Bowie and Prince as the Little Prince

With the death of two music icons recently, I’ve seen this image floating around the internet. It imagines David Bowie and Prince as the Little Prince. For those looking for the origins of the image, here’s the information in one place.

The Bowie side is a modification of Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s depiction of David Bowie as the Little Prince, created shortly after his death. Click the link to go to the original. The image is linked to his Facebook post.

David Bowie imagined as The Little Prince
Jarrett J. Krosoczka

The Prince side is a modification of Sean Gregory Miller’s image from a couple years ago. The image is linked to the original on DeviantArt.

Prince imagined as The Little Prince
Sean Gregory Miller

Images copyright by the artists and included here in small sizes only to provide enough visual idea to identify the pieces.

Old Time Newspaper Wankery

Newspapers didn’t always have pretensions to be objective. In the 1800s, they were often small operations. They printed mostly gossip. They were explicitly Democratic or Republican and received support from their party. In smaller cities, they were extensions of the publisher, who also served as editor and reporter as well. A newspaper was much like a blog today as far as its personality, including feuding.

In the 1880s, Springfield Illinois had two main newspapers, the Illinois State Journal and the Illinois State Register, as well as Sangamo Monitor. They were not friends.

From the Illinois State Journal, 11 July 1881, page 6:

Scooped, Illinois State Journal

Scooped.

With fiendish glee the Register and Monitor yesterday morning announced the death of Coleman Woods, the colored man who was sun-struck Wednesday. — Journal.

Just so: and the lazy Journal reporters would have made the same announcement, if they had been abroad, in search of news. They were safely housed, however, compiling from an old almanac the “best methods of preventing sun-stroke” and did not encounter the report of Wood’s death, which was prevalent throughout the city, and which was generally believe until the next day. Indolence is not always without its compensations, as is manifested in this case — Register.

“Just so” and if the over-enterprising reporters for the Register, who fiendishly declared that live men are dead, “had been abroad in search of news,” instead of remaining “housed up” in the effort to frame the above lame defense of an utterly indefensible action, they might have announced the three cases of sunstroke which occurred on Friday; the fact that two men were overcome by poisonous gases in the Court House well on the same day, and they also might have given a history of the operations of the counterfeiters, sentenced to the penitentiary by Judge Treat. Or if they had not been “housed up” Saturday, they might have been able to announce the interesting decision given by Judge Zane in the German American Savings, Loan & Building Association litigation, which the Journal presents this morning. “They were safely housed up, however,” and were consequently “scooped” by “the lazy Journal reporters,” just as they are again this morning. The fact of the matter is that the Journal is continually “scooping” its cotempories. The Journal is not afflicted with toadyism; it does not deal in “Personal and other Reflections,” but eschews personalities for the sake of legitimate news.

3 Ways to Tell if Your Distaste For Hillary Clinton is Sexist

3 Ways to Tell if Your Distaste For Hillary Clinton is Sexist

Implicit messages are more insidious because they are consumed and deployed beyond the realm of consciousness. We need not think deeply to identify the racism in Donald Trump’s depiction of Mexican immigrants as rapists or the sexism of his asking if Megyn Kelly’s tough questions were due to her being on her period. Identifying subtler racist and sexist cues is more challenging, however, because no one is immune to these subtleties, even those among us who have engaged in personal and public anti-racist and anti-sexist work.

Source: msmagazine.com/blog/2016/03/17/3-ways-to-tell-if-your-distaste-for-hillary-clinton-is-sexist/

It’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a …

It’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Kameron Hurley: Why your gun-toting chick isn’t feminist, redux

Kameron Hurley does a much better job at explaining the things I felt uncomfortable with in Cabin In The Woods.

Also, this is a test of the link format type for WordPress. Click on the title to take you to Ms. Hurley’s article. Formatting may come out weird in RSS or on LJ.

