Norteño, literally meaning “northern” in Spanish, is a genre of Mexican music. The accordion and the bajo sexto are norteño’s most characteristic instruments. This genre of music is extremely popular among some in both Mexico and the United States, especially among the Mexican community. Though originating from rural areas, norteño is highly popular in urban as well as rural areas. 

During the late 19th century, German and Czech migrants to Northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest brought different styles among them: la redova, la varsoviana and the polka. These European immigrants fueled the demand for a local brewing industry, and they also influenced the music scene by bringing the accordion and the polka rhythm, which were part of the popular music of their homeland. Soon, local bands adopted these elements, and a new unique style gradually resulted from a blend with Mexican ranchera styles. This new style soon became a unique norteño genre, thus named because it was primarily popular in the northern regions of Mexico.

In the late 1910s and 1920s, the corridos entered a golden age when Mexicans on both sides of the border recorded in San Antonio area hotels, revolutionizing the genre alongside Mexico’s political revolution. Traditionally, norteño bands played corridos, polkas, and rancheras.

In the 1950s, the heavy influence of Norteño on the traditional music of Mexican-Americans in southern Texas gave rise to a new form of popular music, called Tejano or “Tex-Mex”, which is often influenced by American rock and swing. Tejano music often includes English and may sound much more like American rock and country music, but is a broad genre of music incorporating many different styles, all having origin in traditional Texas Mexican music.

Norteño became even more popular in the 1990s and 2000s in the United States as the Latino-American community increased rapidly. Norteño continues to be one of the most popular types of modern Mexican music today, but it is also gaining rapid popularity in the United States. Many of the most famous Mexican bands such as Ramón Ayala y sus Bravos del Norte, Los Dueto Voces del Rancho, Grupo Móntez de Durango, and Los Rieleros del Norte are all based in the United States with American labels, and their music is usually recorded and produced within the United States. This trend follows the rapid integration of Mexican-American immigrants into the United States. As norteño music is increasingly becoming integrated into American society, norteño, banda, and duranguense are not only Mexican music but also, to some extent, music of the United States.

Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a character trait or quality valued as being good. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice.

Personal virtues became known through Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and inspired many people all around the world. Authors and speakers in the self-help movement report being influenced by him.

1. Temperance. Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation.

2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling Conversation.

3. Order. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time.

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.

6. Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employ’d in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary Actions.

7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.

9. Moderation. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Clothes or Habitation.

11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dullness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation.

13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Hinduism has pivotal virtues that everyone keeping their Dharma is asked to follow, for they are distinct qualities of mankind, that allow one to be in the mode of goodness. There are three modes of material nature as described in the Vedas and other Indian Scriptures: Sattva (goodness, creation, stillness, intelligence), Rajas (passion, maintenance, energy, activity) , and Tamas (ignorance, restraint, inertia, destruction). Every person harbours a mixture of these modes in varying degrees.

Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, two leading researchers in positive psychology, recognizing the deficiency inherent in psychology’s tendency to focus on dysfunction rather than on what makes a healthy and stable personality, set out to develop a list of  Character Strengths and Virtues. After three years of study, six broad areas of virtue were identified, having a surprising amount of similarity across cultures and strongly indicating a historical and cross-cultural convergence. These six categories of virtue are courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom.

Kets are a Siberian people who speak the Ket language. They are thought to be the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived throughout central southern Siberia. Today’s Kets are the descendants of the tribes of fishermen and hunters who have adopted some of the cultural ways of those original Ket-speaking tribes of South Siberia. The earlier tribes engaged in hunting, fishing, and reindeer breeding in the northern areas.

Shamanism was a living practice among the Kets into the 1930s, but by the 1960s almost no authentic shamans could be found. It shared characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples. Additionally, there were several types of Ket shamans differing in function, power and associated animals. Also, there are examples of the use of skeleton symbolics. These have been interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, although they may symbolize the bones of the loon, the helper animal of the shaman, joining air and underwater world, just like the shaman who travelled both to the sky and the underworld. The skeleton-like overlay also represented shamanic rebirth among some other Siberian cultures.

The mythology of Kets has been compared with that of Uralic peoples, assuming that they are modelling semiotic systems in the compared mythologies. Among other comparisons, the mythologies of Ob-Ugric peoples and Samoyedic peoples are mentioned. Other authors have discussed analogies between similar folklore motifs, purely typological considerations, and certain binary pairs in symbolics. These may be related to a dualistic organization of society as some dualistic features can be found in comparisons with these peoples.

However, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of society nor cosmological dualism has been researched thoroughly. If such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered. There are some reports on a division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties, folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and also on cooperation of two beings in the creation of the land, the motif of earth-diver. This motif is present in several cultures in different variants. In one example, the creator of the world is helped by a water fowl as the bird dives under the water and fetches earth so that the creator can make land out of it. In some cultures, the creator and the earth-fetching being, sometimes named as devil, or taking shape of a loon, compete with one another.

