I Call Bullsh*t

True confession.

I have funky feet.

Really FUNKY FEET.

I can't imagine wearing socks for days.

Of course, I shouldn't talk about these before giving them a try, but . . .

I don't buy it.

So, to be fair, somebody try them out and let me know.

Chris Rock Targets Race and Hollywood in Oscars Opening Monologue

Apologies.  I heard the previous clip was removed, so here it is again.

Chris Rock's Opening Monologue at the 2016 Oscars

Contrary to Popular Belief

From The Root -

Black Skiers and Snowboarders Hit the Slopes in Japan at the 2016 Japow! Powder Party

Beautiful scenery and a chance to experience a different culture are the highlights of this annual event. BY: HAKIM I. FAJARDO

Japow! Powder Party members at the Rusutsu Resort atop Mount Isola in Hokkaido, Japan LACRECIA WILLIAMS

Eric Rhea goes waist-deep while snowboarding in the back country of
Asahidake, Hokkaido, Japan, with Hokkaido Outdoor Adventures. 

Fanon Wilkins and Leon Henderson at the
Niseko ski resort in Hokkaido, Japan 

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/02/japow_powder_party_black_skiers_and_snowboarders_hit_the_slopes_in_japan.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

What Does This Say & Does It Matter?

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5HqyFH/:icxGkEgU:jlUm4fHB/aplus.com/a/two-kinds-of-people-tumblr?c=8276

How Leap Year Works

Every Bucket from Steph Curry's 51-Point Night

This kid is good.

Meet President Obama's Nominee for Librarian of Congress

Perfect Timing

From Wired - 

SERGIO TAPIRO HAS a love affair with volcanoes. Well, one volcano. He’s spent 14 years making thousands of photos of the Colima Volcano in the southwest corner of Mexico. His perseverance paid off in December with the shot of a lifetime.

His photo captures a remarkable moment—the volcano erupting in a plume of ash and lava as lightning strikes, illuminating the scene against a sky filled with stars. For Tapiro, it underscores everything that makes Colima beautiful. “Every time you take a picture of a volcano, it reminds you of the beginning of this world,” he says.

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/sergio-tapiro-lava-ash-lightning-perfect-volcano-photo/?mbid=nl_22616

Door Design

The narrator of this clip is an annoying kid who looks like he's 12.  Ignore him and enjoy the very interesting clip.

A Love Letter to Michael

Spike Lee's documentary entitled "Michael Jackson's Journey From Motown to Off the Wall" is wonderful.  It truly is a snapshot into the genius of Michael.

There are several trailers for the film, but I don't think any other them do the film justice.  If I'd seen the trailers, I probably would not have watched the film, and believe me when I say, I would have missed a treat.

So, if time permits and you so desire, check out this masterpiece.

It's currently playing on Showtime.

Do the Right Thing

We all know we should do the right thing, but knowing it and doing it are two very different things.

Do we stand up for what is right, or go along to get along?

Do we turn a blind eye to injustices, or do we take a stand?

Do we give in to the pressures to agree, when we know that we know that in doing that we compromise what is right?  Or do we take a stand and say, "Enough?"

Do we have more courage to stand up when we've reached a certain age, now better able to understand that being able to face ourselves in the mirror is more important than trying to please others?

Every day we have a choice.

Do the right thing . . .

Or not.

Here's hoping that you and I both have the courage to do choose the former.

Quote

By Jeffrey Toobin on Antonin Scalia in The New Yorker - (Bold is mine)

Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_slateplusweekly

Amazing Pictures

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/02/smithsonian-magazines-2015-photo-contest/470982/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter

Why Teams Matter

From The New York Times Magazine

In Silicon Valley, software engineers are encouraged to work together, in part because studies show that groups tend to innovate faster, see mistakes more quickly and find better solutions to problems. Studies also show that people working in teams tend to achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction. In a 2015 study, executives said that profitability increases when workers are persuaded to collaborate more. Within companies and conglomerates, as well as in government agencies and schools, teams are now the fundamental unit of organization. If a company wants to outstrip its competitors, it needs to influence not only how people work but also how they work together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html

Black-ish 2x16 Promo "Hope" (HD)

The Long, Winding Road

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/24/arts/hollywood-diversity-inclusion.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

This Guy vs Our Front Running Village Idiot (Trump)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/justin-trudeau-pink-shirt-day-canada_us_56ce1bf6e4b0871f60e9ed00

