November 17, 2011
A zoot suit is a suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing was popularized by African, Mexican, and Italian Americans during the late 1930s and the 1940s. It started during the Jazz Age in Harlem and slowly spread throughout other ethnic-neighborhoods across America. Malcolm X was known to have loved zoot suits in his early days as Detroit Red, a Harlem drug dealer, racketeer, and pimp. In Britain the bright-colored suits with velvet lapels worn by Teddy Boys (young men wearing clothes inspired by dandies) bore a slight resemblance to zoot suits in the length of the jacket. Often zoot suiters wear a felt hat with a long feather and pointy, French-style shoes. A young Malcolm X described the zoot suit as: ‘a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic’s cell.’ Zoot suits usually featured a watch chain dangling from the belt to the knee or below, then back to a side pocket.
The amount of material and tailoring required made them luxury items, so much so that the U.S. War Production Board said that they wasted materials that should be devoted to the World War II war effort. This extravagance, which many considered unpatriotic in wartime, was a factor in the Zoot Suit Riots, a series of riots in 1943 that erupted in Los Angeles between white sailors and Marines stationed throughout the city and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored. Wearing the oversized suit was a declaration of freedom and self-determination, even rebelliousness. The word zoot probably comes from a reduplication of suit. The creation and naming of the zoot suit have been variously attributed to Harold C. Fox, a Chicago clothier and big-band trumpeter; Louis Lettes, a Memphis tailor; and Nathan (Toddy) Elkus, a Detroit retailer. Zoot suits were initially called drapes.
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November 16, 2011
Slum tourism is a type of tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas, which has become increasingly prominent in several developing countries like India, Brazil, Kenya, and Indonesia. The Oxford English Dictionary found the first use of the word ‘slumming’ in 1884. In London, people visited neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to see how the poor lived. In 1884 the concept moved to New York City to the Bowery and the Five Points area of the Lower East Side were visited to see ‘how the other half lives.’ In the 1980s in South Africa ‘township tours’ were organized to educate local governments on how the black population lived. It then attracted international tourists that wanted to support and learn more about apartheid. Prior to the release of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ in 2008, Mumbai was a slum tourist destination.
Critics say slum tourism, like poorism, is likened to a kind of voyeurism, exploiting people less fortunate, snapping pictures and leaving nothing in return. Some tours do use portions of the profits to help out however. They have also courted controversy because of disputes about their safety, and fears that they misrepresent local culture.
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November 16, 2011
Plastic shaman [shey-muhn] is a pejorative colloquialism applied to individuals who are attempting to pass themselves off as shamans, holy people, or other traditional spiritual leaders, but who have no genuine connection to the traditions or cultures they claim to represent. In some cases, the ‘plastic shaman’ may have some genuine cultural connection, but is seen to be exploiting that knowledge for ego, power or money.
They are believed by their critics to use the mystique of these cultural traditions, and the legitimate curiosity of sincere seekers, for personal gain. In some cases, exploitation of students and traditional culture may involve the selling of fake ‘traditional’ spiritual ceremonies, fake artifacts, fictional accounts in books, illegitimate tours of sacred sites, and often the chance to buy spiritual titles. In Nepal, the term ‘Chicken Shaman’ is used.
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November 13, 2011
The Neon Museum in Las Vegas features signs from old casinos and other businesses displayed outdoors on over 6 acres. The museum is restoring the La Concha Motel lobby as its visitor center. For many years, the Young Electric Sign Company stored many of these old signs in their ‘boneyard.’ The signs were slowly being destroyed by exposure to the elements. The museum is restoring the signs and placing them around the Fremont Street Experience. The Neon Museum maintains twelve restored signs throughout Downtown Las Vegas. Some can be seen on a self-guided visitors walk through the Fremont Street Experience. Three others have been added in recent years to the median of Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the eventual site for the Neon Museum itself.
The Neon Museum is located on Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonanza, across the street from Cashman Center and along the Las Vegas downtown museum corridor. The boneyard preserves over 150 neon signs from the Nevada area. While the core of the collection is from the old Yesco Boneyard, private donations and loans have expanded the collection to the current size. Important historical pieces in the boneyard include the signage from the Moulin Rouge Hotel, the Stardust, Desert Inn and Caesar’s Palace as well as many others. Not just neon signage, the museum also houses fiberglass sculptures including a giant skull from the Treasure Island among others.
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November 13, 2011
Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) is a privately owned manufacturer of electric signs based in Salt Lake City. The company was founded by Thomas Young in 1920 and today has divisions and branches in 10 western states, as well as in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. YESCO offers a comprehensive range of services for electronic signs, including design, fabrication, installation and ongoing maintenance.
Many notable sign projects have been produced by YESCO. These include the NBC Experience globe in New York City, the historic El Capitan Theatre and Wax Museum marquees in Hollywood, the most recent incarnation of the Reno Arch and numerous icons in Las Vegas, such as Vegas Vic, the Fremont Street Experience, the Astrolabe in The Venetian and the recent Wynn Las Vegas resort sign.
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November 13, 2011
The Stardust was a casino resort located on the Las Vegas Strip, which opened in 1958, although most of the modern casino complex (including the main 32-story tower) was built in 1991. The Stardust officially closed in 2006, after operating continuously for 48 years. It was imploded a year later, and was the youngest undamaged high-rise building to ever be demolished at the time. Construction started immediately for Echelon Place, which was planned to replace The Stardust, but development was suspended in 2008, and remains suspended as 2011.
