Everything is Interesting
Progressivism [pruh-gres-uh-viz-uhm] is a political attitude advocating changes or reform through governmental action. Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies. The Progressive Movement began in cities with settlement workers and reformers who were interested in regulating tenement housing and child labor.
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Secular Humanism is a philosophy that espouses reason, ethics, and the search for human fulfillment, and specifically rejects supernatural and religious dogma as the basis of morality and decision-making. Secular Humanism is a life stance that focuses on the way human beings can lead happy and functional lives. The term was coined in the 20th century by British worker’s rights advocate George Holyoake.
Fundamental to the concept is the strongly held belief that ideology—be it religious or political—must be examined by each individual and not simply accepted or rejected on faith. Along with this belief, an essential part of Secular Humanism is a continually adapting search for truth, primarily through science and philosophy. The humanist stance emphasises the unique responsibility facing humanity and the ethical consequences of human decisions.
Balloon Dog is a sculpture by American artist, Jeff Koons. It is over ten feet tall, and constructed of high chromium stainless steel with a transparent color coating. It is part of the ‘Celebration’ series, which Koons began working on in 1993. Other forms in the series of sculptures and paintings include Valentine hearts, diamonds, and Easter eggs. Some of the pieces are still being fabricated. Each of the 20 different sculptures in the series comes in five differently colored ‘unique versions.’
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The Business Plot (also the Plot Against FDR and the White House Putsch) was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933. Retired Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1934 Butler testified to a Congressional committee on these claims. In the opinion of the committee, these allegations were credible, but no one was prosecuted. While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of ‘wild scheme’ was contemplated and discussed.
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.
In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. It is a a form of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents, music and art.
Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired, and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited. Examples include the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, as well as the works of Shakespeare and the patents over powered flight.
Public domain is a concept of intellectual property law, which includes copyright, patents and trademarks, and refers to works, ideas, and information which are intangible to private ownership and/or which are available for use by members of the public.
Astroturfing denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but are disguised as spontaneous, popular ‘grassroots’ behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is said to have been used first in this context by former US Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas in 1985.
Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (outreach, awareness, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual promoting a personal agenda, or highly organized professional groups with money from large corporations, unions, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often, the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research.
During World War II in the Philippines, the occupying Japanese government issued fiat currency in several denominations; this is known as the Japanese government-issued Philippine fiat peso, or simply the Japanese peso. The Japanese-sponsored Second Philippine Republic under Jose P. Laurel outlawed possession of guerilla currency, and declared a monopoly on the issuance of money, so that anyone found to possess guerrilla notes could be arrested.
The Filipinos called the fiat peso ‘Mickey Mouse money,’ because it was similar to play money and next to worthless. Many survivors of the war tell stories of going to the market laden with suitcases or ‘bayong’ (native bags made of woven coconut or buri leaf strips) overflowing with the Japanese-issued bills. In 1944, a box of matches cost more than 100 Mickey Mouse pesos.
Seed bombing or aerial reforestation is a technique of introducing vegetation to land by throwing or dropping compressed clods of soil containing live vegetation. Often, seed bombing projects are done with arid or off-limits (for example, privately-owned) land. The term ‘seed grenade’ was first used by NY artist, Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the ‘Green Guerrillas.’ The first seed grenades were made from condoms filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer. They were tossed over fences onto empty lots in New York City in order to make the neighborhoods look better. It was the start of the guerrilla gardening movement.
The earliest records of aerial reforestation date back from 1930. In this period, planes were used to distribute seeds over certain inaccessible mountains in Honolulu after forest fires. Seed bombing is also widely used in Africa in barren or simply grassy areas. Newer seed bombs use biodegradable shells which feed the sprout as it grows. Barren land can be turned into a garden in a little over a month. A variant of seed bombing, called tree bombing, involves dropping saplings from military aircraft, but has yet to be attempted.
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the violent overthrow of the US government and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. With leadership whose revolutionary positions were characterized by Black separatist rhetoric, the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary.
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The Pour le Mérite, known informally during World War I as the Blue Max, was the Kingdom of Prussia’s highest military order for German soldiers until the end of World War I. The award was a blue-enameled Maltese Cross with eagles between the arms based on the symbol of the Johanniter Order, the Prussian royal cypher, and the French legend Pour le Mérite (‘for Merit’) arranged on the arms of the cross. A civil version of the order, for accomplishments in the arts and sciences, still exists in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Jailbreaking is a process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to install homebrew applications on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many extensions and themes previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia.
A jailbroken iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch is still able to use the App Store and iTunes. Jailbreaking is different from SIM unlocking, which, once completed, means that the mobile phone will accept any SIM without restriction on, for example, the country or network operator of origin.
The Daily Omnivore 