November 9, 2011
The term ‘Super Tuscan‘ describes any Tuscan red wine that does not adhere to traditional blending laws for the region. For example, Chianti Classico wines are made from a blend of grapes with Sangiovese as the dominant variety in the blend. Super Tuscans often use other grapes, especially cabernet sauvignon, making them ineligible for classification under the traditional rules.
In 1968 Azienda Agricola San Felice produced the first ever ‘Super Tuscan’ called Vigorello, and in the 1970s Piero Antinori, whose family had been making wine for more than 600 years, also decided to make a richer wine by eliminating the white grapes from the Chianti blend, and instead adding Bordeaux varietals (namely, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot).
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November 8, 2011
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their activities and memberships but maintain a public presence.
The exact qualifications for labeling a group as a secret society are disputed, but definitions generally rely on the degree to which the organization insists on secrecy, and might involve the retention and transmission of secret knowledge, denial of membership in or knowledge of the group, the creation of personal bonds between members of the organization, and the use of secret rites or rituals which solidify members of the group.
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November 3, 2011
Blackout usually relates to the broadcasting of sports events, television programming, that is prohibited in a certain media market. The purpose is theoretically to generate more revenue by obliging certain actions from fans, either by making them buy tickets or watch other games on TV.
While financially a logical procedure on the part of those providing the programming, blackouts are frequently unpopular with the affected audience as it will cause some fans to miss the game completely even if they were willing to enter the stadium and pay. A similar term, known as preemption, often refers to stations blacking out a program for other than regulatory or governmental reasons, such as when a local station preempts a television network program for local news or a special program.
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November 3, 2011
Since 1973, the NFL has maintained a blackout policy that states that a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time. The policy is intended to encourage full attendance. Prior to 1973, all games were blacked out in the home city of origin regardless of whether they were sold out. This policy, dating back to the NFL’s emerging television years, resulted in home-city blackouts even during championship games.
For instance, the 1958 ‘Greatest Game Ever Played’ between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was unavailable to New York fans despite the sellout. Many fans rented hotel rooms in Connecticut to watch the game on Hartford TV, a practice that continued for Giants games through 1972. Similarly, all Super Bowl games prior to the seventh edition were unavailable in the host city’s market.
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November 3, 2011
The lipstick effect is the theory that when facing an economic crisis consumers will be more willing to buy less costly luxury goods. Instead of buying expensive fur coats, people will buy expensive lipstick. In the time after the 9/11 attacks on the USA lipstick sales rose precipitously.
The underlying assumption is that consumers will buy luxury goods even if there is a crisis. When consumer trust in the economy is dwindling, consumers will buy goods that have less impact on their available funds. Outside the cosmetics market, consumers could be tempted by expensive beer or smaller, less costly gadgets.
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November 3, 2011
The third-person effect hypothesis states that a person exposed to a persuasive communication in the mass media sees it as having a greater effect on others than on himself or herself. This is known as the perceptual hypothesis, but there is also a behavioral hypothesis predicting that perceiving others as more vulnerable increases support for restrictions on mass media. The third-person effect hypothesis also argues that people are compelled to take action after being exposed to a persuasive message but this action might not be due to the message itself but to the anticipation of the reaction of others. This action is unpredictable and it might be either in conformity with the message or counter to it.
Usually, the effects considered are about general media influence, but type of the message also affects the effect size. Messages implying undesirable consequences increase the effect size and messages with desirable consequences decrease or even reverse the effect, as in someone believing that they are more able than others to follow a promoted healthy diet. The third-person effect, specially its behavioral hypothesis, is important to issues of censorship. Censors seldom admit to having been adversely affected by the information they prohibit even if they have been exposed to it numerous times. Usually, they claim, it is the general public that needs to be protected, not them.
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October 31, 2011
Carlos Slim (b. 1940) is a Mexican businessman, and the richest person in the world, worth more than US$60 billion. He owns the Mexican phone company Telmex, which provides a telephone service to most Mexicans. After graduating, Slim expanded on his father’s ownings of real estate in Mexico City. By age 26, he was worth $40 million. During the 1980s and 1990s, Slim bought several companies that were bankrupt or being privatized. Slim owns about 7% of the New York Times.
