The iron law of volunteering: the nicer the cause, the nastier the people

Who is America’s most trusted news source?

trust in news sources chart

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Who is top dog in the digital share market

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Telegraph revealed Nazi gas chambers three years before liberation of Auschwitz

via Holocaust Memorial Day: Telegraph revealed Nazi gas chambers three years before liberation of Auschwitz – Telegraph.

I’ve been to a few presentations like this

 - Dilbert by Scott Adams

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Darwin awards near miss – feeding a crocodile

HT: https://twitter.com/FascinatingVids/status/551143576638595074?s=09

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Hold my beer while I give my friend a hand

https://twitter.com/MatthewJamesMo1/status/557779039151484928

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Behind the scenes of Star Wars

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HT: https://twitter.com/History_Pics/status/548629654001946624?s=09

The Bechdel Test: whether women are in a movie as fully human characters, or as plot devices for the male characters

538 Gender chart

Hollywood is a slave to the box office on the most cutthroat industry there is. Film producers and screenwriters will portray men and women in whatever roles and whatever extent sells tickets.

How women are represented in the movies is determined solely by the preferences of the audiences willing to buy tickets. It’s a buyers market out there. Film producers would do whatever it takes to finance films that sell tickets, as even Five Thirty-Eight realised:

“Movies that are female-driven do not travel,” said Krista Smith, West Coast editor of Vanity Fair, describing the broader sentiment in Hollywood. There are almost no women who have sales value in multiple international territories, maybe with the exception of Sandra Bullock, she said.

Times change, and film producers change with the times. Consumers are both sovereign and change their minds, and in the case of movie audiences, constantly demand novelty and surprises, as even Five Thirty-Eight  picked up on:

Hollywood is the business of making money. Since our data demonstrates that films containing meaningful interactions between women do better at the box office than movies that don’t, it may be only a matter of time before the data of dollars and cents overcomes the rumours and prejudices defining the budgeting process of films for, by and about women.

This moral panic over gender wage gaps between millionaire actresses and actresses dare not say that for want of offending the audience that is actually the main driver of any gender gap in movies.

hickey-bechdel-2

Hollywood activists complaining about the gender wage are to business minded to dare insult the audiences that pay their wages.

Should you use an exclamation mark?

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An astroid the size of a mountain will pass by tomorrow

The UK Green’s election signs are not in any way fluffy like those in New Zealand

Obviously, the UK Greens are not as fluffy as their down-under compatriots if you have a look at this somewhat confrontational sign of theirs.

A YouGov survey last week put the Greens on 10 per cent, up from 5 per cent when the Labour party set up a unit designed to tackle the threat of the minor party

The New Zealand Greens have election campaign signs from which I can neither discern their message, nor easily work out that it is a Green sign because their logo is so small in the bottom right hand corner when driving by a car.

Maybe the Greens are not after car-owner votes, only bicyclists and public transport users – the middle-class on the way to their jobs in the city.

The sign of the UK Greens borders on hate speech. The UK Greens also do not have female and male co-leaders, as is the case for the New Zealand Greens, from what I can see – where is their gender balance?

Darwin awards: Abandoned lion cub who became best friends with man

Friends for life: The story of the abandoned lion cub Sirga who was raised by a German wildlife enthusiast in his 20s was one of the most shared stories on social media last year

HT: Abandoned lion cub who became best friends with man: First seen leaping onto him with ‘grateful hug’ lioness is now star of film about how he taught her to hunt | Daily Mail Online.

My favourite Winston Churchill quote (from 1901)

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.  - Winston Churchill

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Are You at Risk for a Heart Attack? The Answer May Lie in Your Twitter Stream | Mother Jones

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HT: http://m.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/01/twitter-predict-heart-disease

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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.