February 21, 2012
A Guide for the Perplexed is a short book by E. F. Schumacher, published in 1977. The title is a reference to Maimonides’s ‘The Guide for the Perplexed.’ Schumacher himself considered ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ to be his most important achievement, although he was better known for his 1974 environmental economics bestseller ‘Small Is Beautiful,’ which made him a leading figure within the ecology movement.
His daughter wrote that her father handed her the book on his deathbed, five days before he died and he told her ‘this is what my life has been leading to.’ The book is a statement of the philosophical underpinnings that inform ‘Small is Beautiful.’
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February 20, 2012
Baby Bottleneck is a 1945 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short released in 1946 and directed by Bob Clampett and written by Warren Foster. In the short, there is a baby boom in the postwar US; an overworked stork (a clear Jimmy Durante reference) gets drunk in the ‘Stork Klub.’ A mix up results in babies getting sent to the wrong parents (such as a baby Hippopotamus to a Scottish Terrier).
To clear up the confusion, Porky Pig is brought in to manage the factory, with Daffy Duck as his assistant. The babies are seen going through a conveyor belt (to the tune of Raymond Scott’s famous ‘Powerhouse’) and getting sent by various animals, while Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor, and the Dionne Quintuplets. Continue reading →
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February 20, 2012
The Ren & Stimpy Show, often simply referred to as Ren & Stimpy, is an American animated television series, created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi for Nickelodeon. The series focuses on the titular characters: Ren Höek, a psychotic chihuahua, and Stimpson J. Cat, a good-natured, dimwitted cat. The show premiered in 1991, on the same day as the debut of ‘Rugrats’ and ‘Doug,’ the three of which comprised the original Nicktoons. The show ran for five seasons on the network.
Throughout its run, the show was controversial for its off-color humor, black comedy, toilet humor, sexual innuendo, and violence, all of which contributed to the production staff’s altercations with Nickelodeon’s Standards and Practices department. The show developed a cult following during and after its run. It was pioneering for satirical animated shows like ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ and ‘South Park.’ Continue reading →
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February 20, 2012
George Liquor (often taking his epithet as George Liquor, American), most famous for his appearances on ‘The Ren and Stimpy Show,’ is a cartoon character created by John Kricfalusi and is a mascot for Kricfalusi’s defunct animation studio, Spümcø. Kricfalusi portrayed George Liquor as a patriotic, outspoken, politically conservative blowhard. Kricfalusi described Liquor as his favorite character to animate.
Kricfalusi described George Liquor as ‘the greatest American’ who is so conservative ‘that he thinks the Republicans are Commies.’ George harbors a deep antipathy for the political left; in one issue of Spümcø’s ‘Comic Book,’ George Liquor becomes enraged after a fish calls him a Democrat. George is a middle-aged, crass, religious, ultra-patriotic American who favors his nephew, Jimmy The Idiot Boy, and tries to teach Jimmy how to be ‘a Real Man.’ Continue reading →
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February 20, 2012
Michael John Kricfalusi [kris-fuh-loo-see] better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of ‘The Ren & Stimpy Show,’ its adults-only spin-off ‘Ren & Stimpy ‘Adult Party Cartoon,” ‘The Ripping Friends’ animated series, and ‘Weekend Pussy Hunt,’ an interactive web-based cartoon, as well as the founder of animation studio Spümcø.
He spent his early childhood in Germany and Belgium, while his father served in the Canadian air force. At age seven he returned with his family to Canada. Having moved in the middle of a school season, he spent much of his time that year at home, watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons and drawing them. Kricfalusi’s interest in Golden Age animation crystallized during his stay at Sheridan College, where an acquaintance of his held weekly screenings of old films and cartoons, among them the cartoons of Bob Clampett and Tex Avery, which left a deep impression on him. Continue reading →
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February 19, 2012
Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed protestors from in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989. The man achieved widespread international recognition due to the videotape and photographs taken of the incident. Despite his anonymity, he is commonly (though not necessarily correctly) referred to in Chinese as Wang Weilin.
