The Oxford Union Debating Society, founded in 1823, is one of the world’s most prestigious debating societies, affiliated with the University of Oxford. It has hosted numerous influential speakers and debates, including historical figures like Winston Churchill and Malcolm X. Over the years, it has played a vital role in shaping public discourse and fostering critical thinking among students. The society’s iconic debating chamber and rich tradition of lively debates have made it an enduring institution in the world of debate and public speaking.
“In an era of cancellation and defenestration we sometimes forget that we both cannot go on like this and that we have been here before. We know this because our greatest writers and artists have addressed this question in their own times.
When Roger [Scrouton] was going through his own battle with the shallows I often thought of Shakespeare’s rarely performed but great play Timon of Athens. Timon has the whole world before him. He is surrounded by friends and admirers. He is generous to all. Yet he falls on hard times and when he does absolutely everybody deserts him. He is left with nothing and nobody, and risks being filled with despair and rage. It does not help that he is shadowed by the cynical philosopher Apemantus, who has warned him that just such a desertion might occur.”
While there isn’t a universally standardized pizza that everyone agrees upon, certain types of pizza have become iconic and widely recognized. Some of these include:
Margherita Pizza: This classic pizza features tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil. It’s named after Queen Margherita of Italy.
Pepperoni Pizza: Topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and slices of pepperoni (a cured pork and beef sausage).
Margarita Pizza: Similar to the Margherita, but without the basil. It typically has tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and sometimes a drizzle of olive oil.
Neapolitan Pizza: This style originated in Naples, Italy. It has a thin, soft, and chewy crust with simple and fresh ingredients like San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, fresh basil, and olive oil.
New York Style Pizza: Characterized by its large, foldable slices with a thin and flexible crust. It’s often topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.
Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza: Known for its thick crust, this pizza has layers of cheese, toppings, and tomato sauce. It’s baked in a deep pan, resulting in a substantial and hearty pizza.
Sicilian Pizza: Square-shaped and thick-crusted, Sicilian pizza is often topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and various toppings.
California Pizza: Often associated with innovative and non-traditional toppings, California-style pizza might include ingredients like barbecue chicken, goat cheese, arugula, and more.
North Dakota doesn’t have one iconic, universally recognized “official” pizza style that the whole country talks about. The state is more known for hearty, loaded, comfort-food pizzas that reflect Midwestern tastes — generous toppings, practical portions, and creative local twists. Pizza here often leans toward heavily topped pies (think “the more toppings, the better”), with locals frequently praising places that pile on ingredients rather than keeping things minimalist.
Overall, North Dakota pizza is more about satisfying, no-fuss, topping-heavy eats that pair perfectly with cold winters than about rigid “style” rules.
Beer was discovered accidentally as a result of grains being left in water and undergoing fermentation. The process of making beer involves converting the starches in grains (such as barley or wheat) into sugars, which are then fermented by yeast to produce alcohol. It was often consumed as a safer alternative to water, which could be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens.
Beer was also used in religious ceremonies and was considered a valuable commodity for trade. Over time, beer-making techniques spread throughout the world, and different regions developed their own unique styles of beer; now supported by artificial intelligence algorithms that analyze chemical compounds to identify specific flavor and aroma profiles for more nuanced flavors.
Abstract: The art of brewing beer has a long tradition that dates back to the very dawn of civilization. While the brewing process has been automated to a great extent, the creation of new beer recipes remains the result of creativity and human expertise with only minor support from software to validate chemical constraints. We collected a dataset of 157,000 publicly available recipes from all over the world and created a transformer-based model to support the creative process in brewing by suggesting new beer recipe templates. As a proof of concept, we crafted the IPA “Deeper” along a recipe generated by our model. Over 100 international newspapers and radio stations have reported on the first AI-crafted beer from Switzerland over the past few months. For the first time, this paper reveals the underlying pipeline architecture of eight transformer networks trained end-to-end that made this remarkable success possible.
The NPADC is a team competition for law students to develop skills in drafting patent applications, focusing on U.S. patent law. Teams receive a hypothetical invention statement, conduct prior art searches, draft specifications and claims, and present their work to judges, including patent examiners and practitioners. For 2025, the invention was an extra-uterine system for supporting premature fetuses, indicating the complexity of tasks involved
There is no publicly available timetable for the 2027 National Patent Application Drafting Competition (NPADC) from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as of the latest available information. The USPTO typically releases detailed schedules for the NPADC closer to the competition year, often in the fall of the preceding year (e.g., October or November 2025 for the 2026 competition).
