IN FRATERNAM MEAM: HAVE YOU HEARD OR READ THESE WORDS???

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

HAVE YOU HEARD OR READ THESE WORDS???

** Baby Signing -- a controversial new practice that teaches babies how to communicate by "signing" before they are old enough to speak -- as young as six months. Advocates argue that the practice -- which was codified and promoted by Dr. Joseph Garcia -- reduces frustration, gives babies a sense of control andlets parents communicate with their children earlier, and more successfully. Critics believe that the process has little value, and can actually slow the natural process of learning to speak. It seems to us that the pressure to turn babies into tiny communication factories is an outgrowth of our urgent need to accelerate the development of our children and make them smarter, faster.Many, like Neil Postman, author of the seminal Disappearance of Childhood are highly critical of a society that over programs and over stimulates children. Nonetheless, baby signing isprobably an unstoppable force, and it won't be long before a major baby products marketer, like J & J jumps on the bandwagon, or before we see a whole industry of Signing-Friendly Day Care Centers.

** Brain Fingerprinting - a procedure for determining if someone is telling the truth that could very well become the new standard, replacing the unreliable polygraph and the controversial voice-stress analysis.Brain fingerprinting, developed by Dr. Lawrence Farrell, is based upon the fact that neurological responses donot lie. A series of electronic sensors read the subject"s "Brain Fingerprinting" as he or she reponds to images flashed on a screen. Preliminary tests, conducted with federal agencies, have found it to be 100 percent accurate.

** Fusarium Oxysporum - forget your drug-sniffing dogs and your police sweeps. The real way to wipe out cocaine, marijuana and heroin is biological warfare. A fungus known as fusarium oxysporum is being tested as a devastatinly effective -- and environmentally safe - way to destroy the growing fields. It's a bioherbicide, in other words; the stuff is so effective, reports The New York Times that Monatna State University suspended its research two years ago, afraid that they would be a target of drug cartels. It looks as though fusarium oxysporum could be the drug lord's worst nightmare.It's a narrative made for Hollywood evil drug chief battle bioherbalist.

** Cubanglo - coined by the writer Juan Flores to describe those residents of Miami's Cuban community who were born in the United States.

** Dem - to pinpoint a specific individual based on his or her demographic and psychographic characteristis. While this has always been done, sophisticated database marketers have dramatically elevated their ability to target with stunning precision, spurred by behavioural information gleaned from the Internet: they know who you are, where you live, what you buy, what groups you belong to, what magazines you read, how you like your coffee. In the future, we will be demmed by a posse of observant marketers (not to mention political candidates and nonprofit groups) just about every day.

** Edgewalkers - descrines those of mixed background like Tiger Woods (Asian and African American) who are creating a new America. In her book Edgewalkers, Nina Boyd Kreba writes the they "donot shed one skin when they move from theri cultures of origin to the mainstream and back. Edgewalkers maintain continuity wherever they go, walking the edge between two cultures in the same persona". The writer Walter Mignolo called this phenomenon "Bilanguaging" Basho Fujimoto, a young man who has an Irish-Welsch mother and a Japanese-American father, is quoted in the book as saying, "Our interest is not in taking traditional elements from our old cultures and mixing them all together, making from our old cultures and mixing them all together, making a nice, evenly distributed multicultruralism. It is more like taking the consciousness of all our heritage ... and working with that to create something new." This something new is going to be the most radical culture change we've seen since the great waves of early 20th century immigration -- influencing everything from food and literature to structures of thought.

** Generation 1.5 - descrines those Asians who came to the United States as Children; the segment was named by Asia Link Consulting Group. Depending on when they immigrated and their family circumstances here, some Generation 1.5ers assimilate rapidly, others try to hold on to their roots.

** H-1B Debate -- H-1B is the category that Immigration and Naturalization Service uses for visas that are issued to skilled foreign workers. The technology explosion has created great demand for these workers, and the tech industry keeps pushing to raise the ceiling; the current cap is 195,000 visas per year, but it is expected to go to even heigher, since 850,000 tech jobs are open. Immigration has alwys been a hugely sensitive issue, as Americans are torn between ourlong history of welcoming newcomers and our desire to keep Americans employed. Clearly, there is a shortage of skilled tech workers now, but in a forseeable future, when Americans are battling with foreign workers over jobs, a large national debate will erupt over H-1B and it will be on the tip of everyrone's tongue. Also, with unemployment well over 10 percent among some minority groups, the growth in H-1B workers is an ongoing example of our own demestic educational failures.

** Neoyorquinos - used to describe the polygot nature of Latino culture in the New York region. This dynamic, fast growing group -- which includes Puerto Rican, Domincans, Colombians and Cubans, -- makes it difficult, if not impossible to generalize about Latino culture and politics.

** Millennium Generation - used to describe those between 15 and 25; the most racially diverse group in American history; one third are black, Latino, Asian or Native American. While its predecessor generation is 60 percent more likely to be non-white than its parents' generation. They won't lean, shop or vote like any group we've seen, and - because they believe that rules aren't inherited, but invented - they will define the America to be.

** Nowherians -- coined by writer -- and nowherian himself - Pico Iyer to describe those born in one place -- often from parents of diverse ethnicity - raised somehwere else, shcooled in yet a different place and now engaged in a career in which they travel around the world. Nowherians, onne could argue, are the citizens of the future, as they are increasingly disscociated from geography and are creatures of transport and motion. The matra of previous generations was "there's no place like home"; for Newherians it's "There's no place that is home ". The open question; where will their loyalties and emotional center reside?

** Authethnic - whether it's food or literature or entertainment, authethnic describes the real thing: cultural expressions that are unadulterated, unmodified, uncompromised. These come from the pure heart of ethnic expreience, as opposed to that which has been put through the homogenizing mill of American Culture. When we seek out the Vrazilian restaurant run by a family from Rio, buy tickets for a singer of Portugese Fado in a part of twon we've never been or track down a Russian 'emigre' artist before her work gets swept up by the chic galleries, we are in pursuit of the Authethnic. And it's even becoming harder to find, even globally: Travel and Leisure magazine writes of sushi bars in Dublin, Mariachi bands in Kathmandu and Thail hill people drinking bottles of Guinnes..

** Britafornia - while you might think that there are few places on earth as different as Britain and California. Britafornia describes the transformation of England in a manner that parallels the demographic shifts in California. How? Consider that a large and increasing number of Britain's college graduates and successful enterpreneurs are Asian newcomers. These recent immigrants, amny from China, India and Pakistan, have achieved higher living standards that average whites, and the resulting demographic and income shifts will have profound (and not always positive) implications for British social life.

(Source: Dictionary of the Future by: Faith Popcorn and Adam Hanft)

posted by infraternam meam @ 12:38 AM

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