The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump (WikiDumper.org)

Standard chess rules apply, with the following exceptions or clarifications:

• Pawns must go forward in the direction they originally face.
• Castling is not allowed.
• Pawns only move one space at a time.
• Match ends when a player checkmates each of his opponents. Games are reset after each checkmate.
• Checkmate is official on the mated player’s turn, not when it is first made (if there is a player between the player mating and the player being mated, he may choose to "unmate" the player).
• Players alternate the order of turns each game, starting clockwise.
• Players rotate board sides each game clockwise.
• If a player puts an opponent in checkmate, then another opponent puts the same player in checkmate (either a different checkmate or "adding to" the checkmate), then the first player to put the opponent in checkmate gets credit for the win.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:46 PM 0 comments

In contemporary fiction, gargoyles are commonly depicted as a distinct race, not just as a structural ornament. The typical fantasy Gargoyle is a (generally) winged humanoid race with demonic features (generally horns, a tail, talons, and may or may not have a beak). Gargoyles can generally use their wings to fly or glide, and, as a reference to their origins, are often depicted as having a rocky hide, or being capable of turning into stone in one way or another.

Gargoyles have featured in several works of fantasy fiction, such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (Discworld gargoyles) and the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D gargoyles) and Rifts role-playing games. Gargoyles are also the main characters in a Disney animated series and comic book, Gargoyles, and played a role in that company's adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Actress Adrienne Barbeau played a violent gargoyle in the TV series Monsters. Actress Rae Dawn Chong played a gargoyle in human form in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gargoyles in fiction". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 7:56 AM 0 comments

Women in the Tanakh are not the social or economic equals of men. At the time it was written, married women were largely subject to the wishes of their husbands, and unmarried women to the wishes of their fathers. For example, a woman needed consent from her father before she could take religious vows (Book of Numbers 30:3-5). This situation was roughly similar to that of women in the surrounding countries of the time.

Women were not considered mere possessions, however. The killing of a woman was considered murder, not theft. A wife could not be disposed of at her husband's whim, or divorced without reason. Women could own property, and a daughter could inherit her father's property (if there were no sons). They could engage in business and trade (Book of Proverbs chapter 31). Although there are frequent references in the Tanakh to a wife being traded in exchange for money or goods, this was not a simple commercial transaction. Rather, it was a gift to compensate the bride's family. Such gifts, called a dowry, are common in the Near East today. Arranged marriage was the norm for both sons and daughters (Genesis 21:21; Genesis 38:6; Book of Judges 1:12,13) although the bride was sometimes asked for her consent (Genesis 24:58) and sometimes the son chose a wife for himself (Genesis 34:4). This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hebrew Bible views on women". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:48 PM 1 comments

The half-your-age-plus-seven rule is a mathematical guide to judge whether the age difference in an intimate relationship is socially acceptable. Mathematically speaking, the rule is (Minimum Age) = (Age of the Older Individual) / 2 + 7.

For example, if Shane is 30 and wants to date Kristen, who is 20, he would be in violation of the rule, since the minimum age being 22. Notice, however, that the age difference matters less as the potential partners grow older. In this case, Shane would have four years to wait before the age difference in the relationship was "socially acceptable".

Note that what is implied by "socially acceptable" is largely a cultural construct, and has varied over time. Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall were 26 and 89 at the time of their relationship. This violation of the rule (she was 25.5 years too young), and the rule itself, were discussed on CNN in 2006. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Half-Your-Age-Plus-Seven Rule". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:32 AM 4 comments

Grey's Law is a less-known corollary of Hanlon's Razor, which imitates the form of Clarke's Third Law. It states that:

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

While the stated principle pays a certain homage to Hanlon's Razor, it is also to some extent a rebuttal of the principle therein, stating that the distinction which the former makes is often moot. It is unclear just who the "Grey" of Grey's Law is. The quotation itself appears to have spread through email sig blocks and various social bookmarking websites, and appears to be of recent origin. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Grey's Law". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:12 AM 11 comments

There exist many examples of Psychedelics in popular culture. The psychedelic experience has had a strong effect on many genres of popular music, and psychedelic drug references are common in movies, books, and in popular music.

