Wikipedia ( or ) is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 17 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet,
The name ' was coined by Larry Sanger and is a portmanteau from wiki (a technology for creating collaborativ...
A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used by nuclear power proponents to place in scale the dangers of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation generated by a common banana.
Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain. The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana. Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical). By comparing the exposure from th...
Drunken noodles (or Pad Kee Mao, less frequently Pad Ki Mao or Pad Kimao, Lao: ຜັດຂີ້ເມົາ; , , ) is a Chinese-influenced dish that was made popular by the Chinese people living in Laos and Thailand. It is a stir fried noodle dish very similar to Phat Si Io, but with a slightly different flavor profile. It is made with broad rice noodles, soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic, meat or tofu, bean sprouts, and various seasonings. Chili and basil give rise to its distinctive spiciness. Drunken fried rice or khao phat khimao is a similar dish.
External links
*[http://www.templeofthai.com/recipes/...
Rogan josh (or roghan josh) is an aromatic curry dish hailing from Kashmir and is quite popular in India, Pakistan, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Rogan (روغن) means oil in Persian, while josh (جوش) means heat, hot, boiling, or passionate. Rogan josh thus means cooked in oil at intense heat. Another interpretation of the name rogan josh is derived from the word rogan meaning color and josh meaning passion, hot or red. So this is a meat dish which is red in color. The red color is essential to this dish and to achieve this end kashmiri mirch, which means "pepper from Kashmir" is used. T...
Boobquake, which took place on April 26, 2010, was devised by Jennifer McCreight, a senior in the Purdue University College of Science, in response to news reports that Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi had blamed women who dress immodestly for causing earthquakes. On April 19, it was reported that Seddiqi advised his listeners that: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes" and Iranians should "adapt their lives to Islam’s moral codes” to avoid being "buried under the rubble".
One year prior...
The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass, also referred to as the snail telegraph, was a contraption built in an attempt to prove the misguided hypothesis that snails create a permanent telepathic link when they touch. The belief was developed by French occultist Jacques Toussaint Benoit and colleague Monsieur Biat-Chretien in the early to mid 19th century.
The supposed telepathic bond between the two snails was imagined to have no physical limit, thus making communication possible over any distance. By touching one half of the snail partnership it was suggested that the other snail would ...
The Lloyds Bank coprolite is a large human coprolite, or fossilized dung specimen, recovered by archaeologists excavating the Viking settlement of Jórvík (now York) in England.
It was found in 1972 beneath the site of what was to become the York branch of Lloyds Bank and may be the largest example of fossilised human faeces ever found. Analysis of the nine-inch (23 cm) long stool has indicated that its producer subsisted largely on meat and bread whilst the presence of several hundred parasitic eggs suggests he or she was riddled with intestinal worms. In 1991, paleoscatologist Andr...
The Interactive Urinal Communicator is an advertising device invented by bioengineer Dr. Richard Deutsch for the Islip, New York company Wizmark. The 3.5 inch screen is placed in a urinal to promote products or services. Deutsch commented, "Now when nature calls, there is going to be something entertaining to look at and listen to."
Features of the advertising include:
* Flashing lights that are activated by physical presence, or actual urination
* A lenticular image that changes depending on viewpoint
* A 16-second pre-recorded audio message
* A temperature-sensitive image
Deutsch comme...
__NOTOC__
A chicken gun is a large diameter compressed air cannon used to test the strength of aircraft windshields and the safety of jet engines. A common danger to aircraft is that they collide with birds in flight. Most parts of an aircraft are strong enough to resist such a bird strike. Jet engines may sustain serious damage, however, and cockpit windows are necessarily made of transparent materials and are a vulnerable spot.
The chicken gun is designed to simulate high speed bird impacts. It is named after its unusual ammunition: a whole dead standard-sized chicken, as would be used ...
The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this - the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces was 'produced' from a second, so that no actual digestion took place - Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.
Voltaire wrote that "without [...] the duck of Vaucanson, you have nothing to ...
(, pl. Ampelmännchen) is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights at pedestrian crossings in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany). Prior to the German reunification in 1990, the two German states had different forms for the Ampelmännchen, with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally male figure wearing a hat in the east.
The Ampelmännchen is a beloved symbol in Eastern Germany, "enjoy[ing] the privileged status of being one of the few features of communist East Germany to have survived the end of the Iron Curtain with his popularity unscathed." A...
@Kev - I'm been thinking about getting one, but too many projects on my plate already. Plus, as nice as c# is, it's kinda overkill for microcontroller work.
@kev - That sounds like a bit of fun! You'll have to report back on it. I think it's great that all these electronic kits are coming out aimed at a primarily programming audience.
This list of common or popular misconceptions describes documented, widespread ideas and beliefs which are fallacious, misleading, or otherwise flawed.
History
Ancient to Early Modern history
* In ancient Rome, Romans did not build rooms called vomitoria in which to purge themselves after a meal. Vomitoria were tunnels underneath the seats of a stadium, through which crowds entered and exited.
* There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets.
* There is no evidence that Iron maidens were invented in the Middle Ages or even used for torture, despite being shown so in so...
I just used the word "pensive" to describe the feeling of a system administrator's current state, but I don't think that's the right word. I am trying to describe the feeling of waiting for the results of a task; a feeling of anxious anticipation, hoping things will work out for the best but plan...
@Pollyanna I know, I keep asking him how he's getting on with his Python for Kids book and he somehow wiggles into a new subject...but you can only try
@Josh - it implies anxiety, which some associate with negative feelings, and so there are those that think of it as sadness, or "soon to be sadness" but technically it's meant only to imply fixed thought on the outcome of a situation now outside one's control.
