February 27, 2012
Cycle polo is a team sport invented in Ireland in 1891 by retired cyclist Richard J. Mecredy. It is similar to traditional polo, except that bicycles are used instead of horses. In recent years, an alternate form of the game known as ‘Hardcourt Bike Polo’ or ‘Urban Bike Polo’ has grown in popularity. In this variation, teams composed of three to five players compete on tennis courts, street hockey rinks, or whatever other surfaces are available.
The rules vary slightly by city. In the case of a ‘foot down’ or ‘dab’ (touching the ground with one’s foot) the player must ‘tap out’ by riding to mid-court and hitting a designated area with their mallet. There is usually a tap-out located on either side of the court. In order to score, the offensive player must hit the ball across the goal line using the narrow end of the mallet – this is called a ‘shot’ or ‘hit’ – hitting the ball across the goal line with the wide end of the mallet is called a ‘shuffle.’
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February 27, 2012
‘…the terrorists have won‘ is a rhetorical phrase which was widely used in the United States in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The phrase takes the form of ‘if we pursue some particular course of action, then, the terrorists have won.’ One of the most famous instances was on November 4, 2001 by Ellen DeGeneres, who was hosting the Emmy Awards, which had been postponed twice that year for worries that a showy celebration would seem inappropriate in the wake of the attacks. To lighten the mood, she quipped: ‘We’re told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?’
In December 2001, humorist Steve Symanovich commented on the overuse of the expression, writing in the ‘Washington Business Journal’: ‘In recent months I had heard about any number of things that would allow the terrorists to win. Early on, I learned that if America plays fast and loose with the Bill of Rights, the terrorists will have won. I couldn’t agree more, but that was just the start. Later, I found out that if we stop working/shopping/eating out, the terrorists will have won. I took the message to heart. I’m not opposed to work; I don’t mind shopping; and, although I’m on a diet, I can still eat out and order light. But there was more. Finally, I ran into this headline: ‘If you don’t read this article, the terrorists will have won.”
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February 27, 2012
‘Mean world syndrome‘ is a term coined by professor of communications George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Mean world syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory (which states that those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to perceive the real world in ways that reflect the most common messages of the TV world). Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on the effects of television on society, argued that people who watched a large amount of television tended to think of the world as an intimidating and unforgiving place.
The number of opinions, images, and attitudes that viewers tend to make when watching television will have a direct influence on what the viewer perceives the real world as. They will reflect and refer to the most common images or recurrent messages thought to impact on their own real life. Gerbner once said ‘You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behavior,’ he said. ‘It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it’s a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.’ Individuals who watch television infrequently and adolescents who talk to their parents about reality are claimed to have a more accurate view of the real world than those who do not, and they may be able to more accurately assess their vulnerability to violence.
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February 27, 2012
Cultivation theory is a social theory which examines the long-term effects of television. Developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania. They were ‘concerned with the effects of television programming (particularly violent programming) on the attitudes and behaviors of the American public.’
Gerbner asserts that the overall concern about the effects of television on audiences stemmed from the unprecedented centrality of television in American culture. He posited that television as a mass medium of communication had formed into a common symbolic environment that bound diverse communities together, socializing people in to standardized roles and behaviors. He compared the power of television to the power of religion, saying that television was to modern society what religion once was in earlier times. Continue reading →
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February 27, 2012
The Flynn effect is the name given to the observed rise in average IQ scores since the beginning of measurements. The rise in most industrialized countries is about three IQ points per decade. In 1984, based political scientist James R. Flynn described the phenomenon, which is named after him.
The rise is mostly due to the test scores of those who scored an IQ below 100. The number of those who are classified as mentally handicapped diminishes from year to year. In contrast, the test scores of those who scored more than 100, does not seem to be affected.
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February 27, 2012
Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit, or sense. It may be innate, assumed, or reactive – ‘being ‘stupid with grief’ as a defence against trauma,’ a state marked with ‘grief and despair…making even simple daily tasks a hardship.’ The root word ‘stupid,’ which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from the Latin verb ‘stupere,’ for ‘being numb’ or ‘astonished,’ and is related to ‘stupor’ (in Roman culture ”the stupidus of the mimes’ was a sort of professional buffoon – the ‘fall-man,’ the eternal he-who-gets-kicked.’ The word entered the English language in the 16th century; since then, stupidity has become a pejorative appellation for human misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental, due to absence of mental capacity.
The modern English word ‘stupid’ has a broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senseless, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either infer a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze or slow-mindedness.
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February 26, 2012
The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. A large group’s aggregated answers to questions involving quantity estimation, general world knowledge, and spatial reasoning has generally been found to be as good as, and often better than, the answer given by any of the individuals within the group.
An intuitive and often-cited explanation for this phenomenon is that there is idiosyncratic noise associated with each individual judgment, and taking the average over a large number of responses will go some way toward canceling the effect of this noise. This process, while not new to the information age, has been pushed into the mainstream spotlight by social information sites such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, and other web resources that rely on human opinion. In the realm of justice, trial by jury can be understood as wisdom of the crowd, especially when compared to the alternative, trial by a judge, the single expert. Continue reading →
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February 26, 2012
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: National Delusions, Peculiar Follies, and Philosophical Delusions.
Despite its journalistic and rather sensational style, the book has gathered a body of academic support as a work of considerable importance in the history of social psychology and psychopathology. The subjects of Mackay’s debunking include economic bubbles, alchemy, crusades, witch-hunts, prophecies, fortune-telling, haunted houses, popular follies of great cities, and popular admiration of great thieves.
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February 26, 2012
The Wisdom of Crowds is a 2004 book written by American journalist James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.
The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton’s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox’s true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts). The book relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood, however its title is an allusion to Charles Mackay’s ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,’ published in 1841 (which chronicled economic bubbles, witch-hunts, crusades, and similar phenomena).
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February 26, 2012
The Monroe Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit education and research organization devoted to the exploration of human consciousness, based in Virginia. TMI, which claims a policy of no dogma or bias with respect to belief system, religion, political or social stance, was founded by Robert Monroe after he experienced an ‘out of body experience,’ now also commonly referred to as OBEs. Activities includes teaching various techniques, based on audio-guidance processes, in order to expand consciousness and explore areas of consciousness not normally available in the waking state.
Controlled studies of the Institute’s technology suggest that it is effective as an analgesic supplement and can reduce hospital discharge times. The Institute has an affiliated professional membership, and also publishes scientific papers on a subset of its own studies of altered states of consciousness. In its in-house laboratory, these states or focus levels are typically induced by delivering Hemi-Sync signals to subjects performing relaxation procedures inside a shielded, sense-depriving isolation tank. Progression through states is detected and monitored by measurement of peripheral skin temperature, galvanic skin response and DC skin potential voltage.
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February 25, 2012
‘One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society’ is a 1964 book by philosopher Herbert Marcuse. The work offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the society in the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both these societies, as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West.
Marcuse argues that ‘advanced industrial society’ created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.
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February 25, 2012
The Clock of the Long Now is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The project to build it is part of the Long Now Foundation, a private organization that seeks to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The project was conceived by American inventor Danny Hillis in 1986: ‘I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium.I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.’
The first prototype of the clock began working on December 31, 1999, just in time to display the transition to the year 2000. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the date indicator changed from 01999 to 02000, and the chime struck twice. That prototype, approximately two meters tall, is currently on display at the Science Museum in London. The first full-scale clock’s manufacture and site construction is being funded by Jeff Bezos, who has donated $42 million, and is located on his Texas land.
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