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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June 29, 2010
Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962) is an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.
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June 29, 2010
Eve teasing is a euphemism used in India for public sexual harassment, street harassment or molestation of women by men, with Eve being a reference to the biblical Eve. It is a form of sexual aggression that ranges in severity from sexually suggestive remarks, brushing in public places, catcalls, to outright groping.
Posted in Politics, Sex, World |
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June 29, 2010
The CarterCopter is an experimental compound autogyro developed by Carter Aviation Technologies to demonstrate slowed rotor technology. In 2005, the CarterCopter became the first rotorcraft to achieve μ-1, an equal ratio of airspeed to rotor tip speed. The prototype has a top speed of about 173 mph. A helicopter requires twice as much power to maintain that velocity.
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June 29, 2010
Balkanization [bawl-kuhn-uh-zey-shuhn] is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. The term arose from conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. While what is now termed Balkanization has occurred throughout history, the term originally described the creation of smaller, ethnically diverse states following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
The term is also used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance, the subdivision of the Internet into separate enclaves, the division of subfields and the creation of new fields from sociology, and the breakdown of cooperative arrangements due to the rise of independent competitive entities.
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June 29, 2010
A sun dog (scientific name parhelion; also called a mock sun) is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun. Sun dogs may appear as a colored patch of light to the left or right of the sun, 22° distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun, and in ice halos. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright.
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June 29, 2010
The technological singularity is the theoretical emergence of greater-than-human superintelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which events cannot be predicted or understood.
Proponents of the singularity typically state that an ‘intelligence explosion,’ where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent’s cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human. The term was popularized by astrophysicist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity. Continue reading →
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