Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘Emma Watson

#SFRA2017 Links for All Your #SFRA2017 Needs!

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* Watch #SFRA2017 for all the tweets from SFRA2017! I’ll be presenting this afternoon in the 4 PM session: “No, Speed Limit: Hyperspace in the Anthropocene,” mostly talking about John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire but also hitting Octavia Butler, Cixin Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, H.G. Wells, and others.

* And just in time for #SFRA2017, SFFTV 10.2 is now available! A special issue on the SF films of Stephen King.

* From Canavan’s Razor to Kotsko’s Hammer: If you believe that you have caught your enemy in a contradiction, you are mistaken. At best, you have misjudged their real priorities and goals. At worst, you have fallen for a deliberate smokescreen, designed to confuse and distract you.

* CFP: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at 200 (Science Fiction Studies, Special Issue).

Emma Watson has been hiding copies of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale around Paris, with a handwritten note inside each one.

The City University of New York picked the worst time to raise the salaries of its top administrators to as much as $402,700 — the same day it cut the operating budgets of its four-year colleges and raised tuition.

* Can’t you see? Star Wars needs mediocrity.

* Return of the travel ban. Return of the lawsuits. The travel ban going into effect would have saved zero lives from terrorist attacks in the last 20 years. It’s going to get worse.

* This seems normal and fine.

Gun Sales Are Plummeting and Trump Wants to Help.

GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn.

Republican Health Care Bill Cuts Medicaid 24 Percent By 2036. Trumpworld’s push to get a Senate health deal. Senate GOP Health Care Surrender Watch.

* “California decided it was tired of women bleeding to death in childbirth”: The maternal mortality rate in the state is a third of the American average. Here’s why.

The Case for Paying Less Attention to Donald Trump. And Now the Trump Presidency Begins to Fail for Real. MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski say President Trump and his White House used the possibility of a hit piece in the National Enquirer to threaten them and change their news coverage.

* Hell yes, Rep. Barbara Lee.

* Normally I’d say “teach the controversy,” but these allegations are simply too serious to treat flippantly: NASA Denies That It’s Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars.

* Cyberattack attacks Chernobyl radiation monitoring station.

* On desistance and detransition.

* Global warming will intensify regional inequality in the United States, according to a revolutionary new economic assessment of the phenomenon.

* Two brothers, two deaths.

Illinois Approaches 3rd Year Without Budget.

US quietly publishes once-expunged papers on 1953 Iran coup.

SCP-3008-1 is a space resembling the inside of an IKEA furniture store, extending far beyond the limits of what could physically be contained within the dimensions of the retail unit. Current measurements indicate an area of at least 10km2 with no visible external terminators detected in any direction. Inconclusive results from the use of laser rangefinders has lead to the speculation that the space may be infinite. SCP-3008-1 is inhabited by an unknown number of civilians trapped within prior to containment. Gathered data suggests they have formed a rudimentary civilisation within SCP-3008-1, including the construction of settlements and fortifications for the purpose of defending against SCP-3008-2.

* Just what is happening at Disney?

* Rick and Morty season three, at last, by God.

And Jurassic Park but with the dinosaurs from the 90s TV show Dinosaurs, forever and ever amen.

Friday!

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* ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. The power of #YesAllWomen. Media monsters gotta monster.

* Alternate Visions: Some Musings on Diversity in SF.

* Game Theory Is Really Counterintuitive.

* American jails have become the new mental asylums – and you’re paying the bill.

“It was pretty much slave labor,” she says, “but there was nothing I could do about that. I needed stamps to write to my child. I needed hygiene products.” Modern-Day Slavery in America’s Prison Workforce.

* Scenes from the school reform scam in Newark.

In fact, not a cent of Zuckerberg’s money has gone toward hiring counselors, social workers or nurses. Meanwhile, “there have been DRAMATIC cuts to wraparound services,” wrote Mike Maillaro, Newark Teachers Union’s director of communication and research, in an e-mail. Last year, every attendance counselor in the district was eliminated.

