Thursday, December 31, 2015

Gleichschaltung

Gleichschaltung, meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line"), is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J. Evans translated the term as "forcible-coordination" in his most recent work on Nazi Germany.

Among the goals of this policy were to bring about adherence to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible.
The apex of the Nazification of Germany was in the resolutions approved during the Nuremberg Rally of 1935, when the symbols of the Party and the State were fused (see Flag of Germany) and the Germans of Jewish religion and descent were deprived of citizenship, paving the way to the Holocaust.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

deracinate

deracinate (third-person singular simple present deracinates, present participle deracinating, simple past and past participle deracinated)
  1. To pull up by the roots; to uproot; to extirpate.
  2. To force people from their homeland to a new or foreign location.
  3. To liberate or be liberated from a culture or its norms.

Monday, December 28, 2015

subaqueous

sub·a·que·ous
səbˈākwēəs,-ˈak-/
adjective
adjective: subaqueous; adjective: sub-aqueous
1.
existing, formed, or taking place underwater.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

egregious

egregious (comparative more egregious, superlative most egregious)
  1. Exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion.
    The student has made egregious errors on the examination.
  2. Outrageously bad.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Quietism

Quietism in philosophy is an approach to the subject that sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute, but rather that its value is in defusing confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. By re-formulating supposed problems in a way that makes the misguided reasoning from which they arise apparent, the quietist hopes to put an end to man's confusion, and help return to a state of intellectual quietude.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Acid test

Acid test (gold), a chemical or metallurgical test which uses acid, now also used as a general term for "verified", "approved", or "tested" in a large number of fields.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

capitonym

A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when it is capitalized; the capitalization usually applies due to one form being a proper noun or eponym. It is a portmanteau of the word capital with the suffix -onym. A capitonym is a form of homograph and – when the two forms are pronounced differently – also of heteronym. In situations where both words should be capitalized (such as the beginning of a sentence), there will be nothing to distinguish between them except the context in which they are used.

Although some pairs, such as march and March, are completely unrelated, in other cases, such as august and catholic, the capitalized form is a name that is etymologically related to the uncapitalized form. For example, August derives from the name of Imperator Augustus, who named himself after the word augustus, whence English august came. Likewise, both Catholic and catholic derive from a Greek adjective meaning "universal".

Capital letters may be used to differentiate between a set of objects, and a particular example of that object. For instance in Astronomical terminology a distinction may be drawn between a moon, any natural satellite, and the Moon, to be specific the natural satellite of Earth. Likewise, Sun with a capital may be used to emphasise that the sun of Earth is under discussion.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

squiggle

squiggle (plural squiggles)
  1. a short twisting or wiggling line or mark 
  2. (informal) the tilde
  3. an illegible scrawl

hyponym

In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hypernym (sometimes spelled hyperonym outside of the natural language processing community). In simpler terms, a hyponym shares a type-of relationship with its hypernym. For example, scarlet, vermilion, carmine, and crimson are all hyponyms of red (their hypernym), which is, in turn, a hyponym of colour.
Computer science often terms this relationship an "is-a" relationship. For example, the phrase Red is-a colour can be used to describe the hyponymic relationship between red and colour.

Monday, December 21, 2015

Sunday, December 20, 2015

aptronym

An aptronym (also: aptonym) or charactonym is a name aptly suited to its owner. The medieval Latin poem Eupolemius uses aptronyms based on Greek words to allegorise the story of the Gospel. In the book What's in a Name? (1996), author Paul Dickson cites a long list of aptronyms originally compiled by Professor Lewis P. Lipsitt, of Brown University. Psychologist Carl Jung wrote in his 1952 book, Synchronicity, that there was a "sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities". Fictional examples of aptronyms include Mr. Talkative and Mr. Worldly Wiseman in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Truman Burbank (true-man), the lead character in the 1998 film The Truman Show, the principal cast of the Mr. Men (1971), and all the characters in Marc Blitzstein's 1937 play The Cradle Will Rock.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

