nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Leap second

Leap seconds are seconds added to "official" time to account for changes in the Earth's rotation. These changes are largely unpredictable, including changes from melting glaciers and earthquakes, as well as the predictable (very minor) slow of the Earth's orbit. That's about it, really.
==Creationist claim==
Young Earth creationists have claimed that leap seconds have had to be inserted into the year 22 times between 1970 and 1999, showing that the Earth is slowing 0.77 seconds per year. At this rate, the Earth would have slowed to a stop if it were billions of years old.Huse, Scott, The Collapse of Evolution, Chick Publications, 1984, p. 25.
There are several issues with this claim:NIST Time and Frequency Division, n.d., Frequently Asked Questions. 
# So-called "leap seconds" have nothing to do with any change in the Earth's rotation. Rather, leap seconds are a consequence of the fact that human timekeeping systems are arbitrary human constructs which don't match up exactly against the Earth's rotation. Just as those every-four-years leap days are not a sign that the Earth is slowing down in its orbit around the Sun, so it is that leap seconds are not a sign that the Earth's rotation is slowing down.
# If the Earth's movement around the Sun were slowing down, we wouldn't need a constant rate of leap seconds but an increasing rate.
# The earth's rotation (not to be confused with its movement around the Sun) is slowing down, but not at such a great rate and not in this direction. The length of a day now is very slightly more than 24 hours. Therefore the year will have fewer days in the far future (because the days get longer and the year stays the same), and one will have to remove more and more leap seconds.
# The claim grossly exaggerates the rate of change of Earth's day. In reality, it only decreases by 1.7 milliseconds per century, whereas the claim states it decreases by 77,000 milliseconds per century. This is wrong by four orders of magnitude and a factor of 4.
#Creationists who use this claim fail to, or refuse to appreciate how slow the rate of slowing actually is… 450 million years ago, days in the Ordovician period were around 22 hours long.
==Real-life problems==
Computers tend to choke on them. Linux (which large chunks of the Internet runs on) implements leap seconds by winding back a second; this caused a pile of problems during the 23:59:60 30 June 2012 leap second, as things expecting the time to always increase and never go backwards got horribly confused and fell over, causing sysadmins much, ah, entertainment early on a Sunday morning.https://lwn.net/Articles/504744/ This was fixed for the 2015 leap second.http://lwn.net/Articles/648313/
==External links==
*
* Robinson, B.A., 2002. A failed attempt to dialog with creation scientists, 
* Thwaites, William M. and Frank T. Awbrey, Summer 1982. As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time? Creation/Evolution IX: 18-22, 
* NIST, updated monthly. NIST Time Scale Data Archive. 
==See also==
*Leap year
==References==
Category:Creationist claims
Category:Time
Lebensraum

Lebensraum, literally meaning "living space" in German, was a major policy of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. With origins in the Imperial German Septemberprogramm, the basic policy was that the German people needed "living space" in Eastern Europe to repopulate the land with Germanic people. Lebensraum was the ideological motivation behind Hitler's territorial expansion eastwards. The eventual goal of the policy was to create a strong agrarian middle class of loyal Germans by granting veterans farmland in the new territories, simultaneously suppressing the local people and weakening the labor movement.
The policy led to the annexing of parts of Austria and Czechoslovakia. It is also a reason why Germany invaded Poland in 1939. It was also a core reason as to why Hitler began the war with the Soviet Union, and even more importantly Generalplan Ost, the plan for the total eradication of at least 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, the vast majority being Slavs (percentages are population eradicated unless otherwise stated): Poles (80%), Ukrainians (65% to be deported to West Ukraine and enslaved, 35% to be subjected to cultural genocide), Belarussians (75%), and Russians (70 million), and Czechs (50%). Additionally, Latvians (50%), Estonians (≈50%), Lithuanians (85%), and most horrifyingly, Latgalians (100%). 
==See also==
*Irredentism
*Manifest destiny
==References==
Category:Irredentism
Category:Imperialism
Category:Nazism
Lee Hae-chan

