit Rio de la Plata reductions reached a maximum population of 141,182 in 1732 in 30 missions in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. The reductions of the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos in eastern Bolivia reached a maximum population of 25,000 in 1766. Jesuit reductions in the Llanos de Moxos, also in Bolivia, reached a population of about 30,000 in 1720. In Chiquitos, the first reduction was founded in 1691 and in the Llanos de Moxos in 1682.

The Jesuit reductions have been lavishly praised as a "socialist utopia" and a "Christian communistic republic" as well as criticized for their "rigid, severe and meticulous regimentation" of the lives of the Indian people they ruled with a firm hand through Guaraní intermediaries.

Werckmeister temperaments are the tuning systems described by Andreas Werckmeister in his writings. The tuning systems are numbered in two different ways: the first refers to the order in which they were presented as "good temperaments" in Werckmeister's 1691 treatise, the second to their labelling on his monochord. The monochord labels start from III since just intonation is labelled I and quarter-comma meantone is labelled II. The temperament commonly known as "Werckmeister III" is referred to in this article as "Werckmeister I (III)".

The tunings I (III), II (IV) and III (V) were presented graphically by a cycle of fifths and a list of major thirds, giving the temperament of each in fractions of a comma. Werckmeister used the organbuilder's notation of ^ for a downwards tempered or narrowed interval and v for an upward tempered or widened one. (This appears counterintuitive - it is based on the use of a conical tuning tool which would reshape the ends of the pipes.) A pure fifth is simply a dash. Werckmeister was not explicit about whether the syntonic comma or Pythagorean comma was meant: the difference between them, the so-called schisma, is almost inaudible and he stated that it could be divided up among the fifths.

The last "Septenarius" tuning was not conceived in terms of fractions of a comma, despite some modern authors' attempts to approximate it by some such method. Instead, Werckmeister gave the string lengths on the monochord directly, and from that calculated how each fifth ought to be tempered.

🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics

"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" is an English sentence used to demonstrate lexical ambiguity and the necessity of punctuation, which serves as a substitute for the intonation,stress, and pauses found in speech. In human information processing research, the sentence has been used to show how readers depend on punctuation to give sentences meaning, especially in the context of scanning across lines of text. The sentence is sometimes presented as a puzzle, where the solver must add the punctuation.

It refers to two students, James and John, required by an English test to describe a man who had suffered from a cold in the past. John writes "The man had a cold", which the teacher marks incorrect, while James writes the correct "The man had had a cold". Since James's answer was right, it had had a better effect on the teacher.

The sentence is much easier to understand with added punctuation and emphasis:

James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

In each of the five "had had" word pairs in the above sentence, the first of the pair is in the past perfect form. The italicized instances denote emphasis of intonation, focusing on the differences in the students' answers, then finally identifying the correct one.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Law 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software

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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🔗 Aviation 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/European military history

The Blohm & Voss BV 141 was a World War II German tactical reconnaissance aircraft. It is notable for its uncommon structural asymmetry. Although the Blohm & Voss BV 141 performed well, it was never ordered into full-scale production, for reasons that included the unavailability of the preferred engine and competition from another tactical reconnaissance aircraft, the Focke-Wulf Fw 189.