podzols

In soil science, podzols (known as Spodosols in China and the United States of America, Espodossolos in Brazil, and Podosols in Australia) are the typical soils of coniferous, or boreal forests. They are also the typical soils of eucalypt forests and heathlands in southern Australia, while in Western Europe podzols develop on heathland, which is often a construct of human interference through grazing and burning. Many podzols in this region may have developed over the past 3000 years in response to vegetation and climatic changes. In some British moorlands with podzolic soils there are brown earths preserved under Bronze Age barrows. “Podzol” is Russian for "under ash" (под/pod=under, зола/zola=ash) and likely refers to the common experience of Russian peasants of plowing up an apparent under-layer of ash (leached or E horizon) during first plowing of a virgin soil of this type.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Tteokbokki

Tteokbokki, also known as ddeokbokki, topokki (in Japan) or dukboki, is a popular Korean snack food which is commonly purchased from street vendors or pojangmacha. Originally it was called tteok jjim (떡찜), and was a braised dish of sliced rice cake, meat, eggs, and seasoning.
File:Korean.snacks-Tteokbokki-08.jpg

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

barchan

A barchan or barkhan dune is an arc-shaped sand ridge, comprising well-sorted sand. This type of dune possesses two "horns" that face downwind, with the slip face (the downwind slope) at the angle of repose of sand, approximately 30–35 degrees for medium-fine dry sand. The upwind side is packed by the wind, and stands at about 15 degrees. Simple barchan dunes may stretch from meters to a hundred meters or so between the tips of the horns. The word is of Turkic origin, borrowed into English via Russian.

File:Barchan.jpg

Simple barchan dunes may appear as larger, compound barchan or megabarchan dunes, which may migrate with the wind. Barchans and megabarchans may coalesce into ridges that extend for hundreds of kilometers. Dune collisions and changes in wind direction that spawn new barchans from the horns of the old govern the size distribution in a given field.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

hypercane



A hypercane is a hypothetical class of extreme hurricane that could form if ocean temperatures reached around 50 °C (122 °F), which is 15 °C (27 °F) warmer than the warmest ocean temperature ever recorded. Such an increase could be caused by a large asteroid or comet impact, a large supervolcanic eruption, or extensive global warming. There is some speculation that a series of hypercanes resulting from an impact by a large asteroid or comet contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs. The hypothesis was created by Kerry Emanuel of MIT who also coined the term.

Monday, December 14, 2015

isothermal process

An isothermal process is a change of a system, in which the temperature remains constant: ΔT = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir (heat bath), and the change occurs slowly enough to allow the system to continually adjust to the temperature of the reservoir through heat exchange. In contrast, an adiabatic process is where a system exchanges no heat with its surroundings (Q = 0). In other words, in an isothermal process, the value ΔT = 0 but Q ≠ 0, while in an adiabatic process, ΔT ≠ 0 but Q = 0.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

ghoul

A ghoul is a (folkloric) monster associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, often classified as undead. The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights. The term was first used in English literature in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek, which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.
File:Amine Discovered with the Goule.jpg
By extension, the word ghoul is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Night soil

Night soil is a euphemism for human excrement collected at night from cesspools, privies, etc. and sometimes used as a fertilizer. Night soil is produced as a result of a waste management system in areas without community infrastructure such as a sewage treatment facility, or individual septic disposal. In this system of waste management, the human faeces are collected in solid form.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Accipiter