Edit: re-testing

The Bots

Having a hard time focusing on work this afternoon, so here’s a short post on one of my favorite music discoveries of the last year. The Bots are a punkish duo out of Los Angeles. These two kids have talent. Listen to ʼem now so you can be of of the people who can say I’ve been listening to them since before they were popular! Check out their web site to play all their songs, but here’s the video for the song that got me hooked:

Negative interest rates

One of the problems with the economy is that we are up against the zero lower bound. For my non-economics inclined friends, one of the ways that the government (specifically the Federal Reserve, our central bank) manages things is by raising or lowering interest rates. If inflation gets too high, they raise interest rates. If unemployment gets too high, they lower them. In other words, to combat high inflation, they put people out of work. To combat high unemployment they allow inflation to rise.

However, unemployment has been high in the U.S. for long enough that the Fed has run out of room to lower interest rates. It’s been at 0.25% since December 2008. They can’t lower it any more, which causes all sorts of issues. Paul Krugman has been blogging about this for 3 or 4 years.

However, it turns out that the zero lower bound is more psychological than real. I missed it at the time, but Sweden instituted a negative interest rate in August 2009. Banks that banked their money with the Swedish central bank actually paid a penalty to do so. I don’t think they went negative on interest rates to loan money, which might be more complicated. The Fed funds rate above is more like the second, but the two interest rates should move in tandem. (Couldn’t find a link to the comparable Fed rate.)

What penalizing banks for saving money does is make it worth their while to loan it out, where they can make money.

And what’s the result been? Sweden’s highest quarterly growth rate ever.

Women in S.F. Meme

List based off the original Women in S.F. periodic table. In some of the incarnations of this meme, the list of women has morphed. Not that adding women to the list is a bad thing, but it makes it hard to compare.

I own books by the author if they are bolded. If italicized, I’ve read them (including short stories). If marked with an asterisk, I’ve not heard of the author.

  • Johanna Sinisalo *
  • Andre Norton
  • C. L. Moore
  • Evangeline Walton *
  • Leigh Brackett *
  • Judith Merril
  • Joanna Russ
  • Margaret St. Clair *
  • Katherine MacLean *
  • Carol Emshwiller
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley
  • Zenna Henderson *
  • Madeline L’Engle
  • Angela Carter *
  • Ursula LeGuin
  • Anne McCaffrey
  • Diana Wynne Jones
  • Kit Reed
  • James Tiptree, Jr.
  • Rachel Pollack *
  • Jane Yolen
  • Marta Randall *
  • Eleanor Arnason
  • Ellen Asher *
  • Patricia A. McKillip
  • Suzy McKee Charnas
  • Lisa Tuttle
  • Nina Kiriki Hoffman
  • Tanith Lee
  • Pamela Sargent
  • Jayge Carr *
  • Vonda McIntyre
  • Octavia E. Butler
  • Kate Wilhelm
  • Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
  • Sheila Finch *
  • Mary Gentle *
  • Jessica Amanda Salmonson *
  • C. J. Cherryh
  • Joan D. Vinge
  • Teresa Nielsen Hayden
  • Ellen Kushner
  • Ellen Datlow
  • Nancy Kress
  • Pat Murphy
  • Lisa Goldstein
  • Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
  • Mary Turzillo *
  • Connie Willis
  • Barbara Hambly
  • Nancy Holder *
  • Sheri S. Tepper
  • Melissa Scott
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Jeanne Cavelos *
  • Karen Joy Fowler
  • Leigh Kennedy *
  • Judith Moffett
  • Rebecca Ore
  • Emma Bull
  • Pat Cadigan
  • Kathryn Cramer
  • Laura Mixon *
Periodic Table of Women in S.F.

  • Eileen Gunn
  • Elizabeth Hand
  • Kij Johnson
  • Delia Sherman
  • Elizabeth Moon
  • Michaela Roessner *
  • Terri Windling
  • Sharon Lee *
  • Sherwood Smith *
  • Katherine Kurtz
  • Margo Lanagan
  • Laura Resnick
  • Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Sheila Williams
  • Farah Mendlesohn
  • Gwyneth Jones
  • Ardath Mayhar *
  • Esther Friesner
  • Debra Doyle *
  • Nicola Griffith
  • Amy Thomson *
  • Martha Wells *
  • Catherine Asaro
  • Kate Elliott
  • Kathleen Ann Goonan *
  • Shawna McCarthy *
  • Caitlin R. Kiernan
  • Maureen McHugh
  • Cheryl Morgan
  • Nisi Shawl
  • Mary Doria Russell
  • Kage Baker
  • Kelly Link
  • Nancy Springer *
  • J. K. Rowling
  • Nalo Hopkinson
  • Ellen Klages
  • Tananarive Due
  • M. Rickert
  • Theodora Goss
  • Mary Anne Mohanraj
  • S. L. Viehl
  • Jo Walton
  • Kristine Smith *
  • Deborah Layne *
  • Cherie Priest
  • Wen Spencer *
  • K. J. Bishop
  • Catherynne M. Valente
  • Elizabeth Bear
  • Ekaterina Sedia
  • Naomi Novik
  • Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Ann VanderMeer
 