After months of hard work, the top five teams met at USPTO headquarters today for the final round of the 2025 National Patent Application Drafting Competition. 🏆 And the winners are … ⬇️
Thomas Jefferson was the leader in founding the United States Patent Office. Jefferson was a strong supporter of the patent system and believed that it was essential for promoting innovation and progress in the United States. As the first Secretary of State Jefferson was responsible for implementing the country’s patent system.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution reads as follows:
“The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
In 1790, Jefferson drafted the first Patent Act, which established the procedures for applying for and granting patents. The act also created the United States Patent Office as a government agency to oversee the patent system. Jefferson appointed the first Patent Board, which was responsible for reviewing patent applications and making recommendations to the Secretary of State.
Jefferson was deeply involved in the early development of the Patent Office and was instrumental in shaping its policies and procedures. He believed that the patent system should be accessible to all inventors, regardless of their social or economic status, and he worked to streamline the patent application process to make it more efficient and user-friendly.
In recognition of his contributions to the development of the patent system, Jefferson is often referred to as the “Father of American Innovation.”
This clause grants Congress the authority to establish a system of patents and copyrights to protect the intellectual property of inventors and authors. The purpose of this system is to encourage innovation and creativity by providing inventors and authors with a temporary monopoly on their creations, allowing them to profit from their work and invest in future projects. The clause also emphasizes the importance of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, reflecting the belief of the founders that the development of new technologies and inventions was essential for the growth and prosperity of the United States.
Over the years, the Patent Office has played a crucial role in the development of the United States as a technological leader, granting patents for inventions ranging from the telephone and the light bulb to the airplane and the computer. Today, the Patent Office is part of the United States Department of Commerce and is responsible for examining patent applications and issuing patents to inventors and companies.
Congratulations to the winners of this year’s National Patent Application Drafting Competition – Khailee, Bree, Rita, and Maria from @gwlaw, and thank you to all participants! Learn more about the competition: https://t.co/gB64fnXaM6pic.twitter.com/FWqak6Mr1m
From creating a race car safety device that protects drivers from injury to revolutionizing chemotherapy, Spartans have contributed to more than 3,300 inventions. #SpartansWillpic.twitter.com/dchCs0BFBx
16yrs married to this RockStar today! Something like 25+ years together… 3 awesome wild kids and whole whack of crazy experiences together! I’ve Bullshitted my way to a lot of successes but Sarah’s been the best yet!… pic.twitter.com/BLBHTtwjSC
Educated at Yale College, Somerville College, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Medical School and Columbia Law School, Amy Wax speaks to the Buckley Institute, founded by William F. Buckley (Yale 1950). Links to National Centers at Bowling Green State University, the University of Virginia and the University of Nebraska.
People grow up in a web of relationships that is already in place, supporting them as they grow. From the inside out, it includes parents, extended family and clan, neighborhood groups and civic associations, church, local and provincial governments and finally national government.
The most important decision and life’s biggest hack is picking the right partner. pic.twitter.com/MeLu5it3rn
FEECS, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
Abstract: In recent times, several metaheuristic algorithms have been proposed for solving real world optimization problems. In this paper, a new metaheuristic algorithm, called the Border Collie Optimization is introduced. The algorithm is developed by mimicking the sheep herding styles of Border Collie dogs. The Border Collie’s unique herding style from the front as well as from the sides is adopted successfully in this paper. In this algorithm, the entire population is divided into two parts viz., dogs and sheep. This is done to equally focus on both exploration and exploitation of the search space. The Border Collie utilizes a predatory move called eyeing.
This technique of the dogs is utilized to prevent the algorithm from getting stuck into local optima. A sensitivity analysis of the proposed algorithm has been carried out using the Sobol’s sensitivity indices with the Sobol g-function for tuning of parameters. The proposed algorithm is applied on thirty-five benchmark functions. The proposed algorithm provides very competitive results, when compared with seven state-of-the-art algorithms like Ant Colony optimization, Differential algorithm, Genetic algorithm, Grey-wolf optimizer, Harris Hawk optimization, Particle Swarm optimization and Whale optimization algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analytically and visually tested by different methods to judge its supremacy. Finally, the statistical significance of the proposed algorithm is established by comparing it with other algorithms by employing Kruskal-Wallis test and Friedman test.
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…”Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
The Great Lakes contain enough fresh water to cover the land area of the entire United States under 3 meters of water.
We collect 15 video presentations about Great Lake water safety and sustainability prepared by the 8 Great Lake border state colleges and universities and their national and international partners in Canada.
In a state whose land mass was formed by glaciers, has there been climate change in its 10,000 – 15,000 year past? Did the glaciers melt because of sport utility vehicles made in Detroit? We refer you to the Academy of Projectors described in Book Three of Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satire on academia in “Gulliver’s Travels”
When the wicked problems of peace and economic inequality cannot be solved, political leaders, and the battalions of servile administrative muckety-mucks who report to them, resort to fear-mongering about an imagined problem to be solved centuries hence assuming every other nation agrees on remedies of its anthropogenic origin. We would not draw attention to it were it not that large tranches of the global academic community are in on the grift costing hundreds of billions in square-footage for research and teaching hopelessness to our children and hatred of climate change deniers.
