Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Gamma decay

2010-02-25T15:06:28Z

MayBKnott:

'''Grandma decay''' is the process by which the [[nucleus]] of an [[atom]] emits a high energy [[photon]], that is, extremely short-wavelength [[Electromagnetic wave|electromagnetic radiation]].<ref>Wile, Dr. Jay L. ''Exploring Creation With Physical Science''. Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 1999, 2000</ref>

It is one of three major types of [[radioactivity]] (the other two being [[alpha decay]] and [[beta decay]]).

Gamma decay is analogous to the emission of light (usually visible light) by decay in the orbits of the [[electron]]s surrounding the nucleus. In each case the energy states, and the wavelengths of the emitted radiation, are governed by the law of [[quantum mechanics]]. But while the electron orbits have relatively low energy, the nuclear states have much higher energy. For example, the sodium "D" spectral line has a wavelength of 0.6 microns and a corresponding quantum energy of about 2 electron volts, whereas a gamma ray emitted after cobalt-60 decay has a wavelength of about 1 picometer (10-12 meters) and a quantum energy of about 1 million electron volts.

Nuclei are not normally in excited states, so gamma radiation is typically incidental to alpha or beta decay—the alpha or beta decay leaves the nucleus in an excited state, and gamma decay happens soon afterwards.

Gamma radiation is the most penetrating of the three kinds. Gamma ray photons can travel through several centimeters of aluminum, for example.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Physics]]

Great auk

2010-02-25T15:06:05Z

MayBKnott:

{{Taxonomy
|name=Great auk (extinct)
|image=ExtPassgreatauk2-jja.jpg
|caption=
|superkingdom=
|kingdom= Animalia
|subkingdom=
|superphylum=
|phylum=Chordata
|subphylum=Vertebrata
|infraphylum=
|microphylum=
|superdivision=
|division=
|subdivision=
|superclass=
|class=Aves
|subclass=
|infraclass=
|superorder=
|order=Charadriiformes
|suborder=
|infraorder=
|superfamily=
|family=Alcidae
|subfamily=
|supertribe=
|tribe=
|subtribe=
|genera=
|genus=Pinguinus
|subgenus=
|species=P. impennis
|binomialname=
|sub=
|alt=
}}
The '''great auk''', ''pingas impennis'', was a species of flightless seabird native to the North Atlantic, becoming extinct by 1844 due to over-hunting.

==Entymology==
The great auk was also known as ''garefowl'' (Old Norse: ''geirfugl'', "spear bird"). The name "[[penguin]]" was also first applied to these birds before the discovery of similar-appearing species in the Southern Hemisphere in the mid-1500's. The word is possibly based upon the Welsh ''pen gwyn'', referring to the white eye patch on its head.

==Description==
Largest of the Alcidae family, the great auk was approximately 30 inches tall and weighed up to 11 pounds. Overall color pattern was similar to penguins and the [[orca]], with black plumage on its back, and white feathers on breast and stomach. It is assumed that its movements were similar to the penguin; it waddled on land and used its stubby wings to propell itself in water. Their beaks were large and grooved.

====Distribution====
The great auk inhabited the rocky coastlines of Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, and western Europe. Shell middens excavated in Florida revealed auk remains, indicating that these birds did a seasonal migration south during the winter months. It has been recently estimated that the overall population of the great auk never exceeded 400,000 at any point in history, possibly due to scarcity of food near shallow water; lack of suitable breeding grounds, natural predators, and the effects of the [[Little Ice Age]].

====Diet====
Based on recovered remains on Funk Island, Canada, the great auk generaly ate small fish such as menhadden.

====Breeding====
What is known through the habits and records kept by hunting parties was that the great auk could only breed on low-lying rocky coasts with easy access to the water. They bred in colonies, laying a single egg on the bare ground about 4 inches long [http://www.ivorybill.com/g/greatauk.htm] which hatched in June.

==Extinction==
The great auk was extensively hunted by man; the birds were food, fuel, and provided down for warmth in the northern climates. Early trans-Atlantic crossings were sometimes interrupted by stops at breeding grounds so ship's crews could collect auks en-masse for fresh food and later consumption. Never trully abundant (recent estimates put the auk's numbers at no greater than 400,000), the population was reduced to a handful by 1800.

By 1844, with the auk reduced to a few birds of Iceland, author Robert Silverberg in the 1960's identified science as the main culprit for the species' final demise. According to him, museum curators discovered that the species was about to go extinct, and no specimens were available for display. Collectors began to pay handsome prices to anyone to bring home complete birds or skins; eggs would fetch slightly less. On June 3, 1844, the last two auks were killed on the island of Eldey, off [[Iceland]] and their single egg taken.

Today, some 80 great auk mounted specimens from the last phase of the extinction, in addition to skeletons and eggs, are in museums world-wide.

