February 10, 2011
Sacred geometry ascribes symbolic and sacred meanings to certain geometric shapes and certain geometric proportions. It is associated with the belief that a god is the geometer (geometry mathematician) of the world. The geometry used in the design and construction of religious structures such as churches, temples, mosques, religious monuments, altars, and tabernacles has sometimes been considered sacred. The concept applies also to sacred spaces such as temenoi, sacred groves, village greens, and holy wells, and the creation of religious art.
The belief that a god created the universe according to a geometric plan has ancient origins. Plutarch attributed the belief to Plato, writing that ‘Plato said God geometrizes continually’ In modern times, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss adapted this quote, saying ‘God arithmetizes.’ As late as Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), a belief in the geometric underpinnings of the cosmos persisted among some scientists.
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February 10, 2011
Jenkem is an alleged hallucinogenic recreational drug composed of noxious gas formed from fermented sewage. In the mid to late 1990s, several reports stated that Jenkem was being used by Zambian street children. The surfacing of the drug, or rumors of its existence, has caused at least one US municipality to amend its city ordinance regarding substances that cannot be legally inhaled to include organic substances.
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February 10, 2011
Nickelodeon compounds refers to a number of molding substances for children’s play that were created and sold by the children’s television channel Nickelodon and toy company Mattel in the 1990s. Like most molding compounds, they could be kept in their container to retain plasticity, or molded and allowed to harden overnight. They featured a wide variety of compounds with different attributes. The first compound, whose idea was taken from the show ‘You Can’t Do That on Television,’ was Nickelodeon ‘Slime,’ first manufactured in the 1980s.
The most popular compound, ‘Gak,’ was inspired by the game show ‘Double Dare.’ It made a ‘fart’ noise when squeezed into its clear, star-shaped container. In 1994 ‘Floam,’ originally called ‘bubble-gak,’ a compound composed of microbeads in a foam-like substance, was released. ‘Smud’ was much like Play-Doh, but slicker and would not dry out if left out of its container. ‘Skweeez’ was also like Play-Doh but had a more Marshmallow-like feel. ‘Gooze’ was similar to ‘Gak’ but more watery. ‘Sqand,’ or ‘Magic sand,’ begins as ordinary sand, but is dyed and coated in a hydrophobic substance.
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February 9, 2011
Patricia Piccinini (born in 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is an Australian artist and hyperrealist sculptor. Her art work came to prominence in Australia in the late 1990s.
Her major artworks often reflect her interests in issues such as bioethics, biotechnologies and the environment. Other Australian artists who work in a similar idiom are Martine Corompt, Sam Jinks and Ron Mueck.
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February 9, 2011
The Casio F91W is an inexpensive quartz digital watch, manufactured by the Japanese firm Casio Computer Co., Ltd.. It was introduced in 1991. This watch is widely available throughout the world. It is widely noticeable due to its classic Casio shape. Prices vary, normally in the $7.50 – $15 range. United States intelligence officials have identified the F91W as a watch that terrorists often use when constructing time bombs.
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February 9, 2011
In Japan, a junior idol is a child or early teenager pursuing a career in glamour modeling (called gravure modeling in Japan) or pornography. However, child actors, musicians, and J-pop singers (whose musical genre is often termed idol pop) can also be considered junior idols. The primary divisions are divided by years U-18, U-15, and U-12, but there are also more recent partitions designated as U-10, U-6, and U-3 to reflect changes in the marketplace and idol fan communities.
Japan, which has long been relatively tolerant of the open sale and consumption of sexually oriented material, has developed a brisk trade in works that in many other countries might be considered child pornography. Recently however, public officials are moving to place tighter restrictions on the provocative depictions of young girls that are prevalent in magazines, DVDs and online.
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February 9, 2011
St. Matthew Island is a remote island in the Bering Sea in Alaska. The island has a land area of 138 sq mi, making it the 43rd largest island in the United States. In 1944, 29 reindeer were introduced to the island by the United States Coast Guard to provide an emergency food source. The coast guard abandoned the island a few years later, leaving the reindeer. Subsequently, the reindeer population rose to about 6,000 by 1963 and then died off in the next two years to 43 animals.
A scientific study attributed the population crash to the limited food supply in interaction with climatic factors (the winter of 1963-64 was exceptionally severe in the region). By the 1980s, the reindeer population had completely died out. American ecologist, Garrett Hardin cited the ‘natural experiment’ of St. Matthew Island of the reindeer population explosion and collapse as a paradigmatic example of the consequences of overpopulation.
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February 9, 2011
Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis is an interview series on Funny or Die hosted by Zach Galifianakis. Zach conducts interviews with popular celebrities between two potted ferns. The show is filmed to resemble a low-budget amateur production fit for public access television. He maintains an awkward and sometimes antagonistic demeanor with his guests, asking them bizarre and inappropriate questions mixed with off-handed non sequiturs.
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February 9, 2011
The Nuclear Football (also called ‘The Button’) is a black briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States of America to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room. It functions as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system. Russia and the United Kingdom have similar briefcases. Reputedly, there are four things in the Football: the ‘Black Book’ containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder with eight or ten pages stapled together giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Broadcast System, and a three-by-five inch card with authentication codes.
The ‘Black Book’ is 9 by 12 inches and has 75 loose-leaf pages printed in black and red. On the ‘vital’ page listing possible responses to a nuclear attack, retaliatory options appear in red and were labeled: ‘Rare, Medium or Well Done.’ The book with classified site locations was about the same size as the Black Book, and was black. It contained information on sites around the country where the president could be taken in an emergency.
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February 9, 2011
A bat phone, in business jargon, is a private telephone number that is handled at a higher priority than a public line. The name derives from Commissioner Gordon’s secure line to the ‘Batphone’ in the Batman television show of 1966–68. Bat phones are common in many industries. The phone numbers are typically given to key customers so that they may reach important individuals in case of emergencies or critical situations. Bat phones can also provide direct access to politicians or notable people.
Another example of their use is for Internet service providers offering a selection of Internet services that range from dial-up access to secure web server hosting. Customers using the secure web hosting facility would be given access to a 24-hour bat phone for prompt resolution of technical issues, while dialup customers seeking technical support would be required to wait on hold and/or call only during business hours.
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February 8, 2011
A secure telephone is a telephone that provides voice security in the form of end-to-end encryption for the telephone call, and in some cases also the mutual authentication of the call parties, protecting them against a man-in-the-middle attack. Concerns about massive growth of telephone tapping incidents lead to growing demand for secure telephones. Additionally, as the popularity of VoIP grows, secure telephony is becoming more of commonplace and less the lonely domain of spies and civil libertarians.
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February 8, 2011
Joe Cool could refer to: Snoopy of Peanuts fame, whose aliases included Joe Cool, generally while wearing dark sunglasses and hanging around the student union. Joe Montana, a former NFL quarterback who earned the nickname for his undaunted poise in adverse, high-pressure game situations. Or, a New-York-based jazz-fusion band of the 1980’s featuring Rob Mounsey, Jeff Mironov, Will Lee, and Christopher Parker.
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