alexch's almanac

May 28

lillielillie: Railsbridge Changed My Life -

lillielillie:

It’s hard to explain how wonderful the Railsbridge community is. The Ruby community tends to be really welcoming in and of itself, and then Railsbridge takes that and puts an anti-sexist and pro-diversity spin on it. Its people are incredibly non-judgemental and encouraging. The two women who started it all are still very involved, but they no longer have to organize and teach at every workshop — a group of core volunteers helps support each pair of organizers and makes sure the curriculum and install instructions stay up to date, and a big group of people comes out to teach or TA when they can. Since that first workshop I’ve attended another as a student, volunteered as babysitter and generally helpful person at another, and just organized the March workshop. So now I just need to TA a workshop, then teach, and then I’ll have done it all!

May 27

“I’m developing some things to write this fall that can be canceled in future years.” — Kyle Killen, ‘Awake’ finale questions answered by creator | Inside TV | EW.com

“He was absolutely a man who had survived a car accident and lost one or the other of the people closest to him and created another world to correct that damage. That was 100 percent the rules of the game as far as we were concerned.” — ‘Awake’ finale questions answered by creator | Inside TV | EW.com

May 24

“I always laugh at all the pundits /analysts who try to tell you what any non dividend paying stock is worth. Its a function of supply and demand. It’s never fundamentals… In the case of facebook they put an ENORMOUS number of shares into the market. Too much supply. Valuation has no relevance what so ever. Conventional wisdom says the buyers of stocks will try to determine the value of a stock before they buy or sell and make the appropriate rational decision. Not even in a Richie Rich cartoon does that happen.” — Mark Cuban - Facebook IPO Post Mortem – Killer – but not for the reasons you think ! « blog maverick

May 23

“We used to read SF to get the heady high of a big vision, the “eyeball kick” as Rudy Rucker describes it, of seeing something brain-warpingly different and new for the first time. But today you don’t need to read SF to get a sense of wonder high: you can just browse “New Scientist”. We’re living in the frickin’ 21st century. Killer robot drones are assassinating people in the hills of Afghanistan. Our civilisation has been invaded and conquered by the hive intelligences of multinational corporations, directed by the new aristocracy of the 0.1%. There are space probes in orbit around Saturn and en route to Pluto. Surgeons are carrying out face transplants. I have more computing power and data storage in my office than probably the entire world had in 1980. (Definitely than in 1970.) We’re carrying out this Mind Meld via the internet, and if that isn’t a 1980s cyberpunk vision that’s imploded into the present, warts and all, I don’t know what is.” — SF, big ideas, ideology: what is to be done? - Charlie’s Diary

May 21

“Indeed, there’s some evidence that we’ve already hit “peak fish.” World fish production seems to have reached its zenith back in the 1980s, when the global catch was higher than it is today. And, according to one recent study in the journal Science, commercial fish stocks are on pace for total “collapse” by 2048 — meaning that they’ll produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch. On the other hand, many of those fish-depleted areas will be overrun by jellyfish, which is good news for anyone who enjoys a good blob sandwich.” —

PEAK FISH IS HERE

The end of fish, in one chart - The Washington Post

“

Whedon’s first edit of the movie clocked in at three hours. That’s not unusual; first drafts are always long. What’s unusual is what Whedon decided to cut. “I care about these people, about the fact that they’re isolated,” he says. “But I’m also telling Marvel’s story. Much Ado allowed me to realize that taking away some of the Joss is going to make this a better Avengers movie.”

The darker aspects of the dysfunctional team dynamic: out. A quiet scene with Captain America trying to absorb the craziness of modern-day New York: out. And so on. (The rapid-fire dialog and quips are still there, and an ingenue still does some day-saving.) “You don’t have to say what you’re trying to say. You can just do it, and then people will feel it,” Whedon says. “The more I hone this and just focus on the Avengers as they relate to one another, the better it works. That’s painful, but it’s a reality.”

“At one point it looked like the company might not use the Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson; Whedon told Marvel that without her the Helicarrier was going to feel like a gay cruise.” — With The Avengers, Joss Whedon Masters the Marvel Universe | Underwire | Wired.com

rickwebb:

I can’t wait for the Master Mind movie. 

Alex Woolfson: Kickstarter Advice—Before You Begin (Part 1) -

Based on what I’ve seen, if you want your project to succeed, what folks get for their pledges should be equal to or even less expensive than what they’d pay for that same “reward” in a retail store. For a trade paperback, that means something like $20 or less. With domestic shipping included.

“Booker’s words on “Meet the Press” may have enraged the average Obama supporter, but to the Wall Street class they were probably close to heroic – finally, a big-name Democrat with the cojones to call out Obama on his class warfare!” — Cory Booker, surrogate from hell - War Room - Salon.com

“Booker is also providing Republicans with a dream talking point: A top Obama surrogate not only disapproves of Obama’s use of Bain, he finds it nauseating! It wouldn’t be surprising if Booker has already heard from the White House, and surely he’s now in for a world of abuse from Obama supporters. But that hardly means he made a mistake, at least in terms of his own ambition. Financial support from Wall Street and, more broadly speaking, the investor class has been key to Booker’s rise, and remains key to his future dreams.” — Cory Booker, surrogate from hell - War Room - Salon.com

May 20

“Marvel started cranking out a new crop of movies, each featuring a different character, and fans began to realize that they hinted at a wider crossover potential. Stark had Captain America’s shield in his house. The bad guy in The Incredible Hulk got injected with a version of the supersoldier serum that created Captain America. It wasn’t that hard; Marvel was there to help the writers with a whole basket of Easter eggs: paramilitary agencies, Nazi scientists, magic cubes, secret formulas, and so on. The moviemakers started watching one another’s rough cuts and consulting with a “creative committee” of Marvel Comics writers. “In the first Iron Man, the Easter eggs were simply inside jokes for the Marvel faithful,” Favreau says. “By the time the second one rolled around, part of the agenda was to build toward The Avengers.” — With The Avengers, Joss Whedon Masters the Marvel Universe | Underwire | Wired.com

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The best argument she’s got in her defense is that, based on the public evidence so far, she doesn’t appear to have used her claim of Native American ancestry to gain access to anything much more significant than a cookbook; in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, signing the items, “Elizabeth Warren — Cherokee.”

Warren, who graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 and got her law degree from Rutgers University in 1976, did not seek to take advantage of affirmative action policies during her education, according documents obtained by the Associated Press and The Boston Globe. On the application to Rutgers Law School she was asked, “Are you interested in applying for admission under the Program for Minority Group Students?” “No,” she replied.

While a teacher at the University of Texas, she listed herself as “white.” But between 1986 and 1995, she listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Faculty; the University of Pennsylvania in a 2005 “minority equity report” also listed her as one of the minority professors who had taught at its law school.

The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren’s ancestry claim: “Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.

“‘It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn’t mention it to the faculty,’ he said.”

He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: “In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false.”

“I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned,” he added.

That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.

“Elizabeth Warren’s heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School,” he told the Crimson. “Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality.”

“In popular culture,” said a summary of the rules issued on Thursday, “prison rape is often the subject of jokes; in public discourse, it has been at times dismissed by some as an inevitable — or even deserved — consequence of criminality. But sexual abuse is never a laughing matter, nor is it punishment for a crime. Rather, it is a crime, and it is no more tolerable when its victims have committed crimes of their own.” — U.S. Sets New Rules to Stem Prison Rape - NYTimes.com