Word: fads
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...South Park film is that happy surprise, an idea that is enriched as it expands from 20 minutes of TV time to 80 movie minutes. It confounds those who suspected that the explosive blips of the South Park fad were ready to flatline and that a feature film--likely to bore the faithful and annoy everyone else--was the surest way to do a Conan off the window ledge of the show's fading notoriety...
...short, the FDA has unofficially launched a gigantic, uncontrolled experiment on the U.S. population, much as it did with the diet drug Redux in 1996 and the impotence pill Viagra in 1998. The Redux fad ended abruptly a year later when some users developed serious heart-valve defects--and major side effects are always a possibility with Xenical as well. With Redux, though, hints of danger had shown up in clinical testing. That's not true of orlistat, either in animals or in human studies conducted in some of the 17 countries where the medication is already available. (An initial...
...most parents, Pokemon seems a relatively benign, if exasperating fad. But could it be a gateway to more dangerous obsessions? David Walsh, a child psychologist and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, thinks it's possible. The technology behind most video games, he explains, is based on a psychological principle called "operant conditioning"--essentially, stimulus-response-reward. "Research has shown that operant conditioning is a powerful shaper and influencer of behavior," says Walsh. "The obsession is not about violence; it's about how engrossing the game becomes...
...these different directions show that dance music isn't just a fad, and that the future does hold promise; the question for me is how much any of this will catch on in the mainstream in the U.S. That Fatboy Slim is finally getting the airplay he deserves this late in his career seems to be a good sign. But it's hard to learn what quality club music is when the drinking age is so high that college students can't go clubbing on a regular basis and when places like Boston still have 2 a.m club closings...
...grand tradition of the Electric Slide and the Macarena comes the newest fad line dance: the Booty Call. With simple choreography--just a few steps and shakes--the Booty Call has been capturing a huge following in the D.C. area among the geriatrics and Georgetown set alike. Even Vice President Al Gore '69 has vowed to abandon the Macarena in favor of the "Booty Call." Clubs in the area can't keep up with the demand for the butt-centric moves and it promises to make a dent nation-wide. So, before the trend passes Harvard by, take time...