Pollyanna is a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is now considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same optimistic outlook. The book was such a success, that Porter soon produced a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997.
Pollyanna has been adapted for film ...
> Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls "The Glad Game", an optimistic attitude she learned from her father.
there's a better quote than that but I can't find it now
I remember seeing the same thing over a year ago and wondering where Adam's name came from :-)
here it is:
> The novel's success brought the term "Pollyanna" (along with the adjective "pollyannaish" and the noun "Pollyannaism") into the language to describe someone who seems always to be able to find something to be "glad" about no matter what circumstances arise.
Is it just me, or does the english.se site feel wrong? The question title is connected to the page header, which is obviously shadowed to the page, so it's separate, thus the title seems to be part of the header, and not part of the question? Does that make any sense?
@drachenstern no, not at all. I've been trying to strengthen my own vocabulary. I don't have as much time to read as I did many moons ago, and I can actually feel my vocabulary becoming smaller. It's annoying.
Ah, I see the problem. The title has a nice boundary, but the boundary top is hidden behind the page header. Therefore I feel like there's more page content I'm missing because I'm only seeing part of the implied full boundary box around the page title.
@drachenstern I'll admit, it is very pretty. It would take some getting used to, though.
I'm exposed to the interface for the first time, and I have this strange feeling that the page is incomplete somehow. After scratching my head and considering the layout and design, I realized that the question title border is partly hidden by the drop-shadowed page header.
It looks incomplete...
I was just running tests with this select CAST(RAND() * 4 AS INT) + 1 and it seemed to be doing what I wanted, was about to wrap it in a CTE and then run comparison counts to make sure
@Kev Yeah, scripts in my project used to be like that. Thanks to my vigilance, comma placement is now completely inconsistent.
Except I think the point of it is to make it harder to make a misplaced comma mistake when adding a new column, etc. where database scripts are concerned, rather than having anything to do with looking nice.
> I use leading commas as a coding style convention to make SQL queries more readable and maintainable. The importance of readability and maintainability can't be overstated. For example, see if you can spot the two coding errors in this hypothetical query:
SELECT
first_name,
last_name,
title
position,
staff_id,
group,
region,
FROM
staff
> Now see if you can spot the coding errors here:
SELECT
first_name
, last_name
, title
position
, pay_scale
, group
, region
,
FROM
staff
> ...In addition, leading commas are easier to handle if you edit your SQL in a text editor with a keyboard.
@YiJiang Yeah. It confused me at first, but as best as I can tell it stems from a motivational poster style image I posted that has a swear word in it. Unfortunately there's no good feedback, so I can only guess.
@YiJiang - I should clarify that I was banned from chat, not from SO, etc
@RebeccaChernoff We've added keeping track of things that I've debugged so that balpha doesn't accidentally duplicate my efforts to your list of things to do, by the way. And by we, I mean me, just now.
@Pekka I find the recent lack of starred oys to be slightly disturbing. (Imagines @RebeccaChernoff wiping out every one of those she sees with an evil laugh)
@Pollyanna heh, yeah! :) Well, my first priority is to change industries. No more programming for me. I'm open about the form of employment (Freelance or steady) if push comes to shove but steady will be preferred
@Pollyanna I'm going to take a government-supported break (officially "unemployed and seeking new job") starting Jan 31st but I'll be searching pretty actively during that time
@Pekka - Fun! I quit my job last april, and am still trying to make consulting work out. So what industry are you aiming for, if not programming?
I quit because I the vacation time was terrible. I don't know if companies understand how important that is...
If my business fails, at minimum I got a 9 month vacation at home with my family, and given that my kids are still pre-teens, it actually may make a difference...
@Pollyanna I'm searching mainly in the tourism and culture fields here in the city. My dream job would be something outside with lots of contact with people, and lots of english... But I'm relatively open for anything interesting, and I'm sending out a lot of applications to companies that might be interested
@Pollyanna Companies are so dumb. Who says people need to work 8 hours a day, and take only minimal holidays?
I know sooo many people who would be happy to earn less, but have more free time
Which is just as well for the employer in the end
But with happier employees
@Pollyanna Sweet! That sounds good either way. Are you freelancing? Do you have partners?
@Pekka No. When I discussed it with my dad, the best analogy I could come up with is, "Well, I'm going to jump off a cliff, and see if I can build a plane while I'm falling and hope people throw down the parts I need."
I do freelance embedded system design - mostly smallish electronics and microcontroller based projects. I've recently taken on a bit of ios development to pad out the time between embedded projects.
Yeah. I did a project for a local co-working space, and even those places are expensive. But better than money, I save a bunch of time being able to simply walk downstairs, not deal with traffic, not have to take lunch breaks, etc.
I'm quickly learning I'm not as disciplined as I would like to be, though. Nothing like being your own boss to show your flaws.
@Tim Stone I enjoyed both computers and electronics since I was a kid. To me software and hardware are two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately industry keeps them separate, so you either have to choose electrical engineering, or software engineering. I did some of both, then decided if I wanted to dabble in the space inbetween, I had to make my own job. It is fun, for some values of fun.
@Pollyanna I'm a bit tired of programming, and have been wanting to do something new for a long time. I've always been drawn to those fields, and it's time for me to find out how a living can be made there :)
@Pekka As long as you like people you'll be able to make a living in tourism. I suspect that once you get there, you'll get an itch to program. Chances are good you can combine the two and do even better - lots of people buy iOS tourism related apps, for instance. Who knows...
@Pollyanna Yeah, you never know! Although it's not the plan - I have an inkling I may be away from the profession for good. We shall see.
One thing my self employment has taught me during the tougher stretches was to live on a few euros a day, so I can get by with fairly little if need be... Although of course I hope to find something that pays halfway decently not too far in the future.