Haberdasher
A haberdasher is a person who sells small articles for sewing, such as buttons, ribbons and zippers. In U.S. English, haberdasher is another term for a men’s outfitter.
A haberdasher’s shop or the items sold therein are called haberdashery.
Obsolete meanings of the term “haberdasher” refer to a “dealer in, or maker of, hats and caps”.
The word appears in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Haberdashers were initially pedlars, sellers of small wares, such as needles, buttons, etc. The word could derive from the Icelandic haprtask ‘pedlars’ wares’ or the sack in which the pedlar carries them. In this sense, a haberdasher Scandinavian name would be very close to a mercer French name. A haberdasher would retail smallwares, the goods of the pedlar, while a mercer would specialize in “linens, silks, fustian, worsted piece-goods and bedding”.
Saint Louis IX, the King of France 1226–70, is supposedly the patron saint of haberdashers.
Hi-pot
Hipot is an abbreviation for high potential. Traditionally, Hipot is a term given to a class of electrical safety testing instruments used to verify electrical insulation in finished appliances, cables or other wired assemblies, printed circuit boards, electric motors, and transformers.
Under normal conditions, any electrical device will produce a minimal amount of leakage current due to the voltages and internal capacitance present within the product. Yet due to design flaws or other factors, the insulation in a product can break down, resulting in excessive leakage current flow. This failure condition can cause shock or death to anyone that comes into contact with the faulty product.
A Hipot test (also called a Dielectric Withstand test) verifies that the insulation of a product or component is sufficient to protect the operator from electrical shock. In a typical Hipot test, high voltage is applied between a product’s current-carrying conductors and its metallic chassis. The resulting current that flows through the insulation, known as leakage current, is monitored by the hipot tester. The theory behind the test is that if a deliberate over-application of test voltage does not cause the insulation to break down, the product will be safe to use under normal operating conditions — hence the name, Dielectric Withstand test.
In addition to over-stressing the insulation, the test can also be performed to detect material and workmanship defects, most importantly small gap spacings between current-carrying conductors and earth ground. When a product is operated under normal conditions, environmental factors such as humidity, dirt, vibration, shock and contaminants can close these small gaps and allow current to flow. This condition can create a shock hazard if the defects are not corrected at the factory. No other test can uncover this type of defect as well as the Dielectric Withstand test.
Mythbusters Interview
MAKE Magazine’s Patti Schiendelman recently sat down with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of the totally awesome show Mythbusters for a two part interview. These two are quite intelligent, and are doing a great service to the citizens of the world by bringing the scientific method into their homes and making everyday people excited about science and experimentation.
A good excerpt from Jamie Hyneman:
In particular, the thing that I’ve realized, especially recently - people talk about the impact of the Internet, and I’m sure different people use it, obviously, differently, but for me, it’s just absolutely fantastic because I have no end of questions and I can answer those questions almost instantly. Obviously a lot of it’s crap that you’re going to run across; if you learn how to filter it, you’re better off. I was halfway through my master’s in Library Science, had a degree in Russian Language and Literature before that, I was already really into Information Science, way before Mythbusters, before getting anywhere near where I am now. But the Internet - I think of it as something that’s practically mind-altering. The amount of power that you have for advancement and development of technology - I don’t think we’ve really seen the impact of it quite yet - people may not realize the potential of it. But when one learns how to really use the Internet, it’s like you’ve multiplied your intelligence, your abilities by huge factors.
Golomb Ruler
In mathematics, a Golomb ruler, named for Solomon W. Golomb and discovered independently by Sidon and Babcock, is a set of marks at integer positions along an imaginary ruler such that no two pairs of marks are the same distance apart. The number of marks on the ruler is its order, and the largest distance between two of its marks is its length. Translation and reflection of a Golomb ruler are considered trivial, so the smallest mark is customarily put at 0 and the next mark at the smaller of its two possible values.
