March 6, 2012
Martin Kihn (b. 1950) is an American writer and digital marketer. Martin Kihn was born in Zambia, where his parents met while working in a hospital. His South African-born father is a doctor, and his Scottish mother, a former actress, is now a drama teacher. He grew up in Michigan. He has earned a BA in Theater Studies from Yale, and in the late 1990s was Head Writer for the popular television program ‘Pop-Up Video’ on MTV Networks and was nominated for an Emmy for Writing. He lost to ‘Win Ben Stein’s Money,’ decided to quit writing and got into business school. He received an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Kihn’s first book was an expose of the consulting agencies called ‘House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time’ (2005), based on the three years he spent working for a large consultancy, Booz Allen. It was adapted by Showtime as a series with Don Cheadle playing Marty Kaan, an ‘outside the box’ management consultant, loosely based on Marty Kihn himself. Kihn reemerged a few years later with a satirical memoir called ‘Asshole: How I Got Rich and Happy by Not Giving a Shit About You’ (2008).
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March 5, 2012
The Avedis Zildjian [zil-jin] Company is a cymbal manufacturer founded in Istanbul by Armenian Avedis Zildjian in the 17th century during the Ottoman Empire. At nearly 400 years old, Zildjian is one of the oldest companies in the world. The first Zildjian cymbals were created in 1623 by Avedis, an alchemist who was looking for a way to turn base metal into gold; he created an alloy combining tin, copper, and silver into a sheet of metal that could make musical sounds without shattering.
Avedis was given the name of Zildjian by the Sultan Osman II (from the Turkish word ‘zil’ – ‘cymbal,’ ‘dji’ – ‘maker-seller,’ ‘ian’ – a common suffix used in Armenian last names which means ‘son of’). The details of the company’s main product remained secret for generations. It became family tradition that only the company’s heirs would know the manufacturing process. The Zildjian Company moved from manufacturing noisemakers to frighten the enemies of the Ottoman Empire to manufacturing its cymbals as musical instruments in the 19th century.
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March 5, 2012
Kitbashing is a practice whereby a new scale model is created by taking pieces out of commercial kits. These pieces may be added to a custom project or to another kit. For professional modelmakers, kitbashing is popular to create concept models for detailing movie special effects. Professionals often kitbash to build prototype parts which are then recreated with lightweight materials. Although it has a long history, kitbashing came to the attention of a wider public via the fine modelwork seen in TV series such as ‘Thunderbirds’ and the films ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Star Wars.’ Many of the spaceship models created for these programs incorporated details from tank, speedboat and car kits. Another example is the Tumbler from the 2005 film ‘Batman Begins.’
An important aspect of kitbashing in model railroading is the reconfiguration of structure kits, most often to fit the geometry of a specific space. Walls can be shortened or lengthened, and/or corner angles changed to fit a given location on the layout. Another application is to use the wall parts to create a ‘flat,’ or shallow relief model to be displayed against the backdrop. For example, since it isn’t needed in this case, the rear wall can be abutted to the front to double the length of the building; usually, but not exclusively, done with industrial structures. Plain sheet styrene or other material is typically added to the rear to strengthen the resulting model.
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March 5, 2012
A greeble or nurnie is a small piece of detailing added to break up the surface of an object to add visual interest to a surface or object, particularly in movie special effects. They serve no real purpose other than to add complexity to the object, and cause the flow of the eye over the surface of the object to be interrupted, usually giving the impression of increased size. It is essentially the small detailed technical part of a larger object. The detail can be made from geometric primitives, including cylinders, cubes, and rectangles, combined to create intricate, but meaningless, surface detail.
Greebles are commonly found on models or drawings of fictional spacecraft in science fiction. The earliest recorded use of the term ‘greeble’ found to date was by those working on the special effects for ‘Star Wars’ — the group who would later become Industrial Light and Magic. They also described this design method as ‘guts on the outside.’ Ron Thornton is widely believed to have coined the term ‘nurnies’ referring to CGI technical detail that his company Foundation Imaging produced for the ‘Babylon 5’ series.
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March 3, 2012
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is contrary to that of the archetypal hero, yet typically retains many heroic qualities. Some consider the word’s meaning to be sufficiently broad as to additionally encompass an antagonist who, in contrast to the archetypal villain, elicits considerable sympathy or admiration.
