Post something cool you learned on Wikipedia

[SDP]

The first Cardiac Surgeon was African American

['jim]

Every sample on Endtroducing.

[650lex]

Originally posted by SDP
The first Cardiac Surgeon was African American

i believe this was turned into a HBO movie
and Mos Def played the guy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof

Jennifer Garner ranked as the 5th best paid actress in Hollywood in 2005.

['jim]

A tauroctony is an artistic depiction of the legendary hero and ancient religious icon Mithras ritually slaying a bull. The literal act of sacrifice is known as taurobolium.

The highly formulaic scene was developed in the school of sculptors active in Pergamum circa 200 BCE, possibly adapting the formulaic representation of Alexander (Untersteiner1946, et al.) It shows Mithras stabbing a bull: from the wound grains of wheat flow, lapped by a dog and a serpent, while a scorpion attacks the bull's testicles; two smaller figures, the celestial twins of light and darkness (Cautes and Cautopates with lit and extinguished torches) aid Mithras. Mithras kneels on the bull's shoulder, looking away behind him, not directly at his act. His open cape flows back, revealing a starry lining.

[Zaius]

.9999999999999999999999(repeating)


is EXACTLY equal to 1

[Denstradamus]

Originally posted by SDP
The first Cardiac Surgeon was African American

Didn't we all learn that in school during African-American History month?

Originally posted by 'jim
Every sample on Endtroducing.

Two words: Liner Notes.

Originally posted by atomiclotusbox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof

Meh. I was in to militant leftist groups when I was in high school. Red Army Faction was one of those groups.

Originally posted by 'jim

Three words: Frazer's Golden Bough.

Originally posted by Zaius
.9999999999999999999999(repeating)


is EXACTLY equal to 1

Originally said by my frosh math professor


It is true that for any finite number of 9's, the sum is less
than 1. But writing "..." (or a bar over the last 9) means that
one is taking a limit as n --> infinity of the expressions with n
9's;
and even though none of those expressions equals 1, the limit does.
With n 9's, the difference from 1 is 10^{-n}, and as n --> infinity,
10^{-n} approaches 0.

Note also that ".999..." is what you get when you multiply the
decimal expression for 1/3 by 3.

That's after I emailed him asking that very question freshmen year. Yeah I saved the email. If you think about it, it's just the basic definition of a limit from precalc

['jim]

Originally posted by Denstradamus

Two words: Liner Notes.

He only credits the 3 he had to get a license for at the time on my copy.

[Zaius]

Originally posted by Denstradamus


That's after I emailed him asking that very question freshmen year. Yeah I saved the email. If you think about it, it's just the basic definition of a limit from precalc

NERD!!!!!!!

['jim]

NERRRRRRDS!

['jim]

The word itself first appeared in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950, where it simply names one of Seuss's many comical imaginary animals. (The narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo.) Another theory of the word's origin sees it as a variation on Mortimer Snerd, the name of Edgar Bergen's ventriloquist dummy. Yet another theory traces the term to Northern Electric Research and Development, suggesting images of employees wearing pocket protectors with the acronym N.E.R.D. printed on them. In the 1933 film, Dinner at Eight, Jean Harlow's character replies to her husband's suggestion that she might enjoy mingling with Washington "cabinet members' wives" by saying, "Nerds!... A lot of sour-faced frumps with last year's clothes on, pinning medals on Girl Scouts and pouring tea for the DARs..." [Spelling is from Turner DVD subtitles and not verified by the original script.] Finally, oral history at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute holds that the word was coined there, spelled as "knurd" ("drunk" spelled backwards), to describe those who studied rather than partied. (This usage predates a similar coinage of "knurd" by author Terry Pratchett.) The term itself was used heavily in the American 1974–1984 television comedy Happy Days which took place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the mid-1950s.

[SDP]

Originally posted by Denstradamus


Didn't we all learn that in school during African-American History month?

African-American what now? I was a HS sophomore when AAHM was invented, sonny.

[nauism]

not cool, but something I learned on wiki. The uranium for the atom bombs used on Hiroshoma and Nagasaki came from Africa.

[likeothers]

Originally posted by Denstradamus


That's after I emailed him asking that very question freshmen year. Yeah I saved the email. If you think about it, it's just the basic definition of a limit from precalc

this is one reason why i dislike decimal expansions such as these. i think the result is much more apparent once one writes it in a form of limit or infinite sum.

such as

\lim_{N\rightarrow \infty} \sum_{i=1}^N 9*10^{-i}

which is a geometric sum with a = 9 and r = 1/10

so the answer is 9*(1/10/(1-1/10)) = 9*1/9 = 1.