August 10, 2016
Toyetic is a term referring to the suitability of a media property, such as a cartoon or movie, for merchandising tie-in lines of licensed toys, games and novelties. The term is attributed to Bernard Loomis, a toy development executive for Kenner Toys, in discussing the opportunities for marketing the film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ telling its producer Steven Spielberg that the movie wasn’t ‘toyetic’ enough, leading Loomis towards acquiring the lucrative license for the upcoming ‘Star Wars’ properties.
Although George Lucas wrote the ‘Star Wars’ saga without considering the toyetic potentials of the film, he insisted that he would keep the merchandising rights before the first film was released. 20th Century-Fox underestimated the potential of the film and allowed Lucas to do so, and the film turned out to be a toyetic phenomenon. The seven films have spawned a massive merchandising empire, with everything from toys, action figures, and video games to non-toy merchandise, such as beer steins, spoons, and replicas of the lightsaber hilts.
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July 7, 2016
‘Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)’ was a work of endurance performance art by Emma Sulkowicz, conducted as her senior thesis during the final year of her visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York City.
Begun in September 2014, the piece involved her carrying a 50-lb mattress – of the kind Columbia uses in its dorms – wherever she went on campus. She said the piece would end when a student she alleges raped her in her dorm room in 2012 was expelled from or otherwise left the university. Sulkowicz carried the mattress until the end of the Spring semester as well as to her graduating ceremony in May 2015.
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June 29, 2016
Mechanical doping is a recent term describing the use of secret motors in competitive cycling events. As a form of ‘technological fraud’ it is banned by the Union Cycliste Internationale, the international governing body of cycling. One of the first allegations of motor doping dates to the 2010 Tour of Flanders when Fabian Cancellara climbed a steep part of Kapelmuur while unusually seated, leading to allegations that there was an powered device hidden in his bike.
The first confirmed use of mechanical doping in the sport was discovered at the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships when one of the bikes of Belgian cyclist Femke Van den Driessche was found to have a secret motor inside.
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Posted in Games, Politics, Technology |
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June 14, 2016
Audism [aw-diz-uhm] is the notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or to behave in the manner of one who hears, or that life without hearing is futile and miserable, or an attitude based on pathological thinking which results in a negative stigma toward anyone who does not hear. Tom L. Humphries coined the term in his doctoral dissertation in 1977, but it did not start to catch on until Harlan Lane used it in his own writings. Humphries originally applied audism to individual attitudes and practices; whereas Lane broadened the term to include oppression of deaf people.
Audism has been called a form of ‘ableism,’ discrimination on the basis of disability. Like racism or sexism, audism assigns labels, judges and limits individuals based on whether they can hear or speak. People who practice audism are called ‘audists.’ Although it stems predominantly from hearing people, audism can manifest itself in anyone, intentionally or unintentionally.
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May 24, 2016
The ‘Gay Mafia‘ and the ‘Velvet Mafia’ are pejorative terms for the expansion of gay rights groups in politics, media, and everyday life. The terms are typically associated with a perceived ‘elite’ within the fashion and entertainment industries; although they are also used ironically by gay people themselves.
An early use of the term was when English critic Kenneth Tynan proposed an article to ‘Playboy’ editor AC Spectorsky in late 1967 on the ‘Homosexual Mafia’ in the arts. Spectorsky declined, although he admitted that ‘culture hounds were paying homage to ‘faggotismo’ as they have never done before.’ Playboy would run a panel on gay issues in 1971.
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May 6, 2016
A bellwether is something that leads or indicates trends. The term is derived from the Middle English and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (a wether) leading his flock of sheep. The movements of the flock could be noted by hearing the bell before the flock was in sight.
In politics, the term is more often applied in the passive sense to describe a geographic region where political tendencies match in microcosm those of a wider area, such that the result of an election in the former region might predict the eventual result in the latter.
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April 26, 2016
A go-fast boat is a small, fast boat designed with a long narrow platform and a planing hull to enable it to reach high speeds. During the era of Prohibition, these boats joined the ranks of ‘rum-runners’ transferring illegal liquor from larger vessels waiting outside territorial waters to the mainland. The high speed of such craft enabled them to avoid interception by the Coast Guard. More recently the term ‘cigarette boat’ has become common.
