Wikiwiki

I spent a few hours on Wikipedia today. In my old tradition, the chronological order, including what I learned:

• Jet Propulsion Laboritory
• Mars Science Laboritory - This is the next mars rover. It's really big: the size of a small car.
• Aerospace
  
• NASA - Created in '58.
  
• Spacecraft
  
• Lockheed Martin - Biggest defense corp by rev. They merged in '95.
  
• Boeing - Boeing committed corporate espionage against Lockheed Martin a little while ago. As a consequence, the govn't slapped them with fines, transferred a bunch of contracts to Lockheed, and suspended Boeing's satellite work for a while.
  
• EADS - Some European aerospace co.
  
• Saab - Saab (which originally stood for "Swedish Aerospace Company") was created during WWII to provide allied planes. Today they manufacture such things as camouflage systems and shoulder-mounted anti-tank ordinance.
  
• National Aeronautics and Space Act - This created NASA.
  
• F-22 Raptor - The US' new fighter jet. Best in the fucking world, they say (made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing).
  
• Dow Jones Industrial Average - I wasn't aware that this only looks at 30 companies.
• Boeing 787 - The Dreamliner. They're doing this really interesting thing where most of the assembly is being handled by their suppliers. This has cause the massive delays because some suppliers can't get their shit together. I wonder if this strategy is ultimately going to work out for Boeing. They have about 900 pre-orders already.
• Composite material
• Saab Automobile - The automobile arm of Saab. Now owned by GM.
• General Motors
• General Electric
• List of corporations by market capitalization
  
• PetroChina - At the top of the above list.
• ExxonMobil - These people make the most money. Seriously. They have the highest revenue. Of any company. Ever.
• Simplified Chinese characters - Being pushed by the People's Republic of China to increase literacy.
• Republic of China - Commonly known as Taiwan, this was the Chinese government until the communists took over the mainland. For a long time the international community did not recognize the PRC as a legitimate government even though they had full control of the country. The Republic of China, a founding member of the UN, still claims that they are the legal government of mainland China.
• Berkshire Hathaway - They have quite a diverse share of holdings including candy production, encyclopedias, and vacuum cleaners.
• Johnson & Johnson - Considered the most well-respected company in the world.
• Holding company
• 3M - They only officially changed their name to "3M" in 2002.
• Honeywell
• Emerson Electric Company
• News Corporation
• Nintendo - Founded in 1889 to make playing cards, they then tried such business as love hotels and taxi services before becoming the video game giant we know and love today.
• Conglomerate (company)
• Dutch East India Company - So this is absolutely fascinating. The VOC (the abbreviation of the Dutch name) was the first multinational conglomerate corporation. It was also the first company to issue stocks. They were created to combat the Portuguese monopoly on spice trading. They chugged along for 200 years before finally going bankrupt. They had some really shrewd business moves. For example: spice trade was complicated by the fact that the Europeans didn't have much to offer the Indo-Asian cultures other than gold and silver. While Spain and Portugal had lots of gold, other western countries (especially England) did not. VOC set up an intra-Asia trading system whereby their ships facilitated trade between Asian nations. The profits from this operation were then used to purchase spices which the ships then brought back to Europe. They also artificially increased the supply in the pepper market to reduce prices. This meant that their margins were lower in the short-term, but it disincentivized potential competitors from getting into the pepper business because it appeared there was less profit to be had.
• British East India Company
• French East India Company
• Danish East India Company
• Amsterdam (VOC ship) - A wrecked VOC ship. The wreck is sometimes visible at low-tide.
• Protection of Wrecks Act 1973
• Swedish East India Company
• Scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow
• Scuttling - The deliberate sinking of a ship. The Pentagon had a scuttling program called CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink 'Em) which was used to dispose of chemical weapons, such as nerve gasses, after they were made illegal by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.
• Conquistador - Bad Spaniards.
• Black Legend - The theory that Spaniards aren't really that bad.
• Historical revision of the Inquisition
• Inquisition
• USS Oriskany - Scuttled to create an artificial reef.
• VX (nerve agent) - The very nastiest nerve gas.
• Narco submarine - Semi-submersible radar-transparent craft used by Colombian drug runners. There's a nifty loophole in maritime law that lets the smugglers scuttle the sub and avoid charges if someone finds them.
• Artificial reef - Their benefit to marine life is debated.
• Osborne Reef - An artificial reef made of tires. Turns out tires are bad for the fish.
• Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier - The next class of US carrier. In development.
• Nerve agent - Never gases are actually liquid at room temperature.
• Mark I NAAK - A nerve-gas antidote auto-syringe kit issued to US armed forces. The two shots go into the muscle of the outer thigh.
• Tabun (nerve agent) - Also known as "GA" (German agent A). Developed during WWII. Went into mass production. There were some accidents at the plant: "Four pipe fitters had liquid tabun drain onto them; they died before their rubber suits could be removed."
• Sarin - AKA GB. 10x deadlier than Tabun.
• B41 nuclear bomb
• Tsar Bomba - Most physically powerful man-made thing ever created. 50 Megatons (1.4% the output of the Sun). They had originally designed a 100 Megaton version, but it was considered too destructive to be useful (the bomber plane would not be able to escape the detonation). Big nukes were favored in the 60s because targeting was inaccurate and it was assumed that many planes in a fleet of bombers might be shot down en-route. So if only one plane made it, and the drop was off the target by some kilometers, a big bomb would insure that the mission was still successful. As targeting systems improved, the US and USSR moved toward smaller nuke designs. No Tsar Bombas were ever produced after the test unit.
• B53 nuclear bomb
• Atmospheric focusing - A concussive shockwave resulting from large explosions.
• Father of all bombs - Claimed by the Russians to be the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) bomb.
• Spanish Inquisition
• Witch-hunt
• The Spanish Inquisition (Monty Python)
• Moral panic
• Rainbow party (sexuality)
• Witchcraft Act - (British) Someone was arrested under this as late as WWII.
• Helen Duncan - And this was her.
• Wicca
• The Crucible
• The Crucible (1996 film)
• Daniel Day-Lewis
• Nine (film)
• There Will Be Blood
• The Last of the Mohicans (1992 film)
• Oil!
• Upton Sinclair - That's right, he wrote The Jungle.
• DuPont - 2nd biggest chem co.
• BASF - Biggest chem co. German.
• Kevlar - The name is a DuPont trademark.
• Neoprene - Same.