December 6, 2010
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly associated with musician Lonnie Donegan and played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians.
Improvised jug bands playing blues and jazz were common across the American South in the early decades of the twentieth century. They used instruments such as the washboard, jugs, tea chest bass, cigar-box fiddle, musical saw, and comb-and-paper kazoos, as well as more conventional instruments such as acoustic guitar and banjo.The term skiffle was originally one of many slang phrases for a rent party, a social event with a small charge designed to pay rent on a house.
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December 6, 2010
Rick Rubin (b. 1963) is an American record producer and the co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin was the original DJ of the Beastie Boys, and co-founder of Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons. He helped popularize a fusion of hip hop and heavy metal music, and he has worked extensively with hard rock groups, notably Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Slipknot, System of a Down, and Rage Against the Machine, but has produced for artists of all different genres including Shakira, Run-D.M.C., The Dixie Chicks, U2, and Green Day.
Rubin’s biggest trademark as a producer has been a ‘stripped-down’ sound, which involves eliminating production elements such as string sections, backup vocals, and reverb, and instead having naked vocals and bare instrumentation.
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December 6, 2010
The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the Greek god Helios, erected in the city of Rhodes on the Greek island of Rhodes by Greek sculptor Chares of Lindos between 292 and 280 BC. It is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was constructed to celebrate Rhodes’ victory over the ruler of Cyprus, Antigonus I Monophthalmus, who unsuccessfully besieged Rhodes in 305 BC. Before its destruction, it stood over 30 meters (107 ft) high, making it one of the tallest statues of the ancient world.
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December 6, 2010
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) or brown fat is one of two types of fat or adipose tissue (the other being white adipose tissue) found in mammals. It is especially abundant in newborns and in hibernating mammals. Its primary function is to generate body heat without requiring the body to shiver. In contrast to white adipocytes (fat cells), which contain a single lipid droplet, brown adipocytes contain numerous smaller droplets and a much higher number of mitochondria, which contain iron and make it brown. Brown fat also contains more capillaries than white fat, since it has a greater need for oxygen than most tissues.
Typically, mammals generate heat by shivering. Low temperatures signal muscle groups around vital organs begin to shake in small movements in an attempt to create warmth by expending energy. It produces heat because the conversion of the chemical energy (food) into kinetic energy (motion) is not 100% efficient, causing some of the energy to show up as heat. Brown fat cells use their mitochondria to convert chemical energy directly into heat by altering the movement of protons that pass through them. It was discovered recently that some adults retain a portion of their juvenile brown fat deposits.
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December 4, 2010
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or African fever, was a process of invasion, attack, occupation, and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914. As a result of the heightened tension between European states in the last quarter of the 19th century, the partitioning of Africa may be seen as a way for the Europeans to eliminate the threat of a Europe-wide war over Africa.
Popular European ideas in the 19th century also aided the partitioning of Africa. The eugenics movement and racism helped to foster European expansionist policy. The last 20 years of the nineteenth century saw transition from ‘informal imperialism’ of control through military influence and economic dominance to that of direct rule. Many African polities, states and rulers (such as the Ashanti, the Abyssinians, the Moroccans and the Dervishes) sought to resist this wave of European aggression.
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December 4, 2010
‘Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies’ is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at UCLA. The book’s title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, despite often being vastly outnumbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs) and centralized government promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel).
The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while attempting to refute the belief that Eurasian hegemony is due to genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example Chinese centralized government, or improved disease resistance among Eurasians), these advantages were only created due to the influence of geography and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
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December 3, 2010
Issey Miyake (b. 1938) is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances. Miyake was born in Hiroshima; as a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the nuclear bomb. He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. After graduation, he worked in Paris and New York City. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he found the Miyake Design Studio. In the late ’80s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production.
This eventually resulted in a new technique called ‘garment pleating’ and in 1993’s ‘Pleats Please’ in which the garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric’s ‘memory’ holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He had a long friendship with Austrian-born pottery artist Dame Lucie Rie. She bequeathed to him her substantial collection of ceramic and porcelain buttons, which he integrated into his designs and presented them in new collections.
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December 3, 2010
The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (Latin for New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. It contain some of his most personal material, and during the sixteen years he worked on it, Jung developed his theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and individuation. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book.
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December 3, 2010
Carl Gustav Jung [yoong] (1875 – 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker, and the founder of analytical psychology. Jung is often considered the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is ‘by nature religious’ and to explore it in depth. Though not the first to analyze dreams, he has become perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life’s work was spent exploring other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts.
He considered the process of individuation necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining conscious autonomy. Individuation was the central concept of analytical psychology. Many pioneering psychological concepts were originally proposed by Jung, including the Archetype, the Collective Unconscious, the Complex, and synchronicity. A popular psychometric instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has been principally developed from Jung’s theories.
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December 3, 2010
Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception plan during World War II. As part of Operation Barclay, a plan to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, Mincemeat helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective.
This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted ‘top secret’ documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría in Spain.
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December 3, 2010
In 1938 American engineer, Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what is now called software. It describes the ability of technological advancement to do ‘more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.’ Fuller’s vision was that ephemeralization will result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources. The concept is a counterargument to Malthusian philosophy, where that the dangers of population growth (famine, disease, etc.) would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society.
Fuller uses Henry Ford’s assembly line as an example of how ephemeralization can continuously lead to better products at lower cost with no upper bound on productivity. Another example is found in length measurement technologies: ruler > rod > rope > telescope > radio. The technological progression is a continuing increase in length-measuring ability per pound of instrument, with no apparent upper limit according to Fuller. However, increasing system complexity and information overload make it difficult and stressful for the people who must control the ephemeralized systems. This can negate the advantages of ephemeralization.
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December 3, 2010
A QR Code is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes.
QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. The maximum information a QR code can represent is about 4300 alphanumeric characters or just under 3 kilobytes.
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