It's Never Too Late

http://www.lifehack.org/364674/its-never-too-late-start-heres-why-infographic-2?mid=20160224&ref=mail&uid=789627&feq=daily

100 Years of Beauty - Episode 18: USA Men

The Blimp-Maker

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born?mbid=nl_160224_Daily%20A&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=8583208&spUserID=MTE0MzE0NDEyNDUyS0&spJobID=862402181&spReportId=ODYyNDAyMTgxS0

Algorithm Bias

From Slate - 

A Tale of Four Algorithms

Each of these government algorithms is supposed to stop fraud and waste. Which works better—the one aimed at the poor or the rich?

By Virginia Eubanks

Algorithms don’t just power search results and news feeds, shaping our experience of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify, and Tinder. Algorithms are widely—and largely invisibly—integrated into American political life, policymaking, and program administration.

Algorithms can terminate your Medicaid benefits, exclude you from air travel, purge you from voter rolls, or predict if you are likely to commit a crime in the future. They make decisions about who has access to public services, who undergoes extra scrutiny, and where we target scarce resources.

But are all algorithms created equal? Does the kind of algorithm used by government agencies have anything to do with who it is aimed at?

Bias can enter algorithmic processes through many doors. Discriminatory data collection can mean extra scrutiny for whole communities, creating a feedback cycle of “garbage in, garbage out.” For example, much of the initial data that populated CalGang, an intelligence database used to target and track suspected gang members, was collected by the notorious Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums units of the LAPD, including in the scandal-ridden Rampart division. Algorithms can also mirror and reinforce entrenched cultural assumptions. For example, as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun has written, Googling “Asian + woman” a decade ago turned up more porn sites in the first 10 hits than a search for “pornography.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/02/a_close_look_at_four_government_algorithms_designed_to_stop_waste_and_fraud.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_futuretense

Agree?

A sampling from The Root - 

The 15 most racist Oscar films of all time: Here’s why #OscarsSoWhite is not a surprise 

#OscarsSoWhite isn't just about the absence of Black nominees—it's about the Academy's history of racist narratives 

IBRAM X. KENDI

10. Rocky (1976)

3 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing (plus eight more nominations)

If “Planet of the Apes” epitomized racists’ defeated sentiments amid the antiracist movements in 1968, then “Rocky” epitomized their fighting sentiment in 1976. Rocky Balboa—a kind, humble, hard-working, slow-talking journeyman boxer—symbolized the pride of racist White masculinity in the late 1970s. Rocky refused to be knocked out by the avalanche of punches from the antiracist movements—as symbolized by the rich, unkind, cocky, fast-punching Black heavyweight champion. Apollo Creed is a fictional stand-in for the actual heavyweight champion in 1976, Muhammad Ali, the personification of antiracist resistance.

~~~~~~~~~~

7. The Blind Side (2009)

1 Academy Award for Best Actress (plus nomination for Best Picture)

Possibly even more than the interracial buddy film, the #OscarsSoWhite enjoys honoring the White Savior Flicks. In these flicks, paternalistic White parents or coaches or journalists or soldiers or lawyers or educators are portrayed as saving needy Blacks from bad situations, or their inferior selves, or the Black jungle. Of all the White Savior Flicks in Hollywood history—and there are many—”The Blind Side” may have been the most egregious. It shared the “true story” of a White family caring for a homeless boy who they guide into professional football. The contrast between the film’s Black characters hindering and holding Michael Oher’s character back—and Sandra Bullock’s helpful White characters are intense to even the least discerning viewer. Filmmakers enjoy regularly searching out and projecting “true stories” of White saviors, hiding the reality of many Black saviors and White discriminators, reinforcing racist ideas of White paternalism and Black dependence.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/24/the_15_most_racist_oscar_films_of_all_time_heres_why_oscarssowhite_is_not_a_surprise/?source=newsletter

The Thought of Him Representing Us on the World Stage is Nauseating

From Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone - 

In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future. The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:

President Donald Trump.

A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.

It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.

And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.

~~~~~~~~~~

That put him in position to understand that the presidential election campaign is really just a badly acted, billion-dollar TV show whose production costs ludicrously include the political disenfranchisement of its audience. Trump is making a mockery of the show, and the Wolf Blitzers and Anderson Coopers of the world seem appalled. How dare he demean the presidency with his antics?

