User:JorisvS/misc

Some miscellaneous stuff I keep here:


 * Which colors can be displayed on a computer screen?
 * This is good for remembering just how small most bodies in the Solar System are
 * Large TNOs
 * Art of a terraformed Mars
 * Sun eclipsed by Saturn
 * Cassini image of Saturn and Mimas
 * Saturnian moons
 * Diagram of Uranus
 * Universe Reference Map (incl. Sun's neighborhood)
 * List of nearest stars on space.com


 * Terrestrial planet formation in the α Centauri system
 * How incredibly huge stars can be
 * Albino Indian peafowl
 * Eskimo Dog
 * An outer planet beyond Pluto and the origin of the trans-Neptunian belt; Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signalling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets


 * Vesta and a few other asteroids compared
 * The psychology of evil
 * Jupiter-crossing asteroids with a=3.8–4.1 AU (within the range of the Hilda family) and perihelia within the asteroid belt
 * Minor planets with i>50° and e<0.15. This includes a Jupiter trojan and an asteroid-belt asteroid.
 * Central peak complex of crater Tycho (the Moon), taken at sunrise by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2011.
 * Planemos in the inner Solar System
 * The Turkic languages
 * "Sino-Tibetan" in Arunachal Pradesh
 * Linguistic map of Papua New Guinea

Writing

 * Ten tips to make an article FA
 * Writing exercise box (by Tony1):

Quotes to ponder
"Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them."

- Randy Pausch

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity."

- Charles Mingus

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

- Chinese proverb

"Even a rose goes through a lot of dirt before it blossoms."

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

- Mark Twain

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

- Winston Churchill

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

- Charles Darwin

"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."

- Bertrand Russell

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.

Northeast Caucasian

 * Reconstruction of morphosyntactic function: Non-spatial usage of spatial case marking in Tsezic
 * Variation in stem formation in Tsezic languages
 * Khwarshi handout
 * Ditransitive constructions in East Caucasian: A family overview
 * Morphology of adjectives in Khwarshi
 * Reflexives in Khwarshi
 * Witnessed inferentials in Khwarshi: a typologically unusual complex evidential

Other

 * The Contribution of Linguistic Factors to the Intelligibility of Closely Related Languages
 * Siberian link with Na-Dené languages by Edward Vajda
 * The Oceanic Languages
 * The Oceanic Languages