Monday, February 22, 2016
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
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
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
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Love Full Lips?
Just not on us.
~~~~~~~~~~
From Salon -
http://media.salon.com/2016/02/fulllips.patrice.waite_.2.19.2016.mp4
~~~~~~~~~~
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.
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
Saturday, February 20, 2016
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.
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.
Friday, February 19, 2016
What's Celebrated?
An excerpt from The New York Times -
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®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
What Does the Academy Value in a Black Performance?
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®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
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
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