October 25, 2011
Fringe theatre is theater that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which was named by Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival (1948) as a ‘fringe,’ writing: ‘Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before.’ The term has since been adopted by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and thence by alternative theaters and alternative theater festivals.
In London, the Fringe is the term given to small scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York’s Off-Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway theatres. There are also many unjuried theater festivals which are often called fringe festivals. These festivals, such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Adelaide Fringe Festival, permit artists to produce a wide variety of works.
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October 24, 2011
In professional wrestling, something that is kayfabe [kay-fayb] is not real, but rather ‘acted out.’ People who believe that kayfabe acts are real are called ‘marks,’ as opposed to ‘smarts.’ Those who know wrestling is scripted but still enjoy the storylines are known as’ smart-marks,’ ‘or smarks.’
Kayfabe in general is the portrayal of events within the industry as ‘real’ or ‘true.’ Specifically, the portrayal of professional wrestling, in particular the competition and rivalries between participants, as being genuine or not of a worked nature. Referring to events or interviews as being a ‘chore’ means that the event/interview has been ‘kayfabed’ or staged, or is part of a wrestling angle (fictional storyline) while being passed off as legitimate.
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October 23, 2011
Quiz machine is a term used in the UK for commercial coin-operated video quiz games that offer cash prizes for winning performances. These machines are usually found sited in pubs, bars and other places of entertainment. The term quiz machine is often used interchangeably with the trade term SWP (‘Skill With Prizes’) although not all SWP games are quiz based. The quiz machine first appeared on the scene in the UK in 1985.
The first such machine was called Quizmaster which was made by the Cardiff based now defunct Coinmaster Ltd. This was rapidly followed by quiz machines from other manufacturers. Over the following years quiz machines/SWP’s became a regular feature of the British pub. Leading SWP manufacturers of the 1980s and 1990s were: Coinmaster, JPM, Barcrest, Bell-Fruit, Maygay and Ace-Coin. The themes of many SWP games were (and still are) based on popular TV quiz shows, board games or other aspects of popular culture.
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October 23, 2011
The Independent Investigations Group (IIG) is a volunteer-based organization founded by James Underdown in 2000 at the Center for Inquiry’s Los Angles branch, a non-profit, secular educational organization. The IIG investigates fringe science, paranormal and extraordinary claims from a rational, scientific viewpoint, and disseminates factual information about such inquiries to the public.
IIG offers a $50,000 prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The IIG is involved in designing the test protocol, approving the conditions under which a test will take place, and in administering the actual test. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant is asked to perform a simple preliminary demonstration of the claimed ability, which if successful is followed by the formal test. Associates of the IIG usually conduct both tests and preliminary demonstrations at their location in Hollywood or affiliates.
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October 21, 2011
Action Comics #1 (June 1938) features the first appearance of Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster creation Superman. Published on April 18, 1938 by National Allied Publications, a corporate predecessor of DC Comics, it is considered the first true superhero comic; and though today ‘Action Comics’ is a monthly title devoted to Superman, it began, like many early comics, as an anthology. Copies have sold at auction for $1.5 million.
The first issue had a print run of 200,000 copies. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $10 per page, for a total of $130 for their work on this issue. They effectively signed away millions in future rights and royalties payments. Starting in 1978, Siegel and Shuster were provided with a $20,000 a month annuity which was later raised to $30,000. Liebowitz would later say that selecting Superman to run in Action Comics #1 was ‘pure accident’ based on deadline pressure and that he selected a ‘thrilling’ cover, depicting Superman lifting a car over his head. It has been compared ‘Hercules Clubs the Hydra’ by Antonio del Pollaiolo.
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October 21, 2011
Blake Snyder (1957 – 2009) was an American screenwriter based in Los Angeles, who became one of the most popular writing mentors in the film industry. The author of three books on screenwriting and story structure, Snyder led international seminars and workshops for writers in various disciplines, as well as consultation sessions for some of Hollywood’s largest studios. His nonfiction book ‘Save the Cat!
The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need’ was written in a no-nonsense and conversational tone, which has resonated with both seasoned and novice screenwriters. The title is a term coined by Snyder and describes the scene where the audience meets the hero of a movie for the first time. The hero does something nice — e.g. saving a cat—that makes the audience like the hero and root for him. According to Snyder, it is a simple scene that helps the audience invest themselves in the character and the story, but is often lacking in many movies.
