Categorically Imperative

A condition where two people look at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do.

The Escherization problem is stated as follows:
"Given a closed figure in a plane, find a new closed figure that most resembles the given figure and which tiles the entire plane."
Escher was a dutch artist who created a large number of tesselations by hand.

The paradox that French people remain slimmer and healthier than the Americans, even though their consumption of fat is higher. Noted by physician Samuel Black.

Simply put, dendrochronology is the dating of past events like climatic changes through study of tree ring growth. Botanists, foresters and archaeologists began using this technique during the early part of the 20th century, when it was discovered that the wide rings of certain species of trees were produced during wet years and, inversely, narrow rings during dry seasons. Each year, the tree adds a new layer of wood to its trunk, thus creating these annual rings. Hmm, do I remember reading all this in college?
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A lovely picture of the Mandelbrot Fractal.
This reminds me of my college project, although mine was just half this good.

The following is a consolidated list of the people who have suffered from Bipolar Disorder. The sheer talent of these people is amazing. This is definitely an illness some people would "die for" (pun intended).

Virginia Woolf
Vincent Van Gogh
Marilyn Monroe
Edvard Munch
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Carrie Fisher ( Princess Leia from Star Wars )
Trent Reznor ( Nine Inch Nails )
Kurt Cobain
Ernest Hemingway
John Keats

Coprolalia is involuntary swearing that is an occasional but rare characteristic of Tourette syndrome patients. Coprolalia encompasses all words and phrases that are culturally taboo or generally unsuitable for acceptable social use.

Fentanyl - An opiod analgesic, about 80 times more potent than morphine. Domino Harvey, the bounty hunter, on whom the movie "Domino" is based upon, died from an O.D. of this drug just this year.

1. The Monte-Carlo Algorithm - Algorithms that might give incorrect results, but they have
a fixed bound on the probability of failure.
2. The Las-Vegas Algorithm - Algorithms that always give correct results, but the only variation is the running time.

If all ravens are black, aren't all non-black things non-raven?

I remember watching a show on Discovery about "Ball Lightning" some years back. Had quite forgotten what it was about. This is a nice article on it. And some pictures too. Looks good, but is it just a figment of our imagination or an actual phenomenon?

I did'nt know this until recently, but one of my favourite bands Depeche Mode does'nt actually play pop, but something called Synth Pop. Synth Pop is a variation of pop, where the music is not produced by traditional acoustic or percussion instruments, but rather is synthesized or digitized, usually from a computer or maybe a micro-chip. Oh, and it sounds good too, I must admit.

Traditional digital camera (is'nt this an oxymoron?) sensors were equipped with just one filter over each individual unit on the sensor; which means, that each pixel in the image would contain just one out of the 3 possible colors (Red, Green or Blue). I think this was because of the cost and technology required to implement 3 filters (R,G & B) over each pixel. The final image would then be obtained by passing the image through Bayer filters and then approximating the RGB values of each pixel. But then, Foveon came up with its range of X3 sensors (recently, I think), which have 3 filter icons over each possible unit of the sensor, thus eliminating the need for any such approximations in the final image. Even though I don't see this sensor being implemented in any of the current Canon or Nikon models (both Canon and Nikon manufacture their own sensors), I sincerely hope this technology gains some rapid momentum. Maybe then, we can compete with the image quality of traditional SLR's.

Travel to anyplace in the world in exactly 42 minutes and 12 seconds???
The Gravity Train can accomplish that. The maximum speed reached by this hypothetical train is 7900 m/s, which is at the center of the earth. Lovely concept, this one!!!!