August 15, 2011
Fuck for forest, or FFF, is a non-profit environmental organization founded in Norway by Leona Johansson and Tommy Hol Ellingsen, which raises money for rescuing the world’s rainforests by producing pornographic material or having sex in public. They are the world’s first eco-porn organization. However, their unorthodox methods have made it difficult to distribute monies. The Norwegian chapter of the Rainforest Foundation Fund as well as the WWF both in the Netherlands and in Norway have refused to accept donations from FFF. As a result, Fuck for Forest is working on a project to work directly with indigenous communities in Costa Rica and the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
The group gained notoriety when its two members had sexual intercourse on stage during a 2004 Quart Festival concert featuring Norwegian singer Kristopher Schau and his band The Cumshots, after delivering a brief talk on the impact humans have on forests. The group then faced legal action as a result (including a fine imposed on the group after its male member dropped his pants in a courtroom), and consequently moved its headquarters to Berlin, Germany.
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August 15, 2011
Chillwave, sometimes also referred to as Glo-Fi, is a genre of music where artists are often characterized by their heavy use of effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines.
The genre combines the larger 2000s trends towards 80s retro music and (in indie music) use of ambient sound, with modern pop. The term is said to have been originated on the Hipster Runoff blog.
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August 15, 2011
During the Vietnam War, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace in Amsterdam and Montreal, which were their non-violent ways of protesting wars and promoting peace. The idea is derived from a ‘sit-in,’ in which a group of protesters remains seated in front of an establishment until they are evicted, arrested, or their demands are met.
Knowing their March 20, 1969 marriage would be a huge press event, John and Yoko decided to use the publicity to promote world peace. They spent their honeymoon in the presidential suite (Room 702 at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel for a week between March 25 and 31, inviting the world’s press into their hotel room every day between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. After their other stunts, such as the nude cover of the ‘Two Virgins’ album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead the couple were sitting in bed—in John’s words ‘like angels’—talking about peace with signs over their bed reading ‘Hair Peace’ and ‘Bed Peace.’
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August 15, 2011
In mathematics education, number sense can refer to ‘an intuitive understanding of numbers, their magnitude, relationships, and how they are affected by operations.’ Some definitions emphasize an ability to work outside of the traditionally taught algorithms, e.g., ‘a well organized conceptual framework of number information that enables a person to understand numbers and number relationships and to solve mathematical problems that are not bound by traditional algorithms.’
There are also some differences in how number sense is defined in the field of mathematical cognition. For example, Gersten and Chard say number sense ‘refers to a child’s fluidity and flexibility with numbers, the sense of what numbers mean and an ability to perform mental mathematics and to look at the world and make comparisons.’ Researchers consider number sense to be of prime importance for children in early elementary education, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has made number sense a focus area of pre-K through 2nd grade mathematics education. An active area of research is to create and test teaching strategies to develop children’s number sense.
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August 14, 2011
The Anthora is a paper coffee cup design that has become iconic of New York City daily life — its name is a play on the word amphora (ceramic container with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body). The cup was originally designed by Leslie Buck of the Sherri Cup Co. in 1963, to appeal to Greek-owned coffee shops in New York City — and was later copied heavily by other companies. The genuine Anthora depicts an image of an Ancient Greek amphora, a meander design on the top and bottom rim, and the words ‘WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU’ in a font that resembles ancient Greek writing. The blue and white colors were inspired by the flag of Greece.
Buck never made royalties from his design, but as a salesman he was remunerated handsomely from the success of the product. When he retired from Sherri Cup Co. in 1992, he was presented with 10,000 Anthoras printed with a testimonial inscription. On the occasion of Buck’s death in 2010, a New York Times writer described the motto on the cup as having ‘welcome intimations of tenderness, succor and humility.’ The trademark is currently held by the Solo Cup Company, which licenses sales of the cup.
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August 14, 2011
The batter’s eye is a solid-colored, usually dark area beyond the center field wall of a baseball stadium, that is the visual backdrop directly in the line of sight of a baseball batter, while facing the pitcher and awaiting a pitch. This dark surface allows the batter to see the pitched ball against a sharply contrasted and uncluttered background. Its primary purpose is the safety of the batter.
The use of a batter’s background has been standard in baseball (as well as cricket) since at least the late 19th century. The Batter’s Eye performs the same role at a baseball venue as the sightscreen does at a cricket venue, except that a cricket sightscreen is usually white in order to contrast with the dark red cricket ball. Alternatively a black screen is used to contrast the white Kookaburra Limited Overs cricket ball.