But they've all got it backward. The presidency is serious. The presidential electoral process, however, is a sick joke, in which everyone loses except the people behind the rope line. And every time some pundit or party spokesman tries to deny it, Trump picks up another vote.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224#ixzz419HnFTGQ
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Atlas, The Next Generation

From Wired -



ONE OF THESE days, Boston Dynamics—the Alphabet-owned robot company from Beantown—is going to push its robots too far. I mean, just look at their latest video, in which they shove, trip, and play keep away from a robot named Atlas. Sure, the droid walks funny, but if they keep messing around I swear Atlas is going to flip the script on these guys and next thing you know it’s Judgment Day.

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/boston-dynamics-new-robot-wicked-good-getting-bullied/?mbid=nl_22416

Quote

From Vox - 

Clarence Thomas has now gone 10 — 10! — years without asking a question at a Supreme Court oral argument. Jeffrey Toobin explains why that's a problem. [New Yorker / Jeffrey Toobin]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/clarence-thomass-disgraceful-silence?platform=hootsuite&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/24/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Note - this article was written two years ago.

Great Articles

Some of the most interesting articles I come across are featured on The New York Times "What We're Reading."

Their blurb:

Get recommendations from New York Times reporters and editors, highlighting great stories from around the web. What We’re Reading emails are sent twice a week.

Take it from me - 

Sign up today and be enlightened, enraged and entertained.

http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/what-were-reading?nlid=38867499

What Do You Think?

From The American Prospect - 

Prospect Debate: The Illusion of a Minority Majority America

THE EDITORS

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

Four knowledgeable commentators respond to Richard Alba’s argument in the Prospect that America will continue to have a white majority. 

In his Winter 2016 article “The Likely Persistence of a White Majority,” Richard Alba argues that highly publicized projections by the U.S. Census have misled the public into thinking that whites in the United States are destined to become a minority by the middle of the century. That projection is incorrect, Alba suggests, for two primary reasons. First, the census data mistakenly assume that children of mixed marriages where one parent is white will identify as nonwhite. Second, the census sees the white “mainstream” as a fixed category even though the conception of whiteness has changed in the past and will likely change again. As a result, Alba contends, America will probably have a white majority for some time to come.

Is that analysis correct? And what does America’s demographic future say about its political future? Four contributors respond to Alba: Kenneth Prewitt, former director of the Census Bureau and now Carnegie Professor of Social Affairs at Columbia University; William Darity Jr., Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy at Duke University; Harold Meyerson, the Prospect’s executive editor; and Frank Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Alba has the last word.

Follow the link to read their responses.

http://prospect.org/article/prospect-debate-illusion-minority-majority-america

This Simple Gesture . . .

Means so much.

An excerpt from The Washington Post - 

This photo of Obama and a little visitor at a Black History Month celebration is remarkable

The look in Clark's eyes offers one half of America's current story. A country once determined to import and enslave black Americans is now, indeed, led by one. That is a transformation so profound and complex that when another young black child, Jacob Philadelphia, visited the White House in 2009 and asked the then-new president if they have the same hair. Obama bent down and advised Jacob to find out. The answer -- yes -- said much more to Jacob, the millions of Americans who have seen the Souza photo of that moment since. It said, I am like you. You are like me. The most powerful elected office in the world is mine and is truly possible for all of us. Obama reportedly gave the photo a permanent and special home in the White House.

But then, there is Obama's tender touch on Clark's cheek this week. It is another remarkably familiar gesture between strangers which also reveals something deep and true. It speaks to the other half of America's current story. Obama is our president. Still, this remains a country where children who look like Clark, but are perhaps a decade older, are widely regarded as a menace. They are to be feared and contained. Obama's touch says, this child is precious and valuable because of who he is and what he can become. But when Obama said as much -- telling reporters in 2012 that if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon Martin -- a good portion of America reacted as if that reminder was itself an extreme affront.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/20/this-photo-of-obama-and-a-little-visitor-at-a-black-history-month-celebration-says-a-lot/

The President and Kids

Fingers crossed that this video works.

Here's hoping because it's adorable.

Coding App For Kids

Featured in the iTunes App Store -

Kids'n'Code

Description:

Solve puzzles, control robots and learn basic concepts and principles of programming. With Kids'n'Code it's easier than ever.

