Everything is Interesting
Wake therapy is a form of sleep deprivation used as a treatment for depression. The subject is woken at 1AM and stays awake all morning, and the next full day.
While sleepy, patients find that their depression vanishes, until they sleep again. Combining this with bright light therapy make the beneficial effects last longer than one day.
Lifestyle medicine is defined as the application of environmental, behavioral, medical and motivational principles to the management of lifestyle-related health problems in a clinical setting. It is an established branch of medicine which discusses lifestyle’s contribution to health in addition to non-pharmacological intervention in the treatment and management of lifestyle diseases such as exercise in diabetes mellitus and weight management in obesity. It should not be confused with lifestyle drugs (medications which treat non-life threatening and non-painful conditions such as baldness, impotence, wrinkles, or acne).
Lifestyle medicine is often prescribed in conjunction with a typical medicine approach of pharmacotherapy. For example, diabetic patients who may be on medication to help control the blood glucose levels in the short term might also be prescribed a lifestyle intervention of a healthy diet and exercise to assist in the long term management of their pathology. In some cases lifestyle interventions are more effective when augmented with appropriate pharmacotherapy, as with tobacco use where medications such as buproprion may be prescribed to assist the patient to quit smoking and adopt a healthy lifestyle change.
The Walkman Effect refers to the way music listened to via headphones allows the user to gain more control over their environment. It was coined by International Research Center for Japanese Studies Professor Shuhei Hosokawa in an article of the same name published in the journal ‘Popular Music’ in 1984. While the term was named after the dominant portable music technology of the time, the Sony Walkman, it applies to all such devices and has been cited numerous times to refer to more current products such as the Apple iPod.
When Sony released the first Walkmans, they featured two headphone jacks and a ‘talk button.’ When pressed, this button activated a microphone and lowered the volume to enable those listening to have a conversation without removing their headphones. Sony Chairman Akio Morita added these features to the design for fear the technology would be isolating. Though he ‘thought it would be considered rude for one person to be listening to his music in isolation,’ however, people bought their own units rather than share and these features were removed for later models.
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A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, referred to as ‘freaks of nature.’ Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics, people with other extraordinary diseases and conditions, and performances that are expected to be shocking to the viewers. Heavily tattooed or pierced people have sometimes been seen in freak shows, as have attention-getting physical performers such as fire-eating and sword-swallowing acts.
Freak shows were popular in the United States from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries, and were often, but not always, associated with circuses and carnivals. Some shows also exhibited deformed animals (such as two-headed cows, one-eyed pigs, and four-horned goats) and famous hoaxes, or simply ‘science gone wrong’ exhibits (such as deformed babies).
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In the folklore of the Chiloé Island in southern Chile, the imbunche [im-boon-chay] is a legendary monster that protects the entrance to a warlock’s cave. According to legend, the Imbunche was a male child kidnapped by, or sold by his parents to a Brujo Chilote (a type of sorcerer or warlock of Chiloé).
The Brujo chilote transformed the child into a deformed hairy monster by breaking his legs and twisting them over his back, applying a magic cream over the boy’s to cause thick hairs and, finally splitting his tongue to produce a forked, snake-like, tongue.
The Obscene Bird of Night (El obsceno pájaro de la noche, 1970) is the most acclaimed novel by the Chilean writer José Donoso (1924-1996). Donoso was a member of the Latin American literary boom and the literary movement known as magical realism. The novel explores the cyclical nature of life and death, in that our fears and fantasies of childhood resurface in adulthood and old age. It is about the deconstruction of self – to the extreme of trying ‘to live’ in non-existence.
The Imbunche myth is a major theme in the novel. According to legend, the Imbunche was a male child kidnapped by, or sold by his parents to a sorcerer who turns the child into a monster to guard his lair. It symbolizes the process of implosion of the physical and/or intellectual self, turning the living being into a thing or object incapable of interacting with the outside world, and depriving it of its individuality and even of its name. This can either be self-inflicted or forced upon by others.
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Comprachicos is a compound Spanish neologism meaning ‘child-buyers,’ which was coined by Victor Hugo in his novel ‘The Man Who Laughs’ (1869). It refers to various groups in folklore who were said to change the physical appearance of human beings by manipulating growing children, in a similar way to the horticultural method of bonsai – that is, deliberate mutilation.
The most common methods said to be used in this practice included stunting children’s growth by physical restraint, muzzling their faces to deform them, slitting their eyes, dislocating their joints, and malforming their bones. The resulting human monsters made their living as mountebanks (con artists and hustlers) or were sold to lords and ladies to be used as pages or court jester.
