Flehmen response

Flehmen response: "The flehmen response (/ˈfleɪmən/; German: [ˈfleːmən]), also called the flehmen position, flehmen reaction, flehming, or flehmening, is a behaviour whereby an animal curls back its upper lips exposing its front teeth, inhales with the nostrils usually closed and then often holds this position for several seconds."

Science: Holocene extinction

Holocene extinction: "The Holocene extinction, sometimes called the Sixth Extinction, is a name proposed to describe the extinction event of species that has occurred during the present Holocene epoch (since around 10,000 BC). The large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods. Although 875 extinctions occurring between 1500 and 2009 have been documented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the vast majority are undocumented. According to the species-area theory and based on upper-bound estimating, the present rate of extinction may be up to 140,000 species per year."

Science: Fata Morgana (mirage)

Fata Morgana (mirage): "A Fata Morgana is an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon."

Places: Meteora

Meteora: "The Metéora (Greek: Μετέωρα, pronounced [mɛˈtɛoɾɐ], lit. "middle of the sky", "suspended in the air" or "in the heavens above" — etymologically related to "Meteorite") is one of the largest and most important complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece, second only to Mount Athos."

History: Yoshiko Kawashima

Yoshiko Kawashima: "Yoshiko Kawashima (川島 芳子 Kawashima Yoshiko?, 24 May 1907 – 25 March 1948) was a Manchu princess brought up in Japan, who served as a spy in the service of the Japanese Kwantung Army and Manchukuo during the Second World War."

Philosophy: Enlightened self-interest

Enlightened self-interest: "Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest."

Things to do: Way of St. James

Way of St. James: The Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried.

Code of Hammurabi

Code of Hammurabi: "The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating back to about 1772 BC. It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world."

Drake equation

Drake equation: "The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy."

Mapping: Cadastre

Cadastre: "A cadastre (also spelled cadaster), using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country. A cadastre commonly includes details of the ownership, the tenure, the precise location (some include GPS coordinates), the dimensions (and area), the cultivations if rural, and the value of individual parcels of land."

PotD: Chinese room

Chinese room: "The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle in order to challenge the claim that it is possible for a digital computer running a program to have a "mind" and "consciousness" in the same sense that people do, simply by virtue of running the right program."

WotD: Recusancy

Recusancy: In the history of England and Wales, recusancy was the state of those who refused to attend Anglican services. The individuals were known as "recusants".

Dunbar's number

Dunbar's number (Wikipedia)

"Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person."

"No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150."

Besame Mucho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9same_Mucho

Semiotics

Semiotics: "Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches:
- Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata
- Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
- Pragmatics: Relation between signs and their effects on those (people) who use them"

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo "'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.' is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs"

Uncanny valley

Uncanny valley: "The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics[1] and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's human likeness."

Ogive

Ogive: "An ogive ('Oh-jive') is the roundly tapered end of a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object."

Golden ratio

Golden ratio

Book - The education of Karl Witte

The education of Karl Witte