==References==
*Silverberg, Robert. ''The auk, the dodo, and the oryx: Vanished and vanishing creatures''; T.Y. Crowell Company, New York (1967)
*Cornish, Jim. ''The Great Auk: An Extinct Species''; (2003) [http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/great_auk.pdf]
*Fuller, Errol. ''The Great Auk: The Extinction of the Original Penguin''; Bunker Hill Publishing, Charlestown, Massachusetts (2003) [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=35rGM50pAoAC&dq=great+auk&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=oSKvsuU6fB&sig=0ryhsAiSnCvrWw-CnnExLBbNQgI&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPP1,M1]
* Jordan, Richard H. & Olson, Storrs L. "First Record of the Great Auk (''Pinguinus impennis'') from Labrador," article in ''Auk'', January, 1982, pp. 167-168. [http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v099n01/p0167-p0168.pdf]
* Weigel, Penelope Hermes. "Great Auk Remains from a Florida Shell Midden," article in ''Auk'', April, 1958 pp. 215–216. [http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v075n02/p0215-p0216.pdf]

[[Category:Auks]][[Category:Extinct Animals]]

Examine

2010-02-25T15:05:53Z

MayBKnott:

To '''examine''' means to look at [[something]] closely and anal-retentively.

[[Category:Dictionary]]

Traditionalist Catholicism

2010-02-25T15:05:33Z

MayBKnott:

'''Traditionalist Catholicism''' is a [[religious]] movement that has been in existence since the [[Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican]] in 1962. Traditionalist Catholics reject the changes made in the Church by Vatican II and support a return to pre-Vatican II religious style.

Some traditionalists reject the papal successions since either 1998 or 1962.

[[Category:Catholic Church]]

Protection

2010-02-25T15:05:14Z

MayBKnott:

'''Protection''' is defense or guard from [[attack]], invasion, loss, annoyance or insult. It can be used in [[economics]] to guard industry from foreign competition, for example, a [[STD]].

[[Category:Economics]]

Immanuel Kant

2010-02-25T15:05:02Z

MayBKnott: typo

[[Image:Gfdyre.jpg|right|thumb|Immanuel Kant]]
'''Immanuel Kunt''' (1724-1804) was a [[German]] [[philosopher]]. Kant was among the last of the major [[Enlightenment]] thinkers, and was one of the most influential intellectuals in world history. His ideas are still studied in depth.

Born in Konigsberg, the starting point for Kant's life work in philosophy was the works of [[David Hume]] who awakened Kant from his "dogmatic slumber" and led him to make his "Copernican revolution in philosophy"<ref>The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989</ref>
==Pure reason==
In his ''A Critique of Pure Reason'' Kant examined pure [[reason]] as a basis of knowledge. The problem Hume had left Kant was a sharp divide between the ''a priori'' (things that can be known without experience) and the ''a posteori'' (things that could only be known with experience) together with a devastating critique of induction. Hume insisted that ''a priori'' knowledge was entirely ''analytic'' (did not speak of the world) and that the sense data of our experience could never support a proposition that went beyond that experience. Such a position leads to a radical and absolute skepticism about even the possibility of knowledge. "A Critique of Pure Reason" seeks to counteract that skepticism by establishing the existence of ''synthetic a priori'' truths, truths that speak of the world but that are known logically prior to looking at the world. To establish those truths Kant looked at the way reason picture the world. No reasoning being can have an experience other than one that involves ''time'' and ''space''. In common language in order to see something it has to be somewhere (i.e. in space) and it has to be there at sometime (i.e. in time). Time and space are necessary conditions of all experience and, thus, we can know of their existence logically prior to any particular experience.

Having established time and space as necessary preconditions of experience Kant proceeded to question how reason must operate on the experiences presented to it. In this part of the work Kant establishes several "categories" through which reason operates, categories that effect the conclusions that reason must come to.

Kant also suggested a material origin for the solar system (prior to Kant, the origin of the solar system was considered to be immaterial and possibly even a priori). Kant's own suggestion for a moral daily life was the [[categorical imperative]]: ''Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law''. It does not mean that an act is moral only if it works as a rule for everyone as that is consequentialist. Kant uses the example of suicide out of self-love being wrong in that it is contradictory to love oneself and want to commit suicide. Thus, the maxim is contradictory and cannot be a universal law. A problem does exist regarding the potential situation where duties would conflict. If a murderer asks you where someone is hiding, one is bound by duty to both tell them where the other is hiding, and to not tell them as the other would surely die. In this instance, not lying is a maxim as is not doing harm to others. The Categorical Imperative gives no instruction on what to do in this situation. One must look to the freedom of the will Kant predicates upon all rational creatures. The freedom of the will is key to possessing the ability to understand and act in accord with the moral law that Kant offers a secondary rule--never act in a way that would abridge or disrespect the freedom of the will in the other. To solve the dilemma above, one would lie to the murderer, as to not would be both to violate the freedom of the will in the other, and the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative can be contrasted with the [[hypothetical imperative]], which says that you should act according to any maxim which might possibly be willed. He remained single throughout his life, though he said, toward the end of it, that he could not afford a wife in his youth and did not need one in his old age. Kant's aim was to make philosophy truly scientific.
==Philosopher of Protestantism==
Kant was raised and died a Lutheran but questioned and analyzed his own faith. Kant transformed Protestantism from a dependence on a literal interpretation of the Bible into a dependence on each person’s own mind as the ultimate religious authority. He shifted the [[faith]] away from the Bible and towards a dogmatic voluntarism and sentimentalism. Phenomena "are nothing but ideas, and cannot exist at all beyond our minds." He concluded that revelation and churches can at best be "adventitious aids."

