nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Mysticism

Mysticism involves communion with the divine, either through esoteric knowledge or directly through revelation or meditation.
Compare:
Mystics come in all flavors, from the deeply sincere to the outright fraudulent. 
Direct communion can occur in many ways, from speaking in tongues or other forms of possession to visions and revelations. Indirect methods include tarot cards and the practices of the Kabbalah. While all mystics believe in something divine, not all believers are mystics. 
==Examples==
Mysticism is present in countless religions across the world, with widely different doctrines and approaches. In Islam, the most prominent form of mysticism is Sufism. In Judaism, the most prominent form is the Kabbalah. Many branches of Christianity frown on this kind of direct communion, instead preferring rational argumentation and discovery of God through texts. However, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and, to a lesser degree, Roman Catholicism employ mysticism in theological discourse. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Taoism, just to name a few, are some non-Abrahamic religions that have mystical practices. Tantra is arguably mysticism, as well. Shamanism in many folk religions around the world could also often be described as mystical in nature. Encyclopedia Britannica 
==Scientific explanation for ecstatic experiences==
Religious ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness that is often experienced by people practicing mysticism. One frequently finds that mystical experiences get induced by stressing the body (through hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation...), and/or by stressing the mind through isolation. All this can cause hallucinations, as can drugs that are used to induce mystical experience. There is every reason to suspect that mysticism - occurring across multiple cultures and across multiple religious traditions - is due to natural reactions in the brain.
 
==In D&D==
Mystics are also a character class in D&D and are there a type of cleric who forgoes the use of armor and most types of weapons in exchange for witchcraft-like abilities as brewing potions or magical candles to get a trip and fly higher than a kite, er, dragon.
==References ==
==See also==
*Ayahuasca tourism 
*Near death experience -- (this also happens when the brain is severely stressed.)
*Other ways of knowing
*Rasputin
*Sufism
*Kabbalah
Category:Esotericism
Category:Religion
N-rays

N-rays are an early classic example of pathological science, the "science of things that aren't so". The N-ray was a hypothesised form of ionizing radiation described by French physicist in 1903, and initially confirmed by others, but subsequently found to be illusory, to the ruin of Blondlot's previously stellar reputation.
The interest for the modern scholar lies in the fact that people did successfully duplicate the experiments despite the fact that N-rays provably do not exist: it is a cautionary tale of confirmation bias.
Blondlot was one of eight corresponding members of the French Academy of Science. He was conducting experiments on at his lab at the University of Nancy when he thought he saw changes in the brightness of an electric spark in a spark gap placed in an X-ray beam. He photographed the sparks, and later attributed the changes in brightness to a novel form of radiation, which he dubbed N-rays (N for the University of Nancy, where he worked). (X-rays were a relatively new discovery at that time, being first described in 1895.)
Blondlot, Augustin Charpentier, Arsène d'Arsonval and over 100 scientists published a total of around 300 articles discussing the phenomenon, and there was even a dispute over priority. Others, notably Lord Kelvin, William Crookes, Otto Lummer, and Heinrich Rubens failed to do so. American physicist Robert W. Wood, known as a debunker of nonsense, was prevailed upon to visit Blondlot's laboratory, where he secretly removed an essential prism from the experimental apparatus. The experimental operators still insisted that they saw the N-rays. He also replaced a large file claimed to be an emitter with a piece of wood, with similar results. His report was published in Nature and N-rays were exposed as purely subjective, with the scientists involved having recorded data that matched their expectations. By 1905, no one outside of Nancy believed in N-rays, but Blondlot himself is reported to have still been convinced of their existence. Martin Gardner attributed a subsequent decline in mental health and eventual death of Blondlot to the resulting scandal. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly the case that Blondlot's reputation was ruined.
==Further reading==
* Park, Robert (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford University Press, .
* Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, .
Category:Pseudoscience
NAACP

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is the oldest continuing civil rights organization that works on behalf of African Americans. The NAACP was founded in 1909 in the United States,Our History. NAACP. Retrieved January 29, 2022. primarily to push for the criminalization of lynching. Since then, it has had many successes, particularly in the fight against segregation, when the NAACP lawyer, and later Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall argued that separate could never be equal.Who Was Thurgood Marshall? LDF. NAACP. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
Today, the NAACP does a lot of good at the local level, running scholarships and helping give national attention to local issues. For example, the NAACP published a study documenting white nationalist elements of the Tea Party movement (TeaPartyNationalism.com). Unfortunately, Tea Party leader Mark Williams did not address the report but rather decided to attack the messenger with racial undertones, ultimately making a fool of himself.Tea Party Express' Mark Williams: NAACP's Use Of 'Colored' Makes It Racist
==See also==
* Operation Black Vote
==External links==
*Official website
==References==
Category: Civil rights
NAFTA Superhighway

