September 2010
43 posts
2 tags
Oriental Riff →
a musical riff or phrase that has often been used as a trope or stereotype of orientalism in Western culture to represent the idea of the Orient, China, Japan or a generic East Asian theme by Western culture.
submitted by cuedisappointment
August 2010
83 posts
1 tag
“The Hezbollah theme park is a theme park operated by Hezbollah in the village of...”
– Hezbollah theme park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (via palmsies)
List of animals displaying homosexual behavior →
Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species and the motivations for and implications of their behaviors have yet to be fully understood.
Research shows that homosexual behavior, not necessarily sex, has been observed in close to 1500 species, ranging from primates to gut worms, and is well documented for 500 of them.
Hypergraphia →
Hypergraphia is an overwhelming urge to write. It is not itself a disorder, but can be associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and mania in the context of bipolar disorder.
submitted by exempli-gratia
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Mammalian Diving Reflex →
The mammalian diving reflex optimizes respiration which allows mammals to stay underwater for a long time. Both a conscious and an unconscious person can survive longer without oxygen under water than in a comparable situation on dry land.
Beyond the effect of the reflex when submerged in water, the reflex is used consciously in “splashing cold water on one’s face.” This is used...
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Lilith →
In Jewish folklore, Lilith is the name of Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same earth as Adam. She left Adam after she refused to become subservient to Adam and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.
submitted by eatablockoftofu
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Blood libel →
Blood libel is the false accusation that Jews murder Christian or Muslim children to use human blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.
Blood libel accusations have often asserted that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically blood libel claims have often been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases,...
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List of common misconceptions →
Contrary to the popular image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, did not dress in black, wear buckles, or wear black steeple hats.
There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children.
submitted by clocktowermadness
1 tag
stolenage asked: Fuck off
Phatic →
In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information.
Speaker one: “What’s up?”
Speaker two: “Hey, man, how’s it going?”
And each just walks on.
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List of plants used for smoking →
Various plants are used around the world for smoking due to various chemical compounds they contain and the effects of these chemicals on the human body. This list contains plants that are smoked.
Sprezzatura →
Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”
It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the...
Unfinished work →
An unfinished work is creative work that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death.
Benjamin West’s painting of the delegates to the Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolutionary War. Out of shame for their country’s defeat, the British delegates...
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Hobo code →
To cope with the difficulty of hobo life, hobos developed a system of symbols, or a code. Hobos would write this code with chalk or coal to provide directions, information, and warnings to other hobos. Some signs included “turn right here”, “beware of hostile railroad police”, “dangerous dog”, “food available here”, and so on.
submitted by...
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List of helicopter prison escapes →
France has had more recorded helicopter escape attempts than any other country, with at least 11.
The record for most chopper escapes goes to escape artist Pascal Payet, who has used helicopters to escape from prisons in 2001, 2003, and most recently 2007.
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Human experimentation in the United States →
There have been numerous human experiments performed in the United States that have been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects.
Many of these experiments were funded by the United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States military. The human research programs were...
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Matthew effect →
The Matthew effect (or “accumulated advantage”) in sociology is the phenomenon where “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. Those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those resources to gain more power or capital.
The term was first coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1968 and takes its name from a line in the biblical Gospel of...
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Mexican jumping bean →
A Mexican jumping bean is a phenomenon native to Mexico, where it is known as a brincador (“hopper”). Physically, jumping beans resemble small tan to brown beans.
They are a seed pod through which the larva of a small moth has chewed. The seed does not actually jump so much as wiggle because when it gets in a hot place the larva snaps its body hoping to roll to a cooler place.
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Gynecomastia →
Gynecomastia is the development of abnormally large mammary glands in males resulting in breast enlargement.
Toba catastrophe theory →
The Toba supereruption occurred between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at Lake Toba (Sumatra, Indonesia), and it is recognized as one of Earth’s largest known eruptions.
The related catastrophe theory holds that this supervolcanic event plunged the planet into a 6 to 10 year volcanic winter, which resulted in the world’s human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000...
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List of United states presidents with facial hair... →
Most President of the United States have been clean shaven. Following is a list of American presidents who had facial hair at any time during their tenure.
Black Swan Theory →
The Black Swan Theory or “Theory of Black Swan Events” was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain
1) the disproportionate role of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
2) the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing...
Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and... →
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number.
In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock. There are so many in...
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Georgi Markov →
Agents of the Bulgarian secret police, assisted by the KGB, had previously made two failed attempts to kill Markov before a third attempt succeeded. On 7 September 1978, Markov waited at a bus stop to take a bus to his job at the BBC. He felt a slight sharp pain on the back of his right thigh. He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to...
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Asemic writing →
Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content”. With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. Asemic writing has no verbal sense, though it may have clear textual sense. Through its formatting and structure, asemic writing may...
Judica-Cordiglia brothers →
Achille (born in Turin, 1933) and Giovanni Battista (born in Erba, 1939) Judica-Cordiglia are two former amateur radio operators and the source of some of the most dramatic and controversial claims of lost cosmonauts in the 1960s.
In the 1960s, the brothers claimed to have recorded radio communications from secret Soviet Union space missions, including the sounds of one of these secret...
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Zippo dates →
In July 1986, Zippo began including a lot code on all lighters showing the month and year of production. On the left of the underside was stamped a letter A–L, denoting the month (A = January, B = February, C = March, etc.). On the right was a Roman numeral which denoted the year, beginning with II in 1986. Thus a Zippo stamped H IX was made in August, 1993.
However in 2001, Zippo altered this...
update: apparently some people can’t see it. I’ve added a follow link on the left sidebar. please continue to let me know if you can’t see it (along with your browser, maybe) - maybe it will help the developer.
someone said there’s no follow button on the readmorewikipedia page now. but I can see one. can you see it?
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Skoptsy →
A secret sect of Christianity in imperial Russia. The Skoptsy are best known for practicing castration of men and the mastectomy of women in accordance with their teachings against sexual lust. They believed that after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had the halves of the forbidden fruit grafted onto their bodies forming testicles and breasts. Thus, the removal of...
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Phallic saints →
Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803) reported that, among the wax representations of body parts then presented as offerings to Cosmas and Damian at Isernia, near Naples, on their feast day, those of the penis were the most common.
submitted by exempli-gratia
Ladies and gentlemen... readmorewikipedia.com! →
woop woop! featuring a sort-of-new theme (background image from here). and I have an email address @readmorewikipedia.com, and that’s hilarious.
hopefully the domain won’t randomly stop working for a month like it did last time!
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Glossary Of "Carny" Slang →
submitted by liketheorange
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Activities prohibited on Shabbat →
submitted by stankobeard