What children will learn?

Kids will recognize basic patterns, learn problem solving, consistent and algorithmic thinking, spatial visualization, debugging programs. The game develops skills that are useful in algebra, geometry, logic and computer science.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidsncode/id1046906529?mt=8

id1046906529

Crazy Overload

Beautiful Maps

Paula Scher’s Insanely Detailed US Maps Elevate Data Viz to Fine Art

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/paula-schers-insanely-detailed-us-maps-elevate-data-viz-to-fine-art/?mbid=nl_22216#slide-2

This Guy is Scary

Quote 2

From Vox - 

"'Poverty is not just a sad accident,' he said. Yes, it’s partly about lack of jobs, 'but it’s also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.'" [Matthew Desmond to NYT / Jennifer Schuessler]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/books/a-harvard-sociologist-on-watching-families-lose-their-homes.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/22/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Quote

From Vox -

Why do we teach boys it's important to be fearless — but girls that it's cute to be scared? [NYT / Caroline Paul]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/why-do-we-teach-girls-that-its-cute-to-be-scared.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/22/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Makes Me Wanna Holler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDCRhTSUaLA

H\T Houran

We Choose to Forget

From Upworthy - 

During World War II, a young boy was forced from his home with his family, placed on a cramped train, and sent to an isolated camp across the country with no knowledge of when he would be able to return home. He and his family were confined to camps for years, solely on the basis of their ethnicity.

This isn’t the story of an inhumane atrocity that happened across an ocean or in another country. It happened on U.S. soil in 1942.

Kids boarding a bus for relocation in Byron, California. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

And the young boy in this story is George Takei, the "Star Trek" actor, who was one of more than 117,000 Japanese-Americans detained in U.S. concentration camps during the early 1940s. He talked about his experience on Democracy Now!:

"We had nothing to do with the war. We simply happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. But without charges, without trial, without due process — the fundamental pillar of our justice system — we were summarily rounded up, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, where we were primarily resident, and sent off to 10 barb wire internment camps — prison camps, really, with sentry towers, machine guns pointed at us — in some of the most desolate places in this country: the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, the blistering hot desert of Arizona, of all places, in black tarpaper barracks. And our family was sent two-thirds of the way across the country, the farthest east, in the swamps of Arkansas."

Japanese internment is a dark period in America's history, but in many history classrooms, the camps are only touched on briefly — if at all. 

http://www.upworthy.com/a-mini-history-lesson-about-the-concentration-camps-on-american-soil?c=upw1

Hmmmmm . . .

An excerpt from The Washington Post - 

The big question about driverless cars no one seems able to answer

By Brian Fung

Wow. A lot of you guys had some very passionate responses to last week's news that the federal government had recognized Google's software, not the human passenger, as the "driver" in its self-driving cars. There was one, big theme running through many of your comments. See if you can identify it:

So does the software have to get a driver's license and insurance? –ikeaboy

So if I get drunk, get into my Googlemobile and crash into someone the software is going to jail? Seems awkward to put flash memory in with the other prisoners. –InAVanByTheRiver

Who is charged if there is a fatal accident and there is an occupant in the driverless car? What happens if there is a lawsuit? Who pays the fine or serves time if the driverless car is found guilty? –scoon42

All of these questions target the issue of liability, which is about to get very interesting. As computerized, self-driving cars come closer to fruition, car accidents are likely to become vastly more complex. What will happen when you get into a crash, and who will be to blame?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/02/17/the-big-question-about-driverless-cars-no-one-seems-to-have-an-answer-to/

Pelham High Double Amputee Wrestler Hasaan Hawthorne Wins State Title

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/22/this-teenage-wrestler-has-a-perfect-record-and-a-state-title-he-also-has-no-legs/?hpid=hp_no-name_morning-mix-story-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Wanted: A Good Home For a Horse

From The Washington Post - 

Free to a good home: Horses who have served their country

Quincy, one of two horses available for adoption,
waits while stalls are cleaned in the stables at Fort Myer in Arlington.
The Old Guard, the soldiers of Arlington National Cemetery,
are offering two horses for adoption. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

He received good marks in his early days in the military: “quite impressive,” his supervisor once wrote. But after he kicked a few soldiers, he swiftly found himself unwelcome in the Army.