The NAFTA Superhighway was a hypothetical highway which would run all the way from Mexico, via the United States, to Canada. It exists primarily as a conspiracy theory bandied about by anti-Bush, populist right-wingers in the 2000s, who view it as an insidious attempt by "free-traders" and NAFTA supporters to further dissolve the already beleaguered borders of the United States and merge it into the "North American Union". 
This particular conspiracy theory appears to have its origins in rumors snowballing on the Internet, tying together various real things into a conspiracy that isn't. There is such a group as North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO), a Dallas-based business coalition which lobbies for transportation improvements to help the flow of international trade. It is also true that Kansas City Southern railroad has acquired railroads in Mexico and Panama and markets itself as the "NAFTA Railway" stretching from Chicago to Mexico City (the Panama Canal Railroad doesn't connect to anythingThere was an to change that. As the main thing that ultimately led to the failure of the project was the recent economic downturn, it might make a comeback in some form in the future.). It's also true that the plans to connect the various disconnected bits of which has been nicknamed the "NAFTA Superhighway" from time to time because, if completed, it would run directly from the part of Canada with industry (Ontario) to Mexico, but this (1) has run into non-conspiracy-related hiccups such as a lack of funding and environmental impact reports, and (2) isn't really that spectacular, since the route via I-69 isn't particularly useful for Mexican trade. These do not a conspiracy make, paranoia about the New World Order notwithstanding. They're a big "so what?"
NASCO did produce a map showing various transportation corridors in North AmericaOn this (Flash-based) map, under "Economic Corriders", click "Mid-Continent" to see the highways that already join the U.S. and Mexico. which along with the recent book The Late Great USA by Jerome Corsi seems to have fueled much of the paranoia.Christopher Hayes. "The NAFTA Superhighway." The Nation. 2007 August 27.
There are already multiple highways which connect the US to Canada and Mexico, namely the I-5/I-15 and I-29/I-35 interstates. Not to mention the near infinite number of routes between the three countries navigable by drivers willing to stop at the occasional stoplight and/or turn a corner.
==See also==
* Amero
==External links==
*Wrong Paul, FactCheck (See "Paging Fox Mulder" section for NAFTA Superhighway claims)
*Stephen Colbert exposes the NAFTA Superhighway! (Colbert defends...I mean slams Bush!)
==Notes==
==References==
__NOTOC__
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Transport
NDAA

The National Defense Authorization Act, colloquially referred to as the NDAA, is a defense spending bill passed yearly by the United States Congress and signed into law by the President of the United States. This is a typical "must pass" bill - it is vital to maintain the armed forces and though it feeds the military-industrial complex, it also provides for the mundane needs of any standing army. 
Unfortunately, the NDAA for 2012 contained many questionable measures that have nothing to do with defense spending. The NDAA for 2013 provided more of the same,NDAA: What Obama Hoped You Wouldn't Notice About This Bill, Policy Mic as has the NDAA for 2014."Obama signs NDAA 2014, indefinite detention remains", Salon
 
==The world is a battlefield==
Other than making Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers harder to close, the most troubling aspect of the NDAA is Section 1021, the provision allowing for indefinite detention, insisting it can be used by the US anytime, anywhere, on anyone. Controversy arrived from whether this was something new or a mainstreaming of a policy that was unwritten in previous wars (i.e. detaining enemies of the state and supporters of enemies of the state).
===Section 1021===
Below is the provision that has generated the most controversy:
==Legal challenges==
Thankfully, these laws have not gone unquestioned. Opposition to these measures come from the usual quarters, such as the ACLU,President Obama Signs Infinite Detention Law but also from "Tenthers"NDAA: Indefinite Detention i.e., the people who slept through the Bush years and only realized liberty was under attack during the Obama administration.
There have been some legal challenges to Section 1021:
*In May 2012, Federal Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued an injunction against Section 1021 of the NDAA for 2012 on the grounds the provision was too vague and posed a threat to Freedom of Speech under the First Amendment.Federal judge blocks National Defense Authorization Act provision, Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2012
*As of July, 2013, Section 1021 remains intact.Chris Hedges Responds to NDAA Defeat, Says It’s a ‘Black Day’ for Liberty, truthdig. 17 July 2013
*Judge Forrest's ruling was unanimously vacated by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on the grounds that nobody has standing to challenge Section 1021 until they've been detained. How someone being detained incommunicado and without access to counsel is supposed to file a legal challenge is unclear.
==Climate change denialism==
The McKinley amendment to the NDAA for 2015 is meant to enshrine climate change denialism and Agenda 21 paranoia into Department of Defense policy.H.R. 4435 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. McKinley's Amendment is Alteration 145
It remains to be seen if NDAA 2015 will pass with this amendment.
==External links==
*The NDAA for 2012 in its entirety.
*NDAA: The Biggest Election Issue No One's Talking About, Even Cracked understands this is bad.
==See also==
*Arbitrary detention
*USA PATRIOT Act
==References==
Category:Authoritarianism
Category:Government incompetence
Category:United States law
NSA