The genus Accipiter is a group of birds of prey in the family Accipitridae, many of which are named as goshawks and sparrowhawks. They can be anatomically distinguished from their relatives by the lack of a procoracoid foramen. Two small and aberrant species usually placed here do possess a large procoracoid foramen and are also distinct as regards DNA sequence. They may warrant separation in the old genus Hieraspiza.
File:Collared Sparrowhawk kobble08.JPG
Extant Accipiters range in size from the Little Sparrowhawk (A. minullus), in which the smallest males measure 20 cm (7.9 in) long, span 39 cm (15 in) across the wings and weigh 68 g (2.4 oz), to the Northern Goshawk (A. gentilis), in which the largest females measure 64 cm (25 in) long, span 127 cm (50 in) across the wings and weigh 2,200 g (4.9 lb). These birds are slender with short broad rounded wings and a long tail which helps them manoeuvre in flight. They have long legs and long sharp talons used to kill their prey, and a sharp hooked bill used in feeding. Females tend to be larger than males. They often ambush their prey, mainly small birds and mammals, capturing it after a short chase. The typical flight pattern is a series of flaps followed by a short glide. They are commonly found in wooded or shrubby areas.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

baryogenesis

In physical cosmology, baryogenesis is the generic term for hypothetical physical processes that produced an asymmetry between baryons and antibaryons in the very early universe, resulting in the substantial amounts of residual matter that make up the universe today.

Baryogenesis theories (the most important being electroweak baryogenesis and GUT baryogenesis) employ sub-disciplines of physics such as quantum field theory, and statistical physics, to describe such possible mechanisms. The fundamental difference between baryogenesis theories is the description of the interactions between fundamental particles.

The next step after baryogenesis is the much better understood Big Bang nucleosynthesis, during which light atomic nuclei began to form.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

space roar

The space roar is a radio signal from outer space. Discovered by NASA's Alan Kogut and his team, the announcement was made at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 7, 2009. Described as a loud hiss, the team discovered the signal while trying to find traces of heat from first generation stars using an ARCADE radiometer. This instrument is designed to detect radiation at centimeter wavelengths. Though signals from radio galaxies have been detected before, the "space roar" sounds six times louder than what is predicted from those sources. Scientists have yet to explain its source. NASA scientists have currently ruled out primordial stars and all other known radio sources. The roar currently limits the study of the universe's earliest stars. In 2011, the ARCADE 2 researchers reported, "Correcting for instrumental systematic errors in measurements such as ARCADE 2 is always a primary concern. We emphasize that we detect residual emission at 3 GHz with the ARCADE 2 data, but the result is also independently detected by a combination of low-frequency data and FIRAS."

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

dux

dux

In schools in Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Iceland, dux is a modern title given to the top student in academic and sporting achievement (Dux Litterarum and Dux Ludorum respectively) in each graduating year. In this usage, Dux is similar to the American concept of a valedictorian. The runner-up may be given the title proxime accessit (meaning "he came next") or semidux.

Monday, December 7, 2015

pinion

A pinion is a round gear used in several applications:
File:Rack and pinion animation.gif

Friday, December 4, 2015

Neuroptera

File:Chrysopidae 3035.jpg
The insect order Neuroptera, or net-winged insects, includes the lacewings, mantidflies, antlions, and their relatives. The order contains some 6,010 species. The group was once known as Planipennia, and at that time also included alderflies, fishflies, dobsonflies and snakeflies, but these are now generally considered to be separate orders (the Megaloptera and Raphidioptera). Sometimes the name Neuropterida is used to refer to these three orders as a group. This is either placed at superorder rank, with the Endopterygota becoming an unranked clade above it, or the Endopterygota are maintained as a superorder, with an unranked Neuropterida being a part of them. Within the endopterygotes, the closest living relatives of the neuropteridan clade are the beetles. The common name lacewings is often used for the most widely known net-winged insects - the green lacewings (Chrysopidae) - but actually most members of the Neuroptera are referred to as some sort of "lacewing".

