nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Black box

A black box refers to any system understood in terms of input and output with no knowledge of the inner workings of the system, or how the output is derived from the input. Wilhelm Cauer helped develop the concept during the 1940s.Black box 
==Philosophy and rationalism==
"Black box" can refer to any system from sub-atomic interactions through electronics to the human brain. The ignorance of the inner workings can be caused either from individual ignorance (where it's a black box only to people who don't know about it, but others know the inner workings), general ignorance (no one knows how it works), or assumption of ignorance (such as behaviorists who claimed the mind should be treated as a black box to operationalize psychology). 
In philosophy, philosophical intuition is often treated as a black box that gives reliable answers. The psychological study of cognitive biases opens this black box and documents just how badly wrong this assumption of reliability is.
It's an open question about whether all black boxes can eventually be explored and understood or if some systems are fundamentally unknowable; however, the core tenet/hope of rationalism is that every black box can eventually be opened as knowledge increases.
A black box is a generalization of the mathematical concept of a which is an equation that assigns exactly one output to each input.
==Black box and religion==
Arguments such as Goddidit assumes a black-box approach to the inner workings of the universe (also phrased in old horror movies as "Things Man was not meant to know"); God of the gaps is what happens when someone opens the box and the person saying Goddidit claims the as-yet-unopened boxes contain magic. 
Darwin's Black Box is the title of a book by Michael Behe on irreducible complexity. Basically, whenever Behe personally cannot find a way how something could have evolved, he assumes that God must have designed it.Darwin's Black Box, Irreducible Complexity or Irreproducible Irreducibility?
==Technology==
"Black boxes" on aircraft, and even some cars, are highly-durable devices which record flight details together with what goes on in the cockpit and can help determine the cause of any accident. There are actually 2 boxes. The Flight Data Recorder records technical information from instruments. The Cockpit Voice Recorder records audio from the cockpit, including conversations between the pilots, as well as a variety of other noises that can be heard in the cockpit. These boxes are actually brightly coloured rather than black. This is so they can be retrieved more easily if they become separated from the rest of the plane.How Black Boxes Work
==External links==
*A General Black Box Theory, Mario Bunge. Physics Department, Temple University, Philadelphia
* — Wikipedia on the black box concept
==References==
category:Philosophy
Category:Science
Category:Technology
Black chamber

A black chamber (cabinet noir as it was originally rendered by the French) refers to the name given for secret letter-opening rooms for scrutinizing the letters of suspicious citizens without their knowledge as they went through the postal system, resealing the letters once the analysis was finished so the snooping would not be detected in the first place.
Many of these existed as part of the intelligence organs of many medieval monarchies, and many military organizations even in contemporary times employ mail censors who scrutinize outgoing mail for unauthorized disclosure of military secrets.
Originally, black chambers would intercept the letters they were ordered to scrutinize, make copies of any seals or bindings on the letter for later reapplication or resealing to avoid tipping off the intended recipient the original had been tampered with, then, after examining the letter, would send it forward to the recipient with the resealed letters not looking as if they had been tampered with.
In the modern day, this is but one of the many functions of modern intelligence agencies.
==References==
*
Category:Government surveillance
Black triangle