Lee "the liberal Trump" Hae-chan (이해찬, born July 10, 1952) is a politician in South Korea and the former leader of the ruling Minjoo Party (2018-2020). A liberal by South Korean standards, he is controversial because his words and actions are reminiscent of those of Donald Trump.
==Collection of his Trumpish remarks==
민주당, 나경원 막말에 분노… “국가원수 모독죄” - Hankook Ilbo.
His remarks seem like those of a far-right politician, but he is considered liberal in South Korea!
The Justice Party unofficially lashed out at Lee Hae-chan's remarks, saying, "Lee Hae-chan's derogatory hate speech about minorities is very habitual!" In fact, if it were Europe, such hate speech would not only lead to the resignation of the party leader but also criminal punishment. As such, S. Korea is a socially conservative and authoritarian country. Its neighbor, Japan, is not very progressive on this issue either.
==See also==
* Hate speech
==Note==
==References==
Category:Liberals
Category:South Korean politics
Category:Deceit
Category:Ableism
Category:Living people
Lee Smolin

thumb|left|165px|Lee Smolin
Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin He was part of a team that wrote the first equations on quantum gravity, an attempt to unify quantum mechanics with theories of gravity like Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
Through his book , he establishes the claim that space is not empty but full of energy forming a discrete fabric. This fabric is described as a lattice of spin-networks by Roger Penrose, and through a series of loop quantum gravity equations by Carlo Rovelli.http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9505006
Luboš Motl considers Smolin an evil crackpot, as he does anyone failing to see the truth of string theory, but Smolin particularly pisses him off.
==References==
Category:Living people
Lee Spetner

Lee Spetner is an American physicist and Jewish creationist.
==Creationism==
Spetner first became interested in evolution after moving to Israel. In Israel he attempted to search for evidence which "contradicted evolution" - based on his religious views. Spetner believes in the Jewish creation myth which tells of 365 originally created species of "beasts" and 365 birds.Ronald L. Numbers, The creationists: from scientific creationism to intelligent design, 2006, pp. 427 - 428 As a creationist, he has lectured on Jewish creationism.Tom McIver, Anti-evolution: an annotated bibliography, 2008 p. 277
Spetner became best known for his book Not by Chance, Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution (1996), which attacks a strawman version of modern evolutionary theory, claiming wrongly that that theory portrays evolution as "random", when in fact the theory holds that non-random natural selection selects for adaptive changes. He attempts to replace this strawman version of the modern synthesis with a mixture of divine creation and an idea of "non-random evolution theory" (well, duh, we know it's non-random). Creationists, including intelligent-design creationists, have endorsed Spetner's book.
A review of Dr. Lee Spetner's book, Not By Chance!
==Science==
Even though Spetner is a qualified physicist who has some scientific publications under his belt, he is not qualified in biology and his views on evolution have been rejected by the scientific community as pseudoscience. Critics claim that he bases his views on a religious bias and not the evidence.A review of Lee Spetner's "Not By Chance!" by Gert KorthofDr. Spetner derives non-random evolution from the Talmud By Mark Perakh
==Spetner and other creationists==
Spetner is often quote mined by young earth creationists, other Christian creationists and Intelligent design advocates who pretend he is a "non-creationist" who only rejects the mutation element of the modern synthesis. This is however completely false as Spetner has admitted to being a creationist and only accepts microevolution, he is no different than any of the other creationists. It is quite clear from his religious views that he has no interest in embracing any evidence for evolution.
Spetner is also a signatory to A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.
==References==
__NOTOC__
Category:Authors
Category:Jews
Category:Living people
Category:Physicists
Lee Strobel

Lee Strobel is a popular American Christian apologist, creationist, journalist, intelligent design proponent, author of several books, charlatan, and host of a television program called Faith Under Fire. 
Strobel's "shtick" is to present himself both as an investigative reporter (somewhat true - Strobel was once the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and a former atheist. For a self-professed investigative reporter, he seems utterly incapable of asking difficult questions, providing citations for his claims, confronting people when they make overly vague or conflicting statements if said statements cohere with his views or assertions, and seems to take The Bible at face value without argument. Likewise, his description of his atheist past sounds suspiciously like the way atheists are depicted by Christians (e.g. that he was rejecting God, despite knowing or suspecting that He existed(!), in order to be able to sin freelyhttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2009/01/02/lee-strobel-answers-your-questions-part-1/). And, as it turns out, he was actually a lapsed Lutheran (meaning he believed in God but didn't go to church, because in his case, he hated church attendance as a boy) who, after his wife joined a new church, became a pastor.
Furthermore, he rarely interviews people critical of his position and when he does quote them, the quotes are usually superficial and used as a strawman argument for the following text. Comments that support his position are often taken at face value, without analysis or scrutiny and there is almost never any investigation of the claims made which are in support of his arguments.
It is perhaps fitting, given these "credentials", that Strobel was hired as Professor of Christian Thoughthttp://www.hbu.edu/Choosing-HBU/Academics/Colleges-Schools/School-of-Christian-Thought/Departments/Department-of-Apologetics/Faculty/Lee-Strobel.aspx by Houston Baptist the-bible-is-literally-truehttp://www.hbu.edu/About-HBU/General-Information/Mission-and-Values.aspx "University" where he now works alongside "I'm a professional philosopher, no really"-William Lane Craig.
==Publications==
*The Case for a Creator Zondervan (2004) ISBN 0310263867
*The Case for Christ Zondervan (September 1, 1998) ISBN 0310226058Steve Shives made The Case for Christ the subject of his first entry in what would his An Atheist Reads... series and was underwhelmed by Strobel's "evidence"
*The Case for Faith Zondervan (October 1, 2000) ISBN 0310220157
*The Case for Easter Zondervan (2004) ISBN 0310254752
*The Case for the Real Jesus Zondervan (September 10, 2007) ISBN 031024210X
==External links==
*The Premier Site on the net for Debunking Lee Strobel's "Case for" Apologetic Series
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Atheophobia
Category:Authors
Category:Baptists
Category:Christian apologists
Category:Journalists
Category:Living people
Category:Pseudoscience promoters
ru:Ли Стробел
Lent