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Tramontane

Tramontane is a classical name for a northern wind. The exact form of the name and precise direction varies from country to country. The word came to English from Italian tramontana, which developed from Latin trānsmontānus (trāns- + montānus), "beyond the mountains/across the mountains", referring to the Alps in the North of Italy. The word has other non-wind-related senses: it can refer to anything that comes from, or anyone who lives on, the other side of mountains, or even more generally, anything seen as foreign, strange, or even barbarous.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Dowlas

Dowlas is the name given to a plain cloth, similar to sheeting, but usually coarser.
It is made in several qualities, from line warp and weft to two warp and weft, and is used chiefly for aprons, pocketing, soldiers' gaiters, linings and overalls. The finer makes are sometimes made into shirts for workmen, and occasionally used for heavy pillow-cases.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Monday, November 30, 2015

Peritus

Peritus (Latin for "expert") is the title given to Roman Catholic theologians who are present to give advice at an ecumenical council. At the most recent council, the Second Vatican Council, some periti (the plural form) accompanied individual bishops or groups of bishops from various countries. Others were formally appointed as advisers to the whole Council.
Father Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Pope Benedict XVI, served as peritus to Cardinal Josef Frings, Archbishop of Cologne, Germany, while Hans Küng was a peritus for the Council, rather than for an individual Bishop. The influential German theologian Father Karl Rahner S.J. served as peritus to Cardinal Franz König of Vienna. John Henry Newman refused an invitation to be a peritus at the First Vatican Council.
The periti often advocated ideas of reform in the Church and were often at the center of debates with some of the more traditional scholars from the Coetus Internationalis Patrum.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

canard

In aeronautics, a canard (French for "duck") is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration in which a small horizontal surface, also named the canard or foreplane, is positioned forward of the main wing in contrast to the conventional position at the tail. Because of this it is sometimes described as "tail-first".
The term "canard" arose in France. The appearance of the Santos-Dumont 14-bis of 1906 reminded the French public of a flying duck (Fr. canard)., and later the Fabre Hydravion of 1910 was named "Le Canard". Thereafter all aeroplanes with a foreplane were known as canards

File:Rutan.long-EZ.g-wily.arp.jpg

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Canard

Canard is French for duck, an aquatic bird. In English, a canard may be an unfounded rumor or story.
File:Bucephala-albeola-010.jpg

Thursday, November 26, 2015

quadrature

quadrature (plural quadratures)
  1. the process of making something square; squaring
  2. (mathematics) [1]  [quotations ▼]
  3. (astronomy) a situation in which three celestial bodies form a right-angled triangle, the observer being located at the right angle
    When the Moon is in quadrature, it appears in the sky as a half-moon.
  4. (physics) the condition in which the phase angle between two alternating quantities is 90°
  5. (art) A painting painted on a wooden panel

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

quadratojugal

The quadratojugal is a small jaw bone that is present in most amphibians, reptiles and birds, but has been lost in mammals. It is connected to the jugal as well as other bones, though these may vary with species.
The quadratojugal bone is a small bone between the cheek and otic notch. Squamates (lizards and snakes) lack a quadratojugal bone.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

triennial

triennial (not comparable)
  1. Happening every three years.
    triennial elections
    (Can we find and add a quotation of T. Warton to this entry?)
  2. Lasting for three years.
    triennial parliaments; a triennial reign
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Howell to this entry?)
     
     
     
     3!
     
     
     
     
    triennial (plural triennials)
  3. A third anniversary.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

trust metric

In psychology and sociology, a trust metric is a measurement of the degree to which one social actor (an individual or a group) trusts another social actor. Trust metrics may be abstracted in a manner that can be implemented on computers, making them of interest for the study and engineering of virtual communities, such as Friendster and LiveJournal.
Trust escapes a simple measurement because its meaning is too subjective for universally reliable metrics, and the fact that it is a mental process, unavailable to instruments. There is a strong argument against the use of simplistic metrics to measure trust due to the complexity of the process and the 'embeddedness' of trust that makes it impossible to isolate trust from related factors. For a detailed discussion about different trust metrics see.

