November 9, 2013
‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character’ is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman. The anecdotes were edited from taped conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton. The title derives from a woman’s response at Princeton University when, after she asked the newly arrived Feynman if he wanted cream or lemon in his tea, he naively requested both. The book, released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman’s life.
Some are lighthearted in tone, such as his fascination with safe-cracking, studying various languages, participating with groups of people who share different interests (such as biology or philosophy), and ventures into art and samba music. Others cover more serious material, including his work on the Manhattan Project (during which his first wife Arline Greenbaum died of tuberculosis) and his critique of the science education system in Brazil. The section ‘Monster Minds’ describes his slightly nervous presentation of his graduate work on the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in front of Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and other major figures of the time.
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November 8, 2013
Cherchez la femme [sher-shey la-fam] is a French phrase which literally means ‘look for the woman.’ The implication is that a man behaves out of character or in an otherwise inexplicable manner because he is trying to cover up an affair with a woman, or trying to impress or gain favor with a woman. The expression comes from the 1854 novel ‘The Mohicans of Paris’ by Alexandre Dumas. In his 1864 theatrical adaptation the expression translates as: ‘There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, ‘Look for the woman!”
The phrase embodies a cliché of detective pulp fiction: no matter what the problem, a woman is often the root cause. It has come to refer to explanations that automatically find the same root cause, no matter the specifics of the problem.
Posted in Love, Sex, World |
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November 8, 2013
A bar bet is a wager between patrons at a drinking establishment. It is widely believed that the creation of Scientology was the result of a bar bet between science fiction authors L. Ron Hubbard and Robert A. Heinlein. One night over bridge (which they played regularly, with generous libations) Hubbard bet Heinlein $1 that he could create a better sci-fi religion.
Heinlein eventually conceded the bet, admitting the ‘Church of All Worlds’ from his 1961 novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ was inferior to Hubbard’s ‘Scientology’, which by then had a strong following. There is no supporting evidence for the story, but several of Heinlein’s autobiographical pieces, as well as biographical pieces written by his wife, claim repeatedly that the bet did indeed occur.
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Posted in Games, Humor, Money |
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November 7, 2013
Hawala [ha-wah-lah] (Arabic: ‘transfer’) is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers, primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, operating outside of, or parallel to, traditional banking, financial channels, and remittance systems.
The system is believed to have arisen in the financing of long-distance trade around the emerging capital trade centers in the early medieval period. In South Asia, it appears to have developed into a fully-fledged money market instrument, which was only gradually replaced by the instruments of the formal banking system in the first half of the 20th century. Today, hawala is probably used mostly for migrant workers’ remittances to their countries of origin.
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November 6, 2013
Convergent evolution describes the independent development of similar features in species of different lineages. Two species from unrelated lines can develop the same traits if they live in similar habitats, and have to develop solutions to the same kind of problems. Similar structures among species are either ‘homologous’ (derived from a common ancestors), or, as in the case of convergent evolution, ‘analogous’ (independent adaptations to similar conditions).
The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Flying insects, birds, and bats have all evolved the capacity of flight independently. They have ‘converged’ on this useful trait. All wings have functional similarities: they are thin and strong, with a wide surface area, and can be mechanically moved in a regular way so as to create lift. However, in each case the wings evolved separately, so their form reflects certain physical necessities.
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November 5, 2013
Bill de Blasio (b. 1961) is the current Public Advocate for the City of New York, a citywide elected position, which is first in line to succeed the Mayor. The office serves as a direct link between the electorate and city government, effectively acting as an ombudsman, or ‘watchdog,’ for New Yorkers. He formerly served as a New York City Council member representing the 39th District in Brooklyn.
De Blasio and his wife, activist and poet Chirlane McCray, met while both were working for the Dinkins administration. They live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with their two children, Dante and Chiara. Both children attended or still attend public schools.
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November 4, 2013
A hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the hash symbol: #. It is a form of metadata tag, for example, short messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter or Instagram may be tagged by putting ‘#’ before important words, either as they appear in a sentence, or appended to it.
Hashtags provide a means of grouping such messages, since one can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it.
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Posted in Language, Money, Technology |
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October 31, 2013
Seawise Giant, later ‘Happy Giant,’ ‘Jahre Viking,’ ‘Knock Nevis,’ ‘Oppama,’ and finally ‘Mont,’ was an Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) supertanker and the longest ship ever built. She possessed the greatest deadweight tonnage ever recorded.
Fully laden, her displacement was 724,239 tons, the heaviest ship of any kind, and with a draft of 81 ft (the distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull), she was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. Overall, she was generally considered the largest ship ever built, as well as the largest self-propelled human-made object ever built.
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October 31, 2013
‘The Yule Log‘ is a TV program which is broadcast traditionally on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, originally by NYC television station WPIX but now by many other Tribune Company-owned television stations, including WGN America. A radio simulcast of the musical portion was broadcast by associated station WPIX-FM (now WFAN-FM) until 1988. The program, which has been two to four hours in duration (without commercial interruption), is a film loop of a yule log burning in a fireplace, with a traditional soundtrack of classic Christmas music.
The concept was created in 1966 by Fred M. Thrower, President and CEO of WPIX, Inc. Inspired by an animated Coca-Cola commercial a year earlier that showed Santa Claus at a fireplace, he envisioned this program as a televised Christmas gift to New Yorkers who lived in apartments and homes without fireplaces. This also provided time for employees of the television station to stay home with their families, instead of working for the usual morning news program.
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Posted in Humor, Philosophy, Technology |
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October 30, 2013
Slow TV is a genre of live ‘marathon’ television coverage of an ordinary event in its complete length. Its name is derived both from the long endurance of the broadcast as well as from the natural slow pace of the television program’s progress. The concept is an modernization of artist Andy Warhol’s slow movie ‘Sleep’ from 1963, which showed poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours.
The concept was adapted to local TV broadcast in 1966 by WPIX in NYC for a Christmastime ‘yule log’ (a looped film of a log burning in a fireplace, accompanied by classic Christmas music, broadcast without commercial interruption).
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October 29, 2013
Patrice Wilson is a Nigerian singer and songwriter who goes by the stage names Pato and Fat Usher. He got his start in music as a backup singer with Malian-Slovak pop star Ibrahim Maiga (and learned to speak fluent Slovak while touring Eastern Europe).
Wilson moved to the US in 2001, where he took his flavor of Nigerian music, along with eastern Europe pop, and combined it with hip-hop. In 2010 he co-founded ARK Music Factory in partnership with Clarence Jey, an Australian record producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist musician. Jey left the following year, with Wilson remaining the CEO of the company. He co-authored and co-produced alongside Jey the song ‘Friday’ sung by Rebecca Black.
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October 28, 2013
Pharmacy automation is the automation of tasks performed in pharmacy:
measuring and mixing powders and liquids for compounding; tracking and updating customer information in databases (e.g. personally identifiable information, medical history, drug interaction risk detection); inventory management; and dispensing of medication.
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