There is no requirement that a Golomb ruler can measure all distances up to its length, but if it does, it is called a perfect Golomb ruler. It has been proven that no perfect Golomb ruler exists for five or more marks. A Golomb ruler is optimal if no shorter Golomb ruler of the same order exists. Creating Golomb rulers is easy, but finding the optimal Golomb rulers for a specified order is computationally very challenging. Distributed.net has completed distributed massively parallel searches for optimal order-24 and order-25 Golomb rulers, confirming the suspected candidates.
One practical use of Golomb rulers is in the design of phased array radio antennas such as radio telescopes. Antennas in an [0,1,4,6] Golomb ruler configuration can often be seen at cell sites.
Currently, the complexity of finding optimal Golomb rulers of arbitrary length n is unknown, but it is believed to be an NP-hard problem.
Crayola Factory Tour
A truly classic factory tour of yesteryear. This tour of a Crayola factor was featured on Sesame Street in the 70’s. Better not show this to your modern-day children, as we all know that old episodes are “intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
FriendDA
A warm-fuzzy, friendly non-disclosure agreement (NDA), whipped up by Rands of RandsInRepose.com:
WHEREAS I possess a bright idea that I am choosing to disclose to you, The Advisor, with the mutual understanding that you are my friend and that you will not screw me.
Manners of screwing include, but are not limited to:
1. Adapting some or all of The Idea for your own purposes.
2. Choosing to share some or all of The Idea with those who are not bound to this agreement.
3. Failing to do your best to protect The Idea.
Read the rest at http://www.friendda.org/
The sentences of Sarah Palin, diagrammed
“I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.”
I didn’t stop to marvel at the mad thrusting of that pet political watchword “families” into the text. I just rolled up my sleeves and attempted to bring order out of the chaos:
I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there’s anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I’d be delighted to hear from you. To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (”with that vote of the American people”) be damned.
The sentences of Sarah Palin, diagrammed. - By Kitty Burns Florey - Slate Magazine
We Have Lasers!!!!!!!!!!
You begged your mom to pay the extra $4. A tribute to the greatest school photo backdrop there ever was.
I was completely unaware of this phenomenon. However, now that they’ve released some backgrounds [lightning lasers] [classic lasers], maybe I’ll retouch some of my elementary school photos…
KazooKeylele - Ukulele - The final countdown
KazooKeylele–kazoo, baby keyboard, and ukulele.
Seattle Underground
The Seattle Underground is a network of underground passageways and basements in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States that was ground level at the city’s origin in the mid-1800s. After the streets were elevated, these spaces eventually fell into disuse, but have become a tourist attraction in recent decades.
Seattle’s first buildings were wooden. In 1889, a cabinetmaker accidentally overturned and ignited a glue pot. An attempt to extinguish it with water spread the burning grease-based glue. The fire chief was out of town, and although the volunteer fire department responded, they made the mistake of trying to use too many hoses at once. They never recovered from the subsequent drop in water pressure, and the Great Seattle Fire ended up destroying 33 city blocks.
While a destructive fire was not unusual for the time, the response of the city leaders was. Instead of rebuilding the city as it was before, they made two strategic decisions. First, they ordered that all rebuilding use stone or brick—insurance against a similar disaster in the future. They also decided to take advantage of the destruction to regrade the streets one to two stories higher than the original street grade. Pioneer Square had originally been built mostly on filled-in tidelands and as a consequence it often flooded. The new street level also assisted in ensuring that gravity-assisted flush toilets didn’t back up during high tide in Elliott Bay.
In 1965, local citizen Bill Speidel realized there might be interest (and profit) in the subterranean ruins. He established “Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour,” and took paying customers on a tour of what was left underneath Pioneer Square, paying rent to the building owners for the privilege of doing so. He also peppered his tour patter with tall tales from Seattle’s history (some more factual than others), giving the tour an amusing counterculture feel that made it an “underground” tour in every sense of the word.
Over the years, the tour has become more popular, and the underground structures have been steadily refurbished to be more visually appealing. The tour remains a popular attraction for visitors and locals alike.