DMT: The plot of the movie Blueberry (based on the comic Blueberry) touches Dimethyltryptamine practices of Native Americans.

LSD: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has a scene where Admiral Kirk tells a woman in 1986 that Spock did a little too much LDS in the 60's. The woman rolls her eyes at him. This was a reference to LSD, not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a musical take on Timothy Leary's analogy between the LSD experience and the passage from death through to reincarnation described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Psychedelics in popular culture". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 7:43 AM 1 comments

The phrase "Klaatu barada nikto" originates from the 1951 Cold-War-era science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. The phrase "Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!" was used to stop Gort, the robot in the film, from destroying the Earth. There is no known translation for the phrase, although "Klaatu" is the name of the humanoid alien protagonist in the film, and "nikto" is Russian for "nobody / no one." This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Klaatu barada nikto". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 2:27 PM 0 comments

A mass vision is a phenomenon in which a large group of people, usually in physical proximity to each other, all experience the same unexplained phenomena simultaneously. It is similar but not identical to the Folie à deux phenomenon.

Famous mass visions: List of UFO sightings; The Miracle of the Sun -where 70,000 pilgrims at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 saw the sun "tear itsef from the heavens and come crashing down upon the multitude".

Richard Dawkins' addresses mass visions, specifically The Miracle of the Sun, in "The God Delusion". Whilst it's unlikely that 70,000 would all have the same vision, he says it's even less likely that what they "saw" really happened (because none of the rest of the world noticed). He cites David Hume's miracle test: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish." With this, he shrugs off the mass visions. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mass Vision". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:39 AM 2 comments

This is a list of the most obese humans recorded. The table includes each individual's name, peak weight, their birth date, and years of life. This list is limited to those individuals who weighed over 1000 pounds.

Rank, Name, Sex, Birth, Death, Peak Weight
1 Carol Yager, F, 1960, 1994, 1600+ lb (727+ kg)
2 Jon Brower Minnoch, M, 1941, 1983, 1400 lb (636 kg)
3 Manuel Uribe, M, 1966, 1235 lb (550 kg)
4 Walter Hudson, M, 1944, 1991, 1197 lb (544 kg)
5 Francis John Lang, M, 1934, 1187 lb (540 kg)
6 Johnny Alee, M, 1853, 1887, 1132 lb (514 kg)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of the heaviest people". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 11:57 AM 0 comments

The mutilated chessboard problem is a famous puzzle introduced by Martin Gardner in his Scientific American column Mathematical Games. The problem is as follows: Suppose a standard 8x8 chessboard has two opposite corners removed, leaving 62 squares. Is it possible to place 31 dominoes of size 2x1 so as to cover all of these squares?

Solution: The puzzle is impossible. Any way you would place a domino would cover one white square and one black square. A group of 31 dominoes would cover 31 white and 31 black squares of a chessboard, leaving one white and one black square uncovered. The directions had you remove opposite corner squares, and such squares are always either both black or both white.

References: McCarthy, John (1999). "Creative Solutions to Problems". AISB Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Creativity. Retrieved on 2007-04-27. See also: Domino tiling, My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles By Martin. Gardner, Dominoes on a Checker Board by Jim Loy,
Dominoes on a Checker Board. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dominoes on a chessboard puzzle". Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 10:52 AM 0 comments

Ranked by critical review score, based on a four out of four scoring system.

- Singin' in the Rain (1952) starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. Scores 3.9 of 4 and 3rd in best of all time.
- Casablanca (1942) starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Scores 3.9 of 4 and 5th in best movie of all time list.
- Gone with the Wind (1939) starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Scores 3.85 and 14th overall.
- Annie Hall (1977) starring Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Scores 3.6 and 43rd overall.
- Notorious (1946) starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Scores 3.57 and 55th overall.
- Rebecca (1940) starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Scores 3.57 and 56th on the best of all time list.
- The Philadelphia Story (1940) starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Scores 3.5 and lands 64th overall.
- Titanic (1997) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Scores 3.5 of 4 and 72nd overall.
- Shakespeare in Love (1998) starring Joseph Fiennes and Geoffrey Rush. Scores 3.45 of 4 and 86th overall.
- Before Sunrise (1995) starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Scores 3.4 and 89th overall. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Best romance movies of all time". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 7:43 PM 2 comments