The web according to Phil 4-14-2010

Two from Bruce Schneier

Privacy and ControlTo the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it’s no longer private. But that’s not how privacy works, and it’s not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control.

New York and the Moscow Subway Bombing[Movie plot threats] threats are infinite, and the bad guys can easily switch among them. … A far better strategy is to spend our limited counterterrorism resources on investigation and intelligence – and on emergency response. These measures don’t hinge on any specific threat; they don’t require us to guess the tactic or target correctly. They’re effective in a variety of circumstances, even nonterrorist ones.

A few on Virginia’s Confederate History Month declaration

McDonnell’s Confederate History Month proclamation irks civil rights leaders — After getting criticized for a Confederate History Month declaration that didn’t include a mention of slavery, McDonnell says he didn’t include it because there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.

Spelling “Free Black Labor” in Greater Britain and Virginia, 1866for reasons of my own, let me take you back to a particular corner of it that I’ve gotten interested in, white reconstruction as a model for the British Empire. Aaron Bady digs up excerpts from books about Reconstruction, published during Reconstruction.

Sons Of Confederate Vets Split On McDonnell Apology — Brandon Dorsey of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (his actual position isn’t stated) calls the apology and addition of slavery to the proclamation regarding Virginia Confederate History Month and insult.


The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not — The interns hired into our department at Expedia actually got to take on significant projects. We didn’t have them do drudgery so that we didn’t have to. Every time I see a place advertise for an unpaid intern that will be given all the crap work in exchange for contacts or the mere ability to list the employer on their resume, I seethe. The Stranger does the a lot.

Federal Air Marshal Service Has Taken Actions to Fulfill Its Core Mission and Address Workforce Issues, but Additional Actions Are Needed to Improve Workforce Survey — G.A.O. report from last year on the Federal Air Marshal program. Mostly boring stuff about employee satisfaction, but one thing that I noticed is that the program measures it’s success essentially by number of flights it sends marshals on. Not on whether or not it’s prevented any problems, not on arrests, not on anything else. Basically, how many flights were covered. Which is kind of like measuring the Seattle Police Department’s success by how many miles their officers cover. It’s bad if they are on no flights, but more flights doesn’t necessarily mean success.

I randomized the law, and the law won — Actual randomized experiments in policing to see what’s most effective. I wish we could do this a lot more, both in criminal justice as well as all sorts of other industries.

Demolition Dude — My time-waster today.

The Web according to Phil (4/2/2010)

Stuff I read read about today:

Seattle’s first technical book store coming soon to Capitol Hill
The bookstore is named for Ada Lovelace, a 19th Century pioneer in computer programming. She is celebrated today as a symbol of all the great women who add to the advancement of technology. a) Really happy we’re getting a tech book store. b) Really happy to see it named after Ada Lovelace. Women are way under-represented behind the scenes of tech, and a lot of that is because of attitudes that drive them away. Not that this will change a whole lot, but now everyone who goes to Ada’s Technical Books will hopefully have their curiosity piqued and know a bit more about women in tech because of the name.
Where are the Women?
NPR’s Ombudsman looks at gender balance in on-air staff, paid commenters, and interviewees, and finds the balance severely lacking in the latter two categories.
alikewise
Alikewise is a dating site that allows you to find people based on their book tastes. Anything from cooking to politics to yoga — we think we can find others who would like to talk to you. No, not on the market. But I totally would’ve used this a couple years ago. If nothing else, I know that the people using the site are actually readers! Very important to me.