The Mexican magnate’s growing fortune has caused a controversy because it has been amassed in a developing country where per capita income does not surpass $14,500 a year, and nearly 17% of the population lives in poverty. Critics claim that Slim is a monopolist, pointing to Telmex’s control of 90% of the Mexican landline telephone market. Slim’s wealth is the equivalent of roughly 5% of Mexico’s annual economic output. Telmex, of which 49.1% is owned by Slim and his family, charges among the highest usage fees in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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October 29, 2011
DaruDar is an international community where people give away things, their skills and time to each other for absolutely free requiring nothing in return. The community is based on principles of self-organization. Main condition of participation is following the rules of gift giving and communication set on the site. The global mission of DaruDar is to create a widespread social practice of gift-giving, to make it a daily and routine act. Words like ‘lot,’ ‘exchange,’ ‘freebie,’ ‘junk,’ or ‘crap’ are considered obscene on DaruDar. The service was launched in Russian in 2008. It was created by four friends who had worked with Habrahabr project earlier, a collaborative blog. They were inspired by flashmobs, Russian philosopher Peter Kropotkin and Gandhi.
Darudar users call themselves comembers (‘community members’). DaruDar gift is a thing, skill or service of a comember that he/she wants to give away to someone. In order to offer a gift a comember creates a publication describing what he gives. Other comembers can wish it. Later the gift giver chooses someone to promise their gift. Every gift can be commented, wished, promised and thanked. Only those offers which simultaneously satisfy all three of the following conditions and cannot exist without them should be considered gifts on Darudar: It can be wished; It can be promised; and It can be given.
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October 29, 2011
CouchSurfing is a corporation based in San Francisco that offer its users hospitality exchange and social networking services. It recently suffered significant criticism from thousands of users after becoming a for-profit corporation after having been been a non-profit for many years. Couchsurfing is a neologism referring to the practice of moving from one friend’s house to another, sleeping in whatever spare space is available, floor or couch, generally staying a few days before moving on to the next house.
The CouchSurfing project was conceived by Casey Fenton in 1999. According to Fenton’s account, the idea arose after finding an inexpensive flight from Boston to Iceland. Fenton randomly e-mailed 1,500 students from the University of Iceland asking if he could stay. He ultimately received more than 50 offers of accommodation. On the return flight to Boston, he began to develop the ideas that would underpin the CouchSurfing project.
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October 28, 2011
A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, referred to as ‘freaks of nature.’ Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics, people with other extraordinary diseases and conditions, and performances that are expected to be shocking to the viewers. Heavily tattooed or pierced people have sometimes been seen in freak shows, as have attention-getting physical performers such as fire-eating and sword-swallowing acts.
Freak shows were popular in the United States from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries, and were often, but not always, associated with circuses and carnivals. Some shows also exhibited deformed animals (such as two-headed cows, one-eyed pigs, and four-horned goats) and famous hoaxes, or simply ‘science gone wrong’ exhibits (such as deformed babies).
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October 28, 2011
The Bubble Project, as proclaimed by its manifesto, aims to counteract corporate marketing and advertisement messages in public spaces. The project was conceived by Ji Lee, an artist and art director who originally printed 15,000 stickers that look like speech bubbles used in comic strips. He posts these blank speech bubbles on top of advertisements throughout New York City allowing anyone who sees them to write in their comments and thoughts.
By filling in the bubbles people engage in the project and transform ‘the corporate monologue into an open dialogue.’ The comments are photographed and posted on the project’s website. The Bubble Project has quickly gained popularity and independent efforts have sprung up in other parts of the world in countries such as Italy and Argentina.
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October 28, 2011
A status symbol is a perceived visible, external denotation of one’s social position and perceived indicator of economic or social status. Many luxury goods are often considered status symbols. Status symbol is also a sociological term – as part of social and sociological symbolic interactionism – relating to how individuals and groups interact and interpret various cultural symbols. What is considered a status symbol will differ between countries and states, based on the states of their economic and technological development, and common status symbols will change over time. For example, before the invention of the printing press, having a large collection of books was considered a status symbol. After the advent of the printing press, having books was more common among average citizens, and so the possession of books was less of a status symbol. In the past, pearls and jade were major status symbols. Another common status symbol of the past which is still somewhat present today is heraldry, or one’s family name.
Status symbols also indicate the cultural values of a society. For example, in a commercial society, having money or wealth and things that can be bought by wealth, such as cars, houses, or fine clothing, are considered status symbols. In a society that values honor or bravery, a battle scar would be more of a status symbol. The condition of one’s body can be a status symbol. In times past, when workers did physical labor outdoors under the sun and often had little food, being pale and fat was a status symbol, indicating wealth and prosperity (through having enough food and not having to do manual labor). Now that workers usually do less-physical work indoors and find little time for exercise, being tanned and thin is often a status symbol in many cultures. In the 1990s, foreign cigarettes in China, where a pack of Marlboro can cost one day’s salary for some workers, were seen as a status symbol. Cellphone usage in Turkey had been considered a status symbol in early 1990s.
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