Lent is a holy liturgical season in which believers fast and pray before Easter.
==Purpose==
Lent is meant to serve as a reminder of the days Jesus spent in the dessert desert resisting temptations from the Devil. As a celebration of their leader's sacrifices, believers go without something dear to them for the entire period of Lent. It can mean giving up something temporarily over lent or it can mean trying to overcome a sin with the hope that the believer will continue to avoid that sin after Lent.
It should be known that Sundays are not included in the forty days of Lent, as they represent the victory of the Lord over Satan.
==Holy days==
There are several holy days within Lent. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. The fourth Sunday, Laetare Sunday, marks the half way point of Lent. The fifth Sunday marks the beginning of Passiontide, and is known as Passion Sunday. Holy Week begins on the Sixth Sunday, which is known as Palm Sunday.
The Wednesday of the Holy Week is SpyNot to be confused with Spa Wednesday, where it's 20 bucks off facials and massages. Wednesday, as it reminds us of the Judas betraying Jesus. On Thursday, known as Maundy Thursday, believers celebrate the Last Supper and the agony in the garden. On Friday, known as Good Friday, believers mourn and remember the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. On Saturday, known as Holy Saturday, the Great Sabbath, Black Saturday,Hence the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. or Easter Eve, Christians think of Jesus dead in the tomb.
It has been erroneously believed that in 600 CE, Pope Gregory I declared that fetal rabbits were aquatic and therefore "fish", which could be eaten during Lent; his declaration marked the beginning of rabbit domestication.DNA evidence is rewriting domestication origin stories: Fresh ideas emerge about the origins of humans’ relationships with their favorite species by Tina Hesman Saey (12:00pm, July 6, 2017) Science News. By around 920 CE, Christians began giving up red meat on fasting days for fish and fowl. This marked the beginning of breeding chickens to lay eggs all year-round. An analysis of historical records (the declaration was never written), divergence of bone structure, and genetics indicates that there was no single point of domestication of rabbits in the past 20,000 years.Legend held that monks domesticated rabbits for food. The truth is more complex. by Ben Guarino (February 14, 2018) The Washington Post.
==Not as efficient as some religions==
Jon Stewart once remarked that because Catholicism requires forty days of penitence, it's not as efficient as Judaism which requires only one (celebrated on Yom Kippur).
Similarly, Ramadan lasts only a month, and even then Muslims only fast during the daytime (Muslims engage in large celebratory feasts after sundown, usually with goat meat).
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Christianity
Category:Holidays
Leo Igwe