Friday, November 20, 2015

olfactory nerve

The olfactory nerve, or cranial nerve I, is the first of twelve pairs of cranial nerves. It is instrumental in the sense of smell. Derived from the embryonic nasal placode, the olfactory nerve is capable of regeneration. The olfactory nerve is sensory in nature and originates on the olfactory mucosa in the anterosuperior nasal cavity. From the olfactory mucosa, the nerve travels down the olfactory tract until it reaches the olfactory bulb, where the fascicles of the olfactory nerve pass through foramina on the cribriform plate, which resides on the roof of the nasal cavity. These fascicles are not visible on a cadaver brain because they are severed upon removal.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Insufflation

Insufflation (Latin insufflatio "blowing on" or "into") is the practice of inhaling a substance. Insufflation has medical use as a route of administration for many respiratory drugs used to treat conditions in the lungs (e.g., asthma or emphysema) and paranasal sinus (e.g., allergy).
The technique is common for many recreational drugs and is also used for some entheogens. Nasal insufflation (snorting) is commonly used for many psychoactive drugs because it causes a much faster onset than orally, and bioavailability is usually, but not always, higher than orally. This bioavailability occurs due to the quick absorption of molecules into the bloodstream through the soft tissue in the mucous membrane of the sinus cavity and portal circulation bypass. Some drugs have a higher rate of absorption, and are thus more effective in smaller doses, through this route. Prodrugs, drugs that are metabolized or activated by the liver (such as codeine), should not be insufflated, because they need to be metabolized by the liver to break down into the compounds that are active (drugs absorbed through the GI tract pass through the liver before entering the systemic circulation, where drugs which are insufflated are absorbed directly into the systemic circulation).

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Snuff

File:Schnupftabak lose.jpg
Snuff is a smokeless tobacco made from ground or pulverised tobacco leaves. It is insufflated (inhaled) or "snuffed" into the nasal cavity (into each nostril), delivering a swift 'hit' of nicotine and a lasting flavoured scent (especially if flavouring has been blended with the tobacco). Traditionally it is sniffed or inhaled lightly after a pinch of snuff is placed onto the back surface of the hand or held pinched between thumb and index finger, as well as using specially made "snuffing" devices. There is a general misconception associated with "the snuff sniff". The nicotine in snuff is absorbed through the mucus membrane, so a pinch of snuff only needs to get into the nose. Most snuffers agree that if the snuff gets into the sinuses, one is inhaling too strongly.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Quern-stones

Quern-stones are stone tools for hand-grinding a wide variety of materials. They were used in pairs. The lower, stationary, stone is called a quern, while the upper mobile stone is called a handstone. They were first used in the Neolithic to grind cereals into flour.

File:Quernupper.jpg

Monday, November 16, 2015

Ethnoarchaeology

Ethnoarchaeology is the ethnographic study of peoples for archaeological reasons, usually through the study of the material remains of a society (see David & Kramer 2001). Ethnoarchaeology aids archaeologists in reconstructing ancient lifeways by studying the material and non-material traditions of modern societies. Archaeologists can then infer that ancient societies used the same techniques as their modern counterparts given a similar set of environmental circumstances.

Ethnography

Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people" and γράφω grapho "to write") is a qualitative research design aimed at exploring cultural phenomena. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing, the culture of a group.
Ethnography, as the empirical data on human societies and cultures, was pioneered in the biological, social, and cultural branches of anthropology but has also become popular in the social sciences in general—sociology, communication studies, history—wherever people study ethnic groups, formations, compositions, resettlements, social welfare characteristics, materiality, spirituality, and a people's ethnogenesis. The typical ethnography is a holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. In all cases it should be reflexive, make a substantial contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader, and express a credible reality. It observes the world (the study) from the point of view of the subject (not the participant ethnographer) and records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations using concepts that avoid casual explanations.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Antipositivism