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October 20, 2011
Tactical frivolity is a form of public protest involving humor, often including peaceful non-compliance with authorities, carnival and whimsical antics. Humor has played a role in political protests at least as far back as the Classical period in ancient Greece. Yet it is only since the 1990s that the term tactical frivolity has gained common currency for describing the use of humor in opposing perceived political injustice.
There is no universally agreed definition as to which sorts of humorous protest count as tactical frivolity. Generally the term is used for a whimsical, non confrontational approach rather than aggressive mocking or cutting jokes.
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October 20, 2011
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York City based in Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district. Initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters, the protests were inspired by the Arab Spring movement, especially Cairo’s Tahrir Square protests, and the Spanish Indignants. The participants’ slogan ‘We are the 99%’ refers to the difference in wealth between the top 1% and the other citizens of the United States.
They are mainly protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the power and influence of corporations, particularly from the financial service sector, and of lobbyists, over government. The protest began in September, and by October similar demonstrations were either ongoing or had been held in 70 major cities in the US. Internationally, other ‘Occupy’ protests have modeled themselves after Occupy Wall Street, in over 900 cities worldwide.
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October 20, 2011
We are the 99% is a political solidarity slogan and implicit economic claim that emerged from the ‘Occupy’ protests in 2011. It is a reference to the difference in wealth between the top 1% and all the remaining citizens of the United States. It started as a tumblr blog and became an Internet meme that went viral, showing a picture of a person holding a piece of paper with their story on it, ending with the phrase, ‘We are the 99%.’ New York times columnist Anne-Marie Slaughter described pictures on the ‘We are the 99’ website as as ‘page after page of testimonials from members of the middle class who took out loans to pay for education, took out mortgages to buy their houses and a piece of the American dream, worked hard at the jobs they could find, and ended up unemployed or radically underemployed and on the precipice of financial and social ruin.’
In 2006, filmmaker and Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson filmed a documentary called ‘The One Percent’ about the growing wealth gap between America’s wealthy elite compared to the overall citizenry. The film’s title referred to the top one percent of Americans in terms of wealth, who controlled 38% of the nation’s wealth in 2001. The 1% percent in the United States starts with household annual incomes of greater than $593,000.
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October 20, 2011
Corporatocracy [kawr-prit-tok-ruh-see], in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning (notwithstanding the ‘free market’ label).
The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent, have power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people. They exercise their power via corporate monopolies and mergers, and through their subsequent capacity to leverage broad economic interests, which allows them the luxury of being declared ‘too big to fail’; this is accomplished by legal mechanisms (i.e., lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and/or more personally beneficial subsidies, etc.), which renders them immune to vague accusations and prosecution.
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October 20, 2011
The digerati [dij-uh-rah-tee] are people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks. They are the elite of the computer industry and online communities. The word is a portmanteau, derived from ‘digital’ and ‘literati,’ and reminiscent of the earlier coinage glitterati (wealthy or famous people who conspicuously or ostentatiously attend fashionable events). Famous computer scientists, tech magazine writers and well-known bloggers are included among the digerati. The word is used in several related but different ways. It can mean: Opinion leaders who, through their writings, promoted a vision of digital technology and the Internet as a transformational element in society; people regarded as celebrities within the Silicon Valley computer subculture, particularly during the dot-com boom years; and anyone regarded as influential within the digital technology community.
The first mention of the word Digerati on USENET occurred in 1992, and referred to an article by George Gilder in ‘Upside’ magazine. According to William Safire, the term was coined by New York Times editor Tim Race in a 1992. In Race’s words: ‘Actually the first use of ‘digerati’ was in a article, ‘Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute,’ by John Markoff, into which I edited the term. The article was about a controversy engendered by a George Gilder article that had recently appeared in ‘Upside’ magazine.’
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October 18, 2011
A digital mashup refers to digital media content (e.g. text, graphics, audio, video, animation) drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work. Digital media have made it easier for potential mashup creators to create derivative works than was the case in the past, when significant technical equipment and knowledge was required to manipulate analog content. Mashups raise significant questions of intellectual property and copyright. While questioning the law, mashups are also questioning the very act of creation. Are the artists creating when they use other individuals’ work? How will artists prove their creative input?
A major contributing factor to the spread of digital mashups is the World Wide Web, which provides channels both for acquiring source material and for distributing derivative works, both often at negligible cost. Web or cloud computing based applications are a combination of separate parts brought together with the use of the open architecture of public Application Programming Interfaces (API). For example, a mashup between Google Maps and Weather.com could be made available as an iphone application, where the content and context of that content are drawn from outside sources through the published API.
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