Meanwhile, his buddy started out with similarly good reviews — “a big morale booster” — but found his military service cut short by a painful foot condition.

Now, the two retirees are, like so many veterans leaving the service, looking for their next homes.

Preferably homes with lots of hay and some room in a barn.

“These guys did their service,” Staff Sgt. David Smith said. “It’s their time to be a horse.”

Kennedy and Quincy, highly trained horses who have served in the Army’s Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, have finished their tours of duty. And both are up for adoption, free to a good home.

They have served in a role almost unique in the U.S. military, that of the caisson horse.

Caisson horses pull coffins to burials at Arlington, bringing former officers and service members killed in action in America’s wars to their grave sites with haunting uniformity and precision.

The choreographed procession, led by a riderless horse, is one of the most solemn and stylized rituals in the nation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-to-a-good-home-horses-who-have-served-their-country/2016/02/21/3de74d3a-d4f6-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_oldguardhorses-610pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

You Gotta Love Her!

Make Your Own Comic Book

Available at Amazon for $21.99.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IUAAK7U

Love Full Lips?

Just not on us.

~~~~~~~~~~

From Salon -

This picture posted on Instagram reveals a racist double standard: full lips are beautiful for white women but not for black women 

The lips of a black model were posted on social media and sparked hundreds of racist comments

http://media.salon.com/2016/02/fulllips.patrice.waite_.2.19.2016.mp4

What Debate?

An excerpt from Salon - 

Minorities and women largely shut out of encryption debate 

Though frequent targets of government surveillance, blacks and Muslims have little voice where it counts: D.C. 

PATRICK HOWELL O'NEILL, THE DAILY DOT

Surveillance in the 21st century deeply impacts minority communities in the United States, but they have almost no voice in the debate over spying and encryption compared to wealthy white males.

The latter group dominates the Washington, D.C., hearings, academic panels, and board room meetings where the most heavy-duty decision making is taking place, a Daily Dot review found.

~~~~~~~~~~

Minorities, on the other hand, have long been at the center of American surveillance, including when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI put members of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement under their watchful eye. Today, communities of Muslim and black Americans sit right at the center of American surveillance.

At a recent panel on the encryption debate in Austin, Texas, ACLU’s Principal Technologist Christopher Soghoian pointed out the disparity.

“This is a room filled with people who went to very good universities, most of whom probably make more than $100,000 per year, and many of whom already have a device in their pockets that encrypts their data by default,” he said. “The reason we’re having this debate is it looks like the poor and minorities and those who are most surveilled in our society are about to get encryption technology. And people are really upset.”

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/20/minorities_and_women_largely_shut_out_of_encryption_debate_partner/?source=newsletter

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Voting (HBO)

American Crime Story: The People vs. O. J. Simpson - Official Trailer

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember this drama unfolding before your eyes on live television.  But here's the thing, even with all of the prior knowledge, this miniseries is making this "must see" TV.  Definitely worth the watch.

My favorite scene in this clip (0.39 min.) is when OJ declares, "I'm not black.  I'm OJ."

Apologies if this is a repeat post.

On second thought . . . no apologies.

This is worth a second nod.

You're welcome.

What's Celebrated?

An excerpt from The New York Times -

What Does the Academy Value in a Black Performance?

By BRANDON K. THORPFEB. 19, 2016

When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, revealing that not one black actor was in the running, the resulting furor touched on the performances that critics said should have been considered: What about Idris Elba in “Beasts of No Nation”? Michael B. Jordan in “Creed”? Will Smith in “Concussion,” or one of the stars of “Straight Outta Compton”?

The uproar over #OscarsSoWhite made me curious. What does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences value in black performance? Black artists have been nominated for best actress or actor on 30 occasions, for work spanning 28 films. Over the last few weeks, I watched all of them.

These movies have a lot in common, not least that most were directed by white men. Only three were directed by black men and none by women. Perhaps these numbers aren’t surprising, given the well-known demographics of the film industry. Other numbers are more eye-opening.

Consider: In the history of the Oscars, 10 black women have been nominated for best actress, and nine of them played characters who are homeless or might soon become so. (The exception is Viola Davis, for the 2011 drama “The Help.”)

