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Circular Reporting
Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. In many cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy reporting or intelligence-gathering. However, the situation can also be intentionally contrived by the source or reporter as a way of reinforcing the widespread belief in its information. Circular reporting occurs in a variety of fields, including intelligence gathering, journalism, and scholarly research. It is of particular concern in military intelligence because the original source has a higher likelihood of wanting to pass on misinformation, and because the chain of reporting is more prone to being obscured. It is also a problem in journalism and the development of conspiracy theories, in which the primary goal of a source spreading unlikely or hard-to-believe information is to make it appear to be widely known. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Griot
A griot (; ; Manding languages, Manding: or (in N'Ko script, N'Ko: , or in French spelling); also spelt Djali; or / ; ) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. Griots are masters of communicating stories and history orally, which is an African tradition. Instead of writing history books, List of oral repositories, oral historians tell stories of the past that they have memorized. Sometimes there are families of historians, and the oral histories are passed down from one generation to the next. Telling a story out loud allows the speaker to use poetic and musical conventions that entertain an audience. This has contributed to many oral histories surviving for hundreds of years without being written down. Through their storytelling, griots preserve and pass on the values of a tribe or people, such as the Senegalese, who are Muslims. The Wolof people in Senegal, many of whom cannot read or write, depend on griots to learn abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sid Meier
Sidney K. Meier ( ; born February 24, 1954) is an American businessman and computer programmer. A programmer, designer, and producer of many strategy video games and simulation video games, including the ''Civilization'' series, Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. For his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Early life and education Meier was born in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, to parents of Dutch and Swiss descent, which conferred on him both Canadian and Swiss citizenship upon birth. When he was about three years old, his family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he was raised. At the University of Michigan, he studied history and computer science, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science in 1975. Career Following college, Mei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Gandhi
Nuclear Gandhi is a video game urban legend purporting the existence of a software bug in the 1991 strategy video game ''Civilization'' that would eventually force the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi to become extremely aggressive and make heavy use of nuclear weapons. The claim was mentioned on the TV Tropes wiki in 2012, and continued until 2020, when the series' creator, Sid Meier, confirmed that the bug would have been impossible in the original game. Gandhi was programmed to exhibit this behavior in ''Civilization V'', released in 2010, and it is unclear whether this led to the belief that the behavior had also been present in earlier games. While fictional, Nuclear Gandhi is one of the most recognizable video game glitches and has been used as an example of integer overflow in computer science, and was included as an Easter egg in other games in the ''Civilization'' series. Background According to the legend, each leader's game AI in ''Civilization'' had a parameter that d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civilization (video Game)
''Sid Meier's Civilization'' is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse. The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC, and it has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war. ''Civilization'' was designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley following the successes of '' Silent Service'', '' Sid Meier' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TV Tropes
TV Tropes (also written as TVTropes) is a wiki founded by "Fast Eddie" in 2004 that collects and documents descriptions and examples of plot conventions and devices, which it refers to as tropes. Its contents cover many creative works and non-media subjects, which are written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as "Tropers". The nature of the site as a provider of commentary on pop culture and fiction has attracted attention and criticism from several web personalities and blogs. Website content In its establishment of 2004, TV Tropes focuses on various tropes. Since then, it shifted focus from covering tropes to those in general media, toys, writings, and their associated fandoms. It also provides non-media subjects such as history, geography, and politics. Contents of TV Tropes are written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as "Tropers". According to the site's Google Analytics in August 2020, tropers primarily consist of 18-34 year olds. Fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curveball (informant)
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (, ; born 1968), known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is a German-French citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004. Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US and British governments utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where the US President George W. Bush said, "We know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and US Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senate Report On Pre-war Intelligence On Iraq
The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence (formally, the Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq) was the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning the United States Intelligence Community, U.S. intelligence community's assessments of Iraq during the time leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The report, which was released on July 9, 2004, identified numerous failures in the intelligence-gathering and -analysis process. The report found that these failures led to the creation of inaccurate materials that misled both government policy makers and the American public. The Committee's nine Republicans and eight Democrats agreed on the report's major conclusions and unanimously endorsed its findings. They disagreed, though, on the impact that statements on Iraq by senior members of the Bush administration had on the intelligence process. The second phase of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iraq Disarmament Crisis
The Iraq disarmament crisis was claimed as one of the primary issues that led to the multinational invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Since the 1980s, Iraq was widely assumed to have been producing and extensively running the programs of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, including against its own Kurdish population. France and the Soviet Union assisted Iraq in the development of its nuclear program, but its primary facility was destroyed by Israel in 1981 in a surprise air strike. After the Gulf War in 1990, the United Nations Special Commission located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials with varying degrees of Iraqi cooperation and obstruction, but the Iraqi cooperation later diminished in 1998. The disarmament issue remained tense throughout the 1990s with U.S. at the UN, repeatedly demanding Iraq to allow inspections te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niger
Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state Geography of Niger#Political geography, bordered by Libya to the Libya–Niger border, north-east, Chad to the Chad–Niger border, east, Nigeria to the Niger–Nigeria border, south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the Benin-Niger border, south-west, Mali to the Mali–Niger border, west, and Algeria to the Algeria–Niger border, north-west. It covers a land area of almost , making it the largest landlocked country in West Africa and the second-largest landlocked nation in Africa behind Chad. Over 80% of its land area lies in the Sahara. Its Islam in Niger, predominantly Muslim population of about million lives mostly in clusters in the south and west of the country. The capital Niamey is located in Niger's south-west corner along the namesake Niger River. Following the spread of Islam to the region, Niger was on the fringes of some states, including the Kanem–Bornu Empire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yellowcake Uranium
Yellowcake (also called urania) is a type of powdered uranium concentrate obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fuel fabrication or uranium enrichment. Yellowcake concentrates are prepared by various extraction and refining methods, depending on the types of ores. Typically, yellowcakes are obtained through the milling and chemical processing of uranium ore, forming a coarse powder that has a pungent odor, is insoluble in water, and contains about 80% uranium oxide, which melts at approximately 2880 °C. Overview Originally, raw uranium ore was extracted by traditional mining, and this is still the case in many mines. It is first crushed to a fine powder by passing it through crushers and grinders to produce "pulped" ore. This is further processed with concentrated acid, alkaline, or peroxide solutions to leach out the uranium. However, nearl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iraq
Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the Iraq–Kuwait border, southeast, Jordan to Iraq–Jordan border, the southwest, and Syria to Iraq–Syria border, the west. The country covers an area of and has Demographics of Iraq, a population of over 46 million, making it the List of countries by area, 58th largest country by area and the List of countries by population, 31st most populous in the world. Baghdad, home to over 8 million people, is the capital city and the List of largest cities of Iraq, largest in the country. Starting in the 6th millennium BC, the fertile plains between Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, referred to as Mesopotamia, fostered the rise of early cities, civilisations, and empires including Sumer, Akkadian Empire, Akkad, and Assyria. Known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