The famed Stardust sign became a symbol of Las Vegas. Young Electric Sign Company was hired to fabricate the sign. Kermit Wayne’s design was selected for both the façade and the roadside signs. Although Moe Dalitz (bootlegger, racketeer, and philanthropist who was one of the major figures who helped shape Las Vegas), who took over from original developer Tony Cornero upon his death, said it was from his original plans, the sign was really part of Cornero’s original concept.
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November 12, 2011
Hole carding refers to obtaining knowledge of cards that are supposed to be hidden from view in card games. The term is usually applied to blackjack but can apply to other games with hidden hole cards, like three card poker and Caribbean stud poker.
So long as it does not involve the use of a device like a mirror or actions like touching the dealer’s cards, in most jurisdictions hole carding is a legal form of advantage gambling. In other games, like stud poker, casinos normally have rules against ‘rubbernecking’ (having a confederate stand behind an opponent to signal hole cards).
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November 12, 2011
In poker, a hole cam (or pocket cam) is a camera that displays a player’s face-down cards (known as ‘hole cards’) to television viewers. The hole cam became popular in 1999 when it was first used by the BBC. In some cases, the camera is placed under a glass panel in the table and players are instructed to place their cards over the glass. In other cases, the rail of the table is elevated and a small camera placed within the rail, and players are instructed to examine their cards in the usual manner, but while they’re in front of the camera.
The goal in both cases is to allow for the filming and broadcast of the player’s hole cards to the spectators without exposing them to the other players. This has led to the audience garnering a greater understanding of what is going on at the table and an increased interest in the thought processes of the players.
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November 10, 2011
Slow playing (also called sandbagging or trapping) is deceptive play in poker that is roughly the opposite of bluffing: betting weakly or passively with a strong holding rather than betting aggressively with a weak one. The flat call is one such play. The objective of the passive slow play is to lure opponents into a pot who might fold to a raise, or to cause them to bet more strongly than they would if the player had played aggressively (bet or raised). Slow playing sacrifices protection against hands that may improve and risks losing the pot-building value of a bet if the opponent also checks.
Against observant opponents, the frequency of bluffing affects the effectiveness of slow playing, and vice versa. If a player’s table image is that of an aggressive bluffer, slow playing is less important because his opponents will be more willing to call his usual bets and raises. Similarly, if a player is perceived as a ‘trappy’ player (uses frequent slow plays), his bluffs are less likely to be respected (i.e., more likely to be called) because his opponents expect him to slow play his strong hands. Fishing for the overcall occurs when the last card a player is dealt makes him a very strong hand, an opponent in front of him bets, and there are more opponents yet to act behind him. While the player might normally raise with his hand, just calling may encourage the opponents behind him to overcall when they would have folded to a raise.
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November 10, 2011
‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ refers to a person that is competent in many skills but not outstanding in any particular one. The earliest recorded versions of the phrase do not contain the second part (indeed they are broadly positive in tone).
A Jack of all trades may be a master of integration, as such an individual knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring their disciplines together in a practical manner. This person is a generalist rather than a specialist. A person who is exceptional in many disciplines is known as a polymath or a ‘Renaissance man’; a typical example is Leonardo da Vinci. The phrase became increasingly cynical in connotation during the 20th century.
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November 10, 2011
Microblogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs ‘allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links.’ As with traditional blogging, microbloggers post about topics ranging from the simple, such as ‘what I’m doing right now,’ to the thematic, such as ‘sports cars.’ Commercial microblogs also exist, to promote websites, services and/or products, and to promote collaboration within an organization. Some microblogging services offer features such as privacy settings, which allow users to control who can read their microblogs, or alternative ways of publishing entries besides the web-based interface. These may include text messaging, instant messaging, E-mail, or digital audio.
The first microblogs were known as tumblelogs. The term was coined by ‘why the lucky stiff’ in a blog post in 2005, while describing Christian Neukirchen’s Anarchaia: ‘Blogging has mutated into simpler forms (specifically, link- and mob- and aud- and vid- variant), but I don’t think I’ve seen a blog like Chris Neukirchen’s Anarchaia, which fudges together a bunch of disparate forms of citation (links, quotes, flickrings) into a very long and narrow and distracted tumblelog.’
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November 10, 2011
Artificial scarcity describes the scarcity of items even though the technology and production capacity exists to create an abundance. The term is aptly applied to non-rival resources, i.e. those that do not diminish due to one person’s use, although there are other resources which could be categorized as artificially scarce. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by intellectual property rights or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace. The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss.
An example of artificial scarcity is often used when describing proprietary, or closed-source, computer software. Any software application can be easily duplicated billions of times over for a relatively cheap production price (an initial investment in a computer, an internet connection, and any power consumption costs; and these are already fixed costs in most environments). On the margin, the price of copying software is next to nothing, costing only a small amount of power and a fraction of a second. Things like serial numbers, license agreements, and intellectual property create artificial scarcity, and give monetary value to otherwise free copies. Technocrats argue that if the price system were removed, there would be no personal incentive to artificially create scarcity in products, and thus something similar to the open source model of distribution would dominate.
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