The National Security Agency (NSA) is one of the most secretive parts of the United States' intelligence community; anything more secretive probably does not officially exist. It was also referred to as "No Such Agency" for this reason. They mostly deal in signals intelligence (SIGINTNot to be confused with the Unix signal SIGINT.) and other technical forms of intelligence gathering. A secondary mission is information security (INFOSEC) — that is, protecting the USA's sensitive communications; or more cynically, keeping other countries from doing to the USA what it does to them.
The majority of the NSA is privatized, with contractors like the firm Booz Allen Hamilton doing quite a bit of the dirty work and being unaccountable to the democratic process.http://www.thenation.com/article/us-intelligence-is-more-privatized-than-ever-before/ This whole private-public apparatus we call the NSA is headquartered in Maryland.Google Maps satellite image Interestingly, the NSA probably works more closely with American allies than any other part of the American intelligence community. It is well-known that the US shares SIGINT information with the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as part of the "Five Eyes" spy network (also known as ECHELON). Moreover, the NSA works closely with Taiwan's NSB to spy on China, though as a result of the it also had two bases in western China to monitor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/06/13/the-national-security-agency-a-global-superpower.html 
Conspiracy theorists and other people have long speculated that the NSA has been spying on Americans (and others) over a long period of time. Unfortunately for all of us, they were proven right in 2013 when news about the PRISM project (which collects information from most social media sources and also wiretaps millions of phones, especially from Verizon) was leaked by The Guardian, through information provided by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower and former NSA contractor employee. The PATRIOT Act has no bounds, it seems.However, PRISM seems to be a little more inefficient than most conspiracy theorists seem to think, likely the vast majority of data collected is junk data, porn, and YouTube comments. (How this specifically stops terrorism is another debate in itself.) So they're half right. Nonetheless, some also believe that they somehow have a full backup of everyone's hard drive, an absurdity on its own — or a sign that people don't know how computer technology works.
==See also==
*CIA
*Information Awareness Office
*Edward Snowden
*Agent 711
*Big Brother
==External links==
*Prism Break is a decent site pointing to resources for protecting your online privacy from the NSA.
*What were you expecting?
*The NSA - where all your Star Trek fantasies come to life!
==Notes==
==References== 
__NOTOC__
Category:United States government
Category:Government surveillance
Category:Government incompetence
NSFW

NSFW is an internet warning to people, typically given after an awesome link that will reduce your boredom and make the day worthwhile. It means "Not Safe For Work": i.e., the content may be entertaining in one way or another, but if you go there on your company computer, it will be on your permanent record. And if anyone glances into your cubicle when you're there? Odds are the harassment suit has already been filed.
The term has been popularized through the drunken antics of Drew Curtis.
*Maybe you can get away with boobies on your work computer screen (and permanently in your archived history).
*Maybe you can get away with Nazi imagery on your work computer screen (and permanently in your archived history).
*Maybe you can get away with some crap at RationalWiki (oops, too late!) on your work computer screen (and permanently in your archived history).
Most people can't.
IF IT SAYS NSFW, DON'T GO THERE AT WORK! (Or school, for that matter, although chances are it has already been blocked anyways.)
==For even worse situations== 
Not Safe For Life (NSFL) is stuff that, as Urban Dictionary puts it, "doesn't matter where you view the material; you will be scarred."http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NSFL Common on Reddit for stuff that isn't technically NSFW but is still horrible.
==See also==
*Trigger warning
==References==
category:internet
Nancy Appleton

