December 13, 2011
SantaCon is a mass gathering of people dressed in Santa Claus costumes parading publicly on streets and in bars in cities around the world. The focus is on spontaneity and creativity, while having a good time and spreading cheer and goodwill. Sometimes known as Naughty Santas, Cheapsuit Santas, Santarchy, Santapalooza, and Santa Rampage, SantaCon incorporates elements of a flash mob in the context of cheerful bawdy and harmless behavior, the singing of naughty Christmas carols, and the giving of small gifts to strangers. In 2005, a more violent version of the event occurred when participants in New Zealand rioted, looting stores, throwing bottles at passing cars, and assaulting security guards.
In 1994, the Suicide Club (a secret society in San Francisco credited as the first modern extreme urban exploration society, and also known for anarchic group pranks) staged the first ‘Santarchy,’ which was later adopted as Santacon by offshoot the Cacophony Society (a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society). Influenced by the surrealist movement, Discordianism, and other subversive art currents, the Cacophonists celebrated the Yule season in a distinctly anti-commercial manner, by mixing guerrilla street theater and pranksterism.
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December 12, 2011
The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier. Copyright protection for works published prior to 1978, was increased by 20 years to a total of 95 years from their publication date.
This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Act, or as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, effectively ‘froze’ the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this Act, additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still protected by copyright in 1998 will not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterward (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again. Unlike copyright extension legislation in the European Union, the Sonny Bono Act did not revive copyrights that had already expired.
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December 12, 2011
Internet in a suitcase is a program reportedly developed or spearheaded by the U.S. Department of State to provide Internet and mobile phone service to dissidents that can bypass government censorship or shut down of telecommunications in countries such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria and Libya. The plan reportedly involves utilizing common hardware components ‘into a package that could easily’ be smuggled ‘into a repressive country and quickly assembled to deliver wireless service across a wide area to maintain crucial communications between legitimately protesting citizens.’
Part of the operation includes a prototype ‘Internet in a suitcase’ being developed by a ‘group of young entrepreneurs’ led by Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. Other projects employ tools ‘that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe,’ and stealth wireless networks.
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December 12, 2011
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261 was a proposed American law to stop copyright infringement on the Internet. The Internet community had major discussion over it, but the bill was not passed. The supporters claimed that current copyright laws are not effective in shutting down piracy websites. The opponents argued the law amounted to a broad censorship tool over the internet.
In protest, several major sites went dark on January 18, 2012. News aggregator site Reddit blocked access first and then others joined the movement. Wikipedia masked most of its pages with a banner to spotlight the value of open access to information on the Internet. Google put up a black censor board in front of its logo.
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December 12, 2011
The term First World Problems refers to issues perceived as difficult to those residing in the more developed nations in the global arena (i.e., the First World), but which are banal when compared to the difficulties encountered by those in the less developed Third World. First World Problems is often used in a derisive manner towards those who complain about the problems they experience in the ‘First World’ on a regular basis. However, it is also routinely used by scholars and economists in studying the relationship between the Third World and the First World.
The exact provenance of the term is uncertain, although some believe that it originated with comedic author David Rakoff, whose 2005 book ‘Don’t Get Too Comfortable’ is subtitled ‘The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.’ Many computer games, notably, provide a fascinating degree of First World escapism via a simulation of Third World Problems. For example, the infamous 1980s ASCII-based dungeon crawler ‘Rogue’ provided those First World denizens who had overcome the First World Problem of not owning a computer to experience such Third World Problems as starvation, existential ennui, and life-or-death hand-to-hand combat.
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December 11, 2011
Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by Peter O’Donnell (writer) and Jim Holdaway (art) in 1963.
The strip follows the adventures of Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talents and a criminal past, and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin. It was adapted into films made in 1966, 1982, and 2003 and a series of 13 novels and short story collections, beginning in 1965.
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December 11, 2011
Stieg Larsson (1954 – 2004) was a Swedish journalist and writer, best known for his ‘Millennium series’ of crime novels, which were published posthumously.
