Author: Otaku-kun

  • You are more likely to play in the NFL than become an astronaut

    Consider playing in the NFL as the epitome of sports – and being an astronaut as the epitome of a STEM career. In both cases, postulate that college is where you can reasonably draw a line for determining basic qualification for application. In the case of the NFL, to reasonably apply to the NFL you must at minimum play NCAA football. In the case of an astronaut, you must at minimum have a Bachelor’s degree in a STEM-related field. Fair enough?

    The NFL statistics are summarized in this graphic (via @GatorsScott) –

    nfl-player

    The relevant numbers are: 15588 NCAA seniors playing football, of which 256 are drafted to the NFL, or 256/15588 = 1.6%. (note, these numbers are from 2013, via a study commissioned by the NCAA.)

    This year’s astronaut corps application had a total of 18,300 applications. The minimum education requirements to apply are “a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics. An advanced degree is desirable” (about a third of astronauts have an MS, and a third have PhDs). There will be 8-14 open slots, so lets assume the maximum for best possible probability: 14/18,300 = 0.07%.

    Now, this doesn’t disprove the so-called STEM shortage – the evolution of the modern-day disposable academic suffices to do that on its own. It is however a cautionary tale about the rhetoric we use when we tell children to “reach for the stars”. Thats good for *children*, but as advice to college students, it’s terrible. A child should be encouraged to dream, and dream big. A college student is practically an adult and deserves to hear stark realities about the job market because that is precisely the moment in time where they can have to make decisions about the rest of their life – decisions that should be informed by those dreams, but not dictated by them.

    There are a lot of astronauts and NFL players who decided from day one that was what they were going to do, and succeeded. And that is amazing. But there just isnt enough room for everyone who is equally capable and has the same amount of sheer determination and talent to do the same. We don’t need 18,300 astronauts, nor do we need 15,588 NFL players drafted every year.

  • Tech guide for the mobile notary

    I am officially a Notary Public in the state of California – I just earned my commission this month. Like any other profession, being a notary requires having the right gear! Here’s a quick list of the essentials.

    samonite brief

    Briefcase – Samsonite 10558 Focus III 6-Inch Attache (Black)

    I wanted a modern take on the traditional brief, so I went with this Samsonite model. There’s a strange pen-case holder on the inside which is not that useful unless you take out the insert, but other than that I have no complaints. The best feature is the writing surface flap, which seems to be totally unique among all briefcases I researched. The case is deep enough for all my notary gear and stacks of documents, plus extras.

    blue pens

    Pens – BIC Round Stic Xtra Life Ball Pen, Medium Point (1.0 mm), Blue, 60-Count

    Blue ink is the industry standard for loan signings now, and you need to always have a pen ready for your client. You’re going to lose a lot of these. These BIC pens are reliable, blue, and cheap. Buy something more expensive for yourself, but these should be your default for clients. At about $.25 per pen, it doesn’t matter if they don’t give them back.

    field notes ruled

    Notebooks – Field Notes Kraft Ruled 3-Pack

    A small notebook is indispensable when you are out doing mobile notary work – jot down phone numbers, addresses, special notes, or just a to-do memo. Field Notes is a great high quality brand, far more affordable than moleskines and less bulky.

    sandisk usb

    USB Drive – SanDisk Extreme PRO CZ88 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Speeds Up To 260MB/s- SDCZ88-128G-G46

    This is simply the fastest USB 3.0 drive out there. It comes with a lifetime warranty, is built like a tank, and the slide-out mechanism for the plug avoids the hassle of caps. It looks gorgeous, too. I always recommend buying the maximum possible capacity you can afford, for longevity.

    brother mfc

    Multifunction printer – Brother Printer MFC8710DW Wireless Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax

    Brother MFC printers have the edge on HP in terms of price and performance (print speed). The advantage of an MFC is you get a scanner, copier and fax built-in, and the MFC8x series from Brother has a legal-sheet size scanning capacity so you are covered for any legal document you may need to scan or copy. This is the cheapest model that has wireless connection and duplex printing; the next more expensive model has duplex scanning, which in my opinion is not worth the extra $50 in cost. The 8710 is at the sweet spot of price and essential business features, especially for notaries who do loan signings.

    brotehr extra tray

    Legal paper tray – Brother LT5400 Optional 500-Sheet Paper Tray Printer Accessory

    Any notary doing loan signings will be printing a lot of documents in mixed letter and legal size format. A second tray dedicated to legal size paper will save you a fortune in the long run so you arent printing letter-size documents on legal, or wasting time switching trays back and forth. This is a solid investment in efficiency and long-term cost savings.

    garmin gps

    GPS unit – Garmin Nuvi 2539LMT North America

    Indispensable tool to make sure you get to where you are going for notary clients and loan signings. Garmin is the industry leader and has the simplest interface in my opinion, making it easy and intuitive to use. This is the cheapest model that includes lifetime traffic and map updates, no extra subscription fees required.

    quickbooks

    Accounting software – QuickBooks Pro 2016 Small Business Accounting Software with Free QuickBooks Online Essentials

    If you don’t already have it, you need it. Every small business needs to have this. It far cheaper than an accountant, and consolidates every financial aspect of your business, from billing and invoices to expenses and sales.

