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How did Polynesian wayfinders navigate the Pacific Ocean? - Alan Tamayose and Shantell De Silva. Star Compasses. Hawaiian Star Compass © Charles Nainoa Thompson. Nainoa’s Hawaiian Star Compass ©. Click here for a pdf file. Nainoa’s Hawaian Star Compass © with English and Numerical Equivalents in degrees. (The distance between compass points is 11.25 degrees; the points marks the center of houses of the same name. The distance to the sides of the house from the center, on either side, is 5.625 degrees).

Click here for a pdf file. Nainoa’s Hawaiian Star Compass © with the Brightest Stars. Early Star Compasses, from the Nainoa's Notebooks for the 1980 Voyage to Tahiti. Mau’s Compass. Notes on Mau’s Compass The directions are not evenly spaced or numerical. Translations Tan = Rising; Tupul = Setting Stars and Constellations Southern Cross Luubw: Cross rising Machemeias: Cross rising at 45˚ from the southeastern horizon Wuliwuliluubw: Cross upright at 90˚ Machemelito: Cross setting at 45˚ from the southwestern horizon Luubw: Cross setting. How far they'll go: Moana shows the power of Polynesian celestial navigation.

This article contains minor spoilers. One of the greatest feats of human migration in history was the colonisation of the vast Pacific Ocean by Polynesian peoples. They achieved it thanks to their sophisticated knowledge of positional astronomy and celestial navigation. The Disney film Moana has drawn attention to these accomplishments and helped inform a new generation about the complexity of Indigenous astronomy. Polynesia forms a triangle across the Pacific, with Hawaii to the north, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to the southeast, and Aotearoa (New Zealand) to the southwest, with Tahiti in the centre. But Polynesian voyaging extends beyond this triangle; there is strong evidence they reached the coast of South America and sub-Antarctic islands. Moana touches on Polynesian voyaging, showing the eponymous main character using traditional celestial techniques to navigate across the sea. Navigating by hand So what are some of these navigational techniques?

Aboriginal knowledge. 5 Stupid Lies That Changed The Outcome Of Historical Battles. ... and add a dummy fourth one. Scientific American The tactical genius behind this innovation was Karl von Muller, a veteran German captain. He came up with the ruse while serving as commanding officer of the SMS Emden in the Indian Ocean. By adding the extra smokestack, the Emden was able to replicate the profile of a British ship and approach Allied ships unopposed before utterly ruining teatime with a rude surprise attack. These Scooby-Doo-worthy antics allowed Muller and his crew to capture or destroy dozens of Allied ships, absolutely dominating the Indian Ocean for months on end. At one point, the Emden captured nine ships and sank six others in nine days.

Then they got cocky. Operation Scherhorn was a brilliant endeavor by the USSR to siphon off valuable resources and experienced field officers from the Nazis during World War II. German Federal Archives"Da, it is I, Comrade Scherhorn. Support Cracked's journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Asheville celebrates Zelda Fitzgerald, art and mental health. Gizmodo. 'Criminal' manipulation of Nietzsche by sister to make him look anti-Semitic. Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche edited her brother's writings after his mental breakdown in 1889 and quickly began to add, remove and change passages to align his philosophy with her own beliefs and those of her virulent anti-Semite husband Bernhard Förster.

Along with her husband, she founded a Utopian "Aryan" colony in the Paraguyan jungle called Nueva Germania in 1887. It was a disaster: her husband committed suicide in 1889 and Förster-Nietzsche returned to Germany. When she died in 1935, Hitler attended her funeral. While it has been known to Nietzsche scholars that Förster-Nietzsche meddled with her brother's work, particular after his death, the new encyclopedia – consisting of entries by about 150 scholars – shows the sheer breadth and depth of her forgeries as never before. Niemeyer, a psychologist and Nietzsche expert from Dresden University, scoured through Nietzsche's letters to catalogue the extent of the falsifications. 29 examples of twin movies that came out around the same time.

