A ghost word is a word which is taken to be a word, but is not. Ghost words typically occur due to printing or typesetting errors, a classic example being the 'word' 'Dord' which appeared by accident in the 1934 Webster's Second International Dictionary as a synonym of density. In fact, the inclusion of 'Dord' was an error caused by misinterpreting the phrase 'D or d' which are abbreviations for density. Research Ghost Word
Hening's Statutes was the first complete collection ever published of the laws of any colony and State, with inclusion of those obsolete and repealed. Hening's 'Statutes at Large of Virginia' was published, beginning in 1809, by W W Hening, largely at the instance of President Jefferson. It's thirteen volumes are of great value as a source of history. Research Hening's Statutes
A scam is a trick or fraud. All scams rely on a single premise in order to function; the greed of the victim. Popular scams through the ages have ranged from low-key confidence tricks such as the 'find the lady' scam performed on street corners by card sharps in which victims are encouraged to bet on being able to locate the position of a specific playing card - often a queen - which is in a row of three cards mixed by the performer, though elaborate frauds such as the 'sale' of London's Tower Bridge or Australia's Sydney Opera House to unsuspecting foreign millionaires. A popular scam is the 'get rich quick' scam in which victims are invited to send money for details or a book proffering to detail a sure-fire method of achieving immense earnings with negligible effort. The secret to doing so is to place adverts in newspapers or on the Internet inviting people to send money for details or a book detailing how to earn vast income with negligible effort.
During the late 1990's a new scam appeared in Britain, or at least became more obvious. That of the 'male escort'. Adverts appeared, generally in free newspapers where advertising rates are very low, purporting to be recruiting 'male escorts', and explaining that age, size and looks are unimportant to earn up to five-hundred pounds a night with the implied bonus of having sex with beautiful women. The 'agencies' offering to recruit such men in reality require interested parties to send a registration fee for inclusion in their catalogue of escorts. Any cynical prospect who considers checking the agency catalogue first, to ensure that they are genuine, finds that prospective customers also have to send a registration fee before being allowed access to the catalogue. In comparison, genuine escort agencies do not require a registration fee from clients, instead the client simply contacts the agency with their requirements and is suggested a suitable escort, which they may then contact or gracefully decline.
The growth of the Internet saw with it the growth of another scam. That of the 'affiliate scheme' where naïve web site publishers are enticed to place an advert for a third company which in turn offers a percentage sales commission for all sales originating from customers who have accessed the web site through the advert placed on the web site publisher's own site. Very often - but not always - these schemes have get out clauses that allow the company to avoid paying sales commission, perhaps because they claim at their discretion that the web site publisher has broken the rules of the affiliation, or because they claim that the customer has not originated from the advert. By paying a small amount of money these scams operate the same as the classic 'find the lady' scam, by enticing a few naïve victims with a small amount of revenue to recommend them to many more naïve victims who never receive anything. Most of the victims of the affiliate scam are teenagers who publish small web sites and who lack the experience to read the contract, and the money to pursue claims for owed monies which are almost impossible to prove anyway.
The most insidious of all scams is 'The Nigerian Scam', which follows a general pattern of a victim receives correspondence, often by email, purporting to come from a close relative of a dead African - originally a Nigerian, whence the name - politician or some such who just before his death deposited a large amount of money in a European bank account. The scam implores the victim to assist in retrieving the money, as the scammer is unable to leave his country. In return, the victim is offered a large amount of money, perhaps as much as $50 million. The victim is asked to contact the scammer and then later is asked to send some money to assist with arrangements, or to travel to Africa with some money to make arrangements. Several victims travelling to Africa have subsequently disappeared, presumed murdered and robbed. Research Scam
Originally, statistics was the branch of political science dealing with the collection, classification, and discussion of numerical facts relating to the condition of a State or community. Now it is the study of numerical data, their classification and analysis. It embraces every department of activity and knowledge to which numerical comparison can be applied, but properly applies to social facts, and its greatest use is in economics and public administration.
The usefulness of statistics is seriously reduced by the ease with which they may be slewed. For example: statistically air transportation is safer than travelling by motor car when comparing accidents over the distance travelled, that is per mile travelled. However, when one compares the statistics of fatalities over the number of journeys made, irrespective of distance, then travelling by aeroplane is ten times more likely to be fatal than travelling by motor car (according to the British Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents).
