Domicile

Domicile means "a legal residence; home."

Jonnycake

Jonnycakes are thin flatbreads made of cornmeal, salt, and water. They originated in Rhode Island during the colonial days and were called "journey cakes" at the time, because people found them easy to pack when traveling long distances. That's probably where the name "jonnycake" comes from, since New Englanders can't pronounce the "r" in the middle of a word.

Don't come between Rhode Islanders and their jonnycakes. Every year they have baking and eating contests.

And all this is making me hungry. I'd love to have a couple of jonnycakes for breakfast every now and then.

Han Chinese

The Han Chinese are an ethnic group in China that make up 92% of China's population as well as large portions of other nations, and are therefore the largest ethnic group in the world, making up about 20% of the global population. The Han Chinese take their name from the Han Dynasty, which succeeded the Qin Dynasty and lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD. The Han Dynasty is considered one of the greatest periods in China's history.

The Han are in the news nowadays because of the recent strife between them and the Uighurs, the Turkic speaking Muslims who occupy the far western regions of China.

Poison dart frog

Poison dart frogs (or dart poison frogs) are some of the most brilliantly colored frogs in the world. Found in Central and South America and measuring about the size of a paper clip, their most famous characteristic is perhaps the toxin secreted from glands on their backs. Indian tribes in the Andes region of Colombia rub the tips of their blowgun darts over the backs of the frogs for hunting, hence the creature's name. It is said that if the frog is strikingly beautiful then it's probably poisonous, and if it's beautiful and also easy to catch then it's probably deadly.

In the 1970s it was discovered that the poison of one species was 200 times more lethal than opium.

How to halve an apple with your bare hands

Jack Kilby

Jack Kilby is the inventor of the microchip (also called the integrated circuit).

The Texas Instruments laboratory was almost empty in July 1958 -- everyone took the traditional two-week vacation. Kirby, the new hire, had to stay behind to man the shop. There he enjoyed his solitude but also worked on something that would revolutionize the world. He had grown tired, as had many of his colleagues, of the miles of wiring inside a room-filled computer. So he did some shit and put everything on a single chip. In 1967 he co-invented the handheld calculator using the integrated circuit. At the time it could only add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

The impact of the microchip cannot be overstated. Without it we would not have gone to the moon in the '60s, used personal computers, listened to music on iPods, or any of that good stuff.

The day the clowns cried

The Hartford circus fire is one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the U.S. On July 6, 1944 in Hartford, CT, the Ringling Brothers Circus tent caught on fire. Long story short: people panicked, tried to rush through an exit but couldn't, and in the end 168 of the almost 7,000 attendees died, all in a matter of six minutes.

Ringling management accepted responsibility for the financial damages and paid for the suits filed by the families of the victims, which totaled over $4 million. That decision seriously helped them save face -- they survived as one of the world's most famous circuses.

And it turned out that some dumb pyromaniac started the fire.

Why do they refer to Saddam Hussein simply by his first name?

"Saddam Hussein" isn't even his full name; it's Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti. The first name is his given name, the second is his father's name, the third is his family name, and the fourth is the name of his extended family who comes from the Tikrit region.

In 1968 when the Baath party took over with Saddam as vice president, it outlawed the use of tribal names. The government told its people that they (the citizens) owed their allegiance to the state rather than to a local tribe. So Saddam was left with "Saddam Hussein." Later, he chose to be referred to simply as "Saddam," since he wanted to be considered the Iraqi people's Grand Uncle. Now, virtually every Middle Easterner mentions him by just his first name. That is also the primary reason why news organizations print and say "Saddam."

When President George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq in 1991, newsrooms argued over which name they should use for Iraq's president. The problem was that King Hussein of Jordan had the same last name, and no one wanted to confuse that country's leader with the brutal dictator Saddam was. So some just referred to him as "Saddam," including the AP, Reuters, and the BBC, since that's what Arabs called him anyway. Those same organizations still mention him by his first name. Others, like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times use "Hussein." The New York Times uses "Mr. Hussein," following its obsessive honorific tradition. The Wall Street Journal printed "Saddam Hussein" in every reference to him until the king's death. Now it also uses the honorific.

Spousal privilege

Spousal privilege is where a man/woman can exercise the legal choice not to testify against his/her spouse. A court cannot compel the spouse to testify against the other when the couple had a private conversation (no third person involved) concerning the matter at the time of their marriage.

Pantanal

The Pantanal is one of the world's largest continuous wetlands. It is spread out about 60,000 square miles in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, making it ten times larger than the Everglades. It's believed to contain more species of birds than all of Europe, 50 different types of reptiles, and hundreds of species of fish.

Now the Pantanal, like with many other wetland regions, is under threat from careless farming practices and poor sewage treatment.

Cholo

A cholo is a Mexican gangster.

Here are some gay cholos:

Thought identification

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Growing diamonds

"Silicon is so twentieth century." That's what one PhD student at MIT says of silicon being used for computer chips. There is a certain plateau with silicon chips -- the element gets hotter the more energy the chips use, thus the chips break down and the speed of the processors is limited. So what's a better alternative? Diamonds.

One thing about diamonds is its high thermal conductivity. They can withstand higher temperatures, frequencies, current, and voltage (a centimeter thick diamond plate can endure about 10 million volts). Actually, diamonds have the highest thermal conductivity of any material known. So why don't we use them for computer chips more often? It's much more expensive, of course, but it's also very hard to find two diamonds in nature that have the same exact properties for them to properly work for transistors. That's where chemical vapor deposition (CVD) comes in.

CVD is basically a fancy term for "growing diamonds." Scientists are now beginning to build diamonds atom by atom inside vacuum chambers. That way, every diamond will be the same, making it easier to use for chips.

It probably won't totally replace silicon, though. Some circuitries in computer chips call for specific types of semiconductors, a number of which can only be made with silicon. That's why many in the field believe that diamonds will in the future supplement silicon, replacing it in some applications and working with it elsewhere.

For more details check out the NOVA scienceNow clip. And here's how they make them:

Apercu

Apercu means "an immediate estimate or judgment."