Four Branches of the Mabinogi - Wikipedia. The Four Branches of the Mabinogi or Pedair Cainc Y Mabinogi are the earliest prose stories in the literature of Britain. Originally written in Wales in Middle Welsh, but widely available in translations, the Mabinogi is generally agreed to be a single work in four parts, or "Branches. " The interrelated tales can be read as mythology, political themes, romances, or magical fantasies. They appeal to a wide range of readers, from young children to the most sophisticated adult. The tales are popular today in book format, as storytelling or theatre performances; they appear in recordings and on film, and continue to inspire many reinterpretations in artwork and modern fiction.

(The Mabinogi needs to be disentangled from The Mabinogion which is the modern name for a larger collection of British/ Welsh mediaeval tales. Published versions of The Mabinogion[1] typically include the Mabinogi. Overview[edit] The Branches[edit] First branch: Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed[edit] Brân means "raven". Modern Hebrew: old or new? - Languages Of The World. According to the official story, Hebrew has been “revived” in the late 19th century and early 20th century until it once again became the national language of Israel. But some scholars — such as Paul Wexler and Gil’ad Zuckermann — have challenged this narrative, proposing instead that Modern Hebrew is a new language with little or no roots in a Semitic past. So which is it, old or new? A bit of historical background first. The “old”, Biblical (or Classical) Hebrew was spoken (yes, spoken!) But for external reasons to do with the Bar Kohba war of 135 CE, exile and diaspora, Hebrew gradually became extinct as a spoken language around 200 CE.

If we need to put a date on the beginning of the process of the Hebrew language “revival” (a term I will use for now), it must be October 13th 1881, when a man called Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his friends agreed to exclusively speak Hebrew in their conversations. “the Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return it to the fatherland” The Myths and History of Red Hair - Witchcraft and Heresy. Homepage Witchcraft and Heresy Red hair was apparently a sign of witchcraft in Christian Europe and it's said that it was often seen as a marker of guilt in the eyes of witch finders.

To what extent this is true we'll probably never truly know, but it does appear from the evidence that red hair was certainly seen as untrustworthy and something that aroused suspicion. What follows are examples of this prejudice. The Distrust of Redheads There are many examples of redheads being stereotyped as untrustworthy in medieval times. These ideas of untrustworthiness run parallel with the idea that Judas, Christ's betrayer, had red hair. "Red hair, a red beard, and ruddy skin - separately or combined - have been considered suspect, impure, and dangerous because they did not meet the standards of the normal...

She also relates an early example of Christian condemnation of red hair, quoting from a letter from St. "Do not dye her hair red and thereby presage for her the fires of hell. " Back to Home. 9 Albert Einstein Quotes That Are Totally Fake. ELI5: Why do our brains have trouble visualizing more than 3 dimensions? : explainlikeimfive. This New Equation Promises to Unify Physics Theories with the Help of Wormholes. As far as famous equations go, none are more known than Einstein’s E=mc2. This insight by Einstein that relates mass and energy has been linked to the creation of a new kind of physics and the birth of the atomic age. Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and one of the founders of string theory, has proposed a new equation that may have an equally transformative effect. What is it?

ER=EPR. “ER=EPR” promises to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. The letters in the equation actually stand for the names of a few heavyweights from the world of physics. “ER” means Einstein and Nathan Rosen, and, in particular, evokes a 1935 paper they wrote describing wormholes (aka “Einstein-Rosen bridges”), which are essentially tunnels between different times and spaces in the Universe. You might’ve noticed that Einstein is on both sides of this equation, a testament to the influence his ideas continue to have on physics.

