zackorama-blog

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Steady State

Steady State is an alternative to the Big Bang model of the evolution of our universe. In the steady-state theory, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus adhering to the perfect cosmological principle, a principle that asserts that the observable universe is basically the same at any time as well as at any place.y

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Evil eye

The Evil Eye is believed to be cast by a malevolent glare, usually given to a person when they are unaware. Many cultures believe that receiving the evil eye will cause misfortune or injury. Talismans created to protect against the evil eye are also frequently called "evil eyes". The idea expressed by the term causes many different cultures to pursue protective measures against it. The concept and its significance vary widely among different cultures, primarily in West Asia. The idea appears several times in rabbinic literature. It was a widely extended belief among many Mediterranean and Asian tribes and cultures. Charms and decorations with eye-like symbols known as nazars, which are used to repel the evil eye, are a common sight across Armenia, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Morocco, southern Spain, Italy, Greece, the Levant, Afghanistan, Syria, and Mexico, and have become a popular choice of souvenir with tourists.

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Downwinders

Downwinders refers to the individuals and communities in the intermountain area between the Cascade and Rocky Mountain ranges primarily in Arizona, Nevada and Utah but also in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho who were exposed to radioactive contamination or nuclear fallout from atmospheric or underground nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear accidents. More generally, the term can also include those communities and individuals who are exposed to ionizing radiation and other emissions due to the regular production and maintenance of coal ash, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, nuclear waste and geothermal energy. In regions near U.S. nuclear sites, downwinders may be exposed to releases of radioactive materials into the environment that contaminate their groundwater systems, food chains, and the air they breathe. Some downwinders may have suffered acute exposure due to their involvement in uranium mining and nuclear experimentation. Several severe adverse health effects, such as an increased incidence of cancers, thyroid diseases, CNS neoplasms, and possibly female reproductive cancers that could lead to congenital malformations have been observed in "downwind" communities exposed to nuclear fallout and radioactive contamination. The impact of nuclear contamination on an individual is generally estimated as the result of the dose of radiation received and the duration of exposure, using the linear no-threshold model (LNT). Sex, age, race, culture, occupation, class, location, and simultaneous exposure to additional environmental toxins are also significant, but often overlooked, factors that contribute to the health effects on a particular "downwind" community.

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Commodification

Commodification is the transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into commodities, or objects of trade. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "any thing intended for exchange," or any object of economic value. People are commodified—turned into objects—when working, by selling their labour on the market to an employer. One of its forms is slavery. Others are, the trading with animals and body parts through formalised or informalised organ transplant. Commodification is often criticised on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example education, data, information and knowledge in the digital age.

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Ephemerality

Ephemerality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Typically the term ephemeral is used to describe objects found in nature, although it can describe a wide range of things, including human artifacts intentionally made to last for only a temporary period, in order to increase their perceived aesthetic value. With respect to unique performances, for example, it has been noted that "[e]phemerality is a quality caused by the ebb and flow of the crowd's concentration on the performance and a reflection of the nostalgic character of specific performances". Because different people may value the passage of time differently, "the concept of ephemerality is a relative one".

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Rumination

Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions. Both rumination and worry are associated with anxiety and other negative emotional states; however, its measures have not been unified. In the Response Styles Theory proposed by Nolen-Hoeksema (1998), rumination is defined as the "compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions". Because the Response Styles Theory has been empirically supported, this model of rumination is the most widely used conceptualization. Other theories, however, have proposed different definitions for rumination. For example, in the Goal Progress Theory, rumination is conceptualized not as a reaction to a mood state, but as a "response to failure to progress satisfactorily towards a goal".

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Mutable

In astrology, mutable signs are associated with adaptability, flexibility and sympathy. These signs mediate change and change their modes of expression frequently in order to meet this end, and they are often described as being diplomatic and assisting others through transitions. On the other hand, because of their dualistic behavior, they can often be inconsistent, uncommitted and come off as unreliable. Mutable signs, or common signs, often signify the ends of seasons but in possibly expected years. Just as the effect done from the 13-sign theory effect adopted from sidereal astrology, it might often signify both ends and starts of seasons with cardinal signs might possibly pass one of the places of the fixed sign's signification also in future decades.