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A child beauty pageant is a beauty contest featuring contestants including and younger than 18 years of age. Divisions include talent, interview, sportswear, casual wear, swim wear, western wear, theme wear, outfit of choice, decade wear, and evening wear, typically wearing makeup as well as elaborate hairstyles. The contestants wear custom fitted and designed outfits to present their routines on stage.
Some pageants do their best to make every child feel like a winner. There is a queen for every age division and there are Ultimate Grand Supreme awards, Mini supreme queens for certain blocks of age divisions (0-5, 6-11, 12-16, 17 and up). There are also side awards and overall side awards. Pageants may cater to the ‘natural’ contestant (who typically wears minimal makeup, only her own hair, no false teeth, no spray tan, and unmanicured nails) and/or the ‘high glitz’ contestant (who typically uses any and all of the above listed techniques to enhance her appearances).
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The Bubble Project, as proclaimed by its manifesto, aims to counteract corporate marketing and advertisement messages in public spaces. The project was conceived by Ji Lee, an artist and art director who originally printed 15,000 stickers that look like speech bubbles used in comic strips. He posts these blank speech bubbles on top of advertisements throughout New York City allowing anyone who sees them to write in their comments and thoughts.
By filling in the bubbles people engage in the project and transform ‘the corporate monologue into an open dialogue.’ The comments are photographed and posted on the project’s website. The Bubble Project has quickly gained popularity and independent efforts have sprung up in other parts of the world in countries such as Italy and Argentina.
Charlie Kelly is a fictional character on the FX television series ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,’ portrayed by Charlie Day. Green Man is a persona assumed by Charlie wearing a green Lycra suit (morphsuit). The persona has spawned imitators, most notably at sporting events. Rob McElhenney, creator of ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ came up with idea after watching the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Dallas Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Without warning, in the parking lot after the game, a friend of McElhenney’s stripped off his clothes and donned a full-body green lycra suit.
McElhenney said: ‘Everyone started chanting, ‘Green Man! Green Man!’ It went on for several hours, and all I could think was, My God, there has to be a way I can take advantage of this on the show.’ When McElhenney returned to Los Angeles, he ordered a suit from Japan that was identical to the outfit that McElhenney’s friend had worn. The character made his debut the next season in an episode entitled ‘The Gang Gets Invincible,’ which centered on three of the show’s central characters trying out for the Eagles, just as they had seen in the film ‘Invincible.’
Zentai is a term for skin-tight garments that cover the entire body. The word is a contraction of zenshin taitsu (Japanese: ‘full-body tights’). Zentai is most commonly made using nylon/spandex blends, but other materials such as cotton and wool are used as well. There are several variations based on the Zentai suit including mummy bag (similar to a sleepsack) and hybrid suits consisting of either a single leg and arms, or separate legs and no arms. Some companies have tried to create generic brands of the suits, by dropping the traditional name; in particular, examples include RootSuit or Superfan Suit in the United States and Bodysocks or Morphsuits in the United Kingdom. Morphsuits has actively tried to disassociate themselves from the existing zentai community, occasionally being listed as the product’s co-inventor.
This mainstream push has made them relatively common apparel at major sporting events, and created internationally recognized personalities out of The Green Men, two fans of the Vancouver Canucks NHL team. Some sports leagues, such as Major League Baseball, ban the use of the costume hoods. Various professional street dance/hip hop dance groups use the outfits, such as The Body Poets in the United States, and Remix Monkeys in the United Kingdom.
A status symbol is a perceived visible, external denotation of one’s social position and perceived indicator of economic or social status. Many luxury goods are often considered status symbols. Status symbol is also a sociological term – as part of social and sociological symbolic interactionism – relating to how individuals and groups interact and interpret various cultural symbols. What is considered a status symbol will differ between countries and states, based on the states of their economic and technological development, and common status symbols will change over time. For example, before the invention of the printing press, having a large collection of books was considered a status symbol. After the advent of the printing press, having books was more common among average citizens, and so the possession of books was less of a status symbol. In the past, pearls and jade were major status symbols. Another common status symbol of the past which is still somewhat present today is heraldry, or one’s family name.
Status symbols also indicate the cultural values of a society. For example, in a commercial society, having money or wealth and things that can be bought by wealth, such as cars, houses, or fine clothing, are considered status symbols. In a society that values honor or bravery, a battle scar would be more of a status symbol. The condition of one’s body can be a status symbol. In times past, when workers did physical labor outdoors under the sun and often had little food, being pale and fat was a status symbol, indicating wealth and prosperity (through having enough food and not having to do manual labor). Now that workers usually do less-physical work indoors and find little time for exercise, being tanned and thin is often a status symbol in many cultures. In the 1990s, foreign cigarettes in China, where a pack of Marlboro can cost one day’s salary for some workers, were seen as a status symbol. Cellphone usage in Turkey had been considered a status symbol in early 1990s.
The Daily Omnivore 