Hawthorne Avenue reports losing eight support staff members since 2011, including a guidance counselor and two instructional coaches. The school has neither a music teacher nor a librarian.

Zuckerberg’s money would instead “create systemic education reform in Newark.” In 2011, it was reported that a full third of the foundation’s cash had found the pockets of consultants. As Dale Russakoff recently reported in a lengthy New Yorker article, that total now sits at about $20 million.

Though a smattering of grants have benefitted local causes—after-school yoga ($31,000), book drives ($1.2 million), new district schools ($2.1 million) and sundry others—over 40 percent of the money granted to organizations has left the state. Outside talent and recruitment agencies, for instance, raked in over $4 million to align district staffing with Anderson’s politics.

* In New Orleans, major school district closes traditional public schools for good.

* Chris Christie can’t afford to pay public teacher pensions… but still hands education megacorp $82m in subsidies.

Black legislators in North Carolina are blasting a provision in the State Senate’s budget bill that they say is an attempt to force the closure of Elizabeth City State University, a historically black institution, WRAL News reported.

* The Intractability of Op-Ed Habits.

* Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say. Even Middle-Class Students Have Poor Odds of Graduating From College. 2 Years On, Two-Thirds of This Graduating Class Aren’t Financially Self-Sufficient. How to end the college class war.

Making Olin’s problems worse, the school’s only subject, engineering, is very expensive to teach. Unlike other schools with a broader array of programs, Olin cannot subsidize engineering students by charging their classmates the same tuition for cheaper majors such as English and sociology. At many schools — although they may not know it — liberal arts majors are in effect helping to underwrite the high cost of science and technical education.

* All This: Mad Men and the Persistence of the Old Regime. As good as it gets: Mad Men and neoliberalism. Mad Men‘s Robert Morse on Dancing Into the Sunset.  Mad Men’s Trudy Campbell is a KGB Spy. The Matt Weiner Interview. As fun as this show is, it’s about some pretty grimy shit.

In an attempt to emphasize heterosexuality, fear or hatred of homosexuals and misogynist language developed. The bro, in short, is a culture-wide defense mechanism against the gay.

* Back to the top of the order: Let’s Debunk Scientific Racism, Again.

* Most Doctors Would Refuse Their Own Aggressive End-Of-life Treatments.

* Judge Orders Antitrust Suit Against NCAA to Go to Trial Next Month.

* BREAKING: The rule of law is a joke.

* Government files reveal official campaign of spying against Occupy Wall Street.

Nobody Wants To Host The 2022 Olympics.

So the Chamber is telling us that we can achieve major reductions in greenhouse gases at a cost of 0.2 percent of GDP. A Pushback on Green Power. What Will Climate Change Deniers Say…?

The religious right, who liked to call themselves the “moral majority” at the time, actually organized around fighting to protect Christian schools from being desegregated. It wasn’t Roe v. Wadethat woke the sleeping dragon of the evangelical vote. It was Green v. Kennedy, a 1970 decision stripping tax-exempt status from “segregation academies”—private Christian schools that were set up in response to Brown v. Board of Education, where the practice of barring black students continued. 

* Report of the Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature (2014). Just clap your hands if you believe in job training!

* It doesn’t get better: Sorry, nerds: Fraternity brothers have more fulfilling lives later on.

* Incoming Title IX Mess: Duke Student Sues For Diploma After He’s Expelled for Sexual Assault.

* RIP, Maya Angelou.

* Angus Johnston’s Content Warnings.

* Two great tastes! NCAA Teams Up With Defense Dept. on $30-Million Concussion Study.

* Cruel optimism watch: Hulu In Talks To Pick Up New Season Of Community.

* This made me very sad.

* And nothing good will happen anymore: Alfonso Cuarón says he won’t be directing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.