Monday, September 24, 2007

Jewellery

One universal issue is control over who could wear what jewellery, a point which indicate the powerful symbolism the wearing of jewellery evoked. In ancient Rome, for instance, only convinced ranks could wear rings; later, sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what type of jewellery; again based on rank. Cultural dictate have also played a important role; for example, the wearing of earrings by Western men was considered "effeminate" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. on the other hand, the jewellery industry in the early 20th century launched a crusade to popularize wedding rings for men — which caught on — as well as appointment rings for men , going so far as to make a false history and claim that the practice had Medieval roots. By the mid 1940s, 85% of weddings in the U.S. feature a double-ring ceremony, up from 15% in the 1920s.Religion has also played a role: Islam, for instance, consider the wearing of gold by men as a social taboo,and many religions have edicts against extreme display.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Socialism and social democracy

The term socialism, used from the 1830s onwards in France and England, was directly related to what was called the social question, in essence the problem that the emergence of competitive market societies did not create liberty, equality and fraternity for all citizens, requiring the intervention of politics and social reform to tackle social problems, injustices and grievances a topic on which Jean-Jacques Rousseau discourses at length in his classic work The Social Contract. Originally the term socialist was often used interchangeably with co-operative, mutuality, associations and collectivist.

The term social democracy originally referred to the political project of extending democratic forms of association to the whole of society, substituting popular sovereignty, the universal franchise and social ownership for the rule of a propertied class which had exclusive voting rights.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Web proxy

Proxies that hub on WWW traffic are called web proxies. Many web proxies try to block offensive web content. Other web proxies reformat web pages for an exact purpose or audience. Network operators can also set up proxies to intercept computer viruses and other hostile content served from remote web pages.