Dead-eye syndrome is a condition in computer generated films where the human characters appear artificial and creates a doll-like feeling to the characters, sometimes projecting there is no humanity in their eyes. This problem typically arises with computer generated characters made using motion capture technology. Since so much of human expressivity is determined by eye and eyelid movement, and since motion capture is unable to capture such subtle gradations, computer characters' eyes seem fixed and dilated, giving the feeling that the characters, though in motion, are dead.

Though it was not the first film to use motion capture technology, The Polar Express is generally regarded as the first film where the dead-eye syndrome was most noticeable and most distracting.

Notes: ^ a b "Quint has your first look inside the offices of Robert Zemeckis' BEOWULF!!!", Ain't It Cool News (February 7, 2006) by Eric Vespe;
Electrooculography; Uncanny Valley; Beowulf (2007 film); The Polar Express (film); Electroretinography. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dead-eye_syndrome". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 10:59 AM 0 comments

The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time is a list of American TV series compiled by TV Guide as a cover story for the week of May 4, 2002. At the time, TV Guide billed the list as a perspective of the most "influential" television programs in American history. Here is a [truncated] list:

10. Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975— )
9. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, 1960–1968)
8. The Simpsons (Fox, 1989— )
7. The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 1993— )
6. 60 Minutes (CBS, 1968— )
5. The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007)
4. All in the Family (CBS, 1971–1979)
3. The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955–1956)
2. I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–1957)
1. Seinfeld (NBC, 1989–1998)

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 11:57 AM 0 comments

In Judaism and in Jewish communities, men and women use ritual baths called mikvahs for a variety of reasons, mostly religious in the present day. Immersion in a mikvah requires that water covers the entire body (including the entire head). To make sure that water literally touches every part of the body, all clothing, jewelry and even bandages must be removed. In contemporary mikvahs for women, there is always an experienced attendant, commonly called the "mikvah lady", to watch the immersion and ensure that the women have been entirely covered in water.

At the same time, religious Jews are very protective about their naked body. Under the laws of tznius (modesty), both men and women cannot reveal the body parts considered to have sexual connotation (including upper arms, collarbones, legs, and -- for married women and all men -- hair, which is covered completely or partially). It is postulated in the Shulchan Aruch (the Code of Law) that one must uncover as little body as possible when in the toilet room and even when changing before sleep (trousers are often taken off and exchanged for the pijamas under the covers). By Jewish law, no clothes or jewelry at all can be present during sex; at the same time, it must be done completely under covers, and in complete darkness. This ensures maximum acuteness of the sensation experienced during sex and also decreases the risk of self-awareness and shame about one's body.

See also: Social nudity, Nudity in religion, Social nudity and Christianity, History of nudity, Israeli Naturist Society, Israel's first Naturism Portal, Israel Naturist Home Page, Religious Tolerance: Nudity as mentioned in the Bible. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nudity in Judaism". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 11:46 AM 0 comments

List of mother porn stars who are married or not married or divorced or dead [partial list]:

Aja: (two children); Alana Evans: divorced (1 child) ; Alexis Fire: (2 children); Alicia Rhodes; Alison Kilgore (Allison Kilgore): (girl 15 years and son 12 years on 2006); Angel Dark (Esmerelda, Esmeralda, Angel, Viktoria, Dark Angel, Pauline, Paulin): a son; Angel Kelly: (Have children); Angela D'Angelo: (her daughter is pornstar: Ice D'Angelo aka Ice LaFox); Angelica; Angelica Sin; Anna Nova; Annette Haven; April Flowers (Aprik, April Summers, April Rain, April): (1 kid); Ariana: married (one son born 1987); Asia Carrera: married (1 daughter); Autumn Haze: (3 children). This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of Mother Pornstars". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 5:12 PM 1 comments

The year 10,000 problem or Y10K is the collective name for all potential software bugs that may emerge as the need to express years with five digits arises. References to any year 10,000 or Y10K problem cannot at face value be taken to be serious or in jest as there are both legitimate reasons to plan for far in the future dates as well as a number of humorous references.

