July 19, 2011
Teknivals (a portmanteau of ‘tekno’ and ‘festival’) are large free parties which take place worldwide. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement.
The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, New Age Traveller and Burning Man scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.
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July 4, 2011
Subvertising is a portmanteau of subvert and advertising. It refers to the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. Subvertisements may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner. A subvertisement can also be referred to as a meme hack and can be a part of social hacking or culture jamming.
According to AdBusters, a Canadian magazine and a proponent of counter-culture and subvertising, ‘A well produced ‘subvert’ mimics the look and feel of the targeted ad, promoting the classic ‘double-take’ as viewers suddenly realize they have been duped. Subverts create cognitive dissonance. It cuts through the hype and glitz of our mediated reality and, momentarily, reveals a deeper truth within.’
Posted in Humor, Money, Politics |
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April 23, 2011
Prions [prahy-on] are infectious, misfolded proteins (large molecules built from small units known as amino acids). They are known to cause many forms of encephalitis, or brain disease, such as scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, kuru, and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, also known as Mad Cow Disease.
Prions work by changing the shape of proteins in the living things it causes disease in. While normal proteins have lots of alpha helices, or twisted parts, changed proteins have lots of beta sheets, or flat parts. The word ‘prion,’ coined in 1982 by American neurologist, Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words ‘protein’ and ‘infection.’
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April 21, 2011
The humanzee (or chuman) is a hypothetical chimpanzee/human hybrid. The chromosomal similarity of humans and chimps is roughly equivalent to that found in equines (horses, zebras, donkeys, etc.), leading to contested speculation that a hybrid is possible, though no specimen has ever been confirmed.
Geneticists adhere to the portmanteau word convention to indicate which species is the sire (e.g. tigon/liger) For geneticists, ‘Chuman’ therefore refers to a hybrid of male chimpanzee and female human, while ‘Humanzee’ refers to a hybrid of male human and female chimpanzee.
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April 12, 2011
Arcology, a portmanteau of the words ‘architecture’ and ‘ecology,’ is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats (hyperstructures) of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities and minimize individual human environmental impact.
They are often portrayed as self-contained or economically self-sufficient. The concept has been primarily popularized, and the term itself coined, by architect Italian-American architect, Paolo Soleri, and appears commonly in science fiction.
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March 29, 2011
Affluenza [af-loo-en-zuh], a portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of capitalism and consumerism, defined as: a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. Proponents of the term consider that the prizing of endless increases in material wealth may lead to feelings of worthlessness and dissatisfaction rather than experiences of a ‘better life,’ and that these symptoms may be usefully captured with the metaphor of a disease.
They claim some or even many of those who become wealthy will find the economic success leaving them unfulfilled and hungry only for more wealth, finding that they are unable to get pleasure from the things they buy and that increasingly material things may come to dominate their time and thoughts to the detriment of personal relationships and to feelings of happiness. The condition is considered particularly acute amongst those with inherited wealth, who are often said to experience guilt, lack of purpose and dissolute behavior, as well as obsession with holding on to the wealth.
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March 29, 2011
Sheeple (a portmanteau of ‘sheep’ and ‘people’) is a term of disparagement, in which people are likened to sheep. It is often used to denote persons who voluntarily acquiesce to a perceived authority or suggestion without sufficient research to understand fully the ramifications involved in that decision, and thus undermine their own human individuality or in other cases give up certain rights.
The implication of sheeple is that as a collective, people believe or do whatever they are told, especially if told so by a perceived authority figure believed to be trustworthy, without critically thinking about it or doing adequate research to be sure that it is an accurate representation of the real world around them. The term is generally used in a political, social, and mostly in a spiritual sense.
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October 18, 2010
Freeganism is the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded. Freegans and Freeganism are often seen as part of a wider ‘anti-consumerist’ ideology, and freegans often employ a range of alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans ’embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.’
The word ‘freegan’ is a portmanteau of ‘free’ and ‘vegan’; not all dumpster divers are vegan, but the ideology of veganism is inherent in freeganism. Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food.
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