__NOTOC__
Leo Igwe (born 26 July 1970) is a Nigerian skeptic and humanist, who is currently serving as the chair of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, and holds leadership positions in the James Randi Educational Foundation and in the Atheist Alliance International.https://www.atheistalliance.org/our-advisory-council/leo-igwe/ He holds a PhD from the and has led efforts to promote reason and science in the African continent. One of his most prominent efforts is for the ending of child witchcraft accusations in sub-Saharan Africa. He founded the Advocacy for Alleged Witches Foundation (AFaW),Advocacy for Alleged Witches Foundation which serves to aid those accused of witchcraft effectively. 
His criticism of religion and superstitious thought has not been uncontroversial in Africa, a continent of very devout religious views, and has brought him into the sights of religious organizations such as the Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, an organization quite responsible for much of the problems Igwe has discussed. But even with this, Igwe has stayed optimistic concerning the spread of rationalistic and humanistic thought in Africa. In A Manifesto For a Skeptical Africa, Igwe states that:
== Impact of Imperialism on African Skepticism ==
In the aforementioned A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa, Igwe also discusses and disputes the belief in Africa that rationalism and humanism are somehow "un-African," stating that:
Essentially, he is stating that much of the bigotry and superstitious beliefs that exist in Africa today are not something inherent to Africa, but rather an import from outside a consequence of imperialism. 
In reference to this, Igwe has also stated that much of the homophobia that exists in Africa's laws today is not a consequence of some inherent homophobia within its culture, but rather because of imported Western and Arabian norms through colonialism and imperialism, stating that:
==iDoubt==
In 2017, Igwe introduced the method of "iDoubt" in an article for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Essentially, iDoubt is a way to scrutinize information before one takes it as fact, a way for critical thinking. To do this, Igwe introduces five "doubts," which he calls "individual doubt, inspire doubt, inculcate doubt, inform doubt, and Internet doubt."https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/idoubt-critical-thinking-and-skepticism-in-africa-in-an-internet-age/
== Support for LGBTQ+ rights in Africa ==
Igwe has undertaken advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights in his home country of Nigeria, and has written articles in support for the LGBTQ+ community in Africa.https://guardian.ng/opinion/nigeria-time-to-re-think-opposition-to-lgbt-rights/https://nostringsng.com/nigerian-humanist-human-rights/ In a 2017 article for the Nigerian Observer, Igwe noted that:
==External links==
*
*A Manifesto For A Skeptical Africa
*https://humanists.international/case-of-concern/leo-igwe/
*https://humanists.international/2010/07/help-defend-leo-igwe/
==References==
Category:Atheists
Category:Living people
Category:Skeptics
Leprechaun

Leprechauns are mythical creatures said to live on the island of Ireland. Notable characteristics include their greed, love of trickery, short stature, and their modern incarnation's near total disconnection with Irish folklore. Capturing one is notoriously difficult, although rainbows reveal the locations of their treasure hoards. Their name comes from the Irish word for "shoemaker," as they were in many early representations shown fixing a pair of shoes. A "clurichaun" is a continually drunk leprechaun.
Along with unicorns, dragons, and Chupacabra, they are often used as a metaphor for a personal God in arguments against theism.
A leprechaun was supposedly spotted in a trailer park near Mobile, Alabama.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8 Another is notorious for stealing children's breakfastshttp://ferrebeekeeper.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lucky_the_leprechaun.jpg and yet another for representing the Boston Celtics.http://boston.sportsthenandnow.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Celtics-96-present-270x300.jpg One is known for appearing in awful horror movies;Leprechaun on the Internet Movie Database others are known to work for the reconnaissance division of the Lower Elements Police, and in doing so make the world's worst pun.http://artemisfowl.wikia.com/wiki/LEPRecon
==References==
Category:Folklore
Category:Ireland
Lepton

A lepton is one type of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
As far as early 21st century scientists know, leptons, together with quarks, are truly fundamental and cannot be broken down further. Basically leptons are electrons, muons and tau particles, along with their complementary antiparticles and neutrinos. Leptons are much lighter than baryons (protons, neutrons and associated antiparticles). Leptons are fermions and have a quantum spin of ½, and each has neutrinos associated with it. Leptons appear point-like without internal structure.
==Flavour==
They've got exciting flavours, though we can't actually taste them. They'd probably be tasty though. Scientists know different leptons have different properties and for want of a better word they call them flavoursThe Particle AdventureQuarks and LeptonsWhat is a Lepton? (with a suplerfluous "u" to make them sound fancier).
Generation	negatively charged lepton	positively charged lepton	neutrino 	antineutrino
1 	electron, e-, β- 	positron, e+, β+ 	electron neutrino	positron neutrino
2 	muon, μ- 	antimuon, μ+ 	muon neutrino 	antimuon neutrino
3 	tau, τ- 	antitau, τ+ 	tau neutrino 	antitau neutrino
==Fun with muons!==
===Cold fusion===
Muons are sometimes put forth as a way of performing cold fusion; they can indeed effectively catalyze fusion by displacing an electron in a molecule of H2 and sucking the nuclei close enough together to fuse. Unfortunately, they have a half-life of only about 2.2 microseconds, and additionally have some chance of "sticking" to the reaction products instead of continuing to catalyze more fusion. The total energy yield from the number of reactions a single muon could catalyze is lower than the energy needed to create a muon by presently known methods, and so muon-catalyzed fusion isn't actually useful.
===Magnetic moment===
The muon is known to have a magnetic moment differing slightly from that predicted by the due to various quantum effects. Measuring just how different can serve as a useful test for various theories; for example, the Standard Model's prediction is about 3.4σ off the observed value,http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0611102v3.pdf suggesting that something beyond the Standard Model is going on… probably.
==See also==
*Subatomic particle
*Higgs boson
==References==
Category:Physics
Category:Fundamental particles