  • Los Angeles Rams – logo suggestion

    Welcome back to Los Angeles, Rams!

    As a new LA resident myself since June, I am looking forward to rooting for you (after the Packers, and the Giants). I also have a suggestion for a new team logo which I think properly honors your LA history and has a very modern look. I’ve created a mockup in Powerpoint accordingly:

    rams logo ikea

    I also can’t wait to attend a game at the new Inglewood stadium – some assembly required, first, of course.

  • Hugo Awards 2015 – the aftermath

    msmarvelvol1-feat1-630x420

    The Hugo awards have completed, and it was a definitive rebuke to the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy slate. For a great summary, see this article in Wired; for reactions, see Mark (neutral), see Richard (pro-Hugos), and John Wright (pro-Puppies).

    I’ve been mostly a lurker with respect to the whole Hugo controversy – though I did strongly support Ms. Marvel over at my non-geek-facing blog. I am grateful to Mike at File770 for due diligence in keeping all sides of the debate visible.

    I think that the main lesson here going forward is that the Hugos are vulnerable – relatively small numbers of people can influence the results. If nothing else, we should thank the Puppies for raising the controversy to the level of rallying people to participate.

    However, there does need to be a way to broaden the base to make the system immune to coup. The EPH proposal is a good start but it seems to me (and I may be mistaken) that it is designed as a band-aid to the problem arising from the vulnerability, not a genuine solution to that vulnerability.

    Make no mistake, EPH or not, it is still perfectly possible for Vox Day and whoever else to interfere with the results next year. There’s nothing I see in EPH that can forestall another wave of Noah Wards, since ultimately the outcomes are still gameable due to the small numbers involved. The time of hiding in the Shire is over – the world beyond has taken notice, and the stakes are higher.

    What are the solutions?

    For one thing, the Hugos were given a gift in terms of mass media coverage this year. From Wired to WaPo, Puppygate was media catnip as a proxy in the culture wars. This means that there are several dozen journalists who are now experts on Hugo arcana and who are an audience that can and should be cultivated. More importantly, all of their readers are now marginally aware of what the Hugos are, and the involvement of luminaries like GRRM also helps raise that awareness above background noise. Press releases to these journalists and direct advertising in their publications will maintain the interest.

    Also, what about more aggressive marketing to Communities of Geekdom? For example, Comic-Con (and it’s satellites around the country, like Chicago’s version last weekend). AMAs on Reddit? A pitch to the writers at Big Bang Theory? How about a big party somewhere, a mass book signing of Hugo nominees?

    This is just 5 minutes of brainstorming on a blog post. The point is that the official machinery of the Hugo Awards itself needs to start contemplating solutions to grow the base and keep the Hugos relevant to a broader swath of fandom than has been sufficient till now.

    I hope that this wasn’t a banner year for Hugo voting, but rather the beginning of a strong trend. If not, the Hugos really are in danger, long term.

    related: Mark’s observations

  • Nexus by Ramez Naam

    nexus-ramez-naam

    Nexus, by Ramez Naam, is book 1 in a trilogy that I’d never heard of until book 3 was spotlighted by John Scalzi on his blog. Scalzi has been tireless and diligent in promoting new authors and connecting them with his fanbase, allowing prospective readers to really get a sense for the imagination behind a given book right from the author’s mouth. I’ve found a number of promising reads there (and I hope Auston Habershaw has his slot lined up…)

    Check out what Ramez Naam has to say about his new book – and if you’re like me, you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to buy the first volume – which is on sale for $2.99 (Kindle) at Amazon right now.

