January 26, 2011
The Plus 15 or +15 Skyway network in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is the world’s most extensive pedestrian skywalk system with a total length of 16 kilometers (10 mi) and 59 bridges. The system is so named because the skywalks are approximately 15 feet (approximately 4.5 metres) above street level. (Some Plus 15 skywalks are multi-level, with higher levels being referred to as +30’s and +45’s.)
Opening in 1970, the +15 network has expanded to include dozens of downtown Calgary buildings. The central core of the system is a series of enclosed shopping centers, and the city’s flagship department stores. Although there are currently no plans to remove bridges or to discontinue building new ones, the system has been subject to criticism in recent years. It has been identified with a decline in street life in the Downtown Commercial Core. Street life is instead concentrated on streets (such as Stephen Avenue) or in neighbourhoods where there are no bridges (such as Eau Claire and the Beltline).
Posted in Money, Politics, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
Prole drift, short for proletarian drift, is a trend in which products, styles or other aspects of culture previously considered to be upscale or upper class become popular among working class people. Prole drift can also go the other way, as when things that were once the purview of the working class become fashionable in the middle or upper classes. The term was coined by, American literary historian, Paul Fussell in 1983 to describe the phenomenon of most aspects of high culture eventually joining the lowest common denominator.
Examples include sales of premium coffee, Burberry clothing or Coach Inc. handbags to working class people. Examples of reverse prole drift include Mockney, the skinhead and punk subcultures, hip hop, rockabilly, dressing down, slumming it (e.g. going to a working class bar) and NASCAR. BMW cars (particularly the 3 series) have also suffered from this phenomenon, in some instances the 3 series outselling more mainstream cars such as the Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra.
Posted in Language, Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
A chav is a stereotype of certain people in the United Kingdom. Also known as a charver in Yorkshire and North East England, ‘chavs’ are said to be aggressive teenagers, of white working class background, who repeatedly engage in antisocial behaviour such as street drinking, drug abuse and rowdiness, or other forms of juvenile delinquency. The derivative Chavette has been used to refer to females.
Chav probably has its origins in the Romani word ‘chavi,’ meaning ‘child’ (or ‘chavo,’ meaning ‘boy,’ or ‘chavvy,’, meaning ‘youth’). This word may have entered the English language through the Geordie dialect word charva, meaning a rough child. This is similar to the colloquial Spanish word chaval, meaning ‘kid’ or ‘guy.’ In Italy, chavs are termed as coatto, which basically means ‘working class’ and vulgar.
read more »
Posted in Language, Money, World |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
‘Ambient 1: Music for Airports‘ is an ambient album by Brian Eno released in 1978. Of four albums released on Eno’s own, then new, Ambient label, ‘Music for Airports’ was the first to carry explicitly the name ‘ambient’ – a term which he coined to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album’s material and ‘the products of the various purveyors of canned music.’ Notice of similarly quiet, unobtrusive music had been given on his albums such as ‘Evening Star,’ ‘Discreet Music,’ ‘Music for Films,’ and Harold Budd’s ‘The Pavilion of Dreams’ (which Eno produced), but in this album it was given precedence as a fully developed concept.
The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno conceived this idea while being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid 70s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere. It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
Posted in Art, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
In the context of the World Wide Web, content farms are companies (or their divisions) that employ large numbers of (often freelance) writers to generate large amounts of textual content. The articles in content farms are written by human beings but may not be written by a specialist in the area. In one of Google’s own promotional videos the majority of the links available were actually produced at content farms.
Content farms contain huge number of articles. For instance, Demand Media will soon be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Big content farms are expensive resources, sold for many millions.
read more »
Posted in Language, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
A fad, sometimes called a trend, meme or a craze, is any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period, generally as a result of the behavior’s being perceived as novel in some way.
