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November 13

The album covers of Blue Note Records, an American jazz record label, have been recognized for their distinctive designs, which often feature bold colors, experimental typography, and candid photographs of the album's musicians, and are described as belonging to the Bauhaus and Swiss Style movements. In the early 1950s, artists like Gil Mellé, Paul Bacon, and John Hermansader designed Blue Note's earliest album covers. In 1956, Reid Miles was hired as Blue Note's art director, creating 400 to 500 covers with a unique style incorporating diverse typefaces and design principles such as asymmetry and tinting. After Miles left in 1967, artists like Mati Klarwein and Bob Venosa took over. Designers such as Norman Seeff and Bob Cato contributed in the 1970s, while Japanese artists created new covers for reissues in the late 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1980s onward, artists like Paula Scher and Adam Pendleton have designed covers, with Miles's work in particular remaining highly influential. (Full article...)

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April 13

Timpani are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl commonly made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a special drum stick called a timpani stick. Unlike most drums, they produce a definite pitch when struck. Timpani evolved from military drums to become a staple of the classical orchestra in the 17th century. Today, they are used in many types of musical ensembles including concert, marching, and even rock bands. The basic timpano consists of a drumhead stretched across the opening of a bowl typically made of copper or, in less expensive models, fiberglass. The drumhead is connected to a hoop, which is then attached to the bowl via a number of tuning screws called tension rods placed regularly along the circumference. The head's tension can be adjusted by loosening or tightening the rods. Most timpani have six to eight tension rods. (more...)

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March 13

Obverse side of a standard adult card

The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless smart card used in an electronic payment system in Hong Kong. Originally launched in September 1997 as a fare collection system for the city's mass transit systems, it has grown into a widely used electronic cash system for convenience stores, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, parking garages and other point-of-sale applications, as well as to control access in offices, schools and apartments. Using a card simply involves tapping it against an Octopus reader, and recharging can be done with cash at add-value machines, or via directly debiting credit cards and bank accounts. Octopus has become one of the world's most successful electronic cash systems, with over 12 million Octopus cards in circulation (nearly twice that of Hong Kong's population) and over eight million transactions per day, with nearly 300 service vendors. The operator of the Octopus system, Octopus Cards Limited, a joint venture between MTR Corporation and other transport companies in Hong Kong, has won a number of contracts to extend Octopus-style systems to the Netherlands and Changsha. (more...)

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February 13

Bryce Canyon National Park is a national park located in southwestern Utah in the United States. Despite its name, this is not actually a canyon, but rather a giant natural amphitheater created by erosion along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to its unique geological structures, called hoodoos, formed from wind, water, and ice erosion of the river and lakebed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views. The canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1875. The area around Bryce Canyon became a United States national monument in 1924 and was designated as a national park in 1928. (more...)

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January 13

Radio telescope observations play a role in researching the Fermi paradox

The Fermi paradox is a paradox proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi that questions the possibilities of finding intelligent extraterrestrial life. More specifically, it deals with the attempts to answer one of the most profound questions of all time: "Are we (the Earthlings) the only technologically advanced civilization in the Universe?" The Drake equation for estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations with which we might come in contact seems to imply that we should not expect such contact to be extremely rare. Fermi's response to this conclusion was that if there were very many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, then, "Where are they? Why haven't we seen any traces of intelligent extraterrestrial life, such as probes, spacecraft or transmissions?" (more...)

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December 13

Dr. Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages. His works in generative linguistics contributed significantly to the decline of behaviorism and led to the advancement of the cognitive sciences. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his radical left-wing political views, and his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States government. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist and a supporter of anarcho-syndicalism. (more...)

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November 13

The economy of Africa comprises more than 800 million people in fifty-four different nations. Africa's economy is emerging from the after-effects of colonialism and it struggles with difficult democratic, welfare and quality of life issues. Africa is by far the world's poorest continent, and more saliently it is on average poorer than it was twenty-five years ago. While rapid growth in China and now India, and moderate growth in South America, has lifted millions beyond subsistence living, Africa has stagnated, even going backwards in terms of foreign trade, investment, and per capita income. This poverty has widespread effects, including low life expectancy, violence, and instability—factors that further increase the continent's poverty. Over the decades a number of solutions have been proposed and many attempted, but no improvement scheme has shown much success. (more...)

