Different countries have different ideas of what things are crimes, and which ones are the worst. Some things that are crimes in one country are not crimes in other countries. Many countries get their ideas of what things are crimes from religions or controversial events which cause a law to be quickly created. For example, a religious Taboo might say eating a particular food is a crime. When automobiles became numerous, they killed or hurt many people in road accidents, so new laws were made for them.
In many countries, if people say they made or wrote a book, movie, song, or Web page that they did not really make or write, it is a crime against copyright laws. In many countries, helping to grow, make, move, or sell illegal drugs is a crime.
In most countries, police try to stop crimes and to find criminals. When the police find someone who they think might be a criminal, they usually hold the person in a jail. Then, usually, a court or a judge decides if the person really did a crime. If the court or judge decides that the person really did it, then he or she might have to pay a fine or go to prison. Sometimes the judge might decide that the criminal should be executed (killed). This is called Capital punishment (or the "Death Penalty"). There are countries in the world that execute criminals, and others that do not.
In many countries, two conditions must exist for an act to be thought of as a crime:
Both must be present for the act to be thought of as a crime.
Time Cube
Time Cube was a personal website created on 1997 by Otis Eugene Ray. On that website, Ray explained his theory of everything, known as "Time Cube". It described the planet Earth as having a cubic symmetry, and time as rotating four "corners". He also said that all of modern physics is wrong. Scientists reject these ideas, saying that they make no sense and cannot be tested.
The Time Cube website was written in an angry and hateful voice. On his site, Ray said that not believing in Time Cube would be "stupid and evil". Some of the comments were racist and discriminatory, especially against black people and Jews. There were also many comments against gay people. Many people found the site to be difficult to understand.
Ray spoke about Time Cube at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 2002. At MIT, a professor tried to cancel the lecture before it took place. Ray believed this is proof of a conspiracy to keep information about Time Cube hidden. Ray also spoke about Time Cube at the Georgia Institute of Technology in April 2005.
Otis Eugene Ray died on March 18, 2015. He was 87 years old. The website went down on August 2015. It was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016. A theory of everything (TOE or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.
Census of Marine Life
The Census of Marine Life was a ten-year survey of life in the oceans, starting in 2000. Its head was Ron O'Dor of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It used data from researchers all over the world. More than 70 nations were involved and over a billion US dollars were spent on it.
It was a major work of marine ecology. It was founded by J. Frederick Grassle.
The purpose of the Census of Marine Life was to say what is alive in our seas and oceans.
Maize
Maize or Indian corn (called corn in some countries) is "Zea mays", a member of the grass family "Poaceae". It is a cereal grain which was first grown by people in ancient Central America. Approximately 1 billion tonnes are harvested every year. However, little of this maize is eaten directly by humans. Most is used to make corn ethanol, animal feed and other maize products, such as corn starch and corn syrup.
Maize is a leafy stalk whose kernels have seeds inside. It is an angiosperm, which means that its seeds are enclosed inside a fruit or shell. It is has long been a staple food by many people in Mexico, Central and South America and parts of Africa. In Europe and the rest of North America, maize is grown mostly for use as animal feed. In Canada and the United States, maize is commonly referred to as "corn".
Centuries of cross breeding have produced larger plants, and specialized varieties. Corn has become an important ingredient in American foods through the use of corn starch. People have long eaten sweet corn and popcorn with little processing, and other kinds after processing into flour for making cornbread, tortillas, and other artificial foods.
Maize has been a fruitful model organism for research in genetics for many years: see Barbara McClintock. Research has shown that artificial selection developed maize from a Mexican plant called Teosinte.
There are five species and many subspecies in the genus. They are all plants similar to the cultivated maize, with less developed cobs. The wild ones are sometimes called teosintes, and they are all native to Mesoamerica.
Civics
Civics is the study of government. It most often refers to studying government in high school to prepare to be a good citizen. In college, civics is usually called political science. Since a city has the most unsimple government problems, the word for this study is like that for city.
Theories of civics can be grouped as:
Calculus
Calculus is a branch of mathematics that helps us understand changes between values that are related by a function. For example, given a formula indicating how much money one gets every day, calculus would help one understand related formulas, such as how much money one has in total, and whether one is getting more or less money than before. Many of these formulas are functions of time, and one way to think of calculus is to see it as a study of functions of time.
There are two different types of calculus. Differential calculus divides things into small ("different") pieces, and tells us how they change from one moment to the next, while integral calculus joins ("integrates") the small pieces together, and tells us how much of something is made, overall, by a series of changes. Calculus is used in many different areas such as physics, astronomy, biology, engineering, economics, medicine and sociology.
In the 1670s and 1680s, Sir Isaac Newton in England and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany figured out calculus at the same time, working separately from each other. Newton wanted to have a new way to predict where to see planets in the sky, because astronomy had always been a popular and useful form of science, and knowing more about the motions of the objects in the night sky was important for navigation of ships. Leibniz wanted to measure the space (area) under a curve (a line that is not straight). Many years later, the two men argued over who discovered it first. Scientists from England supported Newton, but scientists from the rest of Europe supported Leibniz. Most mathematicians today agree that both men share the credit equally. Some parts of modern calculus come from Newton, such as its uses in physics. Other parts come from Leibniz, such as the symbols used to write it.
They were not the first people to use mathematics to describe the physical world — Aristotle and Pythagoras came earlier, and so did Galileo Galilei, who said that mathematics was the language of science. But both Newton and Leibniz were the first to design a system that describes how things change over time, and can predict how they will change in the future.
The name "calculus" was the Latin word for a small stone the ancient Romans used in counting and gambling. The English word "calculate" comes from the same Latin word.
Differential calculus is used to find the rate of change of a variable—compared to another variable.