A further example of how statistics can be slewed is in the popular use of averages, properly the mean average. The reliability of a mean average in establishing the general value of a group of values is strongly dependant upon the large number of elements being compared. For example, if a government wishes to show that the average wage being paid to workers is far higher than it really is, they need only to include a few extraordinary high wage values in the set of figures to offset the more prevalent low values. For example, take a set of 1000 elements each of which has a value between 18,000 and 20,000. Obviously the mean average will accurately describe a value between 18,000 and 20,000. Now add a single value of 500,000 to the set and the mean average will rise by over 450, and yet the most common value will remain the same, between 18,000 and 20,000.
Careful selection of values for inclusion in statistics can also be used to slew the results. A survey of members of the public sounds objective, and gives the impression of being representative of the populace. However, a survey of the public in which only men wearing business suits are selected will in all likelihood produce very different results to a survey in which equal proportions of men and women of varying ages, ethnic origins, and modes of dress are sampled.
Similarly, a survey on morality carried out among adults leaving church on a Sunday morning, should be expected to reveal a different result to a survey carried out among adults leaving a night club in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and yet both could be honestly described as a survey of adults.
The willingness with which the general public accept the findings of statistics, and the difficulty in establishing the objectivity of otherwise of such findings, has long been a powerful weapon in the arsenal of propaganda used by politicians and by advertising firms. Research Statistics
A thermometer is a device used to measure temperature. It was invented by Galileo in 1592. The graduation and inclusion of fixed points was added by Sanctorio who used snow and the heat of a candle, dividing the range obtained into degrees. The first sealed thermometer was made by Ferdinand II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1654. He filled the bulb and part of the tube with alcohol and then melted the glass tip, thereby sealing the tube. In England, Boyle, at the request of the Royal Society, made experiments on thermometers, his lectures on cold being published in 1665. Mercurial thermometers were first employed by the Academia del Climento of Florence in 1657. In 1694 Renaldini suggested the boiling-point of water as the upper limit of the scale. In 1706 Fahrenheit made improvements to the thermometer. In 1714 he made his Fahrenheit
thermometer with three fixed points. He arrived at his zero by taking a mixture of ice water and sal ammoniac; the second point he obtained by mixing ice and water - this point he called 32 degrees, or freezing point, his third mark was blood heat and was obtained by placing the thermometer in the mouth of a healthy man and holding it there until it reached the body temperature. He then divided the distance between the melting point of ice - 32 degrees - and the boiling point of water - 212 degrees - into 180 degree marks. Celsius invented his own scale with the boiling point of water at zero and the freezing point of water at 100 degrees, this scale has now been inverted. Research Thermometer
In mineralogy, an inclusion is a foreign substance, either liquid or solid, usually of minute size, enclosed in the mass of a mineral. Research Inclusion
Millerite has the formulae NiS and a relative hardness of 4. It is the richest ore of nickel but too scattered to be commercially important. Forms at low temperatures often in cavities and as an altered form of other nickel minerals, or as a crystalinclusion in other minerals. Research Millerite
The HAL HPT-32 Deepak is an Indian side-by-side two seat primary/basic flying trainer aircraft. It is intended to provide grading and primary instruction after which pupils will switch to the HAL HJT-16 Kiran. The HPT-32 has provision for the inclusion of one or two additional seats at the rear of the cabin and also baggage space to enable it to function in a secondary liaison and communications role. The
HAL HPT-32 is powered by a Textron Lycoming AEIO-540-D4B5 flat-six piston engine providing a top speed of 445 kmh and a range of 744 km. Research HAL HPT-32
Double taxation is taxation that falls on the same source of income in more than one country. Taxation is normally levied on a person's world-wide income in his country of residence. He may also be taxed in other countries in which he has a permanent trading establishment. Because this would inhibit trade, arrangements are normally made to mitigate or abolish this double taxation. This is often achieved by double-taxation treaties between countries; it may also be imposed by a country unilaterally. The principal methods of double- taxation relief are: (1) inclusion of the income in one country after deduction of the tax levied in the other; (2) agreement between countries that only one of them will tax the income; and (3) double- tax credits, enabling one country to allow a credit against its own tax for the tax paid in the other country. Research Double Taxation
Abbreviations
Research Ghost Word
