October 15, 2023
The Pasadena Doo Dah Parade is a popular farcical and flamboyant parade held in Pasadena, California. It was conceived in 1978 as an irreverent alternative to the traditional formality of Pasadena’s famed Rose Parade. It is held about once a year, usually in the fall or winter, although in recent years it has moved to the nearest Saturday to May Day. The event has spawned offshoots in Columbus, Ohio, Ocean City, New Jersey, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Norfolk, Virginia.
The parade was started by Peter Apanel, Ted Wright, Charles ‘Skip’ Finnell, Corky Peterson, and Richard Caputo, sitting in a bar called Chromos in Pasadena, with input from Alice McIntosh of The Red Shoes Dancewear store next door. In 1978, January 1 fell on a Sunday, and the Rose Parade, which typically takes place on January 1, will not march on a Sunday. So, they decided it would be fun to have an alternative parade on January 1 that year. It was the first Doo Dah Parade. Peter Apanel became the Czar of Parade and organized and oversaw all the parades through Doo Dah 19. Continue reading →
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September 23, 2023
A tachyonic [tak-ee-on-ik] antitelephone is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one’s own past. Albert Einstein in 1907 presented a thought experiment of how faster-than-light signals can lead to a paradox of causality, which was described by Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld in 1910 as a means ‘to telegraph into the past.’ The same thought experiment was described by physicist Richard Chace Tolman in 1917; thus, it is also known as Tolman’s paradox.
A device capable of ‘telegraphing into the past’ was later also called a ‘tachyonic antitelephone’ by science fiction writer and astrophysicist Gregory Benford. According to current understanding of physics, no such faster-than-light transfer of information is actually possible. Continue reading →
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September 4, 2023
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.
Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force. Certain legal questions may affect implementation of the compact. Continue reading →
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August 29, 2023
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people is a slogan popularized by the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and other gun advocates. The slogan and connected understanding dates back to at least the 1910s, and it became widely popular among gun advocates in the second half of the 20th century, so much so that some have labeled it a cliché.
Gun control proponents claim the slogan is an example of bumper sticker logic and supports the larger folk psychology behind gun advocacy. In colloquial use, both parts of the statement are largely considered true. However, when the statement is used in the context of gun debates it becomes misdirection and can be considered a fallacy. Continue reading →
Posted in Death, Language, Politics |
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August 13, 2023
The Dead Internet Theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity.
These intelligent bots are assumed to have been made, in part, to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers. Further, proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception. The date given for this ‘death’ is generally around 2016 or 2017. Continue reading →
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August 6, 2023
The Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants became prominent in the 20th century, especially among Jewish New Yorkers. It has received attention as a paradoxical form of assimilation by embracing an unfamiliar cuisine that eased the consumption of non-kosher foods.
Factors include the relative absence of dairy products compared to European cuisines, concern over German and Italian antisemitic regimes in the 1930s and the proximity of Jewish and Chinese immigrants to each other in New York City. Continue reading →
Posted in Food, Philosophy, World |
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July 20, 2023
A spread is a prison meal made by inmates. Spreads are often made with commissary ingredients, such as instant ramen and corn puffs. Spreads can be simple meals, or elaborate and inventive combinations of ingredients.
Spreads may be used to supplement or replace the government-mandated meals provided to prisoners by the prison, due to the unpalatable and insubstantial nature of many prison meals. Continue reading →
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July 9, 2023
Muntzing is reducing the components inside an electronic appliance to the minimum required for it to function in most operating conditions, reducing design margins above minimum requirements toward zero.
The term is named after Earl “Madman” Muntz, a car and electronics salesman, who was not formally educated or trained in any science or engineering discipline. Muntz built a low part TV in the 1950s. Continue reading →
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July 5, 2023
In machine learning, a stochastic [stuh-kas-tik] parrot is a large language model (LLM) that is good at generating convincing language, but does not actually understand the meaning of the language it is processing. The term was coined by computational linguistics professor Emily M. Bender in the 2021 artificial intelligence research paper ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’
Stochastic means ‘random and involving chance or probability.’ A stochastic parrot,’ according to Bender, is an entity ‘for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms … according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.’ Less formally, the term refers to ‘large language models that are impressive in their ability to generate realistic-sounding language but ultimately do not truly understand the meaning of the language they are processing.’ Continue reading →
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June 2, 2023
Gaming the system (also rigging, abusing, cheating, milking, playing, working, or breaking the system, or gaming or bending the rules) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system to, instead, manipulate the system for a desired outcome. Although the term generally carries negative connotations, gaming the system can be used for benign purposes in the undermining and dismantling of corrupt or oppressive organisations.
The first known documented use of the term ‘gaming the system’ is in 1975. According to James Rieley, a British advisor to CEOs and an author, structures in companies and organizations (both explicit and implicit policies and procedures, stated goals, and mental models) drive behaviors that are detrimental to long-term organizational success and stifle competition. For some, error is the essence of gaming the system, in which a gap in protocol allows for errant practices that lead to unintended results.
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May 23, 2023
Vicarious embarrassment (also known as secondhand, empathetic, or third-party embarrassment and also as ‘Spanish shame’ or Fremdschämen in German) is the feeling of embarrassment from observing the embarrassing actions of another person.
Unlike general embarrassment, vicarious embarrassment is not caused by participating in an embarrassing event, but instead by witnessing (verbally and/or visually) another person experience an embarrassing event. These emotions can be perceived as pro-social, and some say they can be seen as motives for following socially and culturally acceptable behavior. Vicarious embarrassment is often seen as an opposite to schadenfreude, which is the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction at misfortune, humiliation or embarrassment of another person. Continue reading →
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May 19, 2023
Balconing is the name given in Spain to the act of jumping into a swimming pool from a balcony or falling from height while climbing from one balcony to another, performed by foreign tourists during holidays. The term was formed through a combination of the Spanish-language word balcón (‘balcony’) and the English-language suffix ‘-ing,’ in reference to the origin of most practitioners.
In 2010 and 2011, a spate of injuries and deaths attributed by the Spanish press to ‘balconing’ occurred among tourists in the Balearic Islands (including Mallorca and Ibiza). Videos of people jumping into pools from balconies were posted on video sharing websites such as YouTube, which were alleged to have played a role in the spread of the phenomenon. A similar phenomenon has been described in college-related events in the United States. Continue reading →
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