May 17, 2012
A vulture fund is a private equity or hedge fund that invests in debt issued by an entity that is considered to be very weak or dying, or whose debt is in imminent default. The name is a metaphor comparing these investors to vultures patiently circling, waiting to pick over the remains of a rapidly weakening company or, in the case of sovereign debt, debtor country. Market practitioners refer to them as distressed debt or special situations funds.
Vulture funds have sometimes had success in bringing actions against sovereign debtor governments, usually settling with them before forced sales. Settlements typically are made at a discount in hard or local currency or in the form of new debt issuance. A related term is ‘vulture investing,’ where certain stocks in near bankrupt companies are purchased upon anticipation of asset divestiture or successful reorganization. A prime example in the US is K-Mart, where the real estate held by the company was the anticipated payout for investors who bought stock during their bankruptcy proceedings.
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May 17, 2012
The Glock is a series of semi-automatic pistols designed and produced in Austria. The company’s founder, engineer Gaston Glock, had no experience with firearm design or manufacture at the time their first pistol, the Glock 17, was being prototyped in 1982.
Glock did, however, have extensive experience in advanced synthetic polymers, knowledge of which was instrumental in the company’s design of the first successful line of pistols with a polymer frame. Glock introduced ferritic nitrocarburizing, a form of case hardening, into the firearms industry as an anti-corrosion surface treatment for metal gun parts.
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May 16, 2012
Verner Panton (1926 – 1998) is considered one of Denmark’s most influential 20th-century furniture and interior designers. During his career, he created innovative, funky and futuristic designs in a variety of materials, especially plastics, and in vibrant and exotic colors.
His style was very ‘1960s’ but regained popularity at the end of the 20th century; as of 2004, Panton’s most well-known furniture models are still in production (at Vitra, among others).
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May 16, 2012
Mars to Stay missions propose astronauts sent to Mars for the first time should intend to stay, with their unused emergency return vehicles recycled into settlement construction as soon as the habitability of Mars becomes evident to the initial pioneers. Mars to Stay missions are advocated both to reduce cost and to ensure permanent settlement of Mars.
Among many notable Mars to Stay advocates, former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been particularly outspoken, suggesting in numerous forums ‘Forget the Moon, Let’s Head to Mars!’ The Mars Underground, Mars Homestead Foundation, and Mars Artists Community have also adopted Mars to Stay policy initiatives. The earliest formal outline of a Mars to Stay mission architecture was given at the ‘Case for Mars VI Workshop’ in 1990, during a presentation by George Herbert titled ‘One Way to Mars.’
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May 16, 2012
Max Headroom is a fictional British artificial intelligence, known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. It was introduced in early 1984. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton, and portrayed by Matt Frewer as ‘The World’s first computer generated TV host’ although the computer generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic make up. The classic look for the character was a shiny dark suit – which was actually a fibreglass mould – often paired with Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses.
Only his head and shoulders were depicted, usually against a ‘computer generated’ backdrop of a slowly rotating wire-frame cube interior, which was also initially generated by analogue means – in this case traditional cel animation, though later actual computer graphics were employed for the backdrop. Another distinguishing trademark of Max was his chaotic speech patterns – his voice would seemingly randomly pitch up or down, or occasionally get stuck in a loop. These modulations also appeared when the character was performed live.
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May 16, 2012
New Coke was the reformulation of Coca-Cola introduced in 1985; it originally had no separate name of its own, and was simply known as ‘the new taste of Coca-Cola’ until 1992 when it was renamed Coca-Cola II. The American public’s reaction to the change was negative and the new cola was a major marketing failure.
The subsequent reintroduction of Coke’s original formula, re-branded as ‘Coca-Cola Classic,’ resulted in a significant gain in sales, leading to speculation that the introduction of the New Coke formula was just a marketing ploy.
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May 16, 2012
Crystal Pepsi was a caffeine-free soft drink made by PepsiCo from 1992 to 1993 in the United States, Canada, and for a short time in Australia. Crystal Pepsi was sold for a longer time in Europe.