Practical relevance: This may not be a problem in the year 10,000, as it is highly unlikely that any of the technology or software in use today will still be active at that time. However, it is already a problem today for long term analysis programs, such as software that examines proposals for the long term handling of nuclear waste. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Year 10,000 problem". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 1:40 PM 1 comments

YouTube atheism is a social movement within the YouTube community, made famous by users uploading videos of themselves denying the Holy Spirit. See main article, Rational Response Squad for information on the Blasphemy Challenge.

YouTube atheists became extremely popular in early 2007. YouTube is well established for providing the medium for internet-based social groups to interact. In December of 2006, one such atheist group, the Rational Response Squad, with director and filmmaker Brian Flemming, started the Blasphemy Challenge. This event dramatically increased the number of vocal and visible atheists. Acting as a catalyst for atheists so start talking about atheism and whom became aware of each other on YouTube which allowed the sub-community to grow substantially.

Atheist and personality Nick Gisburne had his accounts deleted on February 8, 2007 for inappropriate content. The inappropriate content in question was critical of Islam. The video was a slideshow of explicit quotations from the Qur'an, which some may see as offensive. This led users to question the motivation behind YouTube's decision. This lead to increased visibility and numerous people re-posting his original video in the form of replies and others have sent letters to Youtube. YouTube retroactively changed the reason for the banning to copyright infringement on the grounds that he posted a video with copyrighted music. Claiming to be required to do so under the DMCA.

References: ^ Two Ways Not To Handle Free Speech on slashdot.org accessed at February 22, 2007; ^ The YouTube user xild reading her letter to YouTube; ^ Click on more in the sidebar to the right to see the full text of one such letter; ^ Nick Gisburne's personal homepage showing screen shots of correspondence with YouTube; ^ A Note on Terminated Accounts on YouTube official blog accessed at February 22, 2007; ^ Nick Gisburne's personal homepage accessed at February 22, 2007; ^ YouTube Search on "gisburne" accessed at February 22, 2007; ^ Interview with the Creator of the YouTube Atheist Video on Secular Student Alliance accessed at February 22, 2007; 'YouTube Atheists' group on YouTube. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Youtube atheists". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 2:38 PM 1 comments

Cathy O'Brien (1957-) is the co-author, with Mark Phillips, of the self-published books "TranceFormation of America and Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security." In her books and lectures, O'Brien relates allegations that, as a child, she was abducted into an alleged CIA mind control project called Project Monarch (supposedly a subsection of MKULTRA and Project Artichoke). She claims to have remained in Monarch as an adult, while she served as "a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave"[1] until rescued by Phillips.

O'Brien claims to have been abused since she was a toddler. Forced to partake in satanic sadomasochistic child pornography movies produced for Gerald Ford, she was eventually sold to the CIA, which was looking for traumatized children for their mind-control program

References: "Trance Formation of America". Trance-Formation.com - Cathy O'Brien's website; portland indymedia - Excerpts from TranceFormation; Mark Phillips / Cathy O'Brien speech (video) (transcript);
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1493414 ; TranceFormation of America: The True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave. (September 1995) ISBN 0-9660165-4-8 ; Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security (August 2004) ISBN 0-9660165-3-X. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cathy O'Brien". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 12:59 PM 1 comments

This is a list of literary characters with nine fingers, assuming for the sake of argument and simplicity that a thumb is a finger.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. Alphabetically by title.