Cover photo credit: Shutterstock. ELI5: What makes spider silk so strong, and what separates it from other similar materials? : explainlikeimfive. Average Layer. This script is intended for a series of photographs with (on each photgraph different) unwanted objects on it, e.g. a large place with moving people. Update! V1.1 works with rectangular selections! The plugin creates a new layer or a new image consisting of the arithmetical, geometrical or harmonic mean of every pixel, thereby creating a 'ghost effect' of the moving objects. If rather you want to remove objects, choose the 'cutoff' function, which removes outlier pixels after sorting the RGB values. This is also known as winsorizing. Also median and mode remove outliers, but less efficiently. For best results, try to cutoff only on dark, bright or on both sides. Working on selections only greatly improves speed. This was inspired by reports of a friend of mine on a Photoshop plugin, which also removes unwanted objects from a series of photographs.

Prerequisites You need Scipy, a scientific computing package for python. Before: After arithmetical mean with 67% cutoff (dark outlier pixels):

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Talmud. Central text of Rabbinic Judaism The Talmud (; Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד‎, romanized: Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology.[1][2] Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews.[3] The term Talmud normally refers to the collection of writings named specifically the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli), although there is also an earlier collection known as the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi).[4] It may also traditionally be called Shas (ש״ס), a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, or the "six orders" of the Mishnah.

Etymology[edit] Talmud translates as "instruction, learning", from the Semitic root LMD, meaning "teach, study".[6] History[edit] An early printing of the Talmud (Ta'anit 9b); with commentary by Rashi Gemara[edit] Extra Annoyed By Chewing Sounds? You May Be A Creative Genius. Using Quantum Physics to Explain Human Cognition and Behavior. The theory of quantum mechanics earned its stripes by making accurate predictions concerning the behavior of atoms and the tiny particles that make them up. No one quite understands what quantum mechanics means, but it works. That’s its appeal, and so it’s understandable that researchers in other fields might want to borrow the insights of quantum mechanics.

Enter “quantum cognition,” a new theory which suggests that the mathematical principles behind quantum mechanics could be used to better understand another notoriously inexplicable area of study: human behavior. “It’s interesting—when we say something is irrational in decision-making, it’s because it’s against what a classical probability-based decision model should predict,” says Zheng Joyce Wang, an associate professor of communication at Ohio State University and a co-author on both papers. “But humans don’t behave in that way.” Take, for example, the classic prisoner’s dilemma. Classical probability can’t explain this. Dreams turned off and on with a neural switch : science. Top 10 Lifehacker Posts of All Time. ATcuINd.jpg (JPEG Image, 720 × 6780 pixels) - Scaled (14%) SCVWkFx.jpg (JPEG Image, 732 × 3410 pixels) - Scaled (29%) This Amazing Camping Hack Will Keep Your Campfire Burning For Hours With Just One Log.

The Fastest Way to Clear a Stuffed Nose. Related: 5 Ways to Fight Sinus Infections No thanks. Instead, look for a decongestant—like Mucinex—that contains the ingredient guaifenesin. It’ll loosen and thin the mucus that’s causing your congestion. That’s one way to find relief. But if you want to feel better even faster, try these two DIY tricks: 1. (For more awesome health hacks, check out The Better Man Project, the brand-new book from the Editor in Chief of Men’s Health. 2. Do this for 3 seconds.

Converting to Metric. Community. FQXi Administrator Zeeya Merali wrote on Aug. 26, 2015 @ 19:05 GMT Spookiness, it seems, is here to stay. Quantum theory has been put to its most stringent “loophole free” test yet, and it has come out victorious, ruling out more common sense views of reality (well, mostly). Many thanks to Matt Leifer for bringing this experiment -- by a collaboration of researchers in the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK -- to my attention (arXiv:1508.05949). A few years ago, I wrote a feature for Science about the quest to close loopholes in quantum entanglement experiments, with a number of groups around the world vying to perform the perfect test.

("Quantum Mechanics Braces for the Ultimate Test. ") In that article, I quote quantum physicist and FQXi member Nicolas Gisin saying: “This race is on because the group that performs the first loophole-free test will have an experiment that stands in history.” We may now have a winner. From their paper: There are also huge practical applications, though. Community. 19 B.S. Science Facts You Assumed Movies Got Right.