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August 14, 2011
Cow tipping is the purported activity of sneaking up on a sleeping, upright cow and pushing it over for fun. As cattle do not sleep standing up, cow tipping is a myth. Cattle only rest while standing up, rather than sleeping that way, and they are easily disturbed.
Additionally, they represent over a half ton of weight that would easily resist a lesser tipping force. Horses, however, do regularly sleep standing up due to a locking mechanism of their stifle joint, a trait cows do not possess.
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August 14, 2011
‘Real-Life Superheroes‘ are men and women who, using the thematic device of the costumed superhero, perform services that benefit the community in a variety of ways. Some Real-Life Superheroes (RLSH) hand out supplies to the homeless, while others seek to directly combat crime through community patrols in which suspicious activity is identified and reported to the proper authorities, and some physically confront suspected perpetrators themselves.
Real life super heroes wear masks or otherwise disguise themselves in order to perform ‘heroic deeds’ like community services or fighting crime when they come across it. They are often similar to neighborhood watches or militias. Examples include Phoenix Jones and a team of nine others in the Rain City Superhero Movement.
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August 14, 2011
Sousveillance [soo-vay-lance] refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. Sousveillance has also been described as ‘inverse surveillance’ because the term stems from the contrasting French words ‘sur,’ meaning ‘above,’ and ‘sous,’ meaning ‘below,’ i.e. ‘surveillance’ denotes the ‘eye-in-the-sky’ watching from above, whereas ‘sousveillance’ denotes bringing the camera or other means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching).
While surveillance and sousveillance both generally refer to visual monitoring (i.e. ‘veiller’ being ‘to watch’), the terms also denote other forms of monitoring such as audio surveillance or sousveillance. In the audio sense (e.g. recording of phone conversations) sousveillance is referred to as ‘one party consent.’
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August 14, 2011
Greenwashing (a compound word modelled on ‘whitewash’), or ‘green sheen,’ is a form of spin in which ‘green’ PR or ‘green’ marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that a company’s policies or products are environmentally friendly. The term was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay regarding the hotel industry’s practice of placing placards in each room promoting reuse of towels ostensibly to ‘save the environment.’
Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward reducing energy waste was being made by these institutions — as evidenced by the lack of cost reduction this practice effected. Westerveld opined that the actual objective of this ‘green campaign’ on the part of many hoteliers was, in fact, increased profit. Westerveld thus labeled this and other outwardly environmentally conscientious acts with a greater, underlying purpose of profit increase as greenwashing.
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August 12, 2011
A Mouli grater is a hand-operated cooking tool designed for grating or pureeing small quantities of food. The device consists of a small metal drum with holes that grate the food and a handle for turning the drum. Mouli is a French brand name that later changed into Moulinex. A grating cylinder similar to the one used in this design later turned up in food processors from that company.
The hand-held unit consists of two sections with hinged handles. The end of one handle contains a food hopper with a grating cylinder and a crank for rotating the cylinder. The other section has a rounded surface that acts as a clamp, pressing the food to be grated into the grating cylinder. The hinged handles are held in one hand and squeezed so that the food presses against the grating cylinder. Meanwhile, the other hand turns the crank, causing the cylinder to rotate and the food to be grated.
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August 11, 2011
Ferdinand Cheval (1836 – 1924) was a French postman who spent thirty-three years of his life building Le Palais Idéal (‘The Ideal Palace’) in Hauterives. The structure is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art architecture. Cheval began the building in April 1879. He claimed that he had tripped on a stone and was inspired by its shape. He returned to the same spot the next day and started collecting stones. For the next thirty-three years, Cheval picked up stones during his daily mail round and carried them home to build with. He spent the first twenty years building the outer walls. At first, he carried the stones in his pockets, then switched to a basket. Eventually, he used a wheelbarrow. He often worked at night, by the light of an oil lamp.
The Palais is a mix of different styles with inspirations from Christianity to Hinduism. Cheval bound the stones together with lime, mortar and cement. He also wanted to be buried in his palace. However, since that is illegal in France, he proceeded to spend eight more years building a mausoleum for himself in the Hauterives cemetery. He died one year after he had finished building it, and is buried there. Just prior to his death, Cheval began to receive some recognition from luminaries like André Breton and Pablo Picasso. His work is commemorated in an essay by Anaïs Nin. In 1932, the German artist Max Ernst created a collage titled ‘The Postman Cheval.’ The work belongs to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and is on display there.
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