October 18, 2010
Freeganism is the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded. Freegans and Freeganism are often seen as part of a wider ‘anti-consumerist’ ideology, and freegans often employ a range of alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans ’embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.’
The word ‘freegan’ is a portmanteau of ‘free’ and ‘vegan’; not all dumpster divers are vegan, but the ideology of veganism is inherent in freeganism. Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food.
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October 18, 2010
Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow’s science fiction novel, ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.’ This book describes a post-scarcity economy: All the necessities (and most of the luxuries) of life are free for the taking. A person’s current Whuffie is instantly viewable to anyone, as everybody has a brain-implant giving them an interface with the Net. The term has since seen some adoption as a synonym for social capital.
In the novel usual economic incentives have disappeared: Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation and is gained (or lost) according to a person’s favorable (or unfavorable) actions. Public opinion determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable. Rudely pushing past someone on the sidewalk will cause a loss of points from the person pushed (and possibly from bystanders who witness the incident), while composing a much-loved symphony will earn the composer Whuffie from everyone who enjoyed it.
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October 18, 2010
‘Cleatus the Robot,’ is the official mascot of Fox NFL Sunday, named by a viewer during a contest in the winter of 2007 in which fans were able to submit entries as to what they thought the robot’s name should be. Cleatus made his first appearance during the 2005-2006 NFL season, but was not used regularly until the following season. Cleatus mainly appears during the intro sequence of the show as well as brief commercials for movies and TV shows.
In commercials he commonly gets attacked by a CGI character from whatever the advertisement is about. He has thus far been attacked by Iron Man, a dragon, and a Terminator robot. Cleatus is also known to hop on two feet, play the electric guitar, shake out his limbs, and do dance moves such as the swim and the electric slide. In response to Cleatus, NASCAR on Fox created ‘Digger,’ an animated gopher mascot.
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October 14, 2010
Zorbing is the recreation of rolling downhill in an orb, generally made of transparent plastic. Zorbing is generally performed on a gentle slope, but can also be done on a level surface, permitting more rider control. There are two types of orbs, harnessed and non-harnessed. Non-harness orbs carry up to three riders, while the harness orbs are constructed for one to two riders. The longer runs are approximately half a mile. The first zorbing site was established in Rotorua, New Zealand, by David Akers and Andrew Akers in 1994.
The zorb is double-sectioned, with one ball inside the other with an air layer between. This acts as a shock absorber for the rider, damping bumps while traveling. A typical orb is about 3 metres (9.8 ft) in diameter, with an inner orb size of about 2 metres (6 ft 6.7 in). The inner and outer orb are connected by numerous (often hundreds) small ropes. Orbs have one or two tunnel-like entrances.
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October 13, 2010
A sizable number of Indian immigrants to the United States came in the 1960s and 1970s, when the motel and hotel industry was booming. Many of them bought up undervalued and dilapidated properties and turned them into businesses, including motels and hotels. It was estimated in 2007 that 60% of the mid-sized motels and hotels in the United States were owned by Indians. Nearly one-third of those Indians were called Patel (and came from Gujarat), with the result that, apparently, many people believe Patel is an Indian word meaning ‘hotel.’
Patel, originally meaning ‘headman’ or ‘village chief” derives from Patlikh, the record keeper named by princely rulers in Gujarat to keep track of the crops, pat being a parcel of land. Traditionally, the Patels or Patils assist the Talati or Kulkarni in collection or revenue in rural areas. Patels in northern Gujarat were very prominent farmers as well. Within the United Kingdom, it is the twenty-fourth most common surname nationally, and the third most common in the Greater London region. In the US, the surname ‘Patel’ ranks 174 among the top 500 list of most common last names.
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October 12, 2010
The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that enables computer programmers (known as Requesters) who are located in the United States to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do. The Requesters are able to pose tasks known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a store-front, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. Workers (called Providers) can then browse among existing tasks and complete them for a monetary payment set by the Requester.
Requesters can ask that Workers fulfill Qualifications before engaging a task, and they can set up a test in order to verify the Qualification. They can also accept or reject the result sent by the Worker, which reflects on the Worker’s reputation. Currently, a Requester has to have a U.S. address, but Workers can be anywhere in the world. Requesters, which are typically corporations, pay at least 10 percent over the price of successfully completed HITs to Amazon.
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October 12, 2010
Choco Taco is a brand of dessert food resembling a taco, consisting of a taco shell-like waffle cone, reduced-fat vanilla ice cream, artificially flavored fudge, peanuts, and a milk chocolate coating. The product was invented in Philadelphia in the 1980s by the Jack and Jill Ice Cream Company, but was introduced nationwide by Good Humor-Breyers in 1996 as ‘America’s coolest taco,’ at the Supermarket Industry Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
The ‘Choco Taco’ is marketed under both the Good Humor and Klondike brands. Both brands are owned by the same ice cream conglomerate, Good Humor-Breyers, a unit of Unilever, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1998, Unilever introduced the Choco Taco to Italy with the name Taco Algida.
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October 10, 2010
In economics and finance, arbitrage [ahr-bi-trahzh] is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets. For example if you can buy one euro for one dollar, you immediately profit if the current exchange rate values euros above dollars. An arbitrage in simple terms, is the possibility of a risk-free profit at zero cost.
In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs — such as a bank or brokerage firm. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.
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October 10, 2010
Lomography is the commercial trademark of Lomographische AG, an Austria photography company. The name is inspired by the former state-run optics manufacturer LOMO PLC of Saint Petersburg, Russia. LOMO created and produced the 35 mm LOMO LC-A Compact Automat camera — which became the centerpiece of Lomography’s marketing and sales activities. This camera was loosely based upon the Cosina CX-1 and introduced in the early 1980s.
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October 1, 2010
The Scratchophone is a portable scratch instrument, featuring a turntable, a special tonearm, scratch mixer, and a pair of speakers, a battery, and a harness. They are hand-made in Quebec, Canada and feature a direct drive Numark turntable, a 2-channel Vestax mixer, and a Stanton cartdidge needle. It sells for $2,179.99.
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September 30, 2010
Uniqlo is a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer. Uniqlo is Japan’s leading clothing retail chain in terms of both sales and profits. The company also operates in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and Russia. Originally a division of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., on November 1, 2005, Uniqlo Co., Ltd. was born of corporate restructuring, and now exists as a 100% consolidated subsidiary of Fast Retailing, which is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
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September 27, 2010
Dark pools of liquidity are financial trading venues or crossing networks similar to exchanges but that provide liquidity that is not displayed on order books. This is useful for traders who wish to move large numbers of shares without revealing themselves to the open market. Dark liquidity pools offer institutional investors many of the efficiencies associated with trading on the exchanges’ public limit order books but without showing their actions to others. Dark liquidity pools avoid this risk because neither the price nor the identity of the trading company is displayed.
Dark pools are recorded to the national consolidated tape. However, they are recorded as over-the-counter transactions. Therefore detailed information about the volumes and types of transactions is left to the crossing network to report to clients if they desire and are contractually obligated. Dark pools allow funds to line up and move large blocks of equities without tipping their hands as to what they are up to. Modern trading platforms and the lack of human interaction have reduced the time scale on market movements. This increased responsiveness of the price of an equity to market pressures has made it more difficult to move large blocks of stock without affecting the price.
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