Affluenza, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of consumerism. Sources define this term as a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. It is also defined as the bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to “keep up with the Joneses”. It is an epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by the pursuit of the American Dream, or an unsustainable addiction to economic growth.

Proponents of the term consider the costs of prizing material wealth vastly outweigh the benefits. They claim those who become wealthy will find the economic success leaving them unfulfilled and hungry for more wealth. The condition is considered particularly acute amongst those with inherited wealth, who are often said to experience guilt, lack of purpose and dissolute behavior, as well as obsession with holding on to the wealth.

British psychologist Oliver James asserts that there is a correlation between the increasing nature of affluenza and the resulting increase in material inequality. The more unequal a society, the greater the unhappiness of its citizens. Referring to the manipulative methods used by the advertising industry, James relates the stimulation of artificial needs to the rise in affluenza.

James also believes that higher rates of mental disorders are the consequence of excessive wealth-seeking in consumerist nations. He cites World Health Organization data that English-speaking nations have twice as much mental illness as mainland Europe. James defines affluenza as placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame, and this becomes the rationale behind the increasing mental illness. He explains the greater incidence of affluenza as the result of ‘Selfish Capitalism,’ the Market Liberal political governance found in English-speaking nations as compared to the less selfish capitalism pursued in mainland Europe. James asserts that societies can remove the negative consumerist effects by pursuing real needs over perceived wants, and by defining themselves as having value independent of their material possessions.

Affluenza is considered to be most present in the United States, where the culture encourages its citizens to measure their worth by financial success and material possessions. Mainstream media outlets, such as television broadcasts, tend to demonstrate how pervasive the idea has become, and by the same token the same media outlets reinforce the values to the viewers.

The term affluenza was popularized in the United States by the 1997 documentary of the same name from KCTS and Seattle and Oregon Public Broadcasting. John de Graaf, producer of the documentary, also co-authored a book with the same title.

The phrase plastic shaman is a pejorative colloquialism used for individuals who try to pass themselves off as shamans, or other traditional spiritual leaders, but who actually have no genuine connection to the traditions they claim to represent. Rather, plastic shamans use the mystique of these cultural traditions, and the legitimate curiosity of sincere seekers, for personal gain. This exploitation of students and traditional culture can involve the selling of fake spiritual ceremonies, fake artifacts, fictional accounts in books, illegitimate tours of sacred sites, and often the chance to buy spiritual titles.

Though the term plastic shaman originated among Native American and First Nations activists, and is most often applied to people posing as Native American medicine men and women, the term has also been applied to those posing as other types of traditional and alternative healers. People who have been referred to as plastic shamans include fraudulent spiritual advisors, seers, psychics, or other practitioners of non-traditional modalities of spirituality and healing who are operating on a fraudulent basis.

Critics of those who have been called plastic shamans believe one danger is that students who come to learn from plastic shamans may be exposing themselves to physical, as well as psychological and emotional risk. This is because the methods used by a fraudulent teacher may have been invented, adapted or stolen from other cultures and taught without reference to a real tradition, or to the precautions such a tradition would normally have in place in regard to sacred ceremonies and guidelines for ethical behavior.

Those using the term plastic shaman to describe these sorts of fraudulent teachers and exploiters of traditional cultures believe plastic shamans are also dangerous because they harm the reputations of the cultures and communities they claim to represent. There is evidence that fraudulent and sometimes criminal acts have been committed by a number of these imposters. They commit financial fraud and thus victomize participants. It is also claimed by traditional peoples that in some cases these plastic shamans may be using corrupt, negative and sometimes harmful aspects of authentic practices.

Transmigration of the soul is similar to the philosophy of reincarnation. The idea of transmigration of the soul comes from the ancient Greeks. In transmigration after death, the soul drinks from the river Lethe and loses all past memories of their previous life while in Hades, or the underworld, and then moves transmigrates into another human form and is reborn. It was thought the soul had been, and always would be, eternal, having no beginning or end.

Some psychic mediums of a variety of religious persuasions and some Spiritualists believe in transmigration of the soul but hold that reincarnation is an anomaly if it occurs at all.

The believed nature of the soul has a significant impact on the Hindu belief of transmigration. In Hinduism, a soul is both immutable and eternal and thus the character of a soul from a previous life is imprinted on the new one.

Buddhists, however, do not subscribe to the concept of universal Atman, Soul, or Self or the individual atman, soul or self. Thus, the concept of transmigration differs from Hinduism on this fundamental point. The Buddhist concept of transmigration, rather, is understood as the effect of karma, karma being defined as volitional action.

Transmigration, although not directly referred to as such, has been used frequently to the point of being an overblown cliché in the sense of people “switching bodies,” in which the identities of two or more characters transmigrate to each others bodies. This concept has been used many times in various films.