    (Or, read Ars Technica’s review. Also glowing 🙂

    Also, Ramez Naam has the coolest name since Hannu Rajaniemi. 🙂

  • Amazon Prime is only $72 – crazy deal

    I’m a heavy user of Amazon Prime – just the savings on shipping alone makes it worth it. The original price used to be $75 but Amazon recently raised the price to $99/year – except for today, where it’s discounted to $72. In my opinion, Prime is as essential as Netflix or a cell phone – the Prime subscription includes all the following for free:

    Am
    Subscribe to Amazon Prime for $72
    • Two-Day Shipping on stuff you buy from Amazon
    • Unlimited streaming on music
    • Instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows (Prime Instant Video)
    • Unlimited photo storage (Amazon Cloud Drive)
    • Selected Kindle books each month (Kindle First and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library)

    All of tyhis is frankly worth $99/year to me, which is why I renew my subscription every year. If you’re an existing Prime member like me, this deal doesn’t apply – but for anyone interested in trying Prime out, this is the time. Pull the trigger and try it for yourself.

  • The Office Hobbit

    Martin Freeman. The Office. The Hobbit. It’s just… yes. Yes it is.

    Now, if only there was some way to fold Sherlock into it… would be the Freeman trifecta

  • the fandom awakens – first trailer for Episode VII

    Short and teasery – but do a great job of conveying the style and tone. Force Greatswords? Xwings and the falcon? New ways for R2 to get around and funky looking landspeeders. And even some ethnic diversity.

    (or check it out via iTunes at http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/lucasfilm/starwarstheforceawakens/)

    I am eager but I refuse to be as crazy as I went back during the Prequel preview days.

  • Disney’s Maleficent vs Disney’s Maleficent

    Maleficent

    This is a guest post by Tasneem Mandviwala.

    Although women have played various roles throughout the global history of war, including leader, organizer, and supporter, the most well-known role tends to be that of victim. This is perhaps justified due to the horrendous number of rape crimes and abuses of women that often happen within a war context. However, the question of why these crimes against women happen in the first place needs to be explored. While racial, ethnic, and cultural domination through the impregnation of the enemy is an immediate (though morally unacceptable) answer, an indirect answer of why women specifically are attacked might be discovered through the study of deeply ingrained cultural ideologies. In many cultures, the West included, women have been portrayed as weak, passive, and at the mercy of men’s whims in one of the most formative vehicles of cultural ideological transmission: fairy tales. Seemingly innocuous, fairy tales are in fact incredibly powerful modes of shaping societal mores, including gender roles and norms of aggression and violence. They gain power due to their liminal role as both fiction and fact. The fiction aspect is obvious enough, but fairy tales are also factual in the sense that they reflect the socio-cultural realities of the context they arise in. Fairy tales are cultural stories, but they have often served to cover up actual stories of women in contexts such as war due to their pervasive ability to stereotype gender roles.

    Even though contemporary society is far removed in time from the conception of many of the stories we consider fairy tales today, these stories persist and teach members of society “the advantages of moral behavior” through “overt and covert meanings,” “carry[ing] important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind” (Bettelheim). “Moral behavior” in the context of war would imply good versus evil, right versus wrong; us versus them. However, although fairy tales—specifically Western fairy tales—are no stranger to violent scenes, the majority of the times the woman enacts the violence, she is dubbed “evil,” whereas when the man engages in violence, it is because he is “good.” Furthermore, the “good” female characters are only good because they are docile and waiting to be saved by the “good” man.

    The artists behind mainstream films—specifically, Walt Disney’s films—have had a heavy hand in promoting traditional gender roles and shaping popular conceptions of fairy tales in the U.S. for about fifty years now. Even a cursory look at the animated 1959 Sleeping Beauty shows us that the moral categories of violence and gender are unquestionably clear cut and unambiguous. However, fifty-five years later, Disney has attempted to rebirth its own social monster and the results are promising. Maleficent (2014) is the re-telling of the story of Sleeping Beauty, but from the perspective of the “evil” violent woman, the fairy godmother. Over the course of the film, Maleficent moves from being a leader and warrior to a victim to an instigator and then full circle back to a warrior, albeit in a transformed way. Although this film is still adhering strongly to the idea of a fairy tale—in fact, Maleficent is literally a fairy in the movie—it reflects much more accurately than its 1959 ancestor the realities of women’s roles during wartime and is an encouraging step toward a truer cultural understanding of women and violence. Furthermore, it is not animated but acted, driving the point home even more that real women are involved in multiple and complex ways in war.