- Assassin's Creed: Altaïr the main protagonist had his finger removed as a part of a dramatic initiation ceremony to install a concealed mechanical dagger attached to his left arm, in place of one of his fingers.
- The Big Sky (film): Jim Deakins, frontiersman hero of has a finger amputated. - Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (novel series): Peter Pettigrew, friend of James Potter (Harry Potter's father), cut off a finger to fake his death and frame Sirius Black for murder. - The Lord of the Rings (novel series), by J.R.R. Tolkien: Frodo Baggins had one finger bitten off by Gollum and was known thereafter as "Frodo of the Nine Fingers." Sauron, from The Lord of the Rings, had his ring finger cut off by Isildur. - The Legend of the Condor Heroes (novel) by Jinyong: Hong Qigong(洪七公), the legendary leader of the Beggars' Sect (丐帮). Though a hero by nature and deed, Hong once let his love of food get the better of him and delay him from saving the life of a righteous man. As per the Chinese lore that the index finger is connected to the appetite, Hong cut off his right index finger as a reminder to himself to never again let food take precedence over doing good. - Mars Trilogy (novel series), by Kim Stanley Robinson: Nadia Cherneschevsky, the constructions engineer of loses her finger in a construction accident. Later in the trilogy, medicine has advanced to the point where she grows it back. - "Me, Myself and Irene" (film): Charley Baileygates (played by Jim Carrey) gets his finger shot off with a handgun.
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (novel) by John Irving: The narrator had his right index finger cut off by his best friend in an effort to prevent the narrator from being drafted during the Vietnam War. - Remnants (novel): Violet Blake had a Worm eat through her right index finger. - Rosie and the Dance of the Dinosaurs: the main character Rosie. This is a children's book about a child with nine fingers. - The Royal Tenenbaums (film): Margot Tenenbaum (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), the brilliant playwright of ran away from home for two weeks and came back with half of one of her fingers missing.
- South by Southeast (novel): Charon, the assassin and antagonist, has only nine fingers. - SubUrbia(play and film) by Eric Bogosian: Tim cut off one finger in order to be discharged from the US Air Force. - The Wayward Bus (novel) by John Steinbeck: Juan Chicoy, the main character and driver of the bus is missing the first knuckle of one finger. - Winter Kills (film): In the deeply complicated plot of this 1987 film a woman named Evelyn is murdered by a hit man. To prove she is dead, he cuts off one of her fingers.- Xanth (novel series) by Piers Anthony: Bink, the main character, accidentally cut off his middle finger as a child, while playing with a cleaver. - Phoenix and Ashes (novel) by Mercedes Lackey: The main character, Eleanor Robinson, has her left pinky finger cut off. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of literary characters with nine fingers". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:49 AM 1 comments

This is an alphabetical list of women who have appeared in the centerfold of Playboy magazine and are now deceased. [For brevity, list is truncated.]

Lannie Balcom - drug overdose; Elisa Bridges - drug overdose; Cheryl Kubert - possible suicide; Willy Rey - drug overdose; Dorothy Stratten - homicide; Star Stowe - homicide; Sue Williams - suicide; Paige Young - drug overdose.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 5:51 AM 3 comments

Rabbi Emmanuel Rabinovich is a non-existent figure commonly cited in antisemitic propaganda. One such fake is a supposed speech by "Rabbi Rabinovich" entitled Our Race Will Rule Undisputed Over The World to the "Emergency Council of European Rabbis" in Budapest, Hungary on January 12, 1952. This forgery is taken as a "proof" of a Jewish plot against the whites in much the same way as another hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, invoked in the Rabinovich speech, is used as "proof" of Jewish global conspiracy. The speech appeared in the early 1950s right-wing newsletter, Common Sense, (A Newspaper Upholding Christianity and Patriotism) published by Conde McGinley. The paper ran an alleged quote by Nikita Khrushchev that could be spurious: when questioned, the editor could not produce a source.

References: They never said it by P.F. Boller and J. George, Oxford University Press, 1989. See also: List of hoaxes, A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, Shiliver Rebbe. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rabbi Emmanuel Rabinovich". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 5:33 PM 0 comments

Wikipedia has articles that criticize everything from certain religions to cartoons.