An examination of transmigration in the arts, perhaps more directly spiritual than the popular culture aspect above, was author Philip K. Dick’s novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Kombucha is the Western name for sweetened tea that has been fermented using a macroscopic solid mass of microorganisms called a kombucha colony.

The culture contains a symbiosis of acetic acid bacteria. The culture itself looks somewhat like a large pancake, and though often called a mushroom, a Mother of vinegar or by the acronym SCOBY (for Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), it is clinically known as a zoogleal mat.

The recorded history of this drink dates back to the Qin Dynasty in China around 250 BC. The Chinese called it the Immortal Health Elixir, because they believed Kombucha balanced the Spleen and Stomach and aided in digestion, allowing the body to focus on healing. Knowledge of kombucha eventually reached Russia and then Eastern Europe around the Early Modern Age, when tea first became affordable to the populace.

The name kombucha is said to have originated in Japan. Reportedly, a Korean physician called Kombu or Kambu treated the Emperor Inyko with the tea. It became known by a combination of the name, Kombu and the word, cha, meaning tea. However, in Japan, kombucha tea is known as kocha kinoko which translates as tea mushroom. Kombu literally means kelp in Japanese and the name Kombucha is used to refer to a hot drink made from powdered kelp.

Kombucha contains many different cultures along with several organic acids, active enzymes, amino acids, and polyphenols. For the home brewer, there is no way to know the amounts of the components unless a sample is sent to a laboratory. The US Food and Drug Administration has no findings on the effects of kombucha. Final kombucha may contain some of the following components depending on the source of the culture: Acetic acid, which provides much anti-microbial activity; butyric acid, gluconic acid, glucuronic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, oxalic acid, usnic acid, as well as some B-vitamins.

Health claims for kombucha focus on a chemical called glucuronic acid, a compound that is used by the liver for detoxification. The idea that glucuronic acid is present in kombucha is based on the observation that glucuronic acid conjugates are increased in the urine after consumption of kombucha.

However, the active component in kombucha is most likely glucaric acid. This compound helps in the elimination of glucuronic acid conjugates that are produced by the liver. When glucuronic acid conjugates are disposed in the bowel during the elimination process, normal gut bacteria can break up these conjugates using an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase. Glucaric acid is an inhibitor of this bacterial enzyme, so the end result is that the glucuronic acid waste is properly eliminated the first time, rather than being reabsorbed and detoxified over and over. Thus, glucaric acid probably makes the liver more efficient.

Interestingly, glucaric acid is commonly found in fruits and vegetables, and is being explored independently as a cancer preventive agent. It has also been discovered that the bacterial beta-glucuronidase enzyme can interfere with proper disposal of a chemotherapeutic agent, and that antibiotics against the gut microbiota can prevent toxicity of some chemotherapy drugs.

Other health claims may be due to the simple acidity of the drink, possibly influencing the production of stomach acids or modifying the communities of microorganisms in the GI tract. For example, anecdotal reports suggest better experience with foods that ‘stick’ going down such as rice or pasta. This is mostly due to relief of stomach gas responsible for preventing proper digestion.

A miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle-worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as miraculous. People in different cultures have substantially different definitions of the word miracle. Even within a specific religion there is often more than one of the term. Sometimes the term miracle may refer to the action of a supernatural being that is not a god. Thus, the term divine intervention, by contrast, would refer specifically to the direct involvement of a deity.

In casual usage, miracle may also refer to any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, such as the survival of a natural disaster, or even that regarded as wonderful regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or beating the odds.

In this view, a miracle is a violation of normal laws of nature by some supernatural entity or unknown, outside force. Some scientist-theologians like Polkinghorne suggest that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but exploration of a new regime of physical experience.

The logic behind an event being deemed a miracle varies significantly. Often a religious text, such as the Bible or Quran, states that a miracle occurred, and believers accept this as a fact. However, C.S. Lewis noted that one cannot believe a miracle occurred if one had already drawn a conclusion in one’s mind that miracles are not possible at all. He cites the example of a woman he knew who had seen a ghost and had discounted her experience, claiming it to be some sort of hallucination.

Many conservative religious believers hold that in the absence of a plausible, parsimonious scientific theory, the best explanation for these events is that they were performed by a supernatural being, and cite this as evidence for the existence of a god or gods. Some adherents of monotheistic religions assert that miracles, if established, are evidence for the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God.

Followers of the Indian gurus Sathya Sai Baba and Swami Premananda claim that they routinely perform miracles. The dominant view among skeptics is that these are predominantly sleight of hand or elaborate magic tricks.

Some modern religious groups claim ongoing occurrence of miraculous events. While some miracles have been proven to be fraudulent, others such as the Paschal Fire in Jerusalem have not proven susceptible to analysis. Some groups are far more cautious about proclaiming apparent miracles genuine than others, although official sanction, or the lack thereof, rarely has much effect on popular belief.