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The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is an environmental movement that calls for all people to abstain from reproduction to cause the gradual voluntary extinction of humankind. VHEMT supports human extinction primarily because, in the group’s view, it would prevent environmental degradation. The group states that a decrease in the human population would prevent a significant amount of human-caused suffering. The extinctions of non-human species and the scarcity of resources required by humans are frequently cited by the group as evidence of the harm caused by human overpopulation. VHEMT was founded in 1991 by Les U. Knight, an American activist who became involved in the environmental movement in the 1970s and thereafter concluded that human extinction was the best solution to the problems facing the Earth’s biosphere and humanity

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Proprioception

Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of one’s own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. In humans, it is provided by proprioceptors in skeletal striated muscles (muscle spindles) and tendons (Golgi tendon organ) and the fibrous capsules in joints. It is distinguished from exteroception, by which one perceives the outside world, and interoception, by which one perceives pain, hunger, etc., and the movement of internal organs. The brain integrates information from proprioception and from the vestibular system into its overall sense of body position, movement, and acceleration. The word kinesthesia or kinæsthesia (kinesthetic sense) strictly means movement sense, but has been used inconsistently to refer either to proprioception alone or to the brain’s integration of proprioceptive and vestibular inputs

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Semiotics

Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign process (semiosis) and meaningful communication. It is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics. Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication

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Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault’s Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, topped the bestseller charts in Italy. Eco also wrote academic texts, children’s books, and essays. He was the founder of the Department of media studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino, president of the Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities at the University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford

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Plutocracy

Plutocracy is a form of society defined as being ruled or controlled by a function of wealth or higher income. The first known use of the term was in 1631. Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense. The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. Throughout history, political thinkers such as Winston Churchill, 19th-century French sociologist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, 19th-century Spanish monarchist Juan Donoso Cortés and today Noam Chomsky have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict, corrupting societies with greed and hedonism.

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Explodng Head Syndrome (EHS)

Exploding head syndrome (EHS), alternately termed episodic cranial sensory shock, is a benign condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and short, like a bomb exploding or a gunshot, when falling asleep or waking up. These noises are often jarring and frightening for the person. Neither the cause nor the mechanism is known. Though harmless in and of themselves, episodes have been known to create distress or impairment in the lives of individuals.

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Untranslatability

Untranslatability is a property of a text, or of any utterance, in one language, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language when translated. Terms are, however, neither exclusively translatable nor exclusively untranslatable; rather, the degree of difficulty of translation depends on their nature, as well as on the translator’s knowledge of the languages in question. Quite often, a text or utterance that is considered to be “untranslatable” is actually a lacuna, or lexical gap. That is, there is no one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language

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The Church Of Euthanasia

The Church of Euthanasia is a religious organization founded by Reverend Chris Korda and Pastor Kim (Robert Kimberk) in the Boston, Massachusetts area of the United States of America in 1992. The official symbol of the Church of Euthanasia is a representation of a Greek temple with four pillars Abbreviation. As stated in the Church’s website, it is “a non-profit educational foundation devoted to restoring balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth”. Members of this organization affirm this can only turn into a reality by a massive voluntary population reduction, which will depend on a leap in Human consciousness to species-awareness. According to Rev. Chris Korda it is likely that this Church is the world’s only anti-human religion. Its most popular slogan is “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself” and its founding ideology is set in one commandment “Thou Shalt not Procreate”, and four main pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (of the already dead) and sodomy (“any sexual act not intended for procreation”). The Church stresses population reduction by voluntary means only, therefore, murder and involuntary sterilization are strictly forbidden by church doctrine

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Radar detector detector (RDD)

A radar detector detector (RDD) is a device used by police or law enforcement in areas where radar detectors are declared illegal. Radar detectors are built around a superheterodyne receiver, which has a local oscillator that radiates slightly. It is therefore possible to build a radar-detector detector, which detects such emissions (usually the frequency of the radar type being detected, plus about 10 MHz for the intermediate frequency). Some radar guns are equipped with such a device. However, like any device that detects stray emissions from electronic equipment, it is easily defeated by using adequate shielding.

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Small penis rule

The small penis rule is an informal strategy used by authors to evade libel lawsuits. It was described in a New York Times article in 1998: "For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two," said Mr. Friedman. Thus, he continued, libel lawyers have what is known as "the small penis rule". One way authors can protect themselves from libel suits is to say that a character has a small penis, Mr. Friedman said. "Now no male is going to come forward and say, 'That character with a very small penis, that's me!'"