Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Artificial Objects On The Moon
This Wednesday’s Wonderful World of Wikipedia is a list of artificial objects found on the Moon. However, this list does not include flag, golfball or statue.
WWWow
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Gravity Hills
A gravity hill, also known as a magnetic hill (and sometimes a mystery hill or a gravity road), is a place where the layout of the surrounding land produces the optical illusion that a very slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope. Thus, a car left out of gear will appear to be rolling uphill. There are hundreds of known gravity hill locations around the world. These “paranormal” sites also tend to have names like “Haunted Hill”, “Magnetic Hill”, or “Anti-gravity Hill”, reflecting attribution by local folklore of the unusual properties of the area to such “mysteries” as the supernatural or magnetism. While humans also have a sense of balance to determine the inclination of the ground, visual cues can override this sense, especially if the inclination is shallow. This wikipedia link also lists all known gravity hill locations.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Mr. Yuk
Do you remember Mr. Yuk? I sure do. We had him plastered to cleaning product bottles under my kitchen sink as a child. I knew not to drink stuff with Mr. Yuk on the bottle – but apparently not everyone kid did. The campaign was considered ineffective. I didn’t know (until now), however, that Mr Yuk had a theme tune.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: The Grandfather Paradox
The paradox is this: Suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler’s grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller’s parents and by extension, the traveler himself would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have traveled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveler would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox. The grandfather paradox has been used to argue that backwards time travel must be impossible. However, other resolutions have also been advanced.
An equivalent paradox is known in philosophy as autoinfanticide — that is, going back in time and killing oneself as a baby — though when the word was first coined in a paper by Paul Horwich it was in the malformed version autofanticide.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: The Mongolian Death Worm
The Mongolian Death Worm is a cryptid reported to exist in the Gobi Desert. It is generally considered a cryptozoological creature, one whose sightings and reports are disputed or unconfirmed. There are a number of extraordinary claims by Mongolian locals (such as the ability of the worm to spew forth a yellow poison that is lethal on contact, and its purported ability to kill at a distance by means of electric discharge). However, there are no known reliable sightings.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: The Monty Hall Problem
The paradox is this: When playing “Let’s Make A Deal“, do the player’s chances of getting the car (behind door number 1, 2, or 3) increase by switching doors once a guess has been made (so technically it’s down to two doors at that point)? Surprisingly, the answer is Yes and the Monty Hall Problem explains why.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: L’Arbre du Ténéré
L’Arbre du Ténéré was once considered the most isolated tree on planet with 400 kilometers of Saharan desert separating it from the nearest tree. This week on Wednesday’s Wonderful World of Wikipedia, find out what happened to it and where it is now.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Tetris Effect
The Tetris effect is the ability of any activity to which people devote sufficient time and attention to begin to dominate their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Fictional Medicines & Drugs
As an anecdote (haha) to last weeks WWWoW, here is a list of fictional medicines and drugs. It should be noted that some of the items listed may be used as both medicine and drug, or in other capacities, but fictional works are often vague on such distinctions. Grouping is done by what seems most likely. My favorite on this list is probably Dylar, from the novel White Noise, a psychoactive drug that is supposed to remove the fear of death.
Wednesday’s Wonderful World Of Wikipedia: Fictional Diseases & Toxins
This is an exhaustive list of nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction which includes diseases that have evolved naturally, artificially engineered biological weapons, hereditary diseases, magical diseases, and technology-based diseases. I think my favorite is Primary Vocabularyitis, from a episode of Bewitched titled “Samantha the Bard”, that causes Samantha Stephens to speak in rhyme.
As a bonus, here is a list of fictional toxins.