littlelazer's tumblog

5oh7:

Last year, there were more than 120,000 stops of black and Latino kids between 14 and 18. The total number of black and Latino boys that age in the entire city isn’t much more than that – about 177,000 – which strongly suggests a teen male with dark skin in New York City will probably get stopped and frisked by the time he’s graduated from high school.

From the mouths of babes..

I admit, my first reaction to reading this was “Really? You have a problem with them too? They’re practically the only people of color characters on tv that aren’t completely defined by their race!?” But, I have to admit that the author is right. They can be geeks/socially awkward and still interact with their respective community (no pun intended). And that would make for more well-rounded characters. Just because you’re a geek doesn’t mean you don’t interact with other black/Arab people, and that would make for some pretty interesting storylines.

On the surface, Troy and Abed have represented a more diverse vision of geekdom than their more popular counterparts on The Big Bang Theory: Abed is a Muslim from a biracial family and a budding filmmaker; Troy is a black Jehovah’s Witness who has transitioned from being a jock toward a career path in air-conditioner repair. The duo lives together and, when not getting into hijinks with their study group. is content to sit around watching good/bad sci-fi or cosplay the characters from Inspector Spacetime, a Doctor Who spoof that’s gotten popular enough to attract notice from the people behind the real show.

But even as Abed and Troy have been shown running with the rest of the Greendale Seven and hosting their own faux-talk show and being cool-cool-cool, the great irony of their characterization is, we’ve hardly ever seen them interact with members of their own communities. Even if their race hasn’t been used to Other them, their geekiness has.

I just really don’t understand how two huge divisions in the same company have such different goals. I will be amazed if they figure out how to resolve that tension, and it’ll be fascinating to watch unfold. Motorola has to use Android (it’ll be interesting to see if they can customize it, since software has to be a differentiating factor), but Android can’t let any one vendor (including Motorola) get too dominant. If Motorola comes out with a few lackluster products to start off, then we’ll really see how solid that firewall is.

Also, tapping a sales guy to run a hardware company/division? Sounds like he’s done a lot f good work for Google over the past 9 years, but I hope he has some great design talent working for him that he can rely on.

Woodside vows that there will be a “firewall” inside Google and that he will not ask for or receive special treatment from Andy Rubin, the senior vice president who runs Google’s Android division. “Andy’s job is to maximize the number of devices running Android,” he says. “My job is to make Motorola as successful as possible and deliver innovative hardware as a licensee of Android.”

Nathanial Frank writing about Colin Powell:

Citing no evidence whatsoever, Powell insisted that letting gay people serve (not just openly gay people but any gay people—notwithstanding his simultaneous acknowledgement that they already did serve) would be “prejudicial” to “privacy, good order, and discipline.” That rationale, notice, is not time-bound—if sharing quarters with people who might find you attractive violates privacy, it doesn’t only do so if gays are unpopular, but does so always. It’s not an argument that’s subject to change as our culture changes, but an argument that’s subject to change only when you admit you were wrong about it, which Powell has never done.

Instead, he’s been repudiating his role in creating “don’t ask, don’t tell” since, well, gay rights started to become popular—and safe, and this from someone who is not even in, or currently running for, office. It was widely reported that Powell “changed his mind” about the gay ban early in 2010, when such a reversal could have been helpful to the repeal effort. But the reporting was wrong. What he actually said was, “If the chiefs and commanders are comfortable with moving to change the policy, then I support it.”

Crazy. Guess this is here they got the plot for Silent Hill. What I don’t understand though, is why some people are so adamant about staying. Even if it was a great place to grow up, almost everybody is gone now.

Centralia was already a coal-mining town in decline when the fire department set the town’s landfill ablaze on May 27, 1962, in an ill-fated attempt to tidy up for Memorial Day. The fire wound up igniting the coal outcropping and, over the years, spread to the vast network of mines beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.

Well worth watching for any programmers.

Programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing

$2 billion gone just like that. And people are supposed to accept that everything is ok because it was just traders being traders?

This excuse is one we haven’t heard in awhile. But in 2008 and 2009, as the financial system melted down, it was a refrain sung in Manhattan with great gusto. When somebody gets a $150,000 loan by forging some papers, that’s fraud. But when an investment bank with $600 billion in debt blows up, well that’s just stupid bankers doing stupid stuff — no reason for anybody to go to jail.

…

But as excuses go, stupidity is a pretty poor one — especially for banks. In fact, I’d argue that the relative lack of criminality in the credit bust was one of the factors that made it so devastating to confidence. Criminals are outliers. By definition, they’re rogue actors who operate outside of norms and take pains to avoid detection. Their activity comes to a halt once they are caught and charged and prosecuted. Companies, investors and society have certain defenses against criminals. Criminals serve jail time, or pay fines and other penalties. They repay their debts to society.

Stupidity, however, is much more harmful. There is no redress or compensation for someone who has an “oops” moment. Just as happens in sports, people in finance who set billions of dollars on fire believe it’s sufficient to hold up their hand and say, “My bad,” resign with their bonuses intact and pursue other interests. But banks aren’t like baseball games. The stupid defense leads us to conclude that there’s something wrong and suspect with the legitimate activities a company is engaged in. It reinforces the notion that the people running these giant vessels at very fast speeds just aren’t paying that much attention, and don’t really know how their business works. If Dimon didn’t have a handle on a unit that could run up such large losses so quickly, what other problems could be lurking out there?

I believe that we form our own lives, that we create our own reality, and that everything works out for the best. I know I drive some people crazy with what seems to be ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked out for me.

—Jim Henson (via nevertoooldtolovemuppets)

(via kalthrace)