Business and Economics: Criticism of debt, Criticism of Wal-Mart, Criticisms of capitalism, Criticism of Microsoft

Media: Criticism of Family Guy, Criticism of George Lucas, Criticism of Pokémon, Criticisms of The Da Vinci Code

Computers, video games, and internet: Criticism of software engineering, Criticism of Internet Explorer, Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox, Criticism of Pokémon, Criticism of Wikipedia, Criticism of World of Warcraft, Criticisms of Windows XP

Politicians: Criticism of Hugo Chávez

Religion: Criticism of religion, Criticism of atheism, Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Judaism, Criticism of Hinduism, Criticism of the Bible, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Criticism of Pope John Paul II, Criticism of the Catholic Church,
Criticism of Prem Rawat, Criticism of Scientology

Politics: Criticism of libertarianism, Criticism of communism, Criticisms of socialism, Criticisms of electoralism, Criticism of Noam Chomsky

Society: Criticism of the clothes free movement,

Science: Criticisms of Anti-Scientific Viewpoints,

Current events: Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina,
Criticism of War on Terrorism, Criticism of the Iraq War, Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report,

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 3:11 PM 1 comments

In algebraic geometry, a branch of mathematics, a Zariski surface is a surface over a field of characteristic p > 0 such there is a dominant inseparable map of degree p from the projective plane to the surface. In particular, all Zariski surfaces are unirational. They were named after Oscar Zariski who used them in 1958 to give examples of unirational surfaces in characteristic p > 0 that are not rational. (In characteristic 0 by contrast, Castelnuovo's theorem implies that all unirational surfaces are rational.) Zariski surfaces are birational to surfaces in affine 3-space A^3 defined by irreducible polynomials of the form
z^p = f(x, y).

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:03 PM 0 comments

Moustaches have been used by artists to make characters distinctive as with Dick Dastardly or the video game character Mario. They have also been or to make a social or political point as with Marcel Duchamp's parody of the Mona Lisa which adds a goatee and moustache or the moustachioed self portraits of Frida Kahlo. At least one fictional moustache has been so notable that a whole style has been named after it, the Fu Manchu moustache.

List of moustaches in art and fiction: Gomez Addams of The Addams Family, Asterix, Obelix and most of the other Gauls in the comic strip Asterix, The Bad, actor Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Beatles as Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Duchamp's parody of the Mona Lisa adds a goatee and moustache, Blake from the comic strip Blake and Mortimer, Borat, Captain Hook,
Clo-Clo from the Belgian comic strip Nero, The Daltons, the bandits from the comic strip Lucky Luke,
Dick Dastardly, Duncan from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Basil Fawlty in the tv-series Fawlty Towers, Self portraits of Frida Kahlo, Fu Manchu and the Fu Manchu moustache, Ned Flanders in The Simpsons, Gobelijn from the Belgian comic strip Jommeke, Harcourt Fenton Mudd in the Star Trek: TOS episodes "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd", Earl Hickey, the character from My Name Is Earl, his moustache is often a source of comedy on the show, Kabapu from Excel Saga, Kiekeboe, Belgian comic character, Jason King, the hedonistic, womanizing, trash novel writing dandy portrayed by actor Peter Wyngarde, The Laughing Cavalier, (1624) , a famous painting by the Dutch Baroque artist Frans Hals, Laughing Cavalier, 1624 by Frans Hals, Manuel in the tv-series Fawlty Towers,
Mario, a famous video game fictional character owned by Nintendo. Also, his brother Luigi and their arch-enemies Wario and Waluigi, Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon, Mirror Spock from Star Trek - Mirror, Mirror, Meneer Pheip from the Belgian comic strip Nero, Rich Uncle Pennybags the Monopoly guy, L.H.O.O.Q. copy of the Mona Lisa by Marcel Duchamp which shows her with a moustache, Pelinore in Walt Disney's The Sword in the Stone, Hercule Poirot, a character in books written by Agatha Christie, Ignatius J. Reilly, slovenly protagonist in John Kennedy Toole's New Orleans set novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, Det. Andy Sipowicz, main protagonist of NYPD Blue, Mike Stivic on All in the Family, Superdupont, mock superhero in a well-known comic book series, Thomson and Thompson in the comic strip The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé (see also Borduria, a fictional country with a moustache as national emblem, from the same series), Wimpey character in the Popeye cartoon series, famous for his sparse bristly moustache, Yosemite Sam from Looney Tunes, The Mustache Commander of StreetWars, V from V for Vendetta, Males of the Viltrumite species in the comic book Invincible. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of notable moustaches in art and fiction". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 3:00 PM 0 comments

