March 24, 2011
An aurora [uh-rawr-uh] is a flickering light caused by the sun’s radiation interacting with an atmosphere, usually found near the poles (Aurora borealis – Dawn of the North, or Aurora australis – Dawn of the South). They come in red, green and occasionally blue, and can sometimes resemble fire, and can be seen for a long way, many hundreds of kilometers or miles. Auroras can occur during the daytime, but are not visible to the naked eye.
The Sun emits a flow of charged particles into space called ‘solar wind.’ The Earth is shielded from these particles by its magnetosphere, a protective electromagnetic bubble created by the planet’s molten iron, outer core. The magnetic field is weakest at the cold areas, so at the poles some particles hit the atmosphere. They discharge their energy on impact, giving off light. An aurora can also happen in a coronal mass ejection, when charged particles are expelled so forcefully they that can penetrate electromagnetic fields.
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March 23, 2011
The Schienenzeppelin (‘rail zeppelin’) was an experimental railcar which resembles a zeppelin airship. It was designed and developed by the German aircraft engineer Franz Kruckenberg in 1929. Propulsion was by means of a propeller located at the rear, it accelerated the railcar to 230 km/h (140 mph) setting the land speed record for a petrol powered rail vehicles. Only a single example was ever built, which due to safety concerns remained out of service and was finally dismantled in 1939.
Anticipating the design of the Schienenzeppelin, the earlier Aerowagon, an experimental Russian high-speed railcar, was also equipped with an aircraft engine and a propeller. The chassis of Schienenzeppelin was designed aerodynamically having some resemblance to the era’s popular Zeppelin airships and it was built of aluminum in aircraft style to reduce weight. The interior of the railcar was spartan and designed in Bauhaus-style.
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March 23, 2011
Nouvelle cuisine (‘new cuisine’) is an approach to cooking and food presentation used in French cuisine. By contrast with ‘cuisine classique,’ an older form of French ‘haute cuisine,’ nouvelle cuisine is characterized by lighter, more delicate dishes and an increased emphasis on presentation.
The modern usage can be attributed to author Henri Gault, who used it to describe the cooking of Paul Bocuse and Fernand Point. Bocuse claims that Gault first used the term to describe food prepared for the maiden flight of the Concorde airliner in 1969.
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March 19, 2011
Operation Odyssey Dawn is the codename for the United States participation in a Libyan no-fly zone. The United Kingdom counterpart to this is Operation Ellamy, the French Opération Harmattan. The no-fly zone was proposed during the 2011 Libyan uprising to prevent government forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from carrying out air attacks on rebel forces.
Allied operations began with surveillance operations, air attacks and missiles aimed at Libyan military targets. It was reported by the Pentagon that the first strike involved the launch of over 100 Tomahawk cruise missile against shoreline air defenses of the Gaddafi regime.
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March 17, 2011
Tuángòu [twangoo], which loosely translates as ‘team buying’ or ‘group buying’ (also known as store mobbing), is a recently developed shopping strategy originating in the People’s Republic of China.
Several people – sometimes friends, but possibly strangers connected over the internet – agree to approach a vendor of a specific product in order to haggle with the proprietor as a group in order to get discounts. The entire group agrees to purchase the same item. The shoppers benefit by paying less, and the business benefits by selling multiple items at once.
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March 17, 2011
Kazumasa Nagai (b. 1929) is a Japanese graphic artist and poster designer. He co-founded the Nippon Design Center in Tokyo in 1960.
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March 17, 2011
Kettling, also known as containment or corralling, is a police tactic for the management of large crowds during demonstrations or protests. It involves the formation of large cordons of police officers who then move to contain a crowd within a limited area. Protesters are left only one choice of exit, determined by the police, or are completely prevented from leaving. The term ‘kettle’ is a metaphor, likening the containment of violence to the containment of heat and steam within a domestic kettle.
The tactic prevents large groups from breaking into smaller splinters that have to be individually chased down, thus requiring the policing to break into multiple small battles. Kettling has been criticized for being an indiscriminate tactic which leads to the detention of law-abiding citizens and innocent bystanders, as well as for denying detainees access to food, water and toilets (for long periods of time in some cases). Critics also allege that kettling has been used to foment disorder with the aim of changing the focus of public debate.
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March 16, 2011
Barbarella is a fictional heroine in the French science fiction comic book created by Jean-Claude Forest. He created the character for serialisation in the French V-Magazine in spring 1962, and in 1964 Eric Losfeld later published these strips as a stand-alone book, under the title Barbarella. The stand-alone version caused a scandal and became known as the first ‘adult’ comic-book, despite its eroticism being slight and the existence of the Tijuana bibles (pornographic comic books) well before this date.
Barbarella is a young woman who travels from planet to planet and has numerous adventures, often involving sex (the aliens she meets often seduce her, and she also experiments with a ‘machine excessive’ or ‘orgasmotron’). The original comic book version of Barbarella was probably modelled on Brigitte Bardot, who was once married to the director of the 1968 film, Roger Vadim. Vadim’s third wife, Jane Fonda, starred as Barbarella in the 1968 movie based on the character. For her creator, the character embodied the modern woman in the era of sexual liberation.
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March 16, 2011
Tentacle rape, or shokushu goukan, is a concept found in some horror hentai titles (pornographic comics and animation), where various tentacled creatures (usually fictional monsters) rape or otherwise penetrate women, anthropomorphous creatures, Futanari (hermaphrodites) and, less commonly, men.
The genre is quite popular in Japanese erotica, and is even the subject of much parody. For Western audiences, tentacle erotica often symbolizes hentai as a phenomenon. Tentacled creatures appeared in Japanese erotica long before animated pornography.
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March 16, 2011
Hentai is a Japanese word that literally means ‘strange appearance,’ but is also used to mean ‘perverted.’ Hentai, because of this, is a word used by countries outside of Japan to show pornographic and sex-related anime, manga, and video games. The word is not used to mean this in Japan. In Japan, terms such as ‘ecchi’ are used. Since hentai is anime, the performers are not bound by physical laws. Makers of hentai often use this in very creative ways.
Censorship is practiced differently in Japan and in the US. Japanese law discourages showing of genitals in hentai, while the United States is more concerned about forbidding the display of sex acts involving people under 18. Hence, there are censoring mosaics in Japan, and scene removals and different ages of characters in America.
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March 15, 2011
Phong Nha – Ke Bang is a national park in north-central Vietnam, about 500 km south of the nation’s capital, Hanoi. The park was created to protect one of the world’s two largest karst regions (landscapes shaped by the dissolution of a layer soluble bedrock) with 300 caves and grottoes and also protects the ecosystem of limestone forest of the Annamite Range region in north central coast of Vietnam.
Phong Nha-Ke Bang area is noted for its cave and grotto systems as it is composed of 300 caves and grottos with a total length of about 126 km, of which only 20 have been surveyed by Vietnamese and British scientists; 17 of these are in located in the Phong Nha area and three in the Ke Bang area. Before discovery of the nearby, Son Doong Cave in 2009, Phong Nha was the largest cave in the world.
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March 13, 2011
Kalimotxo [kal-ee-moht-cho] is a drink consisting of approximately 50% red wine and 50% cola-based soft drink.
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