In the spirit of Ben’s list­ma­nia here are five cool Wikipedia arti­cles — most of which have been pulled from this blog I dis­cov­ered called Best of Wikipedia.

1. Wrap Rage Wrap rage, also called pack­age rage, is the com­mon name for height­ened lev­els of anger and frus­tra­tion result­ing from the inabil­ity to open hard-to-remove pack­ag­ingWrap Rage Wrap rage, also called pack­age rage, is the com­mon name for height­ened lev­els of anger and frus­tra­tion result­ing from the inabil­ity to open hard-to-remove packaging
2. Erdős–Bacon Num­ber A person’s Erdős–Bacon num­ber is a con­cept which reflects the small world phe­nom­e­non in acad­e­mia and enter­tain­ment. It is the sum of one’s Erdős number—which mea­sures the “col­lab­o­ra­tive dis­tance” in author­ing math­e­mat­i­cal papers between that per­son and Hun­gar­ian math­e­mati­cian Paul Erdős—and one’s Bacon number—which rep­re­sents the num­ber of links, through roles in films, by which the indi­vid­ual is sep­a­rated from Amer­i­can actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the num­ber, the closer a per­son is to Erdős and Bacon.
3. Nocebo The adjec­tive nocebo is used to label the harm­ful or unpleas­ant reac­tions that a sub­ject man­i­fested as a result of admin­is­ter­ing a placebo drug, where these responses had not been chem­i­cally gen­er­ated, and were entirely due to the subject’s pes­simistic belief and expec­ta­tion that the inert drug would pro­duce harm­ful, inju­ri­ous, unpleas­ant, or unde­sir­able consequences.
4. The Turk The Turk was a fake chess-playing machine con­structed in the late 18th cen­tury. From 1770 until its destruc­tion by fire in 1854, it was exhib­ited by var­i­ous own­ers as an automa­ton, though it was explained in the early 1820s as an elab­o­rate hoax. With a skilled oper­a­tor, the Turk won most of the games played dur­ing its demon­stra­tions around Europe and the Amer­i­cas for nearly 84 years, play­ing and defeat­ing many chal­lengers includ­ing states­men such as Napoleon Bona­parte and Ben­jamin Franklin.
5. I found this one by myself when I was look­ing up this thing called “Poe’s Law” that I hear athe­ists men­tion­ing all the time when talk­ing about satire about Chris­t­ian stuff… it’s a list of epony­mous laws — from the Famous (like Murphy’s Law, to the obscure inter­net phe­nom­ena — like Godwin’s Law).
   

Share any favourites of yours in the comments…

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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