Andy's definitions

neil peart

Drummer from the band Rush. Known for his innovative use of unusual time signatures, steely countenance, extremely intelligent lyrics, and overall awesomeness. He is the greatest living drummer.

Neil Peart freakin rocks, I'm glad that first drummer left Rush so that, along with Mr. Peart, they could become one of the greatest bands that ever existed.

by Andy May 5, 2004

congress

The opposite of Progress

If Pro and Con are opposite, does that mean Progress is the opposite of Congress?

by Andy May 6, 2004

RFID

Spy-chip - possibly the scariest technology coming into use right now. They're tiny chips, some as small as a third of a millimetre, which can be hidden inside objects, packaging and even people, and which give a unique identity symbol if triggered by a scanner. In other words, every banknote, shoe or pair of jeans might have a unique ID allowing anyone with a scanner to track it - the government could find out your whereabouts and where you bought your clothes, criminals could scan you to find out how much money you were carrying and ID cards, passports etc could contain chips which could be scanned from a distance.

Currently being introduced by WalMart in products and packaging, with 100 other companies interested. Euro banknotes might contain the chips. A version which can be injected in humans, the VeriChip, is now being tested, and several US states including New York are discussing forcibly injecting the chips in homeless people.

It stands for Radio Frequency ID.

by Andy May 7, 2004

Blunkett

Blind as a bat, probably from having his head jammed so far up his own arse.

Blunkett is a cunt.

by Andy May 7, 2004

malapropism

This is when someone abuses the wrong worm so you can't understudy what they're crying to play.

Named after someone called Mrs Malaprop in some classical something or other.

by Andy May 7, 2004

pomo

Abbreviation for postmodernism. Usually hostile.

The journal took a pomo turn round about 1990, but it seems to have recovered since.

by Andy May 7, 2004

poststructuralism

A clearer collective term for many of the texts and trends often subsumed under the misleading label postmodernism. Poststructuralism means theories which arise after the structuralist period in continental philosophy, which draw on structuralism but do not accept all of its ideas. Poststructuralists believe in the importance of discourse for understanding social life and question the idea of the self-determining individual, but they do not believe that people's actions can be entirely reduced to an external structure. Often, they study the ways in which structures can be subverted and broken down through their own limits or through ironic reinterpretation or reconfiguration of the structure itself. See power/knowledge, writerly, differance, line of flight.

Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Lyotard and Baudrillard are the best-known poststructuralists.

by Andy May 7, 2004