The first was Dorothy Dandridge, for “Carmen Jones” (1954). That musical drama, like the opera from which it derives, is mostly known as the story of a sexually rapacious young woman and her obsessive, ultimately murderous lover. But it’s also the story of a wily, prideful human running out of places to go. Late in the film, Carmen and her fugitive boyfriend hide out in a seedy Chicago apartment. There’s no money for rent, and soon they’ll be evicted. Carmen, who’s spent the movie working hard to seem carefree and fierce, tries her best to summon that look again as she sets out to scare up food and rent money.

Nearly every black best-actress nominee has faced a similar plight, right up through “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (2012), in which Quvenzhané Wallis played a little girl about to lose her home to a flood. No black woman has ever received a best-actress nomination for portraying an executive or even a character with a college degree. (Though Gabourey Sidibe’s character in “Precious,” from 2009, seems likely to get one eventually.)

All 10 performances for which black women have received best-actress nominations involve poor or lower-income characters, and half of those are penniless mothers. Two of the portrayals — Diana Ross’s incarnation of Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972) and Angela Bassett’s depiction of Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993) — are of singers who enjoy a measure of wealth at some point. But Holiday begins broke, and viewers know she’ll end up that way, while Tina Turner doesn’t have money of her own until the film’s last five minutes. The remaining characters are maids, sharecroppers, criminal-drifter types, impoverished housewives and destitute girls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/what-does-the-academy-value-in-a-black-performance.html?hpw&rref=movies&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

AMERICAN MASTERS | B.B. King: The Life of Riley - trailer | PBS

THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLU...

Apple vs. FBI

An excerpt from Macworld -

The crux of the issue is should companies be required to build security circumvention technologies to expose their own customers? Not “assist law enforcement with existing tools,” but “build new tools.”

The FBI Director has been clear that the government wants back doors into our devices, even though the former head of the NSA disagrees and supports strong consumer encryption. One reason Apple is likely fighting this case so publicly is that it is a small legal step from requiring new circumvention technology, to building such access into devices. The FBI wants the precedent far more than they need the evidence, and this particular case is incredibly high profile and emotional.

The results will, without question, establish precedence beyond one killer’s iPhone.

http://www.macworld.com/article/3034355/ios/why-the-fbis-request-to-apple-will-affect-civil-rights-for-a-generation.html

MASTERPIECE | Downton Abbey: 10 Best Dowager Countess Zingers | PBS

We're All Speaking English But . . .

It's pretty safe to say that those of us here in the UAE from the US speak only one language - English.  Everyone else comes with two, three or more languages - which is an intriguing asset that I find myself longing for.

I remember when I first started teaching in Sacramento, there was the constant push to have the students speak English only.  They came to school with at least two languages, with most being fluent in their native tongue, whatever that happened to be.

But our mantra was "ENGLISH ONLY, ENGLISH ONLY."

Of course, before we allowed then to graduate from high school, we said they must learn a second language.

Then our mantra was "YOU MUST HAVE A SECOND LANGUAGE, YOU MUST HAVE A SECOND LANGUAGE."

But . . . but . . . but . . .

Did we forget that they came to us with a second language that we forbade them to use?

Such hypocrisy!

Ok.  Ok.

End of this rant.

~~~~~~~~~~

There's something else that I find interesting here.  That is, the English language itself.

At my school, nine of our twelve Western teachers come from South Africa, Ireland, and the UK.  We all speak English, but there are times we need a translator to understand what we're trying to say to each other.

It happens when we speak to each other, but also in our writings.

This was most evident when I had the teachers to write up supply orders for things they needed in their classes.  Invariably, I had to go to each of them to ask what they meant by this or that.  We were talking about the same thing, but we called them something totally different.

~~~~~~~~~~

Living abroad has been an ever-evolving eye-opening experience.

If there is one take-away, that is we in the US should absolutely encourage and foster a second language as a nation, but with that unlikely to happen, at the very least, we should make sure it's happening to the folks in our world.  Especially our kids.

More and more we're becoming a global society, and as such, we need to be equipped with the tools needed to comfortably move around the world.

Oh, how I wish that I'd paid more attention and appreciated the value of my high school Spanish classes.

All I remember is how to count to ten.

Somehow uno, dos, tres, .etc., seems woefully inadequate.

Probably because it is.

They Ought To Be In Prison

An excerpt from CAPTURED:  People in Prison Drawing People Who Should Be - 

For over a year, we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison–the CEOs of companies destroying our environment, economy, and society.

Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.