Antipositivism (also known as interpretivism or interpretive sociology) is the view in social science that the social realm may not be subject to the same methods of investigation as the natural world; that academics must reject empiricism and the scientific method in the conduct of social research. Antipositivists hold that researchers should focus on understanding the interpretations that social actions have for the people being studied.
Antipositivism relates to various historical debates in the philosophy and sociology of science. In modern practice, however, interpretivism may be equated with qualitative research methods, while positivist research is more quantitative. Positivists typically use research methods such as experiments and statistical surveys, while antipositivists use research methods which rely more on ethnographic fieldwork, conversation/discourse analysis or open-ended interviews. Positivist and antipositivist methods are sometimes combined.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

social stratification

In sociology, social stratification is a concept involving the "classification of people into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions." When differences lead to greater status, power or privilege for some groups over the other it is called Social Stratification. It is a system by which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy Social stratification is based on four basic principles: (1) Social stratification is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences; (2) Social stratification carries over from generation to generation; (3) Social stratification is universal but variable; (4) Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs as well.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Charismatic authority

Charismatic authority is one of three forms of authority laid out by sociologist Max Weber in his tripartite classification of authority, the other two being traditional authority and rational-legal authority.
Max Weber defined charismatic authority as "resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him."
The concept has acquired wide usage among sociologists. Other terms used are "charismatic domination" and "charismatic leadership".

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

brobeat

brobeat
A common drum pattern in hardcore/brocore music produced by alternating between the floor tom, bass, and snare. The drummer may also rotate his/her torso for dramatic effect as he/she goes back and forth from floor tom to snare drum. The beat is repeated several times and often preludes or follows a breakdown.
 

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

browbeat

browbeat VERB (third-person singular simple present browbeats, present participle browbeating, simple past browbeat, past participle browbeaten)
  1. (transitive) To bully in an intimidating, bossy, or supercilious way.
    Though the teacher browbeat all the children, they still acted out during the lesson.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Hopperesque

Hopperesque (comparative more Hopperesque, superlative most Hopperesque)
  1. Reminiscent of Edward Hopper (1882–1967), American realist painter and printmaker.
File:Smash The Hun - Dry Dock Dial cover.jpg
Poster illustration, Smash the Hun (1919)



File:Edward Hopper Road in Maine.jpg 
 Road in Maine (1914)

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Plastination

Plastination is a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts, first developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

coterminous

coterminous (comparative more coterminous, superlative most coterminous)
  1. (of property leases) Linked or related and expiring together.
  2. (of regions or properties) Having matching boundaries; or, adjoining and sharing a boundary.
    New York City's borough of Brooklyn and New York State's Kings County are coterminous.
    To get a building warrant he had to show the plans to "coterminous proprietors", neighbours with whom his property shared a boundary.
  3. Having the same scope, range of meaning, or extent in time.
  4. Meeting end to end or at the ends.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Kaiten

Kaiten (Japanese: 回天, literal translation: "Return to the sky", commonly rendered as: "The turn toward heaven", "The Heaven Shaker" or "Change the World") were manned torpedoes and suicide craft, used by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the final stages of World War II.

File:Kaiten Type 1 on display at the Yūshūkan in October 2008.JPG

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

flue

A flue is a duct, pipe, or opening in a chimney for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, furnace, water heater, boiler, or generator to the outdoors. Historically the term flue meant the chimney itself. In the United States, they are also known as vents and for boilers as breeching for water heaters and modern furnaces. They usually operate by buoyancy, also known as the stack effect, or the combustion products may be 'induced' via a blower. As combustion products contain carbon monoxide and other dangerous compounds, proper 'draft', and admission of replacement air is imperative. Building codes, and other standards, regulate their materials, design, and installation.
File:Seven-flue Stack 1834 .png

Monday, November 2, 2015

caster

A caster (or castor) is an undriven, single, double, or compound wheel that is designed to be mounted to the bottom of a larger object (the "vehicle") so as to enable that object to be easily moved. They are available in various sizes, and are commonly made of rubber, plastic, nylon, aluminum, or stainless steel.
Casters are found in numerous applications, including shopping carts, office chairs, and material handling equipment. High capacity, heavy duty casters are used in many industrial applications, such as platform trucks, carts, assemblies, and tow lines in plants. Generally, casters operate well on smooth and flat surfaces.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Airspeed

