1. Either of two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator. The summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere occurs about June 21, when the sun is in the zenith at the tropic of Cancer; the winter solstice occurs about December 21, when the sun is over the tropic of Capricorn. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year and the winter solstice is the shortest.
2. A highest point or culmination.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin slstitium : sl, sun; see swel- in Indo-European roots + -stitium, a stoppage; see st- in Indo-European roots.]
The Sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the North to call Decrepit Winter, from the South to bring Solstitial summers heat.Paradise Lost by Milton, John
Solistitium Records a place where those Norweigen Metal Heads Rock Out:
Monday, December 14, 2009
n.
The branch of zoology that deals with the study of birds.
The Deli Clerk Gregorio Roth had a doctorate in Ornithology, from the University of Kansas. He often loved looking for the rarest, of the rare red, white, and blue Jay Hawk. He had heard reports that the Jay hawk was known to hang out in bars frequented by College Coeds in Lawrence Kansas Gregorio Roth
1. (used with a sing. verb)Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
2. (used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.
3. (used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
4. (used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning. 5. Things that do not change over time. (Added by Gregory Rothbard)
[From pl. of Middle English methaphisik, from Medieval Latin metaphysica, from Medieval Greek (ta) metaphusika, from Greek (Ta) meta (ta) phusika, (the works) after the Physics, the title of Aristotle's treatise on first principles (so called because it followed his work on physics) : meta, after; see meta- + phusika, physics; see physics.]
In Context: Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity out of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding centuries.The Iron Heel by London, Jack
The sense of the word "propinquity" as given here is a specialised one. For a more general definition of the word, see in the Wiktionary.
In social psychology, propinquity (from Latinpropinquitas, nearness) is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Two people living on the same floor of a building, for example, have a higher propinquity than those living on different floors. Propinquity can mean physical proximity, a kinship between people, or a similarity in nature between things. Propinquity is also one of the factors, set out by Jeremy Bentham, used to measure the amount of pleasure in a method known as felicific calculus.
Propinquity effect
The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often. In other words, relationships tend to be formed between those who have a high propinquity. It was first theorized by psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, Kurt Lewin and Kurt Bach in what came to be called as the Westgate studies conducted at MIT (1950). The typical venn diagram used to represent the propinquity effect is shown below where U = universe, A = set A, B = set B, and S = similarity:
The sets are basically any relevant subject matter about a person, or persons, or non-persons, etc; depending on the context of the use of the word. Propinquity can be more than just physical distance. Residents of an apartment building living near a stairway, as an example, tend to have more friends from other floors than others. The propinquity effect is usually explained by the mere exposure effect, which holds that the more exposure a stimulus gets, the more likeable it becomes.
Peter Principle's: In an organizational structure, the practical application allows assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job, i.e. members of a hierarchical organization eventually are promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee's "level of incompetence" where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching his or her career's ceiling in an organization.
n. The quantum of acoustic or vibrational energy, considered a discrete particle and used especially in mathematical models to calculate thermal and vibrational properties of solids.
1. A line, curve, or surface touching but not intersecting another.
2. The ratio of the length of the side opposite an acute angle in a right triangle to the side adjacent to the angle. The tangent of an angle is equal to the sine of the angle divided by the cosine of the angle.
3. The ratio of the ordinate to the abscissa of the endpoint of an arc of a unit circle centered at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system, the arc being of length x and measured counterclockwise from the point (1, 0) if x is positive or clockwise if x is negative.
4. A function of a number x, equal to the tangent of an angle whose measure in radians is equal to x.
tangent - a straight line or plane that touches a curve or curved surface at a point but does not intersect it at that point
straight line - a line traced by a point traveling in a constant direction; a line of zero curvature; "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line"
2.
tangent - ratio of the opposite to the adjacent side of a right-angled triangle
circular function, trigonometric function - function of an angle expressed as a ratio of the length of the sides of right-angled triangle containing the angle
The black hole information paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could "disappear" in a black hole. It is a contentious subject since it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science—that information cannot be destroyed. _Wikipedia (Black hole Information Paradox)
The scenario John Myers describes "is true, but it's really an issue of information getting scrambled, not lost." In the blackholeparadox, the problem is that the information appears to be truly lost, not merely scrambled, yet "the foundations of classical mechanics and statistical mechanics are based on the exact conservation of information." Finally, "a number of the letters express a very common misconception, namely, that because an outside observer sees an infalling observer slow down, that the in falling observer sees the outsider speed up. This is simply not so. The in falling observer looks back and sees nothing unusual."--R. COWEN
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