In the early 1990s, a marketing fad equating clarity with purity began with the remake of Ivory soap from its classic milky solution; the idea spread to many companies, including PepsiCo. Its marketing slogan was ‘You’ve never seen a taste like this.’ A large marketing campaign was launched, for which the company invented the world’s first photo-realistic, computer-generated bus wrap printing. A series of television advertisements featuring Van Halen’s hit song ‘Right Now’ during Super Bowl XXVII.
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May 14, 2012
Shigeru Miyamoto [she-gay-roo mee-yah-moe-toe] (b. 1952) is a Japanese game designer and creator of ‘Donkey Kong,’ ‘Mario,’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’ series for Nintendo. He is one of the most famous game designers in the world and is often called the father of modern video gaming.
His games give players many ways to play and explore, which was unique at the time. Miyamoto started working with Nintendo in 1977 as an artist when it was still a toy and playing-card company. In 1980, he designed ‘Donkey Kong,’ which was a big success. Miyamoto was born and raised in Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of his later work. His other creations for Nintendo include ‘Star Fox,’ ‘F-Zero,’ and ‘Pikmin.’
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May 13, 2012
Gauche [gohsh] caviar [kav-ee-ahr] (‘Caviar left’) is a pejorative French term to describe someone who claims to be a socialist while living in a way that contradicts socialist values. The expression is a political neologism dating from the 1980s and implies a degree of hypocrisy. It is broadly similar to the English ‘champagne socialist,’ the American ‘Limousine liberal,’ the German ‘Salonkommunist,’ the Italian ‘Radical Chic,’ and the Danish ‘Kystbanesocialist’ (referring to well-off coastal neighborhoods north of Copenhagen). French encyclopedia ‘Petit Larousse’ defines ‘left caviar’ as a pejorative expression for a, ‘Progressivism combined with a taste for society life and its accoutrements.’
The term was once prevalent in Parisian circles, applied deprecatingly to those who professed allegiance to the Socialist Party, but who maintained a far from proletariat lifestyle that distinguished them from the working-class base of the French Socialist Party. It was often employed by detractors of former French President François Mitterrand. In early 2007, French politician Ségolène Royal was identified with the ‘gauche caviar’ when it was revealed that she had been avoiding paying taxes. The description damaged her campaign for the French presidency. The weekly French news magazine, ‘Le Nouvel Observateur,’ has been described as the ‘quasi-official organ of France’s ‘gauche caviar.”
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May 11, 2012
Jennifer Government is a 2003 novel written by Max Barry, set in a dystopian alternate reality in which most nations (now controlled by the United States) are dominated by for-profit corporate entities while the government’s political power is extremely limited. Some readers consider it similar in satiric intent to Orwell’s ‘1984,’ but of a world with too little political power as opposed to too much.
Consequently, some readers see the novel as a criticism of libertarianism. Many readers also see it as a criticism of globalization, although Barry claims he is not an anti-globalizationist.
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May 8, 2012
The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by American educator Salman Khan (who has three degrees from MIT (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
With the stated mission of ‘providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere,’ the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,100 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, microeconomics, and computer science.
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May 8, 2012
The exorbitant privilege is a term coined in the 1960s by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then the French Minister of Finance. This quote is generally misattributed to Charles de Gaulle, who is said to have had somewhat similar views. The term refers to the benefit the United States had in its Dollar being the international reserve currency: the US would not face a balance of payments crisis, because it purchased imports in its own currency.
‘Exorbitant privilege’ as a concept cannot refer to currencies that have a regional reserve currency role, only global reserve currencies. Recent McKinsey Global Institute research questions whether the benefit that the US enjoys is really that exorbitant, highlighting the countervailing loss of trade competitiveness from the high dollar (that typically results from its reserve status, all else equal). The phrase became the title of a 2010 book by economist Barry Eichengreen, examining the future prospects for the US Dollar’s dominance in international trade.
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