    Before we can fully appreciate the socio-cultural shift in portrayal of women in war in Maleficent, we need to take a closer look at their portrayal in the now classic version of Sleeping Beauty made in 1959. Although there are more than these three characters, the ones I am concerned with are Princess Aurora, Prince Phillip, and of course, Maleficent. Aurora is portrayed as a perfect being, blessed with the gifts of beauty and happiness from the moment of her birth. These qualities are meant to define her entire life from its beginning and remove all agency and ability from her to develop into an actual individual for the presumably morally superior end of being “good.” Prince Phillip is arguably equally undeveloped, falling in love with Aurora through a chance encounter in the forest and then proceeding to journey to the castle where she sleeps to wake her from Maleficent’s curse with his kiss. This brings us to Maleficent. She is the character who propels all action in the story forward, from cursing Aurora upon her birth to turning into the dragon that Phillip must defeat before he can get to Aurora’s sleeping chambers. The catalyst for Maleficent’s upset at the beginning of the story is that she is not invited to Baby Aurora’s christening, but this is a weak case for the whirlwind of terror and destruction she causes; the proportion of cause to action does not hold. Rather, the stronger reason given for her aggression is the implicit one: she is “evil.” Just as Aurora is without question a “good” woman because she does not upset the system and behaves well, Maleficent is without question the “bad” because she challenges male authority, implements and abides by her own set of rules, and is both literally and metaphorically the character of action in the narrative. Her end at the hands of Phillip is also the end of the story.

    While Aurora’s character stays largely the same in Maleficent, Maleficent’s and consequently Phillip’s roles undergo noticeable shifts from the first account of the fairy tale to the second. The ambiguity of telling the story from the traditionally villainized character’s point of view is appropriately adhered to throughout the 2014 film, with the previously cleanly divided lines of good/evil, male/female, and us/them smudged dramatically in the plot through the character development of Maleficent herself. The first adult identity Maleficent embraces is that of the warrior woman; specifically, the “protector of the Moors.” Because Maleficent grows up to have magnificent and strong wings—a clear symbolic element in the movie that is tied directly to her ability to be a leader—she is able to fly over and protect the land that is her home and the community she is a member of.

    The choice of making her the protector of the “Moors” is not insignificant, as the term has a multivalent presence in a contemporary war context. First, Maleficent’s wings are her strength, but they are also what mark her for what she is: not human. The Moors are described in the film as a magical land bordering a human kingdom, but it is always the humans who attack first and demand the obedience of the creatures who live within the forested lands. It is against these aggressions that Maleficent protects and defends what is rightfully her own, a possible parallel to real world foreign “Others” protecting themselves against Western aggression. For much of our history, including the twentieth and (our current) twenty-first centuries, we as Westerners have often fought wars against ambiguous foreign enemies who come from lands we do not know or understand. Secondly, the literal meaning of a “moor” being an open, uncultivated tract of land also harkens back to notions of Western imperialism and Eurocentric ideas of bringing the right religion and culture to “uncivilized” and “savage” peoples through war and violence. Today, we might see this same mindset in the American idea of spreading democracy to all parts of the world regardless of previously entrenched cultural traditions. Thirdly, the divide between the Moors and the human kingdom set up in the movie is an actual geographic border, a spatial delineation of Us and Them not un-similar to what we find between Mexico and the U.S. today.

    Finally, we cannot ignore the historical allusion the term “Moors” carries. The medieval Muslims who came to be known as the Moors to Europeans had a history of invasion and being invaded and of being viewed as the perpetually mysterious Other, despite being in high contact with numerous European cultures for hundreds of years. The European-Moor relationship is a telling one as it betrays the cultural war that was simultaneously occurring within the physical one. Because the Moors are laden with meanings such as these, the story of Sleeping Beauty itself shifts for the modern viewer. While in Sleeping Beauty the viewer was sure who was Us (the “good” humans Aurora and Phillip) and who was Them (the “evil” fairy Maleficent), in Maleficent, the [human] viewer immediately begins identifying with the Moor creatures rather than the humans, neutralizing the classically established bilateral dynamic.

    Despite her strength as a fierce leader, though, Maleficent becomes a victim of war when Stefan, the future human king, symbolically rapes her of her wings. The king of the human world promises the crown to whoever can defeat Maleficent as he lives out his own last days due to a fatal wound she inflicted upon him during his attempted invasion of the Moors. Out of greed, Stefan takes advantage of the trusting relationship he and Maleficent had as children and teenagers—a relationship he himself had proclaimed to Maleficent to be “true love”—tricks her into drinking a sleeping potion, and severs her wings while she is unconscious; he becomes king shortly thereafter. In perhaps the most moving scene in the movie, Maleficent awakens to find her wings and identity stolen from her by the one human she had trusted most intimately. Having flown her whole life, she now not only must learn to navigate the world solely on foot but also to re-forge her identity as a wingless fairy who can no longer protect the Moors as she once did. While in earlier scenes in the movie Maleficent was arguably already being presented as “good” due to her protector role, the scenes involved violence on both the magical and human side. This scene of wing rape finalizes the repositioning of the classic “evil” Maleficent as an innocent victim and the classically “good” Stefan as an “evil” human. It is Maleficent who is shown in a deep sleep here, not Aurora (who has not been born yet), and it is Maleficent who shows the “good” values of trust and love.