Airspeed is the speed of an aircraft relative to the air. Among the common conventions for qualifying airspeed are: indicated airspeed ("IAS"), calibrated airspeed ("CAS"), true airspeed ("TAS"), equivalent airspeed ("EAS") and density airspeed.
File:FAA-8083-3A Fig 12-1.PNG
The measurement and indication of airspeed is ordinarily accomplished on board an aircraft by an airspeed indicator ("ASI") connected to a pitot-static system. The pitot-static system comprises one or more pitot probes (or tubes) facing the on-coming air flow to measure pitot pressure (also called stagnation, total or ram pressure) and one or more static ports to measure the static pressure in the air flow. These two pressures are compared by the ASI to give an IAS reading.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

debenture

In sport, a debenture is defined as a certificate of agreement of loans which is given under the company's stamp and carries an undertaking that the debenture holder will get a fixed return (fixed on the basis of interest rates) and the principal amount whenever the debenture matures. The terms may also include ancillary benefits such as an option to buy tickets at a favourable price, as well as or instead of interest. The term stems from the financial concept of a debenture.
A large number of sporting organisations have issued debentures to raise money, to allow their fans to gain a financial stake in the club, to foster a sense of community, and in some cases to fund new construction.
File:Youth-soccer-indiana.jpg

Friday, October 30, 2015

debenture

A debenture is a document that either creates a debt or acknowledges it, and it is a debt without collateral. In corporate finance, the term is used for a medium- to long-term debt instrument used by large companies to borrow money. In some countries the term is used interchangeably with bond, loan stock or note. A debenture is thus like a certificate of loan or a loan bond evidencing the fact that the company is liable to pay a specified amount with interest and although the money raised by the debentures becomes a part of the company's capital structure, it does not become share capital. Senior debentures get paid before subordinate debentures, and there are varying rates of risk and payoff for these categories.
File:Vereinigte Ostindische Compagnie bond.jpg
Debentures are generally freely transferable by the debenture holder. Debenture holders have no rights to vote in the company's general meetings of shareholders, but they may have separate meetings or votes e.g. on changes to the rights attached to the debentures. The interest paid to them is a charge against profit in the company's financial statements.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

hook

A hook is a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase, that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to "catch the ear of the listener". The term generally applies to popular music, especially rock music, R&B, hip hop, dance music, and pop. In these genres, the hook is often found in, or consists of, the chorus. A hook can be either melodic or rhythmic, and often incorporates the main motif for a piece of music.
File:The Ronettes.JPG

One definition of a hook is "a musical or lyrical phrase that stands out and is easily remembered".
File:The Beach Boys, May 29, 2012.jpg

While some melodic hooks include skips of a eighths or more to make the line more interesting, a hook can be equally catchy by employing rhythmic syncopation or other devices. A hook may also garner attention from listeners from other factors, such as the vocal timbre or instrumentation, as in the case of the Beach Boys' use of an unusual theremin-like instrument in "Good Vibrations". Some hooks become popular without using any unusual elements. For example, in the song "Be My Baby", performed by The Ronettes, the hook consists of the words "be my baby" over the conventional I-vi-IV-V chord progression of the chorus. Hooks in hip hop almost always refer to the chorus between verses.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

promise ring

A pre-engagement ring (also known as a promise ring) is a ring given to a romantic partner to signify a commitment to a monogamous relationship, often as a precursor to an engagement ring. Promise rings can be worn on any finger, but those symbolizing pre-engagement are generally worn on the left ring finger; sometimes, the left middle finger or right ring finger is used instead to prevent confusion with an actual engagement ring. This is typically done among teenagers who are too young to be legally married, and rarely seen among adults.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Editor's side note on the dangers of automated blogging

Dearest readers,

Yesterday's word of the day "zerbert" is a term coined by Bill Cosby, and a picture of Bill Cosby accompanied the post. This post was in no way a show of support for this man, and there was no intention on my part to make light of his actions. I categorically and whole-heartedly condemn the actions, career, and character of Mr. Cosby. When I made the post it was intended as a playful word of the day referencing the work of a beloved artist. To say his long career as a comedian and self-styled role model is thoroughly tainted would be an understatement. The man is abhorrent.