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October 13

In the history of cryptography, the Enigma machine was a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines — there are a variety of different models.The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by military and governmental services of a number of nations — most famously, by Nazi Germany before and during World War II. The German military model, the Wehrmacht Enigma, is the version most commonly discussed. Allied codebreakers were, in many cases, able to decrypt messages protected by the machine (see cryptanalysis of the Enigma). The intelligence gained through this source — codenamed ULTRA — was a significant aid to the Allied war effort. Some historians have suggested that the end of the European war was hastened by up to a year or more because of the decryption of German ciphers. (more...)

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September 13

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was the most significant volcanic eruption to occur in the lower 48 states of the United States in recorded history. The eruption was preceded by a two-month long series of earthquakes and steam venting episodes that created a huge bulge and a fracture system on Mount St. Helens' north slope. An earthquake on May 18, 1980 caused the entire weakened north face to slide away, suddenly exposing the partly molten, gas and steam-rich rock in the volcano to lower pressure. The rock responded by exploding into a super-heated mix of pulverized lava and older rock that sped toward Spirit Lake so fast that it quickly passed the avalanching north face. By the time the ash settled and the lahars stopped advancing, 57 people were dead, many thousands of animals were killed, hundreds of square miles were reduced to a wasteland, and over a billion U.S. dollars in damage was done. (more...)

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September 6

The Warsaw Uprising was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944 as a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2. An estimated 85% of the city was destroyed during the urban guerrilla war and after the end of hostilities. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army was approaching Warsaw. Although the Soviet army was within a few hundred metres of the city from September 16 onward, the link between the uprising and the advancing army was never made. This failure and the reasons behind it have been a matter of controversy ever since. (more...)

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August 13

Jim Thorpe is considered by many to be one of the most versatile athletes in modern sports. He won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon, starred in college and professional American football, and played Major League Baseball. He subsequently lost his Olympic titles for violating amateurism regulations. Only in 1983, thirty years after his death, were his medals restored. (more...)

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July 13

An 1882 cartoon depicting a vampire with the face of a bat

A vampire is a mythical or folkloric creature said to subsist on human or animal blood. Usually the vampire is the corpse of a recently dead person, reanimated or made undead by one means or another. Some cultures have myths of non-human vampires, such as demons or animals like bats, dogs, and spiders, or even plants such as vampire watermelons. Vampires are often described as having a wide variety of additional powers and character traits, extremely variable in different traditions, and are a frequent subject of folklore, cinema, and contemporary fiction. (more...)

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June 13

Go is a strategic, two-player board game originating in ancient China between 2000 BC and 200 BC. It is highly popular in eastern Asia, and play on the Internet has served to greatly increase its popularity throughout the rest of the world in recent years. In China it is called 圍棋 wéiqí (way-chee), in Korea its name is baduk, and in Japan 囲碁 igo (ee-go), which gave rise to the English name Go from the Japanese character 碁. The Chinese name translates to "Chess of Surrounding (One's Opponent)". (more...)

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May 13

A floppy disk is a data storage device that comprises a circular piece of thin, flexible magnetic medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. The fact that the exterior aspect is neither circular nor floppy confuses some novice users. Floppy disks were ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, being used on home and personal computer platforms such as the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, and IBM PC to distribute software, transfer data between computers, and create small backups. In March of 2003, Dell made the decision to make floppy drives optional on its higher-end desktop computers, a move hailed by some as the end of the floppy disk as a mainstream means of data storage and exchange. (more...)

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April 13

The game of Rock, Paper, Scissors is a whimsical hand game most often played by children. It is often used in a similar way to coin flipping, throwing dice or drawing straws to randomly select a person for some purpose, though unlike truly random selections it can be played with skill if the game extends over many sessions, because one can often recognize and exploit the non-random behavior of an opponent. Various sports, including ultimate frisbee, may use rock paper scissors to determine which team gets the opening play. It is also often used as a method for creating appropriately biased random results in live action role-playing games, as it requires no equipment. (more...)

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March 13

A nuclear weapon is a weapon that derives its energy from nuclear reactions and has enormous destructive power. Countries declared nuclear powers are the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and the People's Republic of China. India and Pakistan have also publicly tested nuclear weapons. Israel is also widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Such weapons have been used only twice in combat, by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the conclusion of World War II. (more...)

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