Weird (travel guides)

Weird is a series of travel guides written by various authors and published by Sterling Publishing of New York City. Started by Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman with a magazine called Weird N.J., together or separately, they often write, collaborate, edit and/or write the forward of the other guides. As of July 2011, all but seventeen states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) have been covered within individual books.

The franchise now includes calendars and spin-off books.

Titles in Series

General U.S.

Psychology

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. It is an academic discipline and an applied science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.

Psychologists explore concepts such as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships, including psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas. Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology has been described as a "hub science", with psychological findings linking to research and perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences, medicine, humanities, and philosophy.

Foil (song)

"Foil" is a song by American musician "Weird Al" Yankovic from his fourteenth studio album, Mandatory Fun (2014). The song is a parody of the 2013 single "Royals" by Lorde. The song begins as an ode to the multiple uses of aluminum foil for food storage, but takes a darker turn in its second verse, parodying conspiracy theories, the New World Order, and the Illuminati.

The song's music video stars Yankovic as the host of a cooking program, and features cameo appearances from Patton Oswalt, Tom Lennon, and Robert Ben Garant.

Background and composition

The song opens with Yankovic lamenting that he cannot finish food at restaurants, opting for a doggy bag from the waiter to take it home. The song's first verse and chorus find the narrator expanding upon the usage of aluminum foil for food storage purposes: "That kind of wrap is just the best / to keep your sandwich nice and fresh." Yankovic deems it better than what he feels as inferior food storage options, among them "baggies, glass jars, [and] Tupperware containers."

Foil (metal)

A foil is a very thin sheet of metal, usually made by hammering or rolling. Foils are most easily made with malleable metals, such as aluminium, copper, tin, and gold. Foils usually bend under their own weight and can be torn easily. The more malleable a metal, the thinner foil can be made with it. For example, aluminium foil is usually about 1/1000 inch (0.03 mm), whereas gold (more malleable than aluminium) can be made into foil only a few atoms thick. Such extremely thin foil is called leaf. Leaf tears very easily and must be picked up with special brushes.

Foil is commonly used in household applications. It is also useful in survival situations, because the reflective surface reduces the degree of hypothermia caused by thermal radiation.

See also

References

FOIL method

In elementary algebra, FOIL is a mnemonic for the standard method of multiplying two binomials—hence the method may be referred to as the FOIL method. The word FOIL is an acronym for the four terms of the product:

The general form is:

Note that a is both a "first" term and an "outer" term; b is both a "last" and "inner" term, and so forth. The order of the four terms in the sum is not important, and need not match the order of the letters in the word FOIL.

History

The FOIL method is a special case of a more general method for multiplying algebraic expressions using the distributive law. The word FOIL was originally intended solely as a mnemonic for high-school students learning algebra. The term appears in William Betz's 1929 text, Algebra for Today, where he states:

Proposed top-level domain

The Domain Name System of the Internet consists of a set of top-level domains which constitute the root domain of the hierarchical name space and database. In the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to expand the set of initially six generic top-level domains in 1984. As a result new top-level domain names have been proposed for implementation by ICANN. Such proposals included a variety of models ranging from adoption of policies for unrestricted gTLDs that could be registered by anyone for any purpose, to chartered gTLDs for specialized uses by specialized organizations. In October 2000, ICANN published a list of proposals for top-level domain strings it had received.

Geographic proposals

Goat

The domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus) is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe.

The goat is a member of the family Bovidae and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat. Goats are one of the oldest domesticated species, and have been used for their milk, meat, hair, and skins over much of the world. In 2011, there were more than 924 million live goats around the globe, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Female goats are referred to as "does" or "nannies", intact males as "bucks", "billies", or "rams" and their offspring are "kids". Castrated males are "wethers". Goat meat from younger animals is called "kid" or cabrito (Spanish), and from older animals is simply known as "goat" or sometimes called chevon (French), or in some areas "mutton" (which more often refers to adult sheep meat).

Etymology

The Modern English word goat comes from Old English gāt "she-goat, goat in general", which in turn derives from Proto-Germanic *gaitaz (cf. Dutch/Icelandic geit, German Geiß, and Gothic gaits), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰaidos meaning "young goat" (cf. Latin haedus "kid"), itself perhaps from a root meaning "jump" (assuming that Old Church Slavonic zajęcǐ "hare", Sanskrit jihīte "he moves" are related). To refer to the male, Old English used bucca (giving modern buck) until ousted by hegote, hegoote in the late 12th century. Nanny goat (females) originated in the 18th century and billy goat (for males) in the 19th.