We present this project to help expose crimes masquerading as commerce.

https://thecapturedproject.com/?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_slateplusweekly

Why Aren't All the Primaries on the Same Day?

The Boss

From The Root - 

Ann-Marie Campbell has been in her job as executive vice president of Home Depot’s U.S. stores since the top of the month. In her new post, Campbell will oversee almost 400,000 employees in 2,000 stores. She replaced veteran exec Marc Powers in mid-January.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/02/jamaican_woman_to_head_all_home_depot_stores_in_us.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

All of It

This article from The Root was just too good to cherry pick, so here it is in its entirety. I've added bold to the last paragraph, as this one sums up the life and times of Antonin Scalia perfectly.

H/T Ben

~~~~~~~~~~

Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia was racist, charismatic, misogynist, intelligent, homoantagonistic, witty, a good friend and a judicial terrorist.

He was all these things, multifaceted in the ways that all human beings are, and he should be remembered as such. Still, in the days since his death, the communities he attacked viciously with his decisions over the course of his 30 years on the Supreme Court have been taken to task for dancing on his grave.

Though I didn’t cheer Scalia’s death, I fully understand the catharsis many people experienced when the news was announced that he was found dead in his bed with a pillow over his head at a Texas ranch Feb. 13. Still, every vogue, wobble and Southside has been countered by just as many near-hagiographic eulogies. And it is this—this romanticizing and whitewashing of his toxic legacy that has taken root in conservative circles—that is dangerous in the same way that Texas textbooks defining the peculiar institution of slavery as migrant work are.

From his perch as justice on the highest court in the land, Scalia held fast to his beliefs that white, Christian, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual men are the only class of citizen that matters; while “invented minorities,” women who should be “treated differently,” black people only capable of succeeding at “slower” and “lesser” universities, and “unwanted” immigrants do not deserve protection under the law.

For that reason alone, some have called him a “conservative lion”; I call him a bigot. These two things are not, have never been and will never be, mutually exclusive.

This Scalia narrative that has emerged is churned out by the same disingenuous, white supremacist mechanisms that have people calling Martin passive and Malcolm violent. It’s the same system that wanted us to believe that Rosa Parks just randomly decided not to give up her seat on the bus, while failing to mention that she worked tirelessly to report sexual violence that black women were and continue to experience at the fists and bodies of racist misogynists in America.

This is the same well-oiled and fine-tuned machine that wants us to celebrate Abraham Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator,” when he didn’t give a damn about enslaved Africans past their political (in)convenience.

This is the same dishonest system that will have you thinking that the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was driven by hatred of white people, instead of love for black children starved for food and freedom. It’s the same contorted system that wants us to believe that Thomas Jefferson was simply a visionary and not a rapist. It is the same system eager to say that Assata did it, but George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, Timothy Loehmann and Daniel Pantaleo did not.

And it is this same system that wants us to believe that the Confederate flag is drenched in the blood of black people, but that the United States flag, waving gently over the genocide of black, brown and indigenous people, is pristine.

We don’t have time for sociopolitical distortions and half-truths; history lives in the now.

In 2005, Scalia had this to say about his storied career: “I don’t worry about my legacy. Just do your job right, and who cares?”

This is where I agree with him. Though it may have been politically necessary for President Barack Obama to call Scalia’s service “extraordinary,” as journalists, writers, truth-seekers and truth-tellers, our only job is to make it plain and get it right. That job is not always polite and it’s definitely not always welcomed. Scalia may have encouraged people to be “fools for Christ,” but we don’t have to be the fools who protect his legacy. I have no desire to have to explain to my three sons years from now—when they come home, bright-eyed, talking about a charming, beloved judge named Scalia—that somebody lied.

But I will.

To again paraphrase Dr. King, it’s important that we get the language right. It’s important that we understand that everybody is good to somebody, but that doesn’t mean they’re good to or for all of us. It’s critical that we hold in tension that a man who possessed keen wit, a brilliant mind, a hearty laugh and a family who loves him can also be a vessel of hate. Our lives depend on it.

So my sincere condolences go out to Antonin Scalia’s friends and family. But my solidarity goes to those who realize that there is one less white supremacist in the world lynching our humanity not with a rope and tree, but with a robe and bench, all in the name of justice.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/02/call_a_thing_a_thing_scalia_s_judicial_terrorism_should_not_be_celebrated.html?wpisrc=topstories