July 11, 2010
Baijiu is a Chinese liquor made from distilled sorghum, a tropical grass, or other grains. The name baijiu literally means ‘white liquor’ or ‘white spirit,’ and it is generally about 80 to 120 proof, or 40-60% alcohol by volume (ABV). Because of its clarity, baijiu can appear similar to several other liquors, but generally has a significantly higher ABV than, for example, vodka (35-50%), Japanese shōchū (25%), or Korean soju (20-45%), and its flavour is distinctive and unique. In 2008 baijiu was the world’s most consumed spirit, with annual sales of 520 million 9-liter cases compared to vodka with 497 million 9-liter cases.
Wuliangye is the most popular brand, followed by Maotai.
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July 9, 2010
Anosognosia [ah-no-sohg-no-see-ah] is a condition in which a disabled person seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis. It was first named by neurologist Joseph Babinski in 1914, although relatively little has been discovered about the cause of the condition since its initial identification. The word comes from the Greek words “nosos” disease and “gnosis” knowledge.
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July 9, 2010
Blek le Rat was born Xavier Prou in Paris in 1952.
He is considered by many the godfather of stencil graffiti art. He began his artwork in 1981, painting stencils of rats on the street walls of Paris, describing the rat as ‘the only free animal in the city,’ and one which ‘spreads the plague everywhere, just like street art.’ His name originates from a childhood cartoon ‘Blek le Roc,’ using ‘rat’ as an anagram for ‘art.’
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July 9, 2010
Banksy is the pseudonym of a prolific British grafiti artist whose identity is still unknown. His artworks are often satirical pieces on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing and stenciling has been compared to Parisian graffiti artist Blek le Rat and members of the punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London subway system in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Banksy’s art has appeared in cities around the world. Art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. Banksy’s first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
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June 30, 2010
White noise is an audio signal that contains all the frequencies audible to the human ear. It is analogous to white light, which contains all the light frequencies visible to the human eye. Pink noise is a signal that is louder at low frequencies and decreases at a constant rate. It is sometimes referred to as flicker noise particularly, when it describes background noise emitted by an electronic device.
Pink noise is used to make music, sound effects, or merely as a pleasant background sound and is reported to sound more like the ocean than white noise (which is often compared to the sound of rainfall or TV static) because of its bias towards lower frequencies. Other colors of noise include: brown, blue, violet, and grey.
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June 30, 2010
The burpee is a full body exercise used in strength and aerobic training. It is performed in four steps: 1) Begin in a standing position; 2) Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground; 3) Kick your feet back, while keeping your arms extended; and 4) Immediately return your feet to the squat position. The athlete then stands up from squat position and repeats the procedure. There are many variants of the burpee such as the ‘Burpee push up’ (the athlete performs one push-ups after assuming the plank position); ‘Jump up Burpee’ (the athlete jumps up as high as they can in at the end of the movement and before beginning the next Burpee); and the ‘Long-jump burpee’ (the athlete jumps forward, not upward). For the ‘Burpee Mile,’ the athlete performs the Burpee exercise, then performs a Standing long jump. This sequence is repeated until the athlete has traveled one mile.
According to Oxford Dictionaries Online, the exercise was named in the 1930s for American physiologist Royal H. Burpee, who developed the Burpee test. He earned a PhD in Applied Physiology from Columbia University in 1940 and created the exercise as part of his PhD thesis as a quick and simple way to assess fitness. The exercise was popularized when the United States Armed Services adopted it as a way to assess the fitness level of recruits in WWII. Consisting of a series of the exercises performed in rapid succession, the test was meant to be a quick measure of agility, coordination and strength.
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June 30, 2010
The Q Score is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a brand, company, celebrity, or television show, used in the United States. The higher the Q Score, the more highly-regarded the item or person is among the group that is familiar with them. Q Scores and other variants are primarily used by the media, marketing, advertising and public relations industries. The Q score metric was developed by Marketing Evaluations, Inc., which uses an annual survey of mail panelists making up a representative sample of the United States to determine a ‘quotient’ (‘Q’) factor or score.
Perenial high scores are associated with Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, and Johnny Depp, while low to negative scores are common for Don Imus, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, Nicole Richie, and Howard Stern.
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June 30, 2010
A shibboleth [shib-uh-lith] is any distinguishing practice that is indicative of one’s social or regional origin. It usually refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group. But, shibboleths can also be customs or practices, such as male circumcision.
Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. For example, during the Battle of the Bulge, American soldiers used knowledge of baseball to determine if others were fellow Americans or if they were German infiltrators in American uniform. Some US soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word ‘lollapalooza’ as a shibboleth to verbally test people who were hiding and unidentified, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R.
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June 30, 2010
Simple English Wikipedia is an English edition of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, primarily written in Basic English (an 850-word auxiliary language created by Charles Kay Ogden in the 1920s for learning English as a second language) and Special English (avoids idioms; created in 1959 and still presented daily by the Voice of America broadcast). Launched in 2003, the site has the stated aim of providing an encyclopedia for ‘people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties and people who are trying to learn English.’
Articles on the Simple English Wikipedia are usually shorter than their English Wikipedia counterparts, typically presenting only basic information: Tim Dowling of ‘the Guardian’ newspaper explained that ‘the Simple English version tends to stick to commonly accepted facts.’ The interface is also more simply labeled; for instance, the ‘Random article’ link on the English Wikipedia is replaced with a ‘Show Any Page’ link; users are invited to ‘change’ rather than ‘edit’ pages; clicking on a red link shows a ‘not yet started’ message rather than the usual ‘page does not exist.’
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June 29, 2010
In physics, a moiré [mwah-rey] pattern is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes. The term originates from moire, a type of textile, traditionally of silk but now also of cotton or synthetic fiber, with a rippled or ‘watered’ appearance.
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June 29, 2010
A paradox is a true statement that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.
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June 29, 2010
Machine elves (also known as fractal elves) is a term coined by the late ethnobotanist, writer and philosopher Terence McKenna to describe the apparent entities that are often reported by individuals using tryptamine-based psychedelic drugs, especially DMT. References to such encounters can be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of Native Americans to indigenous Australians and African tribes, as well as among Western users of these substances.
McKenna’s first published mention of the machine elves is in his and his brother Dennis’ book ‘The Invisible Landscape’ (1975): ‘We especially refer to the apparently autonomous and intelligent, chaotically mercurial and mischievous machine elves encountered in the trance state, strange teachers whose marvelous singing makes intricate toys out of the air and out of their own continually transforming body geometries.’
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