Everything is Interesting
Fecal bacteriotherapy, also known as fecal transfusion, fecal transplant, or human probiotic infusion (HPI), is a medical treatment for patients with gastrointestinal conditions which require restoration of normal bacterial flora from stool obtained from a healthy donor.
Flashblood (also called Flushblood) is a technique employed by drug users in which an addict injects himself with blood extracted from another drug user, most commonly one who has injected heroin. After injecting themselves with heroin using a syringe, the user will extract approximately one teaspoon of blood from the vein. Another user will then inject the withdrawn blood into themselves. It is unclear if there is enough heroin in the injected blood to get high or if the high that many users claim is a result of traces of the heroin that had been injected by the user, or if the high is simply the result of the placebo effect.
A police box is a British telephone kiosk or callbox located in a public place for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. Unlike an ordinary callbox, its telephone is located behind a hinged door so it can be used from the outside, and the interior of the box is, in effect, a miniature police station for use by police officers. Police boxes pre-date the era of mobile telecommunications; now police officers, in many countries, carry two-way radios and/or mobile phones rather than relying on fixed kiosks. Many boxes are now disused or have been withdrawn from service.
British police boxes were usually blue, except in Glasgow, where they were red until the late sixties. In addition to a telephone, they contained equipment such as an incident book and a first aid kit. Today the image of the blue police box is a trademark of the BBC as it is widely associated with the science fiction television programme Doctor Who, in which the protagonist’s time machine, a TARDIS, is in the shape of a 1960s British police box.
The Million Dollar Quartet is the name given to recordings made on Tuesday December 4, 1956 in the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The recordings were of an impromptu jam session between Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.
The custom of drinking beer from a boot-shaped glass is common in German themed bars, beer gardens, and the like. Machine pressed beer boots range in size from a shot glass up to 1 litre. The more popular mouth blown beer boots are typically 1 and 2 litres in size.
There are several different origin stories for the boot of beer. One tradition holds that a Prussian general swore to his troops that he would drink beer from his boot dependent on the successful outcome in a coming battle. When victorious, the general ordered a glass fashioned in the shape of a boot to fulfill his promise without, ‘having to taste his own feet.’ Another tradition holds that the boot began when German soldiers during World War I having nothing else to drink from instead passed around an actual leather boot of beer before heading into battle. They would flick the boot before drinking from it for good luck and again after drinking to wish the next soldier good luck.
Quantum entanglement is a property of physics where two particles will act together and become a system. They behave like one object, but remain two separate objects. It is as if they now sit on the same teeter-totter seesaw. No matter how long the seesaw is, even if it is one million miles long, if one end is down the other end must be up, and this happens instantly. Even though each particle can tell what the other is doing, they do not send messages back and forth. There are no messages between the particles saying, ‘I’m going down, therefore, you must go up’ and waiting for the particle to receive the message. Yet, the particles are always connected and can behave as one.
Quantum Entanglement is one of the concepts that led Albert Einstein to dislike the theory of Quantum Mechanics. Along with his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, Einstein used entanglement to try to disprove quantum mechanics. Einstein called entanglement ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Years later, however, John Bell proved with his theorem that entanglement is real and actually happens to tiny particles. Bell’s theorem was experimentally verified for the first time in 1980 by the French physicist Alain Aspect. Although one can probe a nearby particle to instantly affect its partner particle, it is impossible to control how they end up. In other words, probing the particle will influence its partner particle, but it is impossible to choose how to influence them. Therefore it is impossible to use quantum entanglement to send messages.
In economics, a monopsony [muh-nop-suh-nee] is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only purchaser of a good or service, the ‘monopsonist’ may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.
The term was first introduced by Joan Robinson in her influential book, ‘The Economics of Imperfect Competition.’ Robinson credits classics scholar Bertrand Hallward of Peterhouse College, Cambridge with coining the term. A single-payer universal health care system, in which the government is the only ‘buyer’ of health care services, is an example of a monopsony. It has also been argued that Wal-Mart, in the United States, functions as a monopsony in certain market segments, as its buying power for a given item may dwarf the remaining market. The Canadian Wheat Board, established by the Parliament of Canada in 1935 as a producer marketing system, is a monopsonistic buyer of wheat and barley.
The Higgs Boson [boh-son] is a very small particle, which interacts with a field called the Higgs Field. This field creates a ‘drag’ on particles, and this drag gives the particles mass. An easy way to think of it is that this field grabs onto many other particles, giving them a resistance to being moved. This resistance is observed as the particle’s mass. This field only interacts with particles that have mass, which is why some particles can go the speed of light like photons and some cannot, like neutrons.
As it is much smaller than other particles, it is difficult to detect. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the tool that scientists are now using to try to find it. Its existence is required in the Standard Model of particle physics, but it is the only particle in that model which has not yet been observed. If the the results of the work at CERN cannot show that the Higgs Boson exists, then a rewrite of our entire understanding of physics will be required.
A bearer bond is a debt security issued by a business entity, such as a corporation, or by a government. It differs from the more common types of investment securities in that it is unregistered – no records are kept of the owner, or the transactions involving ownership. Whoever physically holds the paper on which the bond is issued owns the instrument. This is useful for investors who wish to retain anonymity. Recovery of the value of a bearer bond in the event of its loss, theft, or destruction is usually impossible.
Bearer bonds have historically been the financial instrument of choice for money launderers, tax evaders, and those just generally trying to conceal business transactions. In response, new issuances of bearer bonds were banned in the United States in 1982. All the bearer bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury have matured. They no longer pay interest to the holders. As of May 2009, the approximate amount outstanding is $100 million. Bearer bonds are still used in some parts of the world, notably in Central America.
A caltrop is an antipersonnel weapon made up of two or more sharp nails or spines arranged in such a manner that one of them always points upward from a stable base. They may be thought of as the landmines of antiquity, useful to shape the battlefield and force the enemy into certain paths and approaches, or to provide a passive defense as part of a defensive works system. Caltrops served to slow down the advance of horses, war elephants, and human troops. They were said to be particularly effective against the soft feet of camels. In more modern times, caltrops are used against wheeled vehicles with pneumatic tires.
Van Eck phreaking is the process of eavesdropping on the contents of a CRT or LCD display by detecting its electromagnetic emissions. It is named after Dutch computer researcher Wim van Eck, who in 1985 published the first paper on it, including proof of concept. Phreaking is the process of exploiting telephone networks, used here because of its connection to eavesdropping.
Information that drives the video display takes the form of high frequency electrical signals. These oscillating electric currents create electromagnetic radiation in the RF range. These radio emissions are correlated to the video image being displayed, so, in theory, they can be used to recover the displayed image. In a 2009 test of electronic voting systems in Brazil, Van Eck phreaking was used to successfully compromise ballot secrecy as a proof of concept.
Wojtek (1942–1963), was a Syrian brown bear cub adopted by soldiers of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped move ammunition. The name Wojtek is Slavic and has two meanings: ‘he who enjoys war’ or ‘smiling warrior.’
The bear was fed with fruits, marmalade, honey and syrup, and was often rewarded with beer, which became his favourite drink. He also enjoyed eating cigarettes. As one of the officially enlisted ‘soldiers’ of the company, he lived with the other men in their tents or in a transportable wooden crate. After the war, Wojtek was given to the Edinburgh Zoo. There he spent the rest of his days, often visited by journalists and former Polish soldiers, some of whom would toss him cigarettes. Wojtek died in December of 1963, at the age of 22.
