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From its origins the word professor refers to someone who professes to know something about a given subject. In the medieval universities undergraduates started their studies in the arts faculty, where they nominally learnt the seven liberal arts (the trivium consisting of grammar, logic and rhetoric and the quadrivium consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) and philosophy

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The color code was recurrent and meaningful. A black knight was almost a character of primary importance (Tristan, Lancelot, Gawain) who wanted to hide his identity; he was generally motivated by good intentions and prepared to demonstrate his valor, especially by jousting or tournament. A red knight, on the other hand, was often hostile to the hero; this was a perfidious or evil knight, sometimes the devil’s envoy or a mysterious being from the Other World. Less prominent, a white knight was generally viewed as good; this was an older figure, a friend of protector or the hero, to who he gave wise council. Conversely, a green knight was a young knight, recently dubbed, whose audacious or insolent behavior was going to cause great disorder; he could be good or bad. Finally, yellow or gold knights were rare and blue knights nonexistent.

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Medieval scholars inherited the idea from ancient times that there were seven colors: white, yellow, red, green, blue, purple and black. Green was the middle color, which meant that it sat balanced between the extremes of white and black. It was also considered a soothing color, so much so that scribes often kept emeralds and other green objects beside them to look at when they needed to rest their eyes, while the poet Baudri de Bourgueil suggested writing on green tablets instead of white or black ones.

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Orb-weaving spiders, for example, keep a tally of how many silk-wrapped prey items are stashed in the “larder” segment of their web. When scientists experimentally remove the cache, the spiders will spend time searching for the stolen goods in proportion to how many separate items had been taken, rather than how big the total prey mass might have been. Small fish benefit from living in schools, and the more numerous the group, the statistically better a fish’s odds of escaping predation. As a result, many shoaling fish are excellent appraisers of relative head counts. Guppies, for example, have a so-called contrast ratio of .8, which means they can distinguish at a glance between four guppies and five, or eight guppies and ten, and if given the chance will swim toward the slightly fishier crowd. Three-spined sticklebacks are more discriminating still: with a contrast ratio of .86, they’re able to tell six fellow fish from seven, or 18 from 21 — a comparative power that many birds, mammals and even humans might find hard to beat.

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Jams emerge from an elemental struggle between the natural and the mechanical. “Paper isn’t manufactured—it’s processed,” Warner said, as we ambled among the copiers in a vast Xerox showroom with Ruiz and a few other engineers. “It comes from living things—trees—which are unique, just like people are unique.” In Spain, paper is made from eucalyptus; in Kentucky, from Southern pine; in the Northwest, from Douglas fir.

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Using an early Xerox machine required placing an original under a glass pane, reflecting light off it onto a statically charged photosensitive plate, using the charged plate to draw toner from a tray, transferring the toned image to plain paper, and then melting the toner into the paper in a miniature electric oven. (Between the charging of the plate and the ding of the oven, or “fuser,” each copy took around three minutes to make.

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When meeting a stranger, one might inquire “Ayak” (Are You A Klansman)? Only the answer “Akia” brought comfort (A Klansman I Am). The most ridiculous Klan expressions were the renamed days of the week: Dark, Deadly, Dismal, Doleful, Desolate, Dreadful, and Desperate, which sound like the Seven Dwarfs’ depressing cousins.

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Using big guns, chickens have been fired at aircraft engines in safety tests since the 1950s. But what about drones?

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The Oxford English Dictionary contains an anodyne description of its origin: “Early 17th century: from Tamil paraiyar, plural of paraiyan ‘(hereditary) drummer’, from parai ‘a drum.’” It also provides a historical definition: “A member of an indigenous people of southern India originally functioning as ceremonial drummers but later having a low caste.”

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JFK was a very, very sick man his whole life Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966 Dr. Travell revealed that Kennedy also had hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2).[316]

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Encryption Lava Lamps The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet. 1 92 Row of lava lamps Tom Scott / Used by Permission 13,555 What’s encrypting your web traffic as you surf the internet? An advanced algorithm created by a supercomputer? Actually, if the site you’re visiting is encrypted by the cybersecurity firm Cloudflare, your activity may be protected by nothing other than a wall of lava lamps. There couldn’t possibly be a groovier way to keep the internet secure. Cloudflare covers about 10 percent of international web traffic, including the websites for Uber, OKCupid, or FitBit, for instance. And the colorful wall of lava lamps in the company’s San Francisco headquarters might be what’s generating the random code. The wall features over 100 lava lamps, spanning a variety of colors, and its random patterns deter hackers from accessing data. As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code. Why use lava lamps for encryption instead of computer-generated code? Since computer codes are created by machines with relatively predictable patterns, it is entirely possible for hackers to guess their algorithms, posing a security risk. Lava lamps, on the other hand, add to the equation the sheer randomness of the physical world, making it nearly impossible for hackers to break through. While you might think that such an important place would be kept in secret and locked off from the public, it’s actually possible for visitors to witness these lava lamps in person. Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display. It may seem bizarre that Cloudflare would allow average people to affect the video footage, but that’s actually intentional. External disturbances like human movement, static, and changes in lighting from the adjacent windows all work together to make the random code even harder to predict. So, by standing in front of the lava lamp display, you add an additional variable to the code, making it even harder to hack. In a way, by visiting Cloudflare’s wall of lava lamps, you can play a role in making the internet more secure.

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