"The free-speech organization PEN American Center says it is giving its 2016 PEN/Allen award to author J.K. Rowling. The prize honors "a critically acclaimed author whose work embodies its mission to oppose repression in any form and to champion the best of humanity."
I'm not sure I see all that in Rowling's work. If looking for it is an excuse to read Harry Potter again, and more closely and deeply, then I'm all for it.
Richard Brody writing for the New Yorker:
"The underlying issue of the Academy’s failure to recognize black artists is the presumption that baseline experience is white experience and that black life is a niche phenomenon, life with an asterisk. Many of the great classic jazz and blues recordings were marketed as “race records.” To this day, the Academy proceeds as if movies about black experience were race movies. The result is that only narrow and fragmentary views of the lives of African-Americans ever make it to the screen—and I think that this is not an accident. If the stories were told—if the daily lives and inner lives, the fears and fantasies, the historical echoes and the anticipations of black Americans were as copiously unfolded in movies as are those of whites—then lots of white folks would be forced to confront their historical and contemporary shame. They’d no longer be able to claim ignorance of what they’d like not to know—which includes their own complicity in a rigged system."
Remember Cool Runnings? Certainly not Oscar worthy, but certainly proof 20+ years ago, that diversity can be sold universally. Fast forward to the commercial success of the Fast and Furious franchise and the recent record-breaking Star Wars film, and it's clear that films do fine-- lo they do better than fine-- with multi-racial casts... Which is why there should be more of them, allowing for more $$$ and more representation across all genres of features.
Such action will inevitably lead to more roles for actors (of all types) in more prestigious films. The idea that accident of birth is the hallmark of talent is absurd. Access to opportunity is all that's needed to for the talented to rise. A walled garden in this respect keeps the entire art of cinema from achieving it's most impressive and vibrant expression.
"Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying said that it was “not acceptable” for Chinese police to operate independently in Hong Kong, but Leung, a Beijing loyalist, said there was “no indication” this was what had happened.
But pro-democracy lawmakers said it appeared likely Lee had been kidnapped by Chinese police, and expressed shock, anger and fear.
If confirmed, lawmakers said, Lee’s abduction would be a serious violation of the 'One Country, Two Systems' principle and the Basic Law framework that has defined Beijing’s relations with Hong since the 1997 handover from British rule."
Worrisome. Is there an official investigation?
"War" is how the US mainstream fights its enemies. Put another way, for many, the War on Poverty and War on Drugs were US lead conflicts against the poor and against people inflicted with addiction.
Perhaps now that these ills have taken hold
of the mainstream, we can, hand in hand, actually begin working on how to solve the problems we face rather than scheme to attack and exploit a faceless "other."
From US News and World Report:
"Researchers within the Princeton-Brookings report identified several contributing factors to marriage gaps between various classes. For one, there is a smaller pool of "marriageable" men – those with steady, well-paying jobs -- now than there used to be, especially among those with lower education levels.
For example, 82 percent of men ages 25 to 34 were part of the U.S. labor force in 2012, compared with 93 percent in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center. The share of men who are incarcerated also has surged, with black men and those with low levels of education particularly affected.
Economically, the gap between earnings for men and women has narrowed, reducing the budgetary boost a woman could get from marriage and making it less necessary from that standpoint. In 1980, women earned less than 70 percent of what men earned. By 2012, the gap had narrowed to 93 percent."
So Women get married less because they don't *need* men as much, economically. Now they just look for men that they actually like.
And there aren't many of those. So they stay single. Then it's much less of a problem to leave should he becomes a jerk.
On the flip-side, it's almost too bad because marriage is awesome.
The accusations against Fan Duel and Draft Lings sound damning but closer scrutiny leads me to believe that there's a lot more smoke than there is fire. The involved parties never bet against the published data, as has happened on Wall Street, though it is not clear whether employees were allowed to participate themselves with access to information that was not publicly available. Investigations are ongoing but Fantasy Sports companies would do well to look deeply at their culture to see how, if at all, they can self-regulate.
Regardless, Nevada has suddenly decided to ask for gaming licenses from the two companies and any others like it.
from the AP article:
"DraftKings and FanDuel — sites that have insisted they aren't gambling and have promised to make millionaires out of sports fans — both pulled out of Nevada by Thursday evening.
That day's decision from the Nevada Gaming Control Board allows for daily fantasy sports in the state as long as the operator has or gets a gambling license. No one operating a daily fantasy site has one.
"If you're licensed in Nevada, you're good to go," said A.G. Burnett, chief of the state's Gaming Control Board. That includes traditional sports books where gamblers generally wager on the outcome of a given game.
The decision comes amid growing backlash by regulators and investigators, including New York's attorney general, after it was revealed employees often played on competing sites, raising questions about possible insider information being used to win."
One thing doesn't seem to have anything to do with the other.
A decade ago, Nevada's gaming lobby successfully shut down the online gambling businesses of the day by getting Congress to ban the practice.
The current Fantasy Sports betting system is legal due to the fact that the preponderance of data about the sports, the players and other factors makes Fantasy a game of skill, rather than chance. Regardless, Nevada is having none of that.
Rather than embrace the mobile revolution and offer compelling products (or use their tremendous resources to acquire some), it seems that the establishment believes that if you want to gamble, you'd better walk into a casino. And you'd better turn off your phone.
They sent children to a summer camp without mobile devices.
"After five days without phones or tablets, these campers were able to read facial emotions and correctly identify the emotions of actors in videotaped scenes significantly better than a control group. What fostered these new empathic responses? They talked to one another. In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand. Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do."
If only I could turn on a Faraday cage during the time I spend at home during the holidays.