The man placed himself alone in the middle of the street as the tanks approached, directly in the path of the armored vehicles. He held two shopping bags, one in each hand. As the tanks came to a stop, the man gestured towards the tanks with his bags. In response, the lead tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action. After repeatedly attempting to go around rather than crush the man, the lead tank stopped its engines, and the armored vehicles behind it seemed to follow suit. There was a short pause with the man and the tanks having reached a quiet, still impasse.
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February 19, 2012
The Next 100 Years is a 2009 non-fiction book by American political scientist George Friedman. In the book, Friedman attempts to predict the major geopolitical events and trends of the 21st century. Friedman also speculates in the book on changes in technology and culture that may take place during this period. Friedman predicts a second American cold war with Russia in the 2010s. Friedman asserts that around 2015, the United States will become a close ally to some Eastern European countries, who will be dedicated to resisting Russian geopolitical threats during this period.
Friedman speculates in the book that the United States will probably become a close ally of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania, who may form a military alliance during this period. According to Friedman’s prediction, around the year 2020, Russia will collapse, fragment, and disintegrate from the economic and political pressure of a second cold war. Continue reading →
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February 18, 2012
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome (a global think tank) and firstly presented at the 3. St. Gallen Symposium (an annual conference taking place at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, aimed at fostering intergenerational and intercultural dialogue between the decision makers of today and tomorrow). The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798).
Its authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used World3, a computer model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth’s and human systems. Five variables were examined in the original model, on the assumptions that exponential growth accurately described their patterns of increase, and that the ability of technology to increase the availability of resources grows only linearly. These variables are: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. Continue reading →
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February 18, 2012
‘In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)’ is a hit song from 1969 by American pop-rock duo Zager and Evans. It opens with the words ‘In the year 2525, If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find…’ Subsequent verses pick up the story at 1,010-year intervals from 2525 to 6565. Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year. In the year 3535, for example, all of a person’s actions, words and thoughts will be preprogrammed into a daily pill. Then the pattern as well as the music changes, going up a half step in the key of the song, after two stanzas, first from A flat minor, to A minor, and, then, finally, to B flat minor, and verses for the years 7510, 8510 and 9595 follow.
The overriding theme, of a world doomed by its passive acquiescence to and overdependence on its own overdone technologies, struck a resonant chord in millions of people around the world in the late 1960s. The song describes a nightmarish vision of the future as man’s technological inventions gradually dehumanize him. It includes a colloquial reference to the Second Coming (In the year 7510, if God’s a-coming, He ought to make it by then.), which echoed the zeitgeist of the Jesus Movement.
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February 18, 2012
The Race of the Future theory states that due to the process of miscegenation, the mixing of different races, especially in marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations, all the races are blending to become one single new race in the future. Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi distinctly advocated race mixing in his 1925 book ‘Practical Idealism’: ‘The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.’
The same scenario had been envisaged, with rather less enthusiasm, by Madison Grant in his 1916 book ‘The Passing of the Great Race,’ calling for an eugenics program to prevent this development, and in a similar ideological context in Lothrop Stoddard’s ‘The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy’ in 1920. In the United States, the proportion of Multiracial American children is growing. Interracial partnerships are rising, as are transracial adoptions.
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February 18, 2012
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements ‘melting together’ into a harmonious whole with a common culture. It is particularly used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States; the melting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s.
After 1970 the desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model was challenged by proponents of multiculturalism, who assert that cultural differences within society are valuable and should be preserved, proposing the alternative metaphor of the mosaic or salad bowl – different cultures mix, but remain distinct.
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February 18, 2012
Feral pigeons are derived from domestic pigeons that have returned to the wild. The domestic pigeon was originally bred from the wild Rock dove, which naturally inhabits sea-cliffs and mountains. Feral pigeons find the ledges of buildings to be a substitute for sea cliffs, and have become adapted to urban life and are abundant in towns and cities throughout much of the world.
All pigeons are one species (columba livia). Pigeons breed when the food supply is good, which in cities can be any time of the year. Laying of eggs can take place up to six times per year. Pigeons mate for life, and are often found in pairs during the breeding season, but usually the pigeons are gregarious preferring to exist in flocks of from 50 to 500 birds.
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