The antihero has evolved over time, changing as society’s conceptions of the hero changed, from the Elizabethan times of Faust and William Shakespeare’s Falstaff, to the darker-themed Victorian literature of the 19th century, such as John Gay’s ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ or as a timid, passive, indecisive man that contrasts sharply with other Greek heroes to Philip Meadows Taylor’s ‘Confessions of a Thug.’ The Byronic hero also sets a literary precedent for the modern concept of antiheroism.
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February 29, 2012
Wim Delvoye (b. 1965) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. He repeatedly links the attractive with the repulsive, creating work that holds within it inherent contradictions. He has an eclectic oeuvre, exposing his interest in a range of themes, from bodily function, to the Catholic Church, and numerous subjects in between.
Though Delvoye started tattooing pig skins taken from slaughterhouses in the United States in 1992, he began to tattoo live pigs in 1997. He ultimately moved the operation to an Art Farm in China in 2004 where restrictions regarding animal welfare were less strict. The pigs have been inked with a diverse array of designs, including the trivial, such as skulls and crosses, to Louis Vuitton designs, to designs dictated by the pig’s anatomy. Delvoye described the process of tattooing a live pig, ‘we sedate it, shave it and apply Vaseline to its skin.’ As another manifestation of contradiction in Delvoye’s art, he owns a pig farm though he is a practicing vegetarian.
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February 29, 2012
The Dougie is a hip-hop dance generally performed by moving one’s body in a shimmy style and passing a hand through or near the hair on one’s own head.
There is no defined way to perform the Dougie, and each individual performs with his or her own variation. The dance first originated in Dallas, where it took its name from similar moves performed by 1980s rapper Doug E. Fresh.
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February 28, 2012
Mel Ramos (b. 1935) is a U.S. figurative painter, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, he gained his greatest popularity in association with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. The classification of Ramos within any particular school of art is disputed.
Some critical observers of the ‘art scene’ classify him as a pop artist. However, others believe identification of Ramos’ work within the Pop movement of the 1960s implies a satirical or parodic bent which does not reflect the broader context of his paintings, and instead defend his ‘parodies’ as respectful, affectionate tributes, a celebration of images with personal meaning.
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February 28, 2012
The Dark Knight Returns is a four-issue comic book limited series written and drawn by Frank Miller, originally published by DC Comics in 1986, which tells the story of a 56-year-old Bruce Wayne who comes out of retirement to fight crime, only to face opposition from the Gotham City police force and the US government.
The series is set in a dystopian near-future. A year is never specified, though it has been a full decade since the last reported sighting of Batman, the current American President appears to be Ronald Reagan or someone using his image, and the Cold War is still ongoing. Virtually all superheroes, with the exception of Superman, have been forced into retirement or otherwise driven away by a distrusting populace. Bruce Wayne has voluntarily retired from crime fighting following the death (under unspecified circumstances) of Jason Todd, the second Robin. In the absence of superheroes, criminals run amok, and a gang called the Mutants terrorizes Gotham City.
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February 28, 2012
Vocal fry (creak, glottal scrape, or strohbass), is the lowest vocal register, voice is next, then falsetto, and finally whistle is the highest vocal register. It is produced through a loose glottal closure which will permit air to bubble through slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency. Some authorities consider the use of vocal fry in speech a dysphonia, while others consider it so only if it is used excessively. However, the register is more widely used in singing than might at first seem apparent.
Within the bass part of gospel quartet singing the practice is quite common. The croaking sound produced by male singers at the start of phrases in American country music are produced by moving from this mode to the normal voice. Additionally some Russian Anthems contain bass lines within the vocal-fry register. Within choral music, when true basses are not available, choirs often rely on singers who can ‘fry’ the low bass notes. Vocal fry is also used in metal music, usually in combination with air from the diaphragm, in order to create a ‘growl’ or ‘scream’ which sounds aggressive and harsh.
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February 25, 2012
Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and angular bone structure. This waifish, drug-addicted look was the basis of the 1993 advertising campaign of Calvin Klein featuring Kate Moss photographed by Vincent Gallo.
Emaciated features and androgyny were a reaction to ‘healthy’ and vibrant look of models such as Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Heidi Klum. A 1996 article in ‘The Los Angeles Times’ charged that the fashion industry had ‘a nihilistic vision of beauty’ that was reflective of drug addiction.
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February 25, 2012
Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity.
There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as three hundred words, while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction. In one particular format, established by Steve Moss, Editor of the New Times, the requirement is 55 words; no more and no fewer. Another, unspecified but frequently held, requirement is that the title may be no more than seven words.
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