The post was scheduled many months ago before the actions of Mr. Cosby were very widely known. I acknowledge that I was ignorant about his past. Unless anyone objects, I plan to leave the post where it is as a cautionary tale against lazy scheduled blogging. I am very sorry if my actions hurt anyone. I did not mean to offend.

Thank you for your continued readership.

Ben

Claddagh ring

The Claddagh ring (Irish: fáinne Chladaigh) is a traditional Irish ring given which represents love, loyalty, and friendship (the hands represent friendship; the heart represents love; and the crown represents loyalty).
The design and customs associated with it originated in the Irish fishing village of Claddagh, located just outside the old city walls of Galway, now part of Galway City. The ring, as currently known, was first produced in the 17th century.

File:Claddaghring.jpg

Monday, October 26, 2015

Airglow

Airglow (also called nightglow) is the very weak emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed.

File:Cupola above the darkened Earth.jpg

seeing

Astronomical seeing refers to the blurring and twinkling of astronomical objects such as stars caused by turbulent mixing in the Earth's atmosphere varying the optical refractive index. The astronomical seeing conditions on a given night at a given location describe how much the Earth's atmosphere perturbs the images of stars as seen through a telescope.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

zerbert

Noun

zerbert (plural zerberts)
  1. The sound that occurs where someone places the mouth against skin and blows, imitative of the sound of flatulence.

Etymology

Coined as part of an episode of The Cosby Show in 1986.

Friday, October 23, 2015

cow

cow (third-person singular simple present cows, present participle cowing, simple past and past participle cowed)
(transitive) To intimidate; to daunt the spirits or courage of. Found primarily in the passive voice.
Con artists are not cowed by the law.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Internetworking

Internetworking is the practice of connecting a computer network with other networks through the use of gateways that provide a common method of routing information packets between the networks. The resulting system of interconnected networks is called an internetwork, or simply an internet. Internetworking is a combination of the words inter ("between") and networking; not internet-working or international-network.
The most notable example of internetworking is the Internet, a network of networks based on many underlying hardware technologies, but unified by an internetworking protocol standard, the Internet Protocol Suite, often also referred to as TCP/IP.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

reticle

A reticle, or reticule (from Latin reticulum, meaning "net"), also known as a graticule (from Latin craticula, meaning "gridiron"), is a net of fine lines or fibers in the eyepiece of a sighting device, such as a telescope, a telescopic sight, a microscope, or the screen of an oscilloscope. Today, engraved lines or embedded fibers may be replaced by a computer-generated image superimposed on a screen or eyepiece. Both terms may be used to describe any set of lines used for optical measurement, but in modern use reticle is most commonly used for gunsights and such, while graticule is more widely used for the covers of oscilloscopes and similar roles.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

reticule

reticule (plural reticules)
  1. Alternative form of reticle.
  2. A small women's bag made of a woven net-like material.

Monday, October 19, 2015

hot and high

In aviation, hot and high is a condition of low air density due to high ambient temperature and high airport elevation. Air density decreases with increasing temperature and altitude. At any given true airspeed, lower air density reduces the amount of lift generated by the wings or the rotors of an aircraft, which may hamper an aircraft's performance and hence its ability to operate safely. The reduced density also reduces the performance of the aircraft's engine, compounding the effect. Aviators gauge air density by calculating the density altitude.
"Hot" and "high" do not have to be inclusive of one another, though this tends to be the exception. If an airport is especially hot or high, the other condition need not be present. Temperatures can change from one hour to the next, while the elevation of an airport always remains constant. The fact that temperatures decrease at higher elevations mitigates the "hot and high" effect to a certain extent.

lordosis

  Lordosis is historically defined as an abnormal inward curvature of the lumbar spine.