The present era of cigarette boats, dating from the 1960s, owes much of their design to boats designed for offshore powerboat racing, particularly by designer and builder Donald Aronow. During this period, these boats were used by drug smugglers to transfer drugs across the Caribbean to the United States.
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April 19, 2016
The alt-right is a segment of far-right ideologies in the US presented as an alternative to mainstream conservatism in its national politics. The alt-right has been described as a movement unified by support for Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, opposition to multiculturalism and immigration, opposition to feminism, and anti-democratic thought. Although there is no official ideology associated with the alt-right, various sources say it includes beliefs such as Dark Enlightenment (reactionary movement that broadly rejects egalitarianism), monarchism, nativism, right-wing populism, business nationalism, identitarianism, white nationalism, antisemitism, racialism, white supremacy, and American secessionism.
Ian Tuttle writing in ‘National Review’ states that ‘The Alt-Right has evangelized over the last several months primarily via a racist and anti-Semitic online presence. But for Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, the Alt-Right consists of fun-loving provocateurs, valiant defenders of Western civilization, daring intellectuals—and a handful of neo-Nazis keen on a Final Solution 2.0, but there are only a few of them, and nobody likes them anyways.’
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April 14, 2016
Fuerdai is a Chinese term that means ‘the second generation of the rich.’ This term is used to describe social and moral problems that are associated with modern China’s recent economic ascendency. Fuerdai are sons and daughters of the Chinese nouveau riche of the early years of China’s reform era (from the late 1970s onward). During the new era, in which private initiative could be rewarded by wealth, many new rich Chinese emerged in the former-socialist society. Their children often enjoy a comfortable lifestyle and have a much easier and obstacle-free life path.
Most wealthy Chinese send their children abroad to get a better education. This especially true in the US and Canada where it is common to see well-off Chinese students attending driving cars that are out of reach for the vast majority of American students. Universities look favorably to this kind of international student as they generate more revenue and tend to pay more fees. Places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, West Lafayette, Indiana (home to Purdue University), Toronto, Boston, New York, and Dallas tend to have high numbers of Fuerdai, who will often attend university for four years and sell their cars right after graduation.
Posted in Money, Politics, World |
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April 5, 2016
Fighting words are written or spoken words, generally expressed to incite hatred or violence from their target. Specific definitions, freedoms, and limitations of fighting words vary by jurisdiction. It is also used in a general sense of words that when uttered tend to create (deliberately or not) a verbal or physical confrontation by their mere usage.
In 1942, the Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in ‘Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.’ It held that ‘insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace’ are among the ‘well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.’ Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, had purportedly told a New Hampshire town marshal who was attempting to prevent him from preaching that he was ‘a God-damned racketeer’ and ‘a damned fascist’ and was arrested. The court upheld the arrest.
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March 28, 2016
The Me Generation refers to the ‘baby boomer’ generation (Americans born during the 1946 to 1964 post-war baby boom) and the self-involved qualities that some social critics associated with it. Boomers were dubbed the ‘Me’ generation by writer Tom Wolfe during the 1970s; Christopher Lasch was another writer who commented on the rise of a culture of narcissism among the younger generation. The phrase caught on with the general public, at a time when ‘self-realization’ and ‘self-fulfillment’ were becoming cultural aspirations among young people, who considered them far more important than social responsibility.
The 1960s are remembered as a time of political protests, radical experimentation with new cultural experiences (e.g. Sexual Revolution, ‘happenings,’ and New Age spirituality). The Civil Rights Movement gave rebellious young people serious goals to work towards. Cultural experimentation was justified as being directed toward spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. The 1970s, in contrast, were a time of disillusionment with idealistic politics among the young, particularly after the resignation of Richard Nixon, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the end of the Vietnam War. Unapologetic hedonism became acceptable among the young, expressed in the Disco music popular at the time.
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March 21, 2016
Manspreading, or man-sitting, is the practice of sitting in public transport with legs wide apart, thereby covering more than one seat. Both this posture and usage of the term ‘manspreading’ have caused some internet criticism, and debates. The term first appeared in public debate when a feminist anti-manspreading campaign was started on Tumblr in 2013. The Oxford English Dictionary added it as a word in August 2015.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York and Sound Transit of Seattle instituted poster campaigns encouraging respectful posture when other passengers have to stand due to crowding on buses and trains. The MTA campaign carried slogans like ‘Dude, stop the spread please!’
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