Word: phenomenons
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...Today fan fiction (or fanfic if you're in the know) is an Internet phenomenon where anybody with a computer and a connection creates and posts stories using existing fiction, television sitcoms, movies and their characters as the basis for their creations - much in the way that Lydgate continued the Canterbury Tales. True to the participatory web, many fan fiction sites provide visitors with popularity rankings and the ability to review fan fiction entries and sort based on those reviews...
...lovelier chaos, because it hinted at a looming cultural phenomenon, came last year with the midnight screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Or rather the nonscreening; the movie broke down and had to be rescheduled. Outside the theater, star Sacha Baron Cohen, in character, was dragged to the cinema in a cart by a gaggle of actresses playing Kazakh wenches. Two months later, the film was released, and real people got to see what all the insanity was about. Borat grossed more than $100 million Stateside, and Baron Cohen got an Oscar...
...with crackpots). But, today, with new advances in neurology, scientists are better able than ever to locate the physical roots of these bizarre perceptions of self. For example, neurologists have studied amputees who can feel sensation where their missing limbs used to be; researchers think this phantom limb phenomenon has to do with rewiring in the brain's somatosensory cortex. And, in the lab, researchers have been able to make people feel that fake rubber hands are attached to their own bodies. (This was done simply enough, by touching the participants' real hands while having them watch the rubber hands...
...great relief that this event still managed to defy the over-commericalized sensation that other festivals can evoke, a phenomenon that can undermine the music itself. It was this unthreatening, laidback, friendly mood that made the day live up to its expectation - and the day's events were all comfortably wrapped up in time for all the kids to make it home in time for supper...
...that this phenomenon is limited to Europe. South Korean and Taiwanese banks got hammered on their respective stock exchanges last week because of fear - based, again, on a lack of knowledge - that they had bought a lot of paper tied to the subprime debt market. And in Hong Kong, Goldman Sachs issued a warning recently that some of the biggest mainland Chinese banks that trade on the Hong Kong exchange - including the Bank of China - were also exposed. In early August a spokesman for the BOC had said its first-half losses tied to subprime investments were "minimal...