Larsson lived and worked much of his life in Stockholm, in the field of journalism and as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.
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December 11, 2011
The Millennium series (1954 – 2004) is a series of bestselling novels originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson. The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander, an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and editor of a magazine called ‘Millennium.’ Blomkvist, the character, has a history similar to Larsson, the author.
There are three books in the series: ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’ ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire,’ and ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.’ When he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004, Larsson left behind manuscripts of the completed but unpublished novels written as a series. He had written them for his own pleasure after returning home from his job in the evening, and had made no attempt to get them published until shortly before his death. Continue reading →
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December 8, 2011
Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing the customization of healthcare, with all decisions and practices tailored to individual patients. Recently, this has mainly involved the systematic use of genetic or other information about an individual patient to select or optimize preventative and therapeutic care. Over the past century, medical care has centered on standards of care based on epidemiological studies of large cohorts. However, large cohort studies have previously been unable take into account the genetic variability of individuals within a population. Personalized medicine seeks to provide an objective basis for consideration of such individual differences. Traditionally, personalized medicine has been limited to the consideration of a patient’s family history, social circumstances, environment and behaviors.
Since the late 1990s, the advent of research using biobanks (cryogenic storage facilities that archive biological samples) has brought advances in a number of molecular profiling technologies including proteomic profiling, metabolomic analysis, genetic testing, and molecular medicine. Since about 2007 the term Stratified medicine has been used for the current approach.
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December 8, 2011
Personal medicine is an activity that a person does to obtain wellness, rather than something a person takes (e.g., medication) for wellness. In the psychiatric setting, personal medicine, or other self-initiated, non-pharmaceutical self-care activities, is used to decrease symptoms, avoid undesirable outcomes such as hospitalization, and improve mood, thoughts, behaviors, and the overall sense of well being. Not to be confused with ‘personalized medicine’ (a medical model emphasizing the customization of healthcare, with all decisions and practices being tailored to individual patients).
The self-care use of ‘personal medicine’ was first introduced in early 2003 as a result of qualitative research conducted by Patricia E. Deegan through the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. After interviewing individuals who were taking psychiatric medication as a part of their recovery process, Deegan found that: ‘When describing their use of psychiatric pharmaceuticals or ‘pill medicine,’ research participants also described a variety of personal wellness strategies and activities that I have called ‘personal medicine.’ Personal medicines were non-pharmaceutical activities and strategies that served to decrease symptoms and increase personal wellness.
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December 8, 2011
Dwolla is a United States-only e-commerce company that provides an online payment system and mobile payments network by the same name. The company was founded in 2008 with services based only in Iowa. After raising $1.31 million in funding, Dwolla launched nationally in 2009 with founders Ben Milne (CEO) and Shane Neuerburg (CTO), in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, with a few small banks and retailers. Transactions using Dwolla surpassed $1 million a week and its Iowa user-base was overtaken in 2011, with 20,000 users. The company began with two employees and has approximately 15 employees as of June 2011.
The main pull for Dwolla is its low transaction fees. From its onset, Dwolla charged 25 cents per transaction, less than its main rival Paypal, which for several years has charged 30 cents, plus 1.9-2.9% of each transaction. The name Dwolla is a conjunct of ‘dollar’ and ‘web.’ Dwolla is notable for its interest among users of Bitcoin, a digital currency. Some Bitcoin exchanges allow users to buy Bitcoins with dollars transferred to the exchange via Dwolla, and allow users to sell Bitcoins and have the proceeds transferred back to them using Dwolla. Although Dwolla representatives have said that they saw growth due to Bitcoin users, they do not offer any official endorsement of Bitcoins.
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December 8, 2011
The Double Cross System, or XX System, was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British military intelligence arm, MI5. Nazi agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers.
Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: ‘XX.’ The policy of MI5 during the war was initially to use the system for counter-espionage. It was only later that its potential for deception purposes was realized. Agents from both of the German intelligence services, the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), were apprehended. Continue reading →
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