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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February 8, 2011
The Cod Wars were a series of confrontations in the 1950s and 1970s between the United Kingdom and Iceland regarding fishing rights in the North Atlantic. In 1972, Iceland unilaterally declared an Exclusive Economic Zone extending beyond its territorial waters, before announcing plans to reduce overfishing. It policed its quota system with the coast guard, leading to a series of net-cutting incidents with British trawlers that fished the areas. As a result, a fleet of Royal Naval warships and tug-boats were employed to act as a deterrent against any future harassment of British fishing crews by the Icelandic craft.
The conflict involved several cases of vessels ramming each other. The dispute ended in 1976 after Iceland threatened to close a major NATO base in retaliation for Britain’s deployment of naval vessels within the disputed 200 nautical mile (370 km) limit. The British government conceded, and agreed that after 1 December 1976 British vessels would not fish within the previously disputed area.
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February 8, 2011
A tourbillon [tor-bee-yon] (French for ‘whirlwind’) is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement (the device which converts continuous rotational motion into an oscillating or back and forth motion; the source of the ‘ticking’ sound produced by watches and clocks).
Developed around 1795 by the French – Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet from an earlier idea by the English chronometer maker John Arnold a tourbillon counters the effects of gravity by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage. Originally an attempt to improve accuracy, tourbillons are still included in some expensive modern watches as a novelty and demonstration of watchmaking virtuosity. The mechanism is usually exposed for display on the watch’s face.
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February 8, 2011
Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that acts primarily in the brain. It is best known for roles in female reproduction. It is released in large amounts during labor, and after stimulation of the nipples, facilitating birth and breastfeeding. Recent studies have begun to investigate oxytocin’s role in various behaviors, including orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, and maternal behaviors. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the ‘love hormone.’
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February 8, 2011
Coitus reservatus (also known as sexual continence) is commonly thought of as a form of sexual intercourse in which the man does not attempt to ejaculate within his partner, but instead attempts to remain at the plateau phase of intercourse for as long as possible avoiding the orgasm and seminal emission. Another term used for this kind of relationship is the word karezza.
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February 8, 2011
Neotantra is a term used to describe the modern, western use of the word Tantra (one of the later Hindu or Buddhist scriptures dealing especially with techniques and rituals including meditative and sexual practices). Neotantra refers to both the New Age and modern Western interpretations of traditional Indian tantra. Some of its proponents refer to ancient and traditional texts and principles, and many others use tantra as a catch-all phrase for ‘sacred sexuality,’ and may incorporate unorthodox practices. In addition, not all of the elements of Indian tantra are used in neotantric practices, in particular the reliance on a guru, or teacher.
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February 8, 2011
La petite mort, French for ‘the little death,’ is a metaphor for orgasm. More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the ‘life force,’ the feeling whereof is caused by the release of oxytocin in the brain after the occurrence of the orgasm. The term does not only apply to sexual experiences.
Literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as the chief objective of reading literature. He metaphorically used the concept to describe the feeling one should get when experiencing any great literature. It can also be used when some undesired thing has happened to a person and has affected them so much that ‘a part of them dies inside.’
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