Overlinking in a webpage or another hyperlinked text is the characteristic of having too many hyperlinks. It is characterised by:

• A large proportion of the words in each sentence being rendered as links.
• Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which which the reader can be expected to understand the word's full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help.
• A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article. "Excessive" is usually more than one link for the same term in a line or a paragraph, since in this case one or more duplicate links will almost certainly then appear needlessly on the viewer's screen. Remember, the purpose of links is to direct the reader to a new spot at the point(s) where the reader is most likely to take a temporary detour due to needing more information. Providing more link samples for the same word in a short space (as in the bad example of this paragraph) doesn't help much.

Overlinking is often due to writers who believe that the text is improved by any addition of links, and who seem to have a "regularization" obsession - that all words which are the same, should appear the same.

References: Dvorak, John C.. "Missing Links", PC Magazine, April 2002. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Overlinking". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 4:49 PM 2 comments

The Monty Hell problem is a paradox in probability theory involving infinite sequences of actions. As described in a post in the usenet group rec.puzzles, the problem consists of choosing between two alternative strategies for banking your money while spending an eternity confined in Hell. The assumptions of the problem are that each day you are paid $10 in ten $1 bills, but must turn over $1 each day to the Devil to pay for the heat. You are not allowed to handle your money yourself, but instead must choose one of two bankers:
- Monty, who puts each day's bills in a large sack, then chooses one of the bills from the sack uniformly at random (including bills from previous days) to give to the Devil.
- Marilyn, who carefully removes one bill from the stack of ten bills to give to the Devil, and then places the remaining nine bills in her sack.
The goal is to maximize your wealth at the end of your eternal confinement, which occurs on a hypothetical day ω (see Transfinite number), which occurs after all finitely-numbered days.
(The problem is sometimes stated such that Marilyn removes nine bills and only puts one in the sack. Here, for simplicity, they remove the same amount of money daily.)

The paradox: Let us start with the obvious explanation why it doesn't make any difference which banker you choose: after t days, both Monty and Marilyn have 9t dollars. Since these quantities both grow without limit, either will give you infinitely many dollars in the end. There is another explanation that favors Marilyn, and depends on the assumption that dollar bills have individual identities, rather than just being counters for total wealth. Once any particular dollar bill is placed in the sack, on each and every subsequent day, there is a chance that Monty will take that particular dollar bill out again and give it to the Devil. Since there are an infinite number of days thereafter, it would seem that the probability that this will happen eventually is, in fact, 100% (and this intuition is upheld by probability theory, as shown in the appendix). Therefore, each dollar bill that Monty put into the sack will eventually be taken out. None of them will be in the sack on day ω! Monty almost always leaves you with nothing, and you are better off with Marilyn. This is true even though at any finite time Monty and Marilyn have the same number of dollar bills in their sacks.
The paradox is the apparent contradiction between these two answers. The paradox is particularly painful because the obvious explanation requires very little mathematics, making the second answer look suspiciously complex.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 1:03 PM 0 comments

Admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. NKJV

The origin of the term stems from an incident when R.C. Sproul, Jr. in a good-natured, joking, and in-passing manner referred to his wife as a "Prairie Muffin." The term is proudly worn by those who self-define as such, although people who see the term and its lifestyle as form of patriarchy may use it as a pejorative. The husbands of those who self-define as Prairie Muffins sometimes refer to themselves as "Prairie Dawgs". Prairie Muffin women are likely to be Quiverfull, homeschoolers, and to live in a rural area.

See also: Patriarchy, Quiverfull

References: Are you a Prairie Muffin?, Prairie Muffin Update: So Called "Biblical Patriarchy" on the Rise, The Prairie Muffin Manifesto by Carmon Friedrich, The Prairie Muffin Quiz. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Prairie Muffins". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 12:14 PM 4 comments

Bio art is one of the most recent developments of contemporary art; it takes biotechnologies as a medium. Transgenics, tissue culture, morphologic modifications, are some of the many techniques those artists use, posing technological, ethical and social questions.