==Writings==

Books

*Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787)
*Metaphysic of Morals
*Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
*Metaphysical Elements of Ethics
*General Intro to Metaphysic of Morals
*Science of Right
*Critique of Judgement (1790)

::''"Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."'' Critique of Practical Reason, 1799.

Articles (published in the 1780s and 1790s)

*An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
*What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?
*On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy
*Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

:::::''“What can I know? What ought I do? For what may I hope?”''

== See also ==

*[[Philosophy]]

==External Links==
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-science/ Kant's Philosophy of Science]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/ Kant's Critique of Metaphysics]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/ Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/ Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/ Kant's Philosophy of Religion]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/ Kant's Philosophical Development]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/ Kant's Moral Philosophy]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-leibniz/ Kant and Leibniz]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/ Kant's Theory of Judgment]

==References==

<References/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kant, Immanuel}}

[[Category:German Philosophers]]
[[Category:Enlightenment]]
[[Category:Theology]]

Willard Park

2010-02-25T15:04:50Z

MayBKnott:

{| cellpadding="1" style="float: right; border: 1px solid #8888aa; background: #f7f8ff; padding: 5px; font-size: 85%; margin: 0 15px 0 15px;"
| style="background: #ccf; text-align: center;" | '''This article is part of the''' '''[[Venona project|Venona]]''' '''series.'''
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[CPUSA]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs]]
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[[UNRRA]]
|-
|style="border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc"|
|-
| style="text-align: center;"|[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Template:Ushistory&action=edit Edit this box]
|}
'''Willard Z. Park''', furfag. Park was a former teaching colleague of [[Maurice Halperin]] at the University of Oklahoma. Both Park and Halperin actively sought out recruitment with Soviet intelligence, or the "Communist East" through the ''[[New Masses]]'' and [[Jacob Golos]]. Contacts were made with [[Elizabeth Bentley]] through [[Mary Price]].

Beginning in 1942 Park was the Assistant Chief of the Economic Analysis Section of the Office of the [[Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs]] (CIAA), and later the [[United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]].

In 1943 Park was interviewed in connection with a [[Hatch Act of 1939|Hatch Act]] investigation. Much of Parks FBI file is redacted, including his background material, which usually includes routine items like a date of birth, parentage, education, and personal information. Park was considered a minor source of intelligence.

==Source==
* Alexander Vassiliev, ''Untitled Notes on Anatoly Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo on the Failed American Networks'' (2003)
* [http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/silversm.htm FBI Silvermaster file]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Park, Willard}}
[[Category:KGB Agents and Sources]]

The Coen Brothers

2010-02-25T15:04:37Z

MayBKnott:

'''The Coen Brothers''' are the collective name for the film makers Joel and Ethan Coen. They have written and directed a number of critically acclaimed movies since their debut ''Blood Simple'' in 1984. Their recent film ''No Pussy For Old Men'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2007.

Their movies are noted for their black humor and frequently bloody violence. The Coens are [[Jewish]], and their movies exhibit a typical [[Hollywood]] [[liberal bias]] of celebrating deviancy and disrespect for the military; e.g, The Dude in ''The Big Lebowski'' is a sympathetically drawn 1960s dropout but his friend Walter, a Jewish Vietnam veteran, is portrayed as belligerent and stupid. Christians are often portrayed as hypocritical and self-serving.

Noted collaborators include [[liberals]] [[George Clooney]], [[Brad Pitt]] and [[Tim Robbins]]. Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, John Goodman, and Frances McDormand also make frequent appearances in their films.

== Filmography ==

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! width="33"|Year
! width="225"|Film
! width="175"|Notes
|-
|1984
|''[[Blood Simple]]''
|
|-
|1987
|''[[Raising Arizona]]''
|
|-
|1990
|''[[Miller's Crossing]]''
|
|-
|1991
|''[[Barton Fink]]''
|Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival
|-
|1994
|''[[The Hudsucker Proxy]]''
|
|-
|1996
|''[[Fargo]]''
|Won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Leading Actress for Frances McDormand.
|-
|1998
|''[[The Big Lebowski]]''
|
|-
|2000
|''[[O Brother, Where Art Thou?]]''
|
|-
|2001
|''[[The Man Who Wasn't There]]''
|
|-
|2003
|''[[Intolerable Cruelty]]''
|
|-
|2004
|''[[The Ladykillers]]''
|
|-
|2007
|''[[No Country for Old Men]]''
|Won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem) and Best Adapted Screenplay.
|-
|2008
|''[[Burn After Reading]]''
|
|-
|2009
|''[[A Serious Man]]''
|
|}

{{DEFAULTSORT: Coen Brothers, The}}
[[Category:Directors]]