Nancy Appleton https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sandiegouniontribune/obituary.aspx?n=nancy-appleton&pid=195013736 was an American nutritionist, low-carb promoter and anti-sugar campaigner. She was associated with the pseudoscientific Cancer Control Society.https://www.cancercontrolsociety.org/bio2009/appleton.html
Appleton had a BS in clinical nutrition from UCLA and PhD in health services from Walden University.https://www.cancercontrolsociety.org/films/sweetsuicide.html She authored a series of books which claimed that refined sugar upsets body chemistry and devastates the endocrine and immune systems, and which results in a host of diseases. Appleton linked almost every disease to sugar consumption.See for example her book Suicide by Sugar, 2009.
On her website (which is still online), Appleton posted "141 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health".https://nancyappleton.com/141-reasons-sugar-ruins-your-health/Another website claims 146 reasons In theory, Appleton's crusade against sugar was not irrational but she would sometimes make sensationalist claims and insert dubious information about sugar into her books. For example, she once asserted that drinking soda is like drinking battery acid.https://nancyappleton.com/2012/01/02/we-cant-make-this-stuff-up/
Appleton would only rarely cite recent systematic reviews as references which is the way evidence-based medicine works. Instead she would cite outdated sources or studies with small sample sizes.Check her references for "141 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health". Her publications were not peer-reviewed and were entirely ignored by the medical community but her book Lick the Sugar Habit became a bestseller. 
Various alternative medicine and low-carb groups have taken interest in Appleton's books. They were advertised by the Cancer Control Society and sold by the which promotes the crackpot ideas of Weston Price. 
Unlike other low-carbers (e.g. Gary Taubes), Appleton was not a cholesterol denialist. She was extremely thin and may have suffered from anorexia.Check this video and see for yourself.
Appleton claimed to have suffered from a weakened immune system, she died from metastasized skin cancer.Nancy Appleton, A Life
==Notable works==
*Lick the Sugar Habit, 1985
*Suicide by Sugar: A Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction, 2009
*Killer Colas: The Hard Truth about Soft Drinks, 2011
==References==
Category:Food woo promoters
Category:Low-carb fanatics
Nanny state

Nanny state (also known as government paternalism) is a snarl term used by libertarians and sometimes, though hypocritically, by conservativesOh, sure, conservatives say they want small government, but they have a nasty tendency towards authoritarianism, which, among many other things that any sane person would fault it for, is basically the exact opposite of small government. for perceived over-regulation by a government. The classic example involves laws requiring the wearing of a seat-belt, but the label can refer to any behavior that risks harm to the self but no one else. A list of potential candidates for accusations of nanny statism would include:
* assisted-suicide bansCato Institute
* certain building codes
* compulsory saving for retirement and health insurance, or even tax incentives for retirement savingsCato Institute
* helmet requirements for bicyclists and motorcyclistsCP
* recreational-drug bansNotably absent from Conservapedia's trenchant analysis.
* prostitution bansDitto. 
* so-called "sin taxes" on alcohol, sugar, tobacco, and gambling 
Conservapedia even includes compulsory education, public-service announcements encouraging healthy eating, and (why not?) Hillary Clinton's observation and subsequent book title, "It Takes a Village."CP
==Nannyism or reasonable restrictions on "rights" (like the right to be stupid)?==
As usual, whether the government action qualifies as “nanny statism” depends on whether the person agrees with the action. Sin taxes, at minimum, raise revenue for necessary infrastructure, education, and public services without distorting the economy in harmful ways. Actions that seem to threaten only the well-being of the person who engages in the risky behavior can potentially harm others because others often have to pay for the medical treatment by way of increased hospital costs. Recreational drugs have harmful effects on people other than just the user, notably the neglected children of drug addicts and people who have to deal with drunken/drugged behaviour from others (see Drug Liberalization for more on this topic). 
==See also==
*Health and safety
*Clean living movement
*Singapore
==Notes==
==References==
__NOTOC__
Category: Political terms
Nanoflowcell

thumb|right|165px|The questionable car in question.
Nanoflowcell is a string of companies, registered in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and most recently in the United Kingdom, presenting cars that are claimed to be using flow cell batteries to power cars. These flow cell batteries are supposed to be fueled by salt water of two types, "organic" and "non-organic" salt.
==Origin==
The person claiming to have invented this fuel cell, Nunzio La Vecchia, is a song writer making elevator music. He also claims to be a musician, although music videos with him performing don't show his hands and his face at the same time except for extremely simple motions.
The cars presented by Nanoflowcell have been designed by Koenigsegg, and are branded as "QUANT E".
==Claims==
There is a lack of scientific understanding or patents describing how salt water can be used to produce electric energy with the efficiency and energy density that the company claims, and no independent third party measurements confirming the claims are available. The claimed performance contradicts research that has been done on flow batteries. It has been said that "there is no solid proof just yet that the QUANT E actually works and performs as advertised".
==Education==
Nunzio La Vecchia does not have any formal education in engineering or similar background, and has bought a PhD title.
Nanocells Chairman, Jens-Peter Ellermann, has the title 'Professor' in many interviews, yet no university seems to employ him. He does offer violin courses and promotes himself as a "Star-Professor" on his website.
==Fraud==
Nunzio La Vecchia has been accused of fraud in connection with a revolutionary photovoltaic cell that was supposed to have a substantially higher efficiency than competing cells. In a court case he explained that the prototypes had been destroyed for security reasons in 1999 or 2000.
As of 2015, no competitor comes close to the claimed efficiency. Similar accusations were made in connection with a car that was supposed to run on photovoltaic cells with an efficiency that could not be explained by science. The car was never sold to customers.
==External links==
*The Nanoflowcell website
*Article on Nunzio La Vecchia in the Swiss magazine Beobachter, March 1st, 2016 (in German)
==References==
Category:Transport