Black triangles are a type of UFO that look like, well, black triangles with or without lights on their tips. The type seems to have become popular in the 1980s and 1990s. By some coincidence, this is about the same time when vaguely triangular stealth aircraft like B-2 and F-117 were tested and commissioned. Some crazier individuals might propose that these stealth aircraft are actually reverse engineered black triangles. For some time, sightings of black triangles became much more common.http://www.space.com/302-silent-running-black-triangle-sightings-rise.html Either the old flying saucers became passé for alien pilots, or this is just a new fad in hoaxes.
==Explanation==
Most likely there's no single reason explaining all cases. Nevertheless, here are several possible reasons (assuming that the observer actually saw something triangular):
*Any group of three lights in the dark sky may be interpreted by an observer as a single, triangular craft, even if it's actually three aircraft flying in a formation or something entirely else. Given that a number of these sightings occur at night, this is probably one of the most plausible explanations.
*Misidentified stealth aircraft: the military would be very happy indeed to have their secret stuff "identified" as an alien craft Unidentified Flying Object, although some claims overlap with conspiracy theories such as that about a top secret plane called the TR-3B which is capable of flying into space.PROOF OF BLACK PROJECTS? Stunning 'TR-3B triangle UFO filmed on dashcam', Daily Express, Mar 5, 2018
**A "stealth blimp" (see http://www.thestealthblimp.com/, though this one borders on a conspiracy theory)
*A trio of first or second generation Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellites — US spy satellites that fly in a triangular formation.http://www.satobs.org/noss.htmlhttp://web.archive.org/web/20081224190856/http://www.astronautix.com/craft/noss.htm
One particular declassified document from the UK ministry of defense suggests that most sightings could be a sort of buoyant plasma, that is to say a completely natural phenomenon.http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/BA0DA42F-2C56-431E-98F6-19CD45EE7D43/0/uap_vol3_executive_summary_pg2_paras4_and_7.pdf
==See also==
* Aurora (aircraft)
==External links==
* 
==References==
Category:Ufology
Blobsquatch

A blobsquatch is a portmanteau of "blob" and "sasquatch". It is usually used derisively to refer to the photographic or video evidence offered by cryptozoologists, UFOlogists, ghost hunters, and Elvispotters that are of poor quality. 
==Features==
Blobsquatch photos share one or more of the following features:
* Out of focus
* The subject is hidden in shadow
* The subject is taken from a long distance away and the blow up is grainy or pixelated as hell
==History==
Although the term has become a favorite of skeptics these days, it does seem to have emerged in the cryptozoology camp as a kind of by more serious researchers when presented with alleged photos of Bigfoot. Loren Coleman has suggestedThe Short History of Blobsquatch. Cryptomundo, 2006. the term was coined by Bigfoot researcher Vito Quaranta and used by him on a Bigfoot forum. Fellow squatching enthusiast Ray Randell popularized the term for several years in the early 2000s. Alton Higgins was the first to use the term in print in a 2004 paper titled "Evaluating Purported Sasquatch Photographic Evidence". He suggested:
That seems reasonable.
==Expanded use==
The term in recent years has been applied to any extremely bad photo of almost any woo phenomenon. For example, videos and photos from the UAP flap of the 2020s have been compared to a blobsquatch.Tweet by Walter Burton.
Sharon Hill may have been one of the first to introduce the term into skeptical circles in a 2006 blog post.Sharon Hill. Unexplained Blobjects. 2006.
==See also==
*Apophenia
*Electronic voice phenomenon
*Face on Mars
*Pareidolia
*Religious pareidolia
==External links==
*xkcd cartoon - "Alien Observers"
==References==
category:neologisms
Bloop

The Bloop is a famous oceanic fart detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1997. The sound was picked up on — a Cold War relic, originally designed to track Soviet submarines. Although the Bloop's acoustic signature makes it look biological in origin, it is much much louder than anything previously recorded and dwarfs sound by even the largest whales. The Bloop is a favorite among cryptozoologists, who think it demonstrates the existence of some type of cryptid or alien. NOAA has suggested that the bloop was most likely produced by an icequake.
SOSUS has picked up other unusual sounds, which have been labelled . Slowdown, Train and Julia are again most likely probably produced by ice. Upsweep might have been produced by an undersea volcano. The origin of whistle is less clear.
==Claims==
There has been no explanation as further efforts to research the sound have been unsuccessful, because it has not been heard since 1997.
It is possible to identify animals by the sounds they make. Normally, when sounds are unidentifiable, they are given names like Whistle, Slowdown, Upsweep, and Train. The Bloop, although it sounded like a blue whale, originated 4,800 km away, seemingly ruling out any known marine animal. However, some believe that this sound could have been emitted by a whale and carried that distance by warm water currents.
Some postulate that the sound may come from a huge and as-yet-undiscovered species of octopus or squid, or possibly a new species of gigantic whale or fish even larger than the blue whale. Others dispute this, pointing out that all known cephalopods lack the gas-filled sac necessary to produce this type of sound, and that a cetacean larger than a blue whale would still have to surface for oxygen, making it susceptible to sightings, unless it had some smaller breathing apparatus, not unlike an elephant's trunk. 
The Bloop theoretically could have been the product of a machine. The frequency of the Bloop technically is not too low for a machine, but it would be difficult for a machine to produce a sound of such volume.
It is also possible that the sound was made by a large number of creatures emitting a synchronous vibration.
Some people also believe that the sound may belong to a creature called Cthulhu, described by H. P. Lovecraft in his literature. Supposedly, the sunken city of is near the place the Bloop was recorded. Lovecraft said that R'lyeh is located at 47°9′S, 126°43′W in the southern Pacific Ocean.
==In a nutshell==
	
