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Topic Review
SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob SquarePants (also simply referred to as SpongeBob) is an American animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. The series chronicles the adventures of the title character and his aquatic friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Being the fifth-longest-running American animated series, its high popularity has made it a media franchise. It is the highest rated series to air on Nickelodeon as well as the most profitable property for ViacomCBS Consumer Products, having generated over $13 billion in merchandising revenue as of 2019. Many of the series' ideas originated in The Intertidal Zone, an unpublished educational book that Hillenburg created in 1989 to teach his students about undersea life. He began developing SpongeBob SquarePants into a television series in 1996, and in 1997, a seven-minute pilot was pitched to Nickelodeon. The network's executives wanted SpongeBob to be a child in school, but Hillenburg preferred SpongeBob to be an adult character. He was prepared to "walk out" on Nickelodeon and abandon the series, but he compromised by creating Mrs. Puff and her boating school, so that SpongeBob could attend school as an adult. Nickelodeon held a preview for the series in the United States on May 1, 1999, after it aired the 1999 Kids' Choice Awards. The series officially premiered on July 17, 1999. It has received worldwide critical acclaim since its premiere and had gained enormous popularity by its second season. The thirteenth season began airing in October 2020. The series has inspired three feature films: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004, Sponge Out of Water in 2015, and Sponge on the Run in 2020. Two spin-off series, Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years and The Patrick Star Show, premiered in 2021. An additional spin-off, an untitled project based on the character Squidward Tentacles, is in development as of 2020. SpongeBob SquarePants has won a variety of awards including six Annie Awards, eight Golden Reel Awards, four Emmy Awards, 18 Kids' Choice Awards, and two BAFTA Children's Awards. A Broadway musical based on the series opened in 2017 to critical acclaim.
  • 52.8K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
Now I lay me down to sleep is a classic children's bedtime prayer from the 18th century.
  • 37.1K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Women Warriors in Folklore
This is a list of women who engaged in war, found throughout mythology and folklore, studied in fields such as literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, film studies, cultural studies, and women's studies. A mythological figure does not always mean a fictional one, but rather, someone of whom stories have been told that have entered the cultural heritage of a people. Some women warriors are documented in the written record and as such form part of history (e.g. the Ancient Briton queen Boudica, who led the Iceni into battle against the Romans). However, to be considered a warrior, the woman in question must have belonged to some sort of military, be it recognized, like an organized army, or unrecognized, like revolutionaries.
  • 25.9K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Folk Dance
A folk dance is a dance developed by people that reflect the life of the people of a certain country or region. Not all ethnic dances are folk dances. For example, ritual dances or dances of ritual origin are not considered to be folk dances. Ritual dances are usually called "Religious dances" because of their purpose. The terms "ethnic" and "traditional" are used when it is required to emphasize the cultural roots of the dance. In this sense, nearly all folk dances are ethnic ones. If some dances, such as polka, cross ethnic boundaries and even cross the boundary between "folk" and "ballroom dance", ethnic differences are often considerable enough to mention.
  • 19.0K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Pixar Universe Theory
The Pixar universe theory, or simply Pixar theory, proposes the existence of a "shared universe" in which every film that is created by Pixar takes place, sharing characteristics and an internal logic. Media discussion about a "Pixar Universe" has existed since at least 2003, and has been referred to in disparate sources such as SlashFilm, Washington Times, Reno Gazette-Journal, and MTV News. In To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, the companion book to documentary The Pixar Story, Karen Paik states that there are many internal references between various films in The Pixar Universe. In 2009, CityNews Toronto made comparisons between nine "Pixar Universe" films. In his 2013 thesis entitled "The Pixar Theory", Jon Negroni wrote that all fourteen Pixar movies released at the time took place in a single fictional universe. He acknowledges that the concepts behind his thesis were derived from an episode of the Cracked.com video series After Hours, written by Daniel O'Brien. In his post, Negroni discusses all of the films and how they relate in a timeline of events. The character of Boo in Monsters, Inc. is said to create a time loop, and consequently is the same character as the Witch in Brave. As Pixar released new movies, Negroni wrote new posts to fit each new plotline in the whole theory: in June 2015, he published an article on moviepilot.com and another one on his website explaining how Inside Out also fits into his theory; on December 3, 2015, he wrote another post expanding his theory to The Good Dinosaur and on June 17, 2016 another article explaining how the timeline encompasses Finding Dory as well. Negroni had also fit the Cars spin-off series, Planes, into the theory, even though it was not made by Pixar. The blog io9 described Negroni's work as "a crazy read, one that Negroni has been annotating as readers point to corrections or flaws in his theory. But even as a tinfoil hat theory, it makes some clever connections—and, of course, contains plenty of Pizza Planet trucks." Speaking in an informal 2013 interview, Cars "franchise guardian" Jay Ward rejected the idea that the films take place in the same universe, saying: "It's almost like the 9/11 conspiracy theories... it's like, really? No, the movies were sort of made in a different order by different directors in different times, in different places. It's cool that it all worked out that way, but it probably was not intentional." At the 2015 D23 Expo, during the "Pixar Secrets Revealed" panel, director Mark Andrews also rejected the theory, and Inside Out co-director Ronnie del Carmen said: "Do you know what kinds of meetings we'd have to have to make sure all our movies line up?!"
