December 9, 2010
Cyriak Harris is a British freelance animator better known by his first name Cyriak, or by his pseudonym Mutated Monty. He is known for his surreal short web animations. A regular contributor to the British website B3ta since 2004, Cyriak displays a surreal and often disturbing animation style with a distinct British theme. He uses a combination of Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for his animation and visuals along with FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Lookps) for original music pieces alongside his videos.
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December 9, 2010
‘The Birds of America‘ is the title of a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing paintings and scientific description of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series of sections between 1827 and 1838 in Edinburgh and London. The work consists of hand-colored, life-size prints made from engraved plates measuring around 39 by 26 inches. In December of 2010 a copy sold at auction for £7.3 million. The original edition is often regarded as the greatest picture book ever produced. 161 subscribers paid $1,000 each for what ended up to be four volumes.
There are only 11 copies held in private collections out of 119 thought to still exist and it is estimated that out of the top ten most expensive books, five of them would be copies of ‘Birds of America.’ In 2007 the book was the subject of an exhibition by the Teylers Museum (the oldest museum in the Netherlands), which owns a copy it ordered from the original subscription, along with the table sold to house and display it. The book’s subsections fit into special drawers around a fly-leaf table; the table formed the centerpiece for gatherings of the Teyler’s gentleman’s society of science. A low-resolution version of ‘Birds of America’ can be viewed on the Audubon website.
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December 9, 2010
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers. The term is generally used with regards to computer networks, but is not limited to this field, for example, it is also used in reference to CPU resource management. DoS attacks are prosecuted in a number of nations under a variety of computer crime laws. They can also constitute acts of cyberwarfare.
One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
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December 9, 2010
Broken windows theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition prevents vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime, i.e. failure to replace a broken window invites further vandalism to the building and neighborhood. It is a criminological theory introduced in an 1982 article in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which has received support from several empirical studies, and has also been the subject of a large body of criticism. Former NY mayor, Rudy Giuliani was a proponent of the broken windows theory, and aggressively policed minor offenses like subway fare evasion, public urination, and ‘squeegee men,’ and other panhandlers. Crime dropped precipitously during Giuliani’s tenure, but so did crime nationwide during a period of extended economic growth in the 1990s.
A successful strategy for preventing vandalism, according to the theory, is to fix the problems when they are small. Repair the broken windows within a short time, a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less likely to break more windows or do further damage. Clean up the sidewalk every day, and the tendency is for litter not to accumulate (or for the rate of littering to be much less). The theory thus makes two major claims: that further petty crime and low-level anti-social behavior will be deterred, and that major crime will, as a result, be prevented. Criticism of the theory has tended to focus only on the latter claim.
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December 9, 2010
The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist and political theorist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate the hidden costs associated with destroying property of others. The parable, also known as the broken window fallacy, demonstrates how the law of unintended consequences affects economic activity people typically see as beneficial.
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December 9, 2010
A combination puzzle, also known as a sequential move puzzle or twisty puzzle, is a puzzle which consists of a set of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations. The puzzle is solved by achieving a particular combination starting from a random (scrambled) combination. Often, the solution is required to be some recognizable pattern such as ‘all like colors together’ or ‘all numbers in order’. The most famous of these puzzles is the original Rubik’s Cube, invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.
There are many different variations including cubes with up to seven layers: the 2×2×2 (Pocket/Mini Cube), 3×3×3 cube (Rubik’s Cube), the 4×4×4 (Rubik’s Revenge/Master Cube), and the 5×5×5 (Professor’s Cube), the 6×6×6 (V-Cube 6), and 7×7×7 (V-Cube 7). The E-cube is an electronic variant of the 3x3x3 cube, made with RGB LEDs and switches. In addition to cubes, combination puzzles are available in various other geometric shapes, including a tetrahedron (Pyraminx), octahedron (Skewb Diamond), dodecahedron (Megaminx), and icosahedron (Dogic). There are also puzzles that change shape such as Rubik’s Snake and the Square One.
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December 8, 2010
A Fresnel [fruh-nel] lens was originally developed by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for lighthouses. The design enables the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a lens of conventional design. Compared to conventional bulky lenses, the Fresnel lens is much thinner, larger, and flatter, and captures more oblique light from a light source, thus allowing lighthouses to be visible over much greater distances. The first Fresnel lens was used in 1823 in the Cordouan lighthouse, north of Bordeaux; its light could be seen from more than 32 km out.
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December 8, 2010
Clown society is a term used in anthropology and sociology for an organization of comedic entertainers (or ‘clowns’) who have a formalized role in a culture or society. Sometimes clown societies have a sacred role, to represent a trickster character in religious ceremonies. Other times the purpose served by members of a clown society is only to parody excessive seriousness, or to deflate pomposity. A clown shows what is wrong with the ordinary way of doing things, and a clown shows how to do ordinary things the wrong way.
Members of a clown society always dress in some kind of a special costume reserved for clowns, which is usually an absurdly extreme form of normal dress. While in their costume, clowns have special permission from their society to parody or criticize defective aspects of their own culture. Clown societies usually train new members to become clowns in an apprentice system. Sometimes the training is improvisational comedy, but usually a clown society trains members in well known forms of costume, pantomime, song, dance, and common visual gags
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December 8, 2010
Bouffon is a modern french theater term that was re-coined in the early 1960s by French acting instructor Jacques Lecoq to describe a specific style of performance work that has a main focus in the art of mockery. Similar to, but distinct from clowning, the bouffon draws from burlesque, commedia dell’arte, farce, gallows humor, parody, satire, and slapstick.
According to Lecoq, ‘the difference between the clown and the bouffon is that while the clown is alone, the bouffon is part of a gang; while we make fun of the clown, the bouffon makes fun of us. At the heart of the bouffon is mockery pushed to the point of parody. Bouffons amuse themselves by reproducing the life of man in their own way, through games and pranks.’
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December 8, 2010
Chautauqua [shuh-taw-kwuh] is an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that still exists in parts of the U.S.. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is, ‘the most American thing in America.’
The first Chautauqua, the New York Chautauqua Assembly, was organized in 1874 by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in New York State. The educational summer camp format proved to be a popular choice for families and was widely copied. Within a decade, Chautauquas sprang up in various locations across North America. The popularity of the movement can be attributed in part to the social and geographic isolation of American farming and ranching communities. People in such areas would naturally be hungry for education, culture and entertainment, and Chautauqua was a timely response to that need in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The advent of the radio and the automobile diminished its role significantly.
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December 8, 2010
Bisha’a (‘trial by fire’) is a ritual practiced today by some Bedouin tribes for the purpose of lie detection. It is the best-known of various forms of trial by ordeal which are practiced by the Bedouin, but is increasingly uncommon, with more and more Bedouins preferring standard courts of law for enactment of justice. The basic ritual consists of the accused being asked to lick a hot metal object thrice. He is provided with water for rinsing after the ceremony. He is then inspected by the official who presides over the ceremony, the Mubesha, and by the designated witnesses of the ritual.
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December 7, 2010
Ducking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for punishment. They were both instruments of social humiliation and censure, primarily for the offense of scolding or back biting, and less often for sexual offenses like having an illegitimate child or prostitution. They were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation.
Most were simply chairs into which the victim could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence and publicly shamed. Some were on wheels and could be dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence ‘ducking’ stool.
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