	
==See also==
*Cthulhu
*Sky sounds
 
==External links==
*Damn Interesting's "The Call of the Bloop"
*Bloopwatch
*Episode #178, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, 16 December 2008
*Episode #177, "The Bloop", Skeptoid, 27 October 2009
*What it actually was
Category:Cryptozoology
Category:Geology
Category:Science
Category:Sound woo
Blotting

Blotting is a method of analysing DNA and RNA. There are two main blotting techniques.
Northern blotting, or Northern hybridization, is a technique for detection of specific RNA sequences to study gene expression. Northern blotting was developed by James Alwine and George Stark at Stanford University and was named such by analogy to Southern blotting, named for biologist Edwin Southern, used to study DNA. Northern blotting involves the following steps: 
:#Total cellular RNA or mRNA is size-separated by denaturing agarose gel electrophoresis.
:#The separated RNA is transferred onto a nylon membrane.
:#The RNA is then detected with isotopic or non-isotopic labeled complementary DNA or RNA probe.
A notable difference in the procedure (as compared with the Southern blot) is the addition of formaldehyde in the agarose gel, which acts as a denaturant.
As in the Southern blot, the hybridization probe may be made from DNA or RNA.
Southern blotting was named after Edward M. Southern who developed this procedure at Edinburgh University in the 1975. It allows investigators to determine the molecular weight of a restriction fragment, to measure relative amounts in different samples and to locate a particular sequence of DNA within a complex mixture. DNA (genomic or other source) is digested with a restriction enzyme and separated by gel electrophoresis and transferred from an agarose gel onto a membrane which is then incubated with a probe which is single-stranded DNA. This probe will form base pairs with its complementary DNA sequence and bind to form a double-stranded DNA molecule. The probe is labeled before hybridization either radioactively or enzymatically (e.g. alkaline phosphatase or horseradish peroxidase). Finally, the location of the probe is detected by directly exposing the membrane to X-ray film or chemiluminescent methods.
==References==
*Explanation of the procedure
Category:Biochemistry
Blowback

Blowback is when a nation's foreign policy leads to attacks against it in the future. More specifically, it's when the foreign policy, originally formulated from a dominant and/or optionally engaging positionSerbia getting a declaration of war from Austria-Hungary... of realpolitikHumanitarian aid given to a dictator who sells it to buy weapons... for or against another sovereign entity and/or its allies, leads to an attack from the same. Some consider it self-evident that things one does today could create problems in the future.
==Examples==
===Europe between the world wars===
After World War I, the victorious allies were determined to, in the words of "squeeze Germany till the pips squeak." Allied governments and people who had suffered during the Great War both supported this. John Maynard Keynes was very critical of the terms. The German and Austrian governments were made to pay reparations, infuriating their citizenry. Blame levied upon the reparations, as well as other stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles, for a ragged economy and chronic hyperinflation, were major factors in the rise of Hitler and the development of Nazi Germany.
===Soviet-Afghanistan War and Al-Qaeda===
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in a proxy war in Afghanistan. The CIA had helped the rebel Mujahideen with $3.2-20 billion from the United States through the CIA operation "Cyclone." While many of them were anti-Islamist, there were a few that weren't who pocketed the rest. These payments quite naturally caused Osama bin Laden's movement to grow considerably.
After the war, he organized what he had into Al Qaeda. The organization was involved in many terrorist operations. However, the group truly came to prominence on September 11, 2001, in a series of attacks known as 9/11.
==See also==
*Streisand effect
*Henry Kissinger
*Axis of Evil
==External links==
*Blowback's a bitch, Mark Galeotti
==References==
Category:Government incompetence
Category:International relations
Category:Political terms
Category:War
Blue Planet Project

