August 5, 2013
A megachurch is a church having 2,000 or more congregants in average weekend attendance. The Hartford Institute’s database lists more than 1,300 such Protestant churches in the United States. According to that data, approximately 50 churches on the list have attendance ranging from 10,000 to 47,000. While 3,000 individual Catholic parishes (churches) have 2,000 or more attendants for an average Sunday Mass, these churches are not seen as part of the megachurch movement.
Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the number of megachurches has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. The phenomenon has since spread worldwide. In 2007, five of the ten largest Protestant churches were in South Korea. The largest megachurch in the United States is Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas with more than 40,000 members every weekend and the current largest megachurch in the world is South Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, with more than 830,000 members as of 2007.
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August 4, 2013
Televangelism [tel-i-van-juh-liz-uhm] is the use of television to communicate Christianity. The word is a portmanteau of television and evangelism and was coined by ‘Time’ magazine. Televangelists are Christian ministers who devote a large portion of their ministry to television broadcasting. The term is also used derisively by critics as an insinuation of aggrandizement by such ministers.
Televangelism began as a peculiarly American phenomenon, resulting from a largely deregulated media where access to television networks and cable TV is open to virtually anyone who can afford it, combined with a large Christian population that is able to provide the necessary funding. However, the increasing globalization of broadcasting has enabled some American televangelists to reach a wider audience through international broadcast networks, including some that are specifically Christian in nature, such as Trinity Broadcasting Network and The God Channel.
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July 29, 2013
Pagani is an Italian manufacturer of sports cars and carbon fiber components. The company was founded in 1992 by Horacio Pagani and is based in San Cesario sul Panaro, near Modena, Italy.
Horacio Pagani, who formerly managed Lamborghini’s composites department, founded Pagani Composite Research in 1988. This new company worked with Lamborghini on numerous projects, including the restyling of the 25th Anniversary Countach, the Lamborghini LM002, the Lamborghini P140 design concept, and the Diablo. In the late 1980s, Pagani began designing his own car, then referred to as the ‘C8 Project.’
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July 24, 2013
Material efficiency is a description or metric which expresses the degree in which usage of raw materials, construction projects or physical processes are used or carried out in a manner which consumes, incorporates, or wastes less of a given material compared to previous measures.
Making a usable item out of thinner stock than a prior version increases the material efficiency of the manufacturing process. (The term ‘Material efficiency’ can also signify the degree in which a material can handle a particular load, strain or weight upon it.)
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July 24, 2013
‘C.R.E.A.M.‘ (‘Cash Rules Everything Around Me’) is a song by the Wu-Tang Clan, from their 1993 studio album, ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).’
The song was produced by Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA, and samples The Charmels’ 1967 song, ‘As Long As I’ve Got You.’ The track features a verse from Raekwon, a long verse from Inspectah Deck, and the hook performed by Method Man: ‘Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M./Get the money; dollar, dollar bill, y’all.’
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July 17, 2013
Etoy is a European digital art group. Their slogan is: ‘leaving reality behind.’ Etoy routinely experiments with the boundaries of art, such as selling shares of ‘stock’ in the etoy.corporation, a registered company in Switzerland and travelling the world as well as living in ‘etoy.tanks’ (cargo containers).
The group was founded in 1994 and is owned now by hundreds of etoy.shareholders such as international art collectors, the etoy.agents and toywar.soldiers (who protected the etoy.brand during the toywar — a legal fight with an online toy retailer over the etoy.com domain). The etoy.inventors own, control and protect the corporate ‘sculpture.’
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July 16, 2013
Douglas Rushkoff (b. 1961) is an American media theorist, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems. Rushkoff coined the terms: viral media (or media virus), digital native, and social currency. He has written ten books on media, technology, and culture.
He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for ‘The New York Times Syndicate,’ as well as a regular column for ‘The Guardian of London.’ Rushkoff currently teaches in the Media Studies department at The New School University in Manhattan. He has previously lectured at the ITP at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and taught a class called ‘Narrative Lab.’
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June 27, 2013
Pseudorationalism [soo-doh-rash-uh-nl-iz-uhm] was the label given by economist and philosopher Otto Neurath to a school of thought that he was heavily critical of, throughout many of his writings but primarily in his 1913 paper ‘The lost wanderers of Descartes and the auxiliary motive’ and later to a lesser extent in his 1935 ‘Pseudorationalismus der Falsifikation,’ a review of and attack on philosopher of science Karl Popper’s first book, ‘Logik der Forschung’ (‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’), contrasting this approach with his own view of what rationalism should properly be.
Neurath aimed his criticism at a Cartesian belief that all actions can be subject to rational analysis, saying that: ‘Once reason has gained a certain influence, people generally show a tendency to regard all their actions as reasonable. Ways of action which depend on dark instincts receive reinterpretation or obfuscation.’
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June 14, 2013
Attribute substitution is a psychological process thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic (‘rule of thumb’) attribute. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system.
Hence, when someone tries to answer a difficult question, they may actually answer a related but different question, without realizing that a substitution has taken place. This explains why individuals can be unaware of their own biases, and why biases persist even when the subject is made aware of them. It also explains why human judgments often fail to show regression toward the mean.
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June 10, 2013
Chilling Effects is a collaborative archive created by Wendy Seltzer and founded along with several law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a digital rights group) to protect lawful online activity from legal threats.
Its website, ‘Chilling Effects Clearinghouse,’ allows recipients of cease-and-desist notices to submit them to the site and receive information about their legal rights and responsibilities. The archive was founded in 2001 by Internet activists who were concerned that the unregulated private practice of sending cease-and-desist letters seemed to be increasing and was having an unstudied, but potentially significant, ‘chilling effect’ on speech.
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June 10, 2013
‘Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief’ is a 2013 non-fiction book about Scientology written by American journalist Lawrence Wright. The book contains interviews from current and former Scientologists, the history of founder L. Ron Hubbard and current leader David Miscavige, and analysis of the relationships of Tom Cruise and John Travolta to the organization.
In an interview with the ‘New York Times’ Wright said that ‘There are a lot of people out there who were very high up in the church and know a lot about it who have become outspoken…I’m very lucky to come along at a time when a lot of these people are ready to talk.’ Wright also disclosed that he has received ‘innumerable’ letters threatening legal action from lawyers representing the church and celebrities who belong to it.
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June 10, 2013
Recruiting Scientologist celebrities and getting them to endorse Scientology to the public at large has always been very important to the Church of Scientology. According to founder L. Ron Hubbard: ‘Celebrities are very Special people and have a very distinct line of dissemination. They have comm[unication] lines that others do not have and many medias [sic] to get their dissemination through.’
Scientology has had a written program governing celebrity recruitment since at least 1955, when Hubbard created ‘Project Celebrity,’ offering rewards to Scientologists who recruited targeted celebrities. Early interested parties included former silent-screen star Gloria Swanson and jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. A Scientology policy letter of 1976 states that ‘rehabilitation of celebrities who are just beyond or just approaching their prime’ enables the ‘rapid dissemination’ of Scientology.
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