July 25, 2012
Joke thievery is the act of performing and taking credit for comic material written by another person without their consent. This is a form of plagiarism and sometimes can be copyright infringement. A common epithet for a joke thief is ‘hack,’ which is derived from the term, ‘hackneyed’ (over used and thus cheapened, or trite).
From the music hall and vaudeville beginnings of stand-up comedy, joke thievery was common as there were few chances that a performer from one area would meet one from another and a single twenty-minute set could sustain a comic for a decade. Most jokes at the time were one-liners and there was little in the way of proof of a joke’s origin, but the value of each joke was immeasurable to a comedian. Milton Berle and Bob Hope had a long-standing feud due to Hope’s accusation that Berle had stolen some of his jokes. Berle never refuted the claim, but instead embraced the title ‘The Thief of Bad Gag.’
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July 25, 2012
The Frontier Thesis is an argument by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process.
In the thesis, the frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mind-sets and ending prior customs of the 19th century. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History,’ delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. Turner elaborated on many points in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, but never a wrote a book on the frontier.
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July 25, 2012
Truthiness is a quality characterizing a ‘truth’ that a person claims to know intuitively ‘from the gut’ or because it ‘feels right’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word in this meaning as the subject of a segment called ‘The Wørd’ during the 2005 pilot episode of his political satire program ‘The Colbert Report.’
By using this as part of his routine, Colbert satirized the misuse of appeal to emotion and ‘gut feeling’ as a rhetorical device in contemporaneous socio-political discourse. He particularly applied it to President George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Colbert later ascribed truthiness to other institutions and organizations, including Wikipedia. Colbert has sometimes used a mock Latin version of the term, ‘Veritasiness.’
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July 25, 2012
Common sense is ‘sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.’ Thus, ‘common sense’ (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. It is ‘the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.’
However, identifying particular items of knowledge as ‘common sense’ is difficult. Philosophers may choose to avoid using the phrase when using precise language. Common sense remains a perennial topic in epistemology (the study of knowledge) and many philosophers make wide use of the concept or at least refer to it. Some related concepts include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, axioms, wisdom, folk wisdom, folklore, and public opinion.
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July 25, 2012
Folk psychology can be described as the common understanding of mental processes (e.g. pain, pleasure, excitement, anxiety, etc.), grounded in the use of common linguistic terms as opposed to technical or scientific jargon. Folk psychology and analogy are invariably linked, with both concepts having evolved as a result of the relationship they have with each other. Once technical terms are stripped, the easiest way to describe something is through references to familiar items. In this way, the union between analogy and folk psychology was inevitable.
Traditionally, the study of folk psychology has focused on how everyday people—those without formal training in the various academic fields of science—go about attributing mental states. This domain has primarily been centered on intentional states reflective of an individual’s beliefs and desires; each described in terms of everyday language and concepts such as ‘beliefs,’ ‘desires,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘hope.’ As a result of this among other intrinsic factors, the domain’s scope, method, and contributions are consistently subjects of dispute in many scientific quarters.
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July 25, 2012
Boundaries of the mind refers to a personality trait concerning the degree of separateness (‘thickness’) or connection (‘thinness’) between mental functions and processes. Thin boundaries are associated with open-mindedness, sensitivity, vulnerability, creativity, and artistic ability.
People with thin boundaries may tend to confuse fantasy and reality and tend to have a fluid sense of identity, so that they tend to merge or lose themselves in their relations with others. People with thick boundaries differentiate clearly between reality and fantasy and between self and other, and tend to prefer well-defined social structures. The concept was developed by psychoanalyst Ernest Hartmann from his observations of the personality characteristics of frequent nightmare sufferers. The construct has been particularly studied in relation to dream recall and lucid dreaming.
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July 25, 2012
Proxemics [prok-see-miks] is a subcategory of the study of nonverbal communication along with haptics (touch), kinesics (body movement), vocalics (paralanguage), and chronemics (structure of time). Proxemics can be defined as ‘the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture.’
Edward T. Hall, the cultural anthropologist who coined the term in 1963, emphasized the impact of proxemic behavior (the use of space) on interpersonal communication. Hall believed that the value in studying proxemics comes from its applicability in evaluating not only the way man interacts with others in his daily life, but also ‘the organization of space in his houses and buildings, and ultimately the layout of his towns.’
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July 25, 2012
Ambient awareness is a term used by social scientists to describe a new form of peripheral social awareness. This awareness is propagated from relatively constant contact with one’s friends and colleagues via social networking platforms on the Internet. Marketing professor Andreas Kaplan defines ambient awareness as ‘awareness created through regular and constant reception, and/or exchange of information fragments through social media.’
The term essentially defines the sort of omnipresent knowledge one experiences by being a regular user of media outlets that allow a constant connection with one’s social circle. According to Clive Thompson of ‘The New York Times,’ ambient awareness is ‘very much like being physically near someone and picking up on mood through the little things; body language, sighs, stray comments…’ Therefore, in effect two friends who regularly follow one another’s digital information can already be aware of each other’s lives without actually being physically present to have a conversation.
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