The Blue Planet Project (BPP) is an online journal which claims to have been created by whistleblower scientists who were allegedly involved in an "above-top-secret" government project.https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/blueplanetproject/blueplanetproject.htm They should not be confused with a Canadian group that supports access to clean water, The Blue Planet Project.About The Blue Planet Project.
A note on BPP's website reads:
As you can probably tell, this sounds an awful lot like just another batshit insane conspiracy theory, like many other claims of top-secret alien encounters. And also, one could see a group of scientists and other professionals creating an informal discussion group to discuss not only offbeat/implausible ideas like the Blue Planet Project, but also the six different ways in which that idea is a steaming pile of bullshit. However, if "one or more" of them decided that "public interest" overrode whatever United States Official Above Top Secret Act™ they had signed, they would be clever and ingenious enough to find some way of either revealing the information to the public without being traced and/or simply hiring a hack novelist to write an airport bookshop best-seller.
==Claims==
===About the alleged whistleblower===
The unnamed scientist whom the journal claims wrote the notes about the aliens who have supposedly crashed here on Earth was allegedly discovered to be documenting these encounters by Big Government™, and was "scheduled for termination". However, why the folks who created Blue Planet Project haven't also been targeted for termination remains a mystery.Apparently, the government must be mega-tolerant to not have eaten the people who made BPP alive already.https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/blueplanetproject/blueplanetproject00.htm
===About the "aliens"===
Of course, BPP has some very vague information about the aliens that allegedly landed on Earth (and strangely only in Americahttps://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/blueplanetproject/blueplanetproject02.htm Which, by the way, is the only country on Earth that these aliens ever seem to crash-land in…). The details are as follows:
In short, basically the usual alien conspiracy theories. Like virtually all other similar conspiracy theories, the only government ever accused of doing the bidding of top-secret extraterrestrials is that of the U.S. of A. Also, as you can see, all of the "information" contained on this list is very vague, and never backs up any of its assertions with any specific examples. And again, these aliens and Top Secret Government Cabal must be mega-tolerant to not have eaten these BPP whistleblowers alive already…
==See also==
*Above Top Secret — another conspiracy website
==External links==
*Their Facebook page
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Conspiracy theorists
Blue law

Blue law is the US term for laws limiting retail activities on Sundays, including laws restricting or barring the sale of alcoholic beverages, or restricting or barring businesses from being open at all on Sunday.https://www.britannica.com/topic/blue-law These laws originated in Christian tradition but are often maintained for economic or political reasons. "Blue" in this sense comes from a 17th century (or in the US, 18th century) usage meaning "rigidly moral".
The trend over the past few decades has been to repeal blue laws, although many still remain on the books. The strictest blue law still in effect is in (of all places) New Jersey. Bergen County, New Jersey contains a high concentration of high-end shopping malls, which attract shoppers from New York City taking advantage of lower state sales taxes. This has motivated residents to retain the county's law banning sales of just about everything on Sunday, despite many referenda to repeal it. The blue law is estimated to cost the county millions of dollars in lost business and sales taxes,https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/americas-last-ban-sunday-shopping but there's a compelling case to be made that keeping New Yorkers away for at least one day a week is worth it.
Some blue laws, such as those preventing automobile sales from being conducted on Sundays, were pushed forward not by religious groups but by local industry leaders, to give them a day off and ensure that none of their competitors would be open on that day.https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-cant-you-buy-a-car-on-sunday-262228
Whether or not the NFL had anything to do with these laws is fair game for speculation.
In some European countries, particularly Switzerlandhttps://www.ch.ch/en/working-night-or-sundays/ and Austria,http://businessculture.org/western-europe/business-culture-in-austria/work-life-balance-in-austria/ laws restricting Sunday trading have been supported by an alliance of religious conservatives, workers' rights activists (who are concerned that 7-day opening would lead to pressure on low-paid workers to work all 7 days), and small business supporters (as both countries exempt shops, etc., where there are no employees and only the owner or joint owners work there).
==See also==
* National Sunday law: A Seventh-day Adventist conspiracy theory about Sunday blue laws in the United States.
* Prohibition
* Teetotalism
==External links==
*Sunday Blue Laws
*Sunday retailing laws in England and Wales
==Notes==
==References==
__NOTOC__
Category:Law
Category:Religion
Bob Livingston