  • 18.6K
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" — which can be spelled a number of ways — is a children's counting rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is either "chosen" or "counted out". The rhyme has existed in various forms since well before 1820, and is common in many languages with similar-sounding nonsense syllables. Since many similar counting rhymes existed earlier, it is difficult to ascertain this rhyme's exact original.
  • 18.3K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Ifrit
Ifrit, also spelled as efreet and afrit (Arabic: ʻIfrīt: عفريت, pl ʻAfārīt: عفاريت), is a powerful type of demon in Islamic mythology. The afarit are often associated with the underworld and also identified with the spirits of the dead, and have been compared to evil geniī loci in European culture. In Quran, hadith and Mi'raj narrations the term is always followed by the phrase among the jinn. In later folklore, they developed into independent entities, identified as powerful demons or spirits of the dead who sometimes inhabit desolate places such as ruins and temples. Their true habitat is the underworld.
  • 16.2K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Asian Sexual Fetishism
Asian sexual fetishism, sometimes called an Asian fetish, is a variety of sexual fetishism involving primary attraction to persons of Asian descent, especially East or Southeast Asian descent and to some extent South Asian descent. Sexual fetishism towards East Asians by people of other ethnicities is sometimes described by the derogatory term yellow fever.
  • 16.1K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Moon Man (Internet Meme)
Mac Tonight is a fictional character used in the marketing for McDonald's restaurants during the mid-1980s. Known for his crescent moon head, sunglasses and piano-playing, the character used the song "Mack the Knife" which was made famous in the United States by Bobby Darin. Throughout the campaign, Mac was portrayed by actor Doug Jones in his fourth Hollywood job. Originally conceived as a promotion to increase dinner sales by Southern California licensees, Mac Tonight's popularity led McDonald's to take it nationwide in 1987. Although McDonald's ceased airing the commercials and retired the character after settling a lawsuit brought by Darin's estate in 1989, the company reintroduced the character nineteen years later throughout Southeast Asia in 2007.
  • 15.6K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Guilt-shame-fear Spectrum of Cultures
In cultural anthropology, the distinction between a guilt society (or guilt culture), shame society (also shame culture or honor-shame culture), and a fear society (or culture of fear) has been used to categorize different cultures. The differences can apply to how behavior is governed with respect to government laws, business rules, or social etiquette. This classification has been applied especially to so called "apollonian" societies, sorting them according to the emotions they use to control individuals (especially children) and maintaining social order, swaying them into norm obedience and conformity. The terminology was popularized by Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, who described American culture as a "guilt culture" and Japanese culture as a "shame culture".
  • 15.5K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Tangible Cultural Heritage and Historical Monuments of Morocco
Morocco is impacted by indigenous Berber, Arab, African, and European influences , and is often referred to as Al Maghreb (Arabic meaning "West"). The kingdom, which is the region's only monarchy and is located on North Africa's western edge, has managed to transform its rich cultural heritage into a tolerant state.
  • 12.6K
  • 13 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Ievan Polkka
"Ievan Polkka" or "Ievan Polokka" (Savo Finnish for "Eva's Polka") is a popular Finland song with lyrics written in the early 1930s by Eino Kettunen to a traditional Finnish polka tune. The name is commonly misspelled Levan Polkka, due to the similarity of lowercase L and the uppercase vowel I (i) in sans-serif fonts. It is also known as "Loituma's Polka" (or "Loituma's Polkka").
  • 11.4K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Fairy Tale
A fairy tale, fairytale, wonder tale, magic tale, or Märchen is an instance of a folklore genre that takes the form of a short story. Such stories typically feature entities such as dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy-tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy-tale romance". Colloquially, the term "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale; it is used especially of any story that not only is not true, but could not possibly be true. Legends are perceived as real; fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics, fairy tales usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and to actual places, people, and events; they take place "once upon a time" rather than in actual times. Fairy tales occur both in oral and in literary form; the name "fairy tale" ("conte de fées" in French) was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century. Many of today's fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared, with variations, in multiple cultures around the world. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace because only the literary forms can survive. Still, according to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon, such stories may date back thousands of years, some to the Bronze Age more than 6,500 years ago. Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today. Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways. The Aarne-Thompson classification system and the morphological analysis of Vladimir Propp are among the most notable. Other folklorists have interpreted the tales' significance, but no school has been definitively established for the meaning of the tales.
