Category: Anthropology

The Only Olympic Team Which is Not Funded by its Government World Wide

Leave a comment

The only Olympic teams which are entirely privately funded (e.g. sponsorships, broadcast rights, donations etc.) are within the U.S., as virtually all Olympic teams internationally utilize a combination of government funding and private funding. This policy includes all U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams, making the U.S. unique upon the world stage of athletics as of 2024. This private funding model can be challenging for Olympic athletes within the U.S., as many are forced to find additional work or additional individual sponsorship to cover both training and living expenses. The U.S. government does not fund its athletes for a variety of reasons including the historical tradition of the separation of sport and politics within the U.S., a strong and well funded private sector with ample resources to fund athletes and teams alike, the non-profit business model status of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee which affords tax exemption among other benefits, and state and local government sponsorship of athletes and teams. It should be noted, a small number of countries have attempted to replicate the U.S.’ Olympic funding model however data of the efficacy of these nations is not publicly available

The Peculiarity of Isotopes Xenon 129, Xenon 132, and Krypton 80 Upon Mars

Leave a comment

Scientific study of Mars has revealed the existence of the isotope xenon 129 present within the almost non-existent Martian atmosphere. This has puzzled scientists as there are a limited number of understood methods to achieve such an outcome. The first method is via cosmic radiation, specifically galactic cosmic rays and/or solar cosmic rays striking elements like barium or bromine upon the Martian surface which can cause neutron capture, leading to the formation of xenon 129 naturally. This is because Mars has a very thin atmosphere and lacks a global magnetic field, which means it is less protected from cosmic radiation in comparison to the Earth. The second method is to detonate nuclear weaponry upon Mars which has left scientists dumbfounded as to how such an event could occur without third party intervention. Because of this, the majority of scientists believe the former method to be the causation, however there are scientists who take issue with this theory, mainly due to the high ratios of xenon 129, xenon 132, and krypton 80 within the Martian atmosphere which can be a byproduct of the fast neutron fission of uranium and plutonium weaponry, with all 3 of these isotopes able to be created by generating nuclear energy as well, the topography of Mars itself as vast glass like smooth regions exist which strikingly resemble the Trinity nuclear weaponry test detonation site in New Mexico, United States of America, as well as the high concentration of specific isotopes within specific regions (e.g. high levels of krypton 80 in the Cydonia region of Mars etc.)

How Antique Books are Forged and How to Detect Replica Antique Book Forgeries

Leave a comment

Modern day forgers are able to replicate rare books printed using a mechanical printing press by using photopolymer plates, a process which involves taking a high resolution photograph of a page which was printed using a printing press and allowing computer software to create a three dimensional printed image of that photograph with depth for each letter present. This method produces pages which have an imprint mark as if pressed by a printing press but its fatal flaw is that it also provides depth to small lines around the margin of text which are picked up during the printing process. These lines should have no depth as they are merely extra ink which has been caught during the printing process but with photopolymer replicas, because the software used to extract three dimensional characters reads every single bit of ink as a marker to place depth, these lines appear to have depth within forgeries which is an immediate red flag in terms of authenticity as originals have no reason to possess depth. These incidental inking lines around the margin of the page are referred to as “shoulder inking”, and if they possess depth of any degree, it is a strong indication that the piece is a modern day forgery

The 3 Conditions Required to Diagnose a Patient as Brain Dead

Leave a comment

3 conditions are necessary for a patient to reach prior to being categorized as brain dead which include being within a persistent comatose state which does not respond to pain stimuli (e.g. nail bed pressure, sternal rub, pressure upon the orbital rim of the face etc.), possessing absent brain stem reflexes (e.g. pupillary light reflex, oculocephalic reflex, coughing gag reflex etc.), and possessing a lack of spontaneous respiration, if a patient is unable to breathe upon their own accord. If a patient possesses all 3 of these metrics, they are considered brain dead and legally deceased within the U.S.. If tests are inconclusive, ancillary examinations can be provided to determine definitively whether or not a person is brain dead (e.g. electroencephalograph, transcranial doppler ultrasound, diagnostic cerebral angiogram etc.) as well as other tests which can be performed

