December 7, 2011
Isotype (International System of TYpographic Picture Education) is a method of showing social, technological, biological and historical connections in pictorial form.
It was first known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, due to its having been developed at the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna (Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien) between 1925 and 1934. The founding director of the museum, Otto Neurath, was the initiator and chief theorist of the Vienna Method. The term Isotype was applied to the method around 1935, after its key practitioners were forced to leave Vienna by the rise of Austrian fascism.
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December 4, 2011
The Ben Franklin effect is a psychological finding: A person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be if they had received a favor from that person. Similarly, one who harms another is more willing to harm them again than the victim is to retaliate.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed the effect and for whom it is named, ‘He that has once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’
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December 4, 2011
The door-in-the-face (DITF) technique is a persuasion method whereby a persuader attempts to convince someone to comply with a request by first making an extremely large request that the respondent will obviously turn down, with a metaphorical slamming of a door in the persuader’s face. The respondent is then more likely to accede to a second, more reasonable request than if this second request were made without the first, extreme request.
Psychology and marketing professor Robert Cialdini suggests this as a form of reciprocity, i.e. the (induced) sharp negative response to the first request creates a sense of debt or guilt that the second request offers to clear, and the reduced second request is interpreted by the receiver as a concession which is reciprocated by compliance with the request. Alternately, a reference point (or framing) construal may explain this phenomenon, as the initial bad offer sets a reference point from which the second offer looks like an improvement.
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December 1, 2011
Corporate-owned life insurance (COLI), also known as dead peasant life insurance, or janitors insurance, is life insurance on employees’ lives that is owned by the employer, with benefits payable to the employer. When the employer is a bank, it is known as a bank owned life insurance (BOLI).
COLI was originally purchased on the lives of key employees and executives by a company to hedge against the financial cost of losing key employees to unexpected death, the risk of recruiting and training replacements of necessary or highly-trained personnel, or to fund corporate obligations to redeem stock upon the death of an owner. This use is commonly known as ‘key man'” or ‘key person’ insurance.
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December 1, 2011
‘Pink Box: Inside Japan’s Sex Clubs’ is a book by photojournalist Joan Sinclair, chronicling her exploration of the secret world of fuzoku (prostitution) in Japan. Sinclair was joined by contributor James Farrer, a British sociologist who attempted to ‘place[s] the images in the context of contemporary Japanese culture.’
The book was published in 2006. Sinclair, a lawyer, describes being triggered to write the book by a comment she overheard ten years earlier, when she spent a year teaching English in Japan. Sinclair describes encountering, and overcoming, difficulties researching and getting access to the clubs—usually reserved for Japanese born patrons.
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November 30, 2011
A gynoid refers to female robots. Android is a gender neutral term for humanoid robots, but which has male connotations. The term ‘gynoid’ was used by Gwyneth Jones in her 1985 novel ‘Divine Endurance’ to describe a robot slave in a futuristic China, that is judged by her beauty.
The tongue-in-cheek portmanteau ‘fembot’ (female robot) was used in the ‘Austin Powers films,’ a cultural play on the fembots originating in the TV series ‘The Bionic Woman.’ Robotess is the oldest gender-specific term, originating in 1921 from the same source as robot, a 1920 Czech play: ‘R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).’
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November 30, 2011
123Klan is a French graffiti crew, founded in 1992 by husband and wife Scien and Klor. Since 1994 the crew have also worked in graphic design, inspired by the work of English graphic designer Neville Brody, and started to apply it to their graffiti (and vice versa). They describe their art as ‘when street knowledge meets technology and graffiti melds with graphic design.’
Scien has said, ‘The great thing about graffiti is its impact on the streets. But most of people don’t like graffiti, simply because they don’t understand it. In a city you have probably less graffiti than advertising, and most of it is certainly uglier than certain graffiti pieces – so to come up with something that gets an impact on people in this visual jungle, it is a real challenge.’
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November 29, 2011
A Drunkard’s cloak was a type of pillory used in various jurisdictions to punish miscreants. An early description of the drunkard’s cloak appears in Ralph Gardiner’s ‘England’s Grievance Discovered,’ first published in 1655. A John Willis claimed to have travelled to Newcastle and seen ‘men drove up and down the streets, with a great tub, or barrel, opened in the sides, with a hole in one end, to put through their heads, and to cover their shoulders and bodies, down to the small of their legs, and then close the same, called the new fashioned cloak, and so make them march to the view of all beholders; and this is their punishment for drunkards, or the like.’
Drunkenness was first made a civil offence in England by the Ale Houses Act 1551; the drunkard’s cloak became a common method of punishing recidivists, especially during the Commonwealth of England. From 1655 Oliver Cromwell suppressed many of England’s alehouses, particularly in Royalist areas, and the authorities made regular use of the cloak.
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November 29, 2011
Tetrahydrocannabinol [te-truh-hahy-druh-kuh-nab-uh-nawl] (THC), also known as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), is the main chemical psychoactive substance found in the cannabis plant. It was first isolated in 1964. In pure form, it is a glassy solid when cold, and becomes viscous and sticky if warmed. An organic chemical (specifically an aromatic terpenoid), with very low solubility in water, but good solubility in most organic solvents (e.g. alcohol, acetone, and butane).
Like most pharmacologically-active plants, THC in cannabis is assumed to be involved in self-defense, perhaps against herbivores. THC also possesses high UV-B absorption properties, which, it has been speculated, could protect the plant from harmful UV radiation exposure. Dronabinol is the generic name of a THC isomer (it has the same number and type of atoms as THC but in a different configuration); it is sold as Marinol (a registered trademark of Solvay Pharmaceuticals).
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November 25, 2011
Nabiximols (trade name Sativex) is a cannabinoid mouth spray developed by the UK company GW Pharmaceuticals for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, who can use it to alleviate neuropathic pain, spasticity, overactive bladder, and other symptoms. Nabiximols is also being developed in Phase III trials as a potential treatment to alleviate pain due to cancer. It has also been researched in various models of peripheral and central neuropathic pain.
Nabiximols is distinct from all other pharmaceutically produced cannabinoids currently available because it is derived from cannabis plants, rather than a solely synthetic process. The drug is a pharmaceutical product standardized in composition, formulation, and dose, although it is still effectively a tincture of the cannabis plant. Its principal active cannabinoid components are the cannabinoids: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). The product is formulated as an oromucosal spray which is administered into the mouth. Each spray delivers a fixed dose of 2.7 mg THC and 2.5 mg CBD.
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November 25, 2011
‘Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions’ is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as ‘A Square,’ Abbott used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to offer pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture.
However, the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions, for which the novella is still popular amongst mathematics, physics, and computer science students.
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November 25, 2011
Junk food news is a sardonic term for news stories that deliver ‘sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia,’ especially when such stories appear at the expense of serious investigative journalism.
It implies a criticism of the mass media for disseminating news that, while not very nourishing, is ‘cheap to produce and profitable for media proprietors.’
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