A Ton of Crap (126 page)

Communication with the Dead in Other Religions
Though Spiritualism derived from Christianity, many other religions have a similar concept of being able to talk to the dead. In indigenous religions and animism, shamans contact the dead and the spiritual world. Animists believe that shamans can talk not only to the dead, but also with the spirit of nature. Sufism, which is considered a mystical branch of Islam, believes that communication with the dead is possible as well. There are also some Wiccan religions that believe the dead can talk to humans.

Y2K

Panic
Y2K created a mass panic, and people began preparing for a disaster. Insurance companies began selling policies that covered the Y2K crisis, stores began stocking up on food and even began selling freeze-dried foods. People feared the stock market would crash and that planes would stop working and fall from the sky. A survey of 14,000 people found that more than half of the people were going to take cash out of their bank accounts that would last them two to six weeks.

JOSEPH PULITZER

Yellow Kid
During World War I, Pulitzer and Hearst were competing with one another in the newspaper industry using yellow journalism. In 1886, the
New York World
incorporated a color section, and was one of the first papers to do so. Pulitzer hired cartoonist Richard F. Outcault, and he created
Hogan’s Alley
, featuring his character, the Yellow Kid, one of the world’s first newspaper comics, which became immensely popular. William Randolph Hearst was extremely impressed with the work of Pulitzer, and bought Outcault from the
New York World to
join his paper. Pulitzer then hired George Luks to create the Yellow Kid series.

PRIME NUMBERS

The Largest Known Prime
Since Euclid has proven that prime numbers go on infinitely, mathematicians have been trying to discover larger prime numbers that exist. The Electronic Frontier Foundation even awards prizes for those who find the next largest prime numbers. Many of the largest prime numbers are called Mersenne numbers, named after the seventeenth-century monk who created the formula
Mp
 = 2
p
 – 1. Of the ten highest prime numbers found, the top nine are Mersenne primes, and the tenth is the highest non-Mersenne prime. Currently, the largest prime is 243,112,609 − 1.

STEM CELLS

Adult Stem Cells
Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells that exist around differentiated cells in a tissue or organ and have the ability to renew and differentiate to create some or all of the specific types of cells in the tissue or organ. In living organisms, stem cells repair and maintain the tissue they exist in. Whereas the embryonic stem cell is derived from the embryo, scientists still do not know where the adult stem cells are derived from, and they have been identified in the brain, heart, teeth, skin, skeletal muscle, testes, ovarian epithelium, liver, blood vessels, peripheral blood, and gut.

SPIRITUALISM, MEDIUMS, AND TALKING TO THE DEAD

Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg lived from 1688 to 1772. At the age of fifty-six, Swedenborg, who was a Swedish scientist, inventor, and philosopher, claimed to have had a spiritual awakening. Swedenborg began having dreams and visions, and he believed he was chosen by God to reform Christianity with a new doctrine. Following his supposed awakening, Swedenborg published eighteen books, with his most well-known book being
Heaven and Hell
. In his
Life on Other Planets
, Swedenborg claimed he had communicated with spirits from the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter. The fact that he had not communicated with spirits from Neptune or Uranus, which had not been discovered yet, has raised concern over his credibility.

Y2K

Solutions
The Y2K problem was solved in several different ways. Dates were expanded, meaning the two-digit years in programs, databases, and files were changed to four-digit years. For databases whose size was too large to change, codes that were six-digit year/month/day were changed into three-digit days and three-digit years (this was known as date repartitioning). In the process of windowing, the two-digit years were kept, and the programs had to determine the century only when it was needed for a specific function. This process required installations of code and was much simpler than expanding the dates.

JOSEPH PULITZER

Journalism Schools
In 1892, Joseph Pulitzer approached the president of Columbia University about creating the first ever journalism school, and offered to pay for it. Pulitzer was turned down; however, in 1902, the new president of Columbia University took him up on his offer. The journalism school, however, was not created until after Pulitzer’s death. In his will, Pulitzer left Columbia University $2 million dollars, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism was created in 1934. By the time Columbia University created the school, the University of Missouri, from the sway of Pulitzer, had created the Missouri School of Journalism.

PRIME NUMBERS

Trial Division
Trial division is an extremely complex process with a very simple idea. The basic concept of trial division is to see if a number that is going to be factored (
n
) can be divided by a number greater than 1 but less than that number (
n
). This means that one has to test whether
n
is divisible by a number that is not itself. You begin by two and work your way up. If a number is not divisible by two, it will not be divisible by four (because four is divisible by two). This rule applies for any multiples. So from that, we can determine that the only numbers worth testing are prime numbers.

STEM CELLS