A fad is said to ‘catch on’ when the number of people adopting it begins to increase rapidly, but they fade quickly once the perception of novelty is gone. Though the term trend may be used interchangeably with fad, a fad is generally considered a fleeting behavior whereas a trend is considered to be a behavior that evolves into a relatively permanent change.
read more »
Posted in Language, Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
January 25, 2011
The Monty Hall problem is a famous problem in probability science. The problem is based on a game show, ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ and is named for the show’s host, Monty Hall. In the problem, there are three doors. A car is behind one door and goats behind the other two doors.
read more »
Posted in Humor, Money, Science |
Leave a Comment »
January 24, 2011
Boomerang Generation is one of several terms applied to the current generation of young adults in Western culture. They are so named for the frequency with which they choose to cohabitate with their parents after a brief period of living on their own–thus boomeranging back to their place of origin. This cohabitation can take many forms, ranging from situations that mirror the high dependency of pre-adulthood to highly independent, separate-household arrangements. In as much as home-leaving practices differ by economic class, the term is most meaningfully applied to members of the middle class.
The 18th through 21st birthdays of this generation coincide with the economic downturn starting with the collapse of the stock market bubble in 2000. This led to rising unemployment until 2004, the same time this generation was entering the workforce after high school or college graduation. Additionally, in the new economy, where globalisation-induced phenomena like outsourcing have eliminated many jobs, real wages have fallen over the last twenty years, and a college degree no longer ensures job stability, this is the easiest, if not only, way for these young adults to maintain the middle class lifestyle they anticipated.
Posted in Language, Money |
Leave a Comment »
January 24, 2011
An appetizing store, typically in reference to Jewish cuisine, is best understood as a store that sells ‘the foods one eats with bagels’ ‘Appetizing’ is used as a noun by itself to refer to these type of foods. Appetizing stores includes both dairy and ‘parve’ (neither dairy nor meat) food items such as lox (smoked salmon), whitefish, and cream cheese spreads. These foods are typically eaten for breakfast or lunch and, based on Jewish kashrut dietary laws, include no meat products (kosher fish products are not considered meat).
The simplest distinction is that an appetizing store is a place that sells fish and dairy products, whereas a delicatessen sells meats. It can also can be described as ‘appy table,’ ‘appetizing table,’ or just ‘appy’ (short for ‘appetizing’ in the way ‘deli’ is short for ‘delicatessen.’ The term is used typically among American Jews, especially those in the New York City area. Pareve and dairy restaurants in Toronto, Canada, also have ‘Appetizers’ as part of their name who are both Kosher and Kosher style.
Posted in Food, Language, Money |
Leave a Comment »
January 24, 2011
The term Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) refers to self-help ‘training’ offered by certain groups sometimes linked with the human potential movement (a ‘new age’ philosophy founded in the 1960s) . The programs may involve several hundred people at a time for hours or days. It is common for the programs to feature an authoritarian demeanor by the trainer, and to cause physical strains on the participants from a long schedule followed by periods of release and encouragement.
By spending approximately half the time making a person feel bad and then suddenly reversing the feeling through effusive praise, the programs cause participants to experience a stress-reaction and an endorphin high. Over many hours and days the participants are physically exhausted, and made more susceptible to the trainer’s message, whether in the participants’ best interests or not. Examples of LGATs include: Lifespring, Erhard Seminars Training, The Forum, Newfield Consulting, Seres Naturales and Landmark Education.
Posted in Health, Money, Philosophy |
Leave a Comment »
January 21, 2011
Pantone is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric, and plastics. The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to ‘color match’ specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color.
The company provides Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small ‘fan deck.’ Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually as their inks become more yellow over time. Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated), while interedition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used.
Posted in Art, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
January 20, 2011
K Foundation Burn a Million Quid was a performance art/ political exercise that took place in 1994, in which the K Foundation (an art duo consisting of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) burned cash in the amount of one million pounds sterling on the Scottish island of Jura. A single house brick that was manufactured from the fire’s ashes. This money represented the bulk of the K Foundation’s funds, earned by Drummond and Cauty as The KLF, one of the United Kingdom’s most successful pop groups of the early 1990s.
The incineration was recorded on a Hi-8 video camera by K Foundation collaborator Gimpo. In 1995, the film was toured around the UK, with Drummond and Cauty engaging each audience in debate about the burning and its meaning. Later that year, the duo pledged to dissolve the K Foundation and to refrain from public discussion of the burning for a period of 23 years. Despite this Drummond has spoken about the burning in 2000 and 2004. At first he was unrepentant but in 2004, he admitted to the BBC that he regretted burning the money.
Posted in Art, Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
