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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May 8, 2012
The Nixon Shock was a series of economic measures taken by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 including unilaterally cancelling the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold that essentially ended the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange.
The return to a gold standard is supported by followers of the Austrian School, largely because they object to the role of the government in issuing fiat currency through central banks. A number of gold standard advocates also call for a mandated end to fractional reserve banking.
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May 5, 2012
A non-apology apology is a statement in the form of an apology but that is not in fact an apology at all. It is common in both politics and public relations. It most commonly entails the speaker saying that he or she is sorry not for a behavior, statement or misdeed, but rather is sorry only because a person who has been aggrieved is requesting the apology, expressing a grievance, or is threatening some form of retribution or retaliation.
An example of a non-apology apology would be saying ‘I’m sorry that you felt insulted’ to someone who has been offended by a statement. This apology does not admit that there was anything wrong with the remarks made, and additionally, it may be taken as insinuating that the person taking offense was excessively thin-skinned or irrational in taking offense at the remarks in the first place.
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May 4, 2012
In computer security, the dancing pigs problem (also known as the dancing bunnies problem) is a statement on user attitudes to computer security: that users primarily desire features without considering security, and so security must be designed in without the computer having to ask a technically ignorant user.
The term has its origin in a remark by computer scientists Edward Felten and Gary McGraw: ‘Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.’
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May 3, 2012
The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchist, socialist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him, collectively called the Culture series.
The Culture is characterized by being a post-scarcity society (meaning that its advanced technologies provide practically limitless material wealth and comforts for everyone for free, having all but abolished the concept of possessions), by having overcome almost all physical constraints on life (including disease and death) and by being an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others.
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May 3, 2012
Slavoj Žižek [slah-voy zhee-zhek] (b. 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic working. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory and theoretical psychoanalysis. Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology University of Ljubljana.
Žižek uses examples from popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy, and Marxist economic criticism to interpret and speak extensively on immediately current social phenomena, including the current ongoing global financial crisis.
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May 1, 2012
James Jean is a Taiwanese-American visual artist, known for both his commercial and fine art gallery work. He is also known in the American comics industry as a cover artist for various books published by DC Comics, as well as for his work for Prada, ESPN, and Atlantic Records. His work, which has been collected in numerous volumes, has been compared to Maxfield Parrish (known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery). Jean was born in Taiwan and was raised in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. He illustrated covers for the comic book series ‘Fables’ and ‘The Umbrella Academy.’ In 2008, Jean retired from illustration and commercial projects to focus on painting.
In 2007, Jean created a mural for the Prada Epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. He also created a backdrop for Prada’s Spring/Summer 2008 show in Milan. Aspects of the Epicenter mural and the Milan wallpaper were transformed into clothing, handbags, shoes, and packaging. Prada undertook a global campaign that featured Jean’s work in advertising environments, animation, and special events. Jean developed an animated short based on the theme titled ‘Trembled Blossoms,’ taken from the poem ‘Ode to Psyche,’ by John Keats (one of his darker and more experimental odes). In 2010, Jean was commissioned by fashion designer Phillip Lim to paint a series of portraits featuring Los Angeles-based actors, musicians, and tastemakers, including Rachel Bilson, Selma Blair, and Devendra Banhart.
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April 29, 2012
In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. One of the first examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the ‘VisiCalc’ spreadsheet for the Apple II. The machine was purchased in the thousands by finance workers on the strength of this program.
The definition of ‘killer app’ came up during Bill Gates’s questioning in the ‘United States v. Microsoft’ antitrust suit. Gates had written an email in which he described ‘Internet Explorer’ as a killer app. In the questioning, he said that the term meant ‘a very popular application,’ and did not connote an application that would fuel sales of a larger product or one that would supplant its competition.
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April 28, 2012
A disruptive innovation creates a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.
By contrast, a ‘sustaining innovation’ does not create new markets or value networks but rather only evolves existing ones with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other’s sustaining improvements; they may be either ‘discontinuous’ (i.e. ‘transformational’ or ‘revolutionary’) or ‘continuous’ (i.e. ‘evolutionary’).
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April 27, 2012
Planetary Resources, Inc., formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics, is a company formed in 2010, and reorganized and renamed with considerable fanfare in 2012. Their stated goal is to ‘expand Earth’s natural resource base’ by developing and deploying the technologies for asteroid mining. Although the long-term goal of the company is to mine asteroids, its initial plans call for developing a market for small (30–50 kg) cost-reduced space telescopes for both Earth observation and astronomy.
These spacecraft would employ a laser-optical system for ground communications, reducing payload bulk and mass compared to conventional RF antennae. The deployment of such orbital telescopes is envisioned as the first step forward in the company’s asteroid mining ambitions. The same telescope satellite capabilities that Planetary Resources hopes to sell to customers can be used to survey and intensively examine near-earth asteroids.
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April 27, 2012
Lisa Frank is an American commercial artist and founder of Lisa Frank Incorporated, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The artist’s work appears on various commercial elementary and middle-school products, mostly school supplies. Also common among Lisa Frank-related items are stickers and a variety of other merchandise such as clothing and toys marketed towards young girls. Frank founded the company in 1979 at the age of 24, and her success resulted from her sticker line.
The company’s headquarters is easily visible because of the bright hearts, stars, and music notes decorating the side of the building. There is currently a quarterly magazine also named ‘Lisa Frank.’ Her corporation’s artwork features extremely bright and vibrant colors, and round, smooth, reflective surfaces. A number of characters recur on ‘Lisa Frank’ branded items, such as a Hollywood Bear, and Markie the unicorn. Rainbows and especially the color purple are abundant in Lisa Frank’s art.
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April 26, 2012
Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain in 2000. Backed by the Yamaha Corporation it was developed into a commercial product, which was first released in 2004. The software enables users to synthesize singing by typing in lyrics and melody. It uses synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. A piano roll type interface is used to input the melody and the lyrics can be entered on each note. The software can change the stress of the pronunciations, add effects such as vibrato, or change the dynamics and tone of the voice.
Each Vocaloid is sold as ‘a singer in a box’ designed to act as a replacement for an actual singer. The software was originally only available in English and Japanese, but as of Vocaloid 3, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean have been added. The software is intended for professional musicians as well as light computer music users and has so far sold on the idea that the only limits are the users’ own skills. Japanese musical groups Livetune and Supercell have released their songs featuring Vocaloid as vocals. Japanese record label Exit Tunes of Quake Inc. also have released compilation albums featuring Vocaloids. Artists such as Mike Oldfield have also used Vocaloids within their work for back up singer vocals and sound samples.
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