November 2, 2010
Pantheism [pan-thee-iz-uhm] is the view that the Universe (Nature) and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. Although there are divergences within Pantheism, the central ideas found in almost all versions are the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity and the sacredness of Nature.
The term ‘pantheist’ — from which the word ‘Pantheism’ was derived — was purportedly first used in English by Irish writer John Toland in his 1705 work, ‘Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist.’ However, many earlier writers, schools of philosophy, and religious movements expressed pantheistic ideas such as Heraclitus and Anaximander, and the early Taoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi is also pantheistic.
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November 2, 2010
Moai [moh-aye] are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island’s perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-fifths the size of their bodies. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors.
The 887 statues’ production and transportation is considered a remarkable creative and physical feat. The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tons; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.
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November 2, 2010
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.
In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. It is a a form of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents, music and art.
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November 2, 2010
Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired, and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited. Examples include the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, as well as the works of Shakespeare and the patents over powered flight.
Public domain is a concept of intellectual property law, which includes copyright, patents and trademarks, and refers to works, ideas, and information which are intangible to private ownership and/or which are available for use by members of the public.
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November 2, 2010
Luxottica is the world’s largest eyewear company. Its best known brands include Ray-Ban, Oliver Peoples, Revo, and Oakley. It also makes sunglasses and prescription frames for a multitude of designer brands such as Chanel and Prada, whose designs and trademarks are used under license. Leonardo Del Vecchio started the company in 1961, in Agordo north of Venice, Italy; today the company is headquartered in Milan. Its prime competitor is Safilo, which was founded in 1939 also in northern Italy. Del Vecchio began his career as the apprentice to a tool and die maker in Milan, but decided to turn his metalworking skills to making spectacle parts. So in 1961 he moved to Agordo in the province of Belluno, which is home to most of the Italian eyewear industry.
In 1967 he started selling complete eyeglass frames under the Luxottica brand. Convinced of the need for vertical integration, in 1974 he acquired Scarrone, a distribution company. The company listed in New York in 1990, and in Milan in December 2000, joining the MIB-30 (now S&P/MIB) index in September 2003. The listing enhanced the company’s ability to acquire other brands, starting with Italian brand Vogue in 1990, Persol and US Shoe Corporation (LensCrafters) in 1995, Ray-Ban in 1999 and Sunglass Hut, Inc. in 2001. They went looking for more retail companies, acquiring Sydney-based OPSM in 2003, Pearle Vision in 2004, Surfeyes in 2006, and Cole National in 2004. Most recently, it acquired Oakley in a US$2.1bn deal in November 2007.
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November 2, 2010
In software development, a software project’s bus factor is an irreverent measurement of concentration of information in a single person, or very few people. The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated, (as by getting hit by a bus) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed. Commentators have noted that the vanilla Linux kernel tree’s bus factor may be as low as one: the project’s founder and chief architect, Linus Torvalds.
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November 1, 2010
Opal is a mineraloid (a mineral-like substance that does not demonstrate crystallinity) which is deposited at a relatively low temperature and may occur in the fissures of almost any kind of rock, being most commonly found with limonite, sandstone, rhyolite, marl and basalt. The word opal comes from the Latin opalus (to see a change of color).
The water content is usually between three and ten percent, but can be as high as twenty percent. Opal ranges from clear through white, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, magenta, rose, pink, slate, olive, brown, and black. Of these hues, the reds against black are the most rare, whereas white and greens are the most common. These color variations are a function of growth size into the red and infrared wavelengths. Opal is Australia’s national gemstone.
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October 30, 2010
Dock Ellis (1945 – 2008) was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other teams. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. However, he is perhaps best remembered for throwing a no-hitter in 1970 and later stating that he had done it while under the influence of LSD. Continue reading →
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October 28, 2010
Dub FX (real name Benjamin Stanford) is a worldwide street performer and studio recording artist from Australia. His trademark is creating live music using only his own voice, Live looping, and effects pedals.
His music is based on hip hop, reggae and drum and bass rhythms. Stanford travels and performs with his fiancée, Flower Fairy (real name Shoshana Sadia).
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October 28, 2010
The Mimic Octopus is a species of octopus that has a strong ability to mimic other creatures. It grows up to 60 cm (2 feet) in length. Its normal coloring consists of brown and white stripes or spots. Living in the tropical seas of South East Asia, it was not discovered officially until 1998, off the coast of Sulawesi. The octopus mimics the physical likeness and movements of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, flounders, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. It accomplishes this by contorting its body and arms, and changing color.
Although all octopuses can change color and texture, and many can blend with the sea floor, appearing as rocks, the mimic octopus is the first octopus species ever observed to impersonate other animals. Based on observation, the mimic octopus may decide which animal to impersonate depending on local predators. For example, when the octopus was being attacked by damselfish, it often mimics a banded sea snake, a damselfish predator. The octopus impersonates the snake by turning black and yellow, burying six of its arms, and waving its other two arms in opposite directions. The mimic octopus is often confused with Wunderpus photogenicus, another recently discovered species. The Wunderpus can be distinguished by the pattern of strong, fixed white markings on its body.
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October 28, 2010
Funky Forest: The First Contact, also known as Naisu no mori is a 2005 Japanese movie written and directed by Katsuhito Ishii, Hajimine Ishimine and Shunichiro Miki. The movie is a collection of several surreal, non-sequitur shorts. Dance numbers, pillow fights, animation, comedy, and science fiction all combine to create a unique and disorienting viewing experience featuring such highlights as an absurdist tribute to David Cronenberg, an ass-television, and a girl who fires lasers from her forehead in order to battle a floating space blob which emits spinning, spherical projectiles.
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October 28, 2010
The Darwin Award are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions circa 1985. They recognize individuals who have contributed to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization due to their own (unnecessarily foolish) actions. The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993, and followed up by a series of books starting in 2000, authored by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states, ‘In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species’ chances of long-term survival.’
Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies; however, the site notes: ‘Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously.’ But the candidate is disqualified if ‘innocent bystanders,’ who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process. The Darwin Awards books state that an attempt is made to disallow known urban legends from the awards, but some older ‘winners” have been ‘grandfathered’ to keep their awards. The Darwin Awards site does try to verify all submitted stories, but many similar sites, and the vast number of circulating ‘Darwin awards’ emails, are largely fictional.
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