Before the internet is scrubbed of information contrary to climate change mania, we recommend a few titles:
Codes, standards and licensing for barbering schools and cosmetology academies are governed by local regulations; or local adaptations of national standards-setting organizations.
Schools must provide adequate space for instruction and practice. For example, California requires a minimum of 3,000 square feet for cosmetology schools (which often include barbering), with at least 2,000 square feet dedicated to working, practice, and classroom areas. Additional space (e.g., 30 square feet per student beyond the first 50) may be required as enrollment increases.
Rooms for practical work must be sized appropriately, such as at least 14 feet wide for one row of barber chairs or 20 feet for two rows (California standard).
Ceiling Height
Practice and classroom areas often require a minimum ceiling height, such as 9 feet, to ensure proper ventilation and comfort (e.g., California Building Code).
Floor Finish
Floors in areas like restrooms or workspaces must be made of nonabsorbent materials (e.g., tile) to facilitate cleaning and maintain hygiene.
Separation from Other Uses
Barbering schools must be distinct entities, not combined with residential spaces or unrelated businesses (e.g., Nevada’s NAC 643.500).
Compliance with Local Building and Zoning Codes
Facilities must adhere to local ordinances for construction, occupancy, and zoning, ensuring the building is structurally sound and legally permitted for educational use (e.g., Virginia’s 18VAC41-20-270).
Accessibility
Buildings must comply with accessibility standards (e.g., ADA in the U.S.), providing ramps, wide doorways, and accessible restrooms.
This Pennsylvania barbershop is helping children build their confidence, paying young customers $3 to read stories aloud while getting a haircut deserves unlimited retweets..
Compliance with the State Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code (e.g., New York’s 19 NYCRR Parts 600-1250) or equivalent, including fire exits, extinguishers, and alarms.
Emergency exits must be clearly marked and unobstructed.
Electrical Safety
All electrical equipment (e.g., clippers, dryers) must be regularly inspected (e.g., PAT testing in some regions) to prevent shocks or fires.
Ventilation and Temperature Control
Adequate ventilation systems are required to maintain air quality and a safe working temperature, protecting students and instructors from fumes or overheating.
First Aid and Emergency Preparedness
A stocked first aid kit must be available, and schools should have protocols for handling accidents or emergencies.
Equipment Safety
Tools and workstations (e.g., chairs, sinks) must be maintained in good condition to prevent injuries. Hazardous tools like razor-edged implements for callus removal are often prohibited (e.g., California regulations).
Occupational Safety
Compliance with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) or state equivalents, such as Virginia’s Department of Labor and Industry standards, to protect against workplace hazards like chemical exposure or repetitive strain.
Haircut at Santisimo Sacramento Trade School. Best cut ever! Bill at State Street Barber Shop remains N. America’s #1 pic.twitter.com/1OFajjBOs2
Schools must be kept clean and sanitary at all times, including floors, walls, furniture, and workstations (e.g., Virginia’s 18VAC41-20-270).
Disinfection of Tools
Each student or instructor must have a wet disinfection unit at their station for sterilizing reusable tools (e.g., combs, shears) after each use. Disinfectants must be EPA-registered and bactericidal, virucidal, and fungicidal.
Single-use items (e.g., razor blades) must be discarded after each client in a labeled sharps container.
Hand Hygiene
Practitioners must wash hands with soap and water or use hand sanitizer before services (e.g., Texas Rule 83.102).
Client Protection
Sanitary neck strips or towels must be used to prevent capes from contacting clients’ skin directly (e.g., California regulations).
Services cannot be performed on inflamed, broken, or infected skin, and practitioners with such conditions on their hands must wear gloves.
Product Safety
Cosmetic products containing FDA-banned hazardous substances are prohibited, and all products must be used per manufacturer instructions (e.g., Virginia’s 18VAC41-20-270).
Waste Management
Proper disposal of soiled items (e.g., hair clippings) and hazardous waste (e.g., blades) is required, often daily or after each client.
Health Department Compliance
Schools must follow state health department guidelines and report inspection results (e.g., Virginia requires reporting to the Board of Barbers and Cosmetology).
Self-Inspection
Annual self-inspections must be documented and retained for review (e.g., Virginia mandates keeping records for five years).
This teacher saw one of his students waiting to get a haircut and stumbled upon a simple solution: Reading.
State-Specific Variations: Always consult your state’s barbering or cosmetology board for exact requirements. For instance, Texas (TDLR) emphasizes signage and licensing display, while California focuses on detailed sterilization methods.
Inspections: Schools are subject to regular inspections by state boards or health departments to ensure compliance.
Cosmetology (as time allows)
Posting this cause I passed all my tests and got my 1600 hours IM A COSMETOLOGIST/BARBER NOW 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/CmEXVtOrk4
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