Analogs of the Christian Bible’s Epic of Noah’s Ark

Leave a comment

In London, England in 2014, Dr. Irving Finkel, one of, if not the worlds most foremost authoritive upon cuneiform writing, published a book entitled “The Ark Before Noah” which states that a 3700 year old Sumerian tablet translated by Finkel depicts the Christian biblical story of Noah and the flood which drowned the world. This tablet is at the very least 1000 years older than that of the Biblical epic. In the Christina Bible, Noah is warned of a cataclysmic flood by God. A similar story exists in ancient Indian Vedic texts in which King Manu was forewarned by Lord Vishnu in the form a fish, of a great flood impending, with Manu constructing a large boat and ultimately surviving. In the Babylonian poem the Epic of Gilgamesh, the protagonist Utnapishtim (pronounced “ut-nah-pish-tim”) is advised of an impending flood by the god Enki (pronounced “en-kee”). In ancient Aztec culture, a sacred male and female couple hide within a hollow tree with corn while holding steady as the deluge of a great flood envelops the Earth. Ancient Celtic, Norse, and Chinese mythology also account similar stories in which a great flood occurs and only some survive. The common denominator between all of these stories is intervention by a force which knew ahead of time of the impending cataclysm

The Advent of Post It Notes

Leave a comment

Post It notes were invented by a chemical engineer whose bookmark fell off his hymn book while singing in church. The inventor, Arthur Fry, created an adhesive which worked like a basketballs skin in that some adhesive touches the object it’s stuck to, but not very much so it’s continually sticky dependant of how it lands each time

Modern Day Slavery World Wide

Leave a comment

It is estimated that 1,200,000 (1.2 million) people in Europe are subjected to slavery and this value leaps to a conservative estimate of 40,300,000 (40.3 million) worldwide as of 2020

The Etymology of “ChatGPT” and How Artificial Intelligence Models are Developed

Leave a comment

OpenAI’s artificial intelligence “ChatGPT” is named as such because of the acronym “GPT” which stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”. The generative pre-trained transformer provides the characteristics of any large language model like ChatGPT. The term “generative” refers to an artificial intelligences “ability to generate new content which is similar to the data sets it was trained upon”. The term “pre-trained” refers to the “practice of artificial intelligence models being fine tuned for specific tasks, a pre-training phase in which the large language model learns from a vast amount of text data which helps the model understand language patterns and contexts”. The term “transformer” refers to the transformer architecture which is a “neural network design that relies upon a mechanism referred to as “attention” to weigh the influence of different parts of the input data”. This transformer architecture is particularly effective for tasks which involve understanding the context of language (e.g. language translation or answering questions etc.) which is why artificial intelligence models are able to understand human language in a deep and complex way

The Origin of Birthday Cakes, Birthday Candles, and Birthday Wishes

Leave a comment

The modern day birthday cake tradition can be traced to Medieval Germany. During the Medieval period, German bakers began creating sweetened bread doughs for birthday celebrations with this specific kind of cake referred to as a “geburtstagstorte” (pronounced “guh-boorts-stocks-tor-tuh” with a slightly rolled “r” sound). German cakes became more elaborate over time, introducing ingredients like sugar. The practice of placing candles upon birthday cakes also has its roots within Germany, as candles were believed to hold special significance. One of the most subscribed to theories of the use of birthday cake candles within Germany is that these candles represented the light of life and blowing them out while making a wish was thought to ensure that the wish would come true. It was believed that the smoke from the candles carried the wishes of the person being celebrated upward, toward the ear of God

The Auctioning of Spouses During the 18th Century and 19th Century

Leave a comment

Traditionally, if a wife was no longer desired by her husband, he would lead her in her Sunday best, to the towns market square, laiden with a rope halter wrapped around her neck or waste, to be sold to the highest bidder. Women were exhibited the same way livestock are sold during the modern day. Over the course of the 18th and 19th century, approximately 300 transactions of a wife for money were exchanged within the U.K. The most recent exchange took place in 1928, in Blackwood, Wales for £1.00. Technically wife sales were illegal but because wives were considered the property of their husbands, English society turned a blind eye to the act