Article of the Day

Though the term is often used metaphorically to describe a rare event, a blue moon is actually, in astronomical terms, the second full moon within a calendar month or the third full moon in a three-month calendrical season that has four full moons. While most years have 12 full moons that occur approximately once a month, each solar year has about 11 days more than the lunar yea...

Though the term hacker has become synonymous with someone who illegally exploits computer system vulnerabilities, the different aims and approaches of members of the hacking subculture create certain distinctions. White hat hackers, for example, breach security ethically and for altruistic reasons, while black hat hackers engage in malicious criminal attacks. The colorful terms ...

Many of England's historic turf mazes—labyrinthine paths formed by cutting complex patterns into grass—were given names that incorporate the word "Troy," such as Troy Town, The City of Troy, or Troy's Walls. Such names were presumably used because, according to popular legend, the walls of the city of Troy were constructed in such a confusing and complex manner that any enemy wh...

Boggarts are malevolent household spirits of British folklore that latch on to unfortunate families and cause trouble for them by making things disappear, making milk go sour, and even stripping the linens off of beds in which people are sleeping. Superstitions about boggarts vary but often include the beliefs that the creatures should never be named and that hanging a horseshoe...

Proposed by cognitive scholar Douglas Hofstadter, the concept of a "strange loop" involves a paradox that arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back at the initial starting point. Examples of such feedback loops in various media include the well known M. C. Escher lithograph Drawing Hands and the novelty song "I'm My Own Grandp...