July 16, 2012
The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace. It began with Carlo Petrini’s protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, such as Cittaslow (Slow Cities), Slow living, Slow Travel, and Slow Design. Geir Berthelsen and his creation of The World Institute of Slowness presented a vision in 1999 for an entire ‘Slow Planet.’
Norwegian philosopher Guttorm Fløistad summarizes the philosophy, stating: ‘The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.’
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July 16, 2012
A world’s fair (or world expo) is a large public exhibition. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in varying parts of the world. The main attractions at world’s fairs are the national pavilions, created by participating countries.
At ‘Expo 2000 Hanover,’ where countries created their own architecture, the average pavilion investment was about €13 million. Given these costs, governments are sometimes hesitant to participate, because benefits are often assumed not to outweigh the costs.
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July 12, 2012
The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in 1987. It typically uses uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law.
The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments, such as the disfiguring of compact discs in live performance, known as ‘CDestruction,’ and has produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50’s corporate shorts to a Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming.
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July 12, 2012
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in San Francisco in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! song. The current core of the band consists of Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce, David Wills, and Peter Conheim. Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure sound collage to more musical expositions. These have mostly been released on their own label, Seeland Records.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for SST Records, most notably ‘Escape from Noise,’ ‘Helter Stupid,’ and ‘U2.’ Negativland were sued by U2’s record label, Island Records, and by SST Records, which brought them widespread publicity and notoriety.
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July 9, 2012
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is an adventure video game developed by Capcom. It was first released as ‘Gyakuten Saiban’ (literally ‘Turnabout Trial’) in Japan exclusively for the Game Boy Advance in 2001. The game stars Phoenix Wright, a rookie defense attorney in the Fey and Co. Law Offices, owned by fellow defense attorney Mia Fey. Other characters include Maya Fey, Mia’s sister; Miles Edgeworth, a rival prosecutor; Dick Gumshoe, a scatterbrained detective, and Larry Butz, an old friend of Phoenix’s.
The game features five court cases divided into episodes. Each case flips between two game modes: investigation and the actual trial. In the investigation aspect of the game, Phoenix gathers evidence and speaks to characters involved in the case. In the trial aspect of the game, Phoenix defends his client using said evidence, cross examines witnesses, and solves the mystery surrounding each case. The court perspective is usually in the third person, while the perspective outside of court is in the first person. Since the release of the Game Boy Advance version, the Ace Attorney series has produced many sequels and spin-offs, in a variety of formats including Nintendo’s WiiWare and Apple iOS.
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July 9, 2012
The Atomic Cafe is a 1982 American documentary film produced and directed by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty.
The film covers the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare, created from a broad range of archival film from the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s – including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (including military training films), advertisements, television and radio programs. News footage reflected the prevailing understandings of the media and public.
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July 9, 2012
Ugly American is a pejorative term used to refer to perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ethnocentric behavior of American. Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to US corporate businesses in the international arena.
The term has been defined as: ‘Americans traveling or living abroad who remain ignorant of local culture and judge everything by American standards.’
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July 9, 2012
Futurism was a modern art and social movement which originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia, England, and elsewhere.
The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theater, cinema, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture, and even gastronomy.
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July 7, 2012
‘Superman: Red Son‘ is a comic book mini-series published by DC Comics that was released under their Elseworlds imprint in 2003. Author Mark Millar created the comic with the premise ‘what if Superman had been raised in the Soviet Union?’ The story mixes alternate versions of DC super-heroes with alternate-reality versions of real political figures such as Joseph Stalin and John F. Kennedy. The series spans approximately 1953-2001, save for a futuristic epilogue.
In ‘Red Son,’ Superman’s rocket ship lands on a Ukrainian collective farm rather than in Kansas, an implied reason being a small time difference (a handful of hours) from the original timeline, meaning Earth’s rotation placed the Ukraine in the ship’s path instead of Kansas. Instead of fighting for ‘…truth, justice, and the American Way,’ Superman is described in Soviet radio broadcasts ‘…as the Champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.’ His ‘secret identity’ (i.e. the name his adoptive parents gave him) is a state secret.
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July 7, 2012
Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions; the current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. For example, a prediction market security might reward a dollar if a particular candidate is elected, such that an individual who thinks the candidate had a 70% chance of being elected should be willing to pay up to 70 cents for such a security.
People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants.
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July 5, 2012
Labeling theory holds that deviance is not inherent to an act, but instead focuses on the tendency of majorities to negatively label minorities or those seen as deviant from standard cultural norms. It was developed by sociologists during the 1960s; Howard Saul Becker’s book ‘Outsiders’ was particularly influential. The theory is concerned with how the self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them.
It is associated with the concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping. Unwanted descriptors or categorizations – including terms related to deviance, disability, or diagnosis of a mental disorder – may be rejected on the basis that they are merely ‘labels,’ often with attempts to adopt a more constructive language in its place. A stigma is defined as a powerfully negative label that changes a person’s self-concept and social identity.
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July 3, 2012
‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television‘ is a 1978 book written by liberal activist Jerry Mander which argues that there are a number of problems with the medium of television. Mander argues that many of the problems with television are inherent in the medium and technology itself, and thus cannot be reformed. Mander spent 15 years in the advertising business, including five as president and partner of Freeman, Mander & Gossage, San Francisco, a nationally-known advertising agency.
‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’ argues that the technology of television is not a neutral or benign instrument or tool. The author argues that in varied technologies and institutions such as militaries, automobiles, nuclear power plants, mass production, and advertising, the basic form of the institution and the technology determines its interaction with the world, the way it will be used, the kind of people who use it, and to what ends.
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