Bob Livingston was a Roman Catholic Republican congressman from Louisiana who, surprise surprise, couldn't keep his pants up. In late 1998, Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House, and Bob Livingston was selected to take his place. Unfortunately for him, Larry Flynt had placed an ad offering up to $1 million for information on politicians' sexual escapades, and gathered some apparently rather juicy information on adultery on the part of a certain Republican from Louisiana. Tsk, tsk. Bob Livingston instead resigned from Congress in early 1999 to become a lobbyist for the government of Turkey trying to prevent Congress from recognizing the Armenian Genocide. He would later lobby for Libya and Egypt.The New York Times:Arab Unrest Puts Their Lobbyists in Uneasy Spot He was replaced by Vitterman.
He now runs the Orwellianly misnamed Personal Liberty Digest, where he makes incoherent rants about everyone and everything coming to destroy his freedom. Oh, and he's also a germ-theory denialist, a Climate Change denialist, a birther, and a 9/11 Truther as well.
==References==
Category:Former United States Representatives
Category:Christians
Category:Living people
Bobby Mackey's Music World

Bobby Mackey's Music World is a nightclub in Wilder, Kentucky that is supposedly so haunted it has its own portal to Hell in the basement. 
==The club==
Country singer Bobby Mackey bought a run-down building in 1978 and turned it into a nightclub. It wasn't very successful until Mackey heard that a murdered woman's body was dumped in the nearby town of Fort Thomas more than 100 years ago. Since paranormal aficionados consider any murder, even one located 3 miles away, to be sufficient proof of a haunting, the club was soon being promoted as "the most haunted nightclub in the USA".Bobby Mackey's Haunted History Travel Channel
==Fakelore==
The building allegedly housed a meat-packing facility and slaughterhouse in the 1850s; however, why there would be some connection between meat packing and the presence of ghosts and demons is anybody's guess. The owners promote a number of popular but completely unverifiable stories, including one about a dance hall girl named Johanna who committed suicide in the basement after a tragic love affair, gunfights between Cincinnati mobsters in the parking lot, and secret satanic rituals held in the basement by cult members.
==Portal to hell==
The management charges $10 to go into the basement and look at a shallow hole in the dirt floor, most likely an old well or drainage pump site which patrons are assured is the entrance to Hell itself.Bobby Mackey’s Music World, The Gate To Hell beforeitsnews.com‪‪‪‬
==Favorite Yelp comments==
*"The spookiest thing about this place is how little gin they can put in their drinks and still call it a gin and tonic"
*"I'm not sure what's more scary: the paranormal or fat women in tank tops and tube tops riding the bull"
*"Hey, if you're scared of ghosts, no worries, the smoke disguises them"
==As seen on TV==
They may not be able to keep the restrooms clean, but one thing they are very good at is publicity. Bobby Mackey's was launched onto the tabloid TV scene in the early 1990s with a supposed live exorcism of the club's caretaker performed on that most credible of documentary programs, The Jerry Springer Show. More recently, it's received the highly imaginative attention of shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and A Haunting.
==External links==
*Watching over the portal to hell 
*Ghost punched me, man says
==References==
Category:Business
Category:Paranormal
Category:Restaurants