  • 11.2K
  • 17 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Invincible (Comics)
Invincible is an American comic book series written by Robert Kirkman, illustrated by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, and published by Image Comics. Set in the Image Universe, Invincible follows the coming of age of superhero Mark Grayson / Invincible, a Viltrumite and first-born son of Omni-Man, the most powerful person on the planet. The series began publication on January 22, 2003, concluding on February 14, 2018 with 144 issues. A television series adaptation began streaming on Amazon Prime Video on March 25, 2021 to critical acclaim.
  • 10.5K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Gadsden Flag
The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a timber rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Beneath the rattlesnake are the words: "Dont Tread on Me". Some modern versions of the flag include an apostrophe. The flag is named after politician Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), who designed it in 1775 during the American Revolution. It was used by the Continental Marines as an early motto flag, along with the Moultrie flag. It is often used in the United States as a symbol for gun rights and limited government. There are Americans today that still display the Gadsden flag in support of freedom, independence, and for the United States military.
  • 9.4K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Mail-Order Bride
A mail-order bride is a woman who lists herself in catalogs and is selected by a man for marriage. In the twentieth century, the trend was primarily towards women living in developing countries seeking men in more developed nations. In the twenty-first century, the trend is now based primarily on internet-based meeting places which do not per se qualify as mail-order bride services. The majority of the women listed in the twentieth-century and twenty-first-century services are from Southeast Asia, countries of the former Eastern Bloc and (to a lesser extent) from Latin America. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, large numbers of eastern European women have advertised themselves in such a way, primarily from Russia , Belarus , Ukraine , and Moldova. Men who list themselves in such publications are referred to as "mail-order husbands", although this is much less common. The term "mail-order bride" is both criticized by owners (and customers) of international marriage agencies and used by them as an easily recognizable term.
  • 9.3K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Hook
The Hook, or The Hookman, is an urban legend about a killer with a pirate-like hook for a hand attacking a couple in a parked car. The story is thought to date from at least the mid-1950s, and gained significant attention when it was reprinted in the advice column Dear Abby in 1960. It has since become a morality archetype in popular culture, and has been referenced in various horror films.
  • 8.7K
  • 03 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Scandinavian Folklore
Scandinavian folklore or Nordic folklore is the folklore of Norway , Sweden, Denmark , Iceland and the Faroe Islands. It has common roots with, and has been mutually influenced by, folklore in England, Germany, the Baltic countries, Finland and Sapmi. Folklore is a concept encompassing expressive traditions of a particular culture or group. The peoples of Scandinavia are heterogenous, as are the oral genres and material culture that has been common in their lands. However, there are some commonalities across Scandinavian folkloric traditions, among them a common ground in elements from Norse mythology as well as Christian conceptions of the world. Among the many tales common in Scandinavian oral traditions, some have become known beyond Scandinavian borders - examples include The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body.
  • 7.1K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Liberal Socialism
Liberal socialism is a socialist political philosophy that incorporates liberal principles. Liberal socialism does not have the goal of completely abolishing capitalism and replacing it with socialism, but it instead supports a mixed economy that includes both private property and social ownership in capital goods. Although liberal socialism unequivocally favors a mixed market economy, it identifies legalistic and artificial monopolies to be the fault of capitalism and opposes an entirely unregulated economy. It considers both liberty and equality to be compatible and mutually dependent on each other. Principles that can be described as liberal socialist are based on the works of philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein, John Dewey, Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio, Chantal Mouffe and Karl Polanyi. Other important liberal socialist figures include Guido Calogero, Piero Gobetti, Leonard Hobhouse, John Maynard Keynes and R. H. Tawney. To Polanyi, liberal socialism's goal was overcoming exploitative aspects of capitalism by expropriation of landlords and opening to all the opportunity to own land. Liberal socialism has been particularly prominent in British and Italian politics. Liberal socialism’s seminal ideas can be traced to John Stuart Mill, who theorised that capitalist societies should experience a gradual process of socialisation through worker-controlled enterprises, coexisting with private enterprises. Mill rejected centralised models of socialism that could discourage competition and creativity, but he argued that representation is essential in a free government and democracy could not subsist if economic opportunities were not well distributed, therefore conceiving democracy not just as form of representative government, but as an entire social organisation.
  • 7.0K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Take This Lollipop
Take This Lollipop is a 2011 interactive horror short film and Facebook app written and directed by Jason Zada. It uses the Facebook Connect application to bring viewers themselves into the film, through use of pictures and messages from their own Facebook profiles. Starring actor Bill Oberst Jr. as 'The Facebook Stalker', the film acts to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the internet. The information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app is used once, and then deleted. The title is derived from the 1963 song "Please Little Girl Take This Lollipop", written and performed by singer-songwriter Bobby Jameson, which is used in the film. According to Zada, Take This Lollipop was taken offline "a few months" prior to August 2018. The film's website now hosts a Facebook post by him, saying that the data needed had become "quite hard to access" and had affected the functionality of the film.
  • 7.0K
  • 20 Oct 2022
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