February 24, 2012
Outsider music, a term coined by music historian Irwin Chusid in the mid-1990s, are songs and compositions by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry who write songs that ignore standard musical or lyrical conventions, either because they have no formal training or because they disagree with formal rules. This type of music, which often lacks typical structure and is emotionally stark, has few outlets; performers or recordings are often promoted by word of mouth or through fan chat sites, usually among communities of music collectors and music connoisseurs.
Outsider musicians usually have much ‘greater individual control over the final creative’ product either because of a low budget or because of their ‘inability or unwillingness to cooperate’ with modifications by a record label or producer. While a small number of outsider musicians became notable, such as Florence Foster Jenkins, an American soprano, the majority of outsider artists do not attain mainstream popularity.
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February 23, 2012
Free speech zones (also known as ‘First Amendment Zones’) are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech in the US. The First Amendment states that ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ The existence of free speech zones is based on court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression.
The stated purpose is to protect the safety of those attending the political gathering, or for the safety of the protesters themselves. Critics, however, suggest that such zones are ‘Orwellian,’ and that authorities use them in a heavy-handed manner to censor protesters by putting them literally out of sight of the mass media, hence the public, as well as visiting dignitaries. Civil libertarians claim that such areas are used as a form of censorship and public relations management to conceal the existence of popular opposition from the mass public and elected officials.
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February 23, 2012
Poseur is a pejorative term which describes a person who copies the dress, speech, and mannerisms of a subculture without understanding the values or philosophy of the group they are mimicking. A poseur habitually pretends to be something they are not (an insincere person), or tries to impress others by behaving in an affected way (a pretentious person).
While the term is most associated with the 1970s- and 1980s-era punk and hardcore subculture, English use originates in the late 19th century. The English term is a loanword from French, where it refers to people who ‘affect an attitude or pose.’ One could say ‘poseur’ is merely the English word ‘poser’ in French garb and thus could itself be considered an affectation.
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February 23, 2012
Gravitropism [gra-vitre-pizm] is a turning or growth movement by a plant or fungus in response to gravity.
Charles Darwin was one of the first to scientifically document that roots show positive gravitropism and stems show negative gravitropism. That is, roots grow in the direction of gravitational pull (i.e., downward) and stems grow in the opposite direction (i.e., upwards).
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February 22, 2012
Gallows humor is a type of humor that still manages to be funny in the face of, and in response to, a hopeless situation. It arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations, often in circumstances such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable. The genre developed in Central Europe, and then moved to the US as part of Jewish humor. Gallows humor is offered by the person affected by the dramatic situation, an aspect that is missing in the derivative called black comedy. It is rendered with the German expression ‘Galgenhumor,’ and is comparable to the French ‘rire jaune’ (‘sickly smile’), and the Belgian Dutch ‘groen lachen’ (‘laugh desperately’). Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humor focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses, and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter.
In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common; Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it. Sigmund Freud in his 1927 essay ‘Humour (Der Humor)’ puts forth the following theory of the gallows humor: ‘The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.’ Gallows humor has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. ‘To be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them.’
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February 22, 2012
A black comedy is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor (humor that still manages to be funny in the face of, and in response to, a hopeless situation); and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes an emotion, all humor is ‘black humor.’ The term ‘black humor’ (from the French ‘humour noir’) was coined by the Surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935, to designate a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death.
In black humor, topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo, specifically those related to death, are treated in an unusually humorous or satirical manner while retaining their seriousness; the intent of black comedy, therefore, is often for the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort, sometimes simultaneously.
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February 21, 2012
The Beginning of Infinity is a popular science book by physicist David Deutsch that was published in 2011. Deutsch views the enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that is resistant to falsifiability. Any real process physically possible is able to be performed provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired.
The enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato’s Academy in Golden age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies’ resistance to change.
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February 21, 2012
The Turing test is a test to see if a computer can trick a person into believing that the computer is a person too. Alan Turing thought that if a human could not tell the difference between another human and the computer, then that computer must be as intelligent as a human. No one has made a computer that can pass the Turing test. A chatterbot called Elbot came close in 2008. The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence,’ which opens with the words: ‘I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?” Since ‘thinking’ is difficult to define, Turing chooses to ‘replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words’:
‘Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?’ (a party game in which a man and a woman go into separate rooms and guests try to tell them apart by writing a series of questions and reading the typewritten answers sent back; both the man and the woman aim to convince the guests that they are the other). This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that ‘machines can think.’ In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
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February 21, 2012
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including listening, dancing, and background music for other activities. Unlike electronic dance music, which is sub-genre in the category, all examples of electronica are not necessarily made for dancing. Genres such as techno, drum and bass, downtempo, and ambient are among those encompassed by the umbrella term, entering the American mainstream from ‘alternative’ or ‘underground’ venues during the late 1990s.
With newly prominent music styles such as reggaeton, and subgenres such as electroclash, indie pop, and favela funk, electronic music styles in the current decade are seen to permeate nearly all genres of the mainstream and indie landscape such that a distinct ‘electronica’ genre of pop music is rarely noted.
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February 21, 2012
The Fourth Way refers to a concept used by Russian spiritualist G.I. Gurdjieff to describe an approach to self-development learned over years of travel in the East that combined what he saw as three established traditional ‘ways,’ or ‘schools’ into a fourth way. These three ways were of the body, mind, and emotions. The term ,The Fourth Way, was further developed by Russian esotericist P.D. Ouspensky in his lectures and writings. Posthumously, Ouspensky’s students published a book entitled ‘Fourth Way,’ based on his lectures. The ‘Fourth Way’ is sometimes referred to as ‘The Work,’ ‘Work on oneself,’ or ‘The System.’
According to this system, the chief difference between the three traditional schools, or ways, and the fourth way is that ‘they are permanent forms which have survived throughout history mostly unchanged, and are based on religion. Where schools of yogis, monks or fakirs exist, they are barely distinguishable from religious schools. The fourth way differs in that it is not a permanent way. It has no specific forms or institutions and comes and goes controlled by some particular laws of its own.’
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February 21, 2012
A Guide for the Perplexed is a short book by E. F. Schumacher, published in 1977. The title is a reference to Maimonides’s ‘The Guide for the Perplexed.’ Schumacher himself considered ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ to be his most important achievement, although he was better known for his 1974 environmental economics bestseller ‘Small Is Beautiful,’ which made him a leading figure within the ecology movement.
His daughter wrote that her father handed her the book on his deathbed, five days before he died and he told her ‘this is what my life has been leading to.’ The book is a statement of the philosophical underpinnings that inform ‘Small is Beautiful.’
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February 19, 2012
The Next 100 Years is a 2009 non-fiction book by American political scientist George Friedman. In the book, Friedman attempts to predict the major geopolitical events and trends of the 21st century. Friedman also speculates in the book on changes in technology and culture that may take place during this period. Friedman predicts a second American cold war with Russia in the 2010s. Friedman asserts that around 2015, the United States will become a close ally to some Eastern European countries, who will be dedicated to resisting Russian geopolitical threats during this period.
Friedman speculates in the book that the United States will probably become a close ally of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania, who may form a military alliance during this period. According to Friedman’s prediction, around the year 2020, Russia will collapse, fragment, and disintegrate from the economic and political pressure of a second cold war.
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