Those experimentations may involve the artist's own body (implants, skin culture, animal blood transfusion), and often embody traditional fears and hopes linked to the technology.... While Bio art can be said to have several originators, Eduardo Kac is considered by many as the emblematic bio artist and a leading figure in the field. He is best know for his living work, the rabbit Alba, and for his "Genesis". Kac originally introduced the term "bio art" in relation to his work "Time Capsule", in 1997. Another fundamental name is George Gessert, who started to hybridize and create new flowers already in the early 1980s. Joe Davis is also a bio artist whose recent works include the Microvenus, where the artist embedded messages into a bacterial genome. His Audio Microscope was able to translate light into sound and this allowed you to hear living cells to reflect on their unique acoustic signatures. SymbioticA is a group founded by Oron Catts and Ionatt Zurr and located at the University of Western Australia in The School of Anatomy & Human Biology. They use living tissue as a sculptural form while engaging the ethical issues surrounding this often controversial art form.SymbioticA's latest exhibition created by Guy Ben-Ary, BioKino: The living screen. Nano movies are projected over living canvas' (cornea, blood and skin), via a Bio projector (The projection is 500 microns in size). Shown in recreation fairground and vaudeville houses of earlier cinema, with costuming by award winning designers ericaamerica. Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey used photosynthesis to create "photographs" on grass. Natalie Jeremijenko has cloned trees to confound common understanding of the notion of the individual. Marta de Menezes has created butterflies with wing patterns produced by herself.

See also: biopunk, biotechnology, bionics, next nature. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bio Art". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 4:35 PM 0 comments

Marija Pavlovic (April 1, 1965 -) was one of the six visionaries at Medjugorje who saw the Virgin Mary. On 24 June 1981, at about 6 pm, along with five other young parishioners from Medjugorje she saw on the hill Crnica (on the place called Podbrdo) an apparition, a white form with a child in her arms. Surprised and scared, they did not approach. The next day at the same time, 25 June 1981, four of them returned, and were later joined by the other two. Thereafter they had daily apparitions of Our Lady.
At the time of the first apparition, she was 16 years old. During the apparitions she was given nine secrets. Her visions relate her to the Italian writer and mystic Maria Valtorta in that Our Lady recommended Valtorta’s book to Marija in her visions. She is married now, lives in Italy and has four children.

External Links: Gospa: http://www.gospa.com/pages/vision.htm, Medjugorje: http://www.medjugorje.org/avip.htm. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Marija Pavlović". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 5:52 PM 1 comments

Centaurs were reportedly seen in the Roman Empire era, for example, during the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54). One of them was even captured and moved to Egypt as a gift for the Roman emperor. After it died, its corpse was embalmed and shipped by sea to Rome where it was exhibited in Claudius's palace. The centaur completely submerged in honey was witnessed by Pliny the Elder. The natural historian Aelian (AD 200) was also interested in these creatures. Around AD 50 the emperor Claudius received a message from the authorities in Greece about the birth of a baby centaur in Thessaly." [1]

Historical Evidence of Human-Animal Sexual Contacts: There are many historical records about the use of sheep or goats by warriors for eating and for having sex. Bestiality was common among ancient Greeks and Romans. According to a legend, Greek scholar Thales warned his master Periandros not to hire unmarried shepherds in order to stop creating more centaurs. Roman satirist Juvenalius mentioned that "Roman women often exposed their naked buttocks to tempt donkeys into sex contacts." Similar contacts were caused by fertility cults in Egypt. According to Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin, he saw a woman who had a baby with a feline head after a copulation with a cat. [2]

Reports of Modern-Day Centaur Sightings: Alleged sigtings of Centaurs continue to this day. Reports come from many different places, as far away as Florida [3] and Nigeria [4].

Unorthodox Scientific Opinions: Some modern-day Australian and British anthropologists suggest that hybrids such as centaurs could have co-existed side by side with early humans, if we look at 32,000-year-old rock paintings in Australia and South Africa. [5]

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Centaurs in antiquity". Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 6:10 PM 0 comments

This is a list of bands and artist whose names begin with the word "lemon": Lemon Demon, The Lemonheads, Lemon Hill, Lemon Jelly, Lemon Juju,