    However, after the initial shock of the betrayal wears off, Maleficent begins her healing by engaging once again in active participation in the war between the magical and the human, this time embracing the role of a vengeful instigator. As a tool of revenge against the newborn Aurora’s father Stefan, Maleficent curses Aurora: She will prick her finger on a spinning wheel’s spindle on her sixteenth birthday and fall into a deep sleep, only to be awoken by “true love’s kiss.” In this act, Maleficent reclaims Stefan’s words to her that led to her own wing-rape and suffering and repurposes them into her own weapon for fighting back. She is active in the magic-human war once again, albeit in a different manner.

    The peak of vengeance was achieved in the moment of the curse, though, and the audience sees that Maleficent’s identity moves forward swiftly after this act into yet another stage: hero, or in a sense, a return to the warrior woman. Maleficent watches Aurora grow up and as her sixteenth birthday nears, the fairy godmother decides to let go of revenge, forgive, and reverse the curse upon the girl. Unfortunately, it is irreversible, but even this attempted act is telling of Maleficent’s complex character as both instigator and protector. Phillip becomes much less important in the saving of Aurora in 2014 than he was in 1959. In fact, he is present to kiss her only because Maleficent enchants his body into a passive state of slumber and actively takes him to the castle when her own attempt to undo the curse fails. As it turns out to everyone’s surprise, Phillip’s kiss is not one of true love; he becomes a marginal presence. It is Maleficent’s kiss to Aurora’s forehead, offered with apologies and regret, that awakens the girl and breaks the curse. This does not begin the dĂ©nouement of the film, however. King Stefan, rather than being overjoyed at his daughter’s renewed life is instead bent on revenge himself and once again initiates battle with a peaceful Maleficent. During this fight scene, Maleficent’s wings, which Stefan has saved over the years as his trophy, magically come back to life as they sense their owner’s presence and reattach themselves to Maleficent’s body. She is able to conquer Stefan and return safely to the Moors. These blatant role reversals that occur in two of the most defining scenes of the classic story—the kiss and the final battle—are a progressive step forward to more accurately conveying women’s active and complex roles in both the instigation but also the resolution of conflicts. Even the closing moments of Maleficent reflect this complexity, as Maleficent steps aside to allow Aurora to become the official leader of both the Moors and the human kingdom, creating a unified harmony. Additionally, we learn that Aurora was the one who was narrating the story from the beginning, a final moment of the female reclaiming her voice and her story.

    Even though the dynamic character development of Maleficent is a positive change in the realm of popular culture depictions of fairy tales and the wars contained therein, the presence of the (symbolically) sexual victim stage still causes pause. The argument could be made that it was necessary to propel the plot forward, but there are deeper issues here that I believe the inclusion of the victim role point to. Although women today are far more active in militaries across the world than ever before, rape in a war context persists, and it is not always enemies attacking enemies. As recent research shows (e.g., the 2010 documentary film The Invisible War; Katie Rapp’s BuzzFeed interview with Alison Vingiano), sexual assault within the U.S. military is a pressing issue that women soldiers have to face, the trauma of which they have to deal with in addition to the stress of actual war. Maleficent’s violation by someone she thought she could trust is unfortunately not far from the idea of American soldiers being raped by American soldiers. Therefore, although women are increasingly present on the frontlines, the industry of war is still very much a male-dominated realm that complicates women’s roles in much the way Maleficent’s character is. To allow women to flourish and excel to their full abilities as fighters for whatever causes they believe in, socio-cultural norms that accept rape as a reality must be permanently altered. We are a long way away, but the portrayal of Maleficent as an empowered leader despite her victimhood is certainly a hopeful step.

    Tasneem Mandviwala is a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development.

  • NFL week 2: Giants lose, Packers win

    wpid-IMG_20140914_175931.png

    The Giants lost to the Cardinals, and the Packers beat the Jets. So i’m doing 1-3 overall in my teams’ progress 😛 Well, I did say I wanted narrative…

    The Packers game was a great example of how that team reacts to pressure. They were down 3-21 in the 2nd quarter. Then they just took off, with the big play a TD run by Jordy Nelson for 80 yards (!). The Jets put up a fight early on and then just couldn’t stop the Pack.

    However, the Giants loss was a disappointment, of course, especially since according to the 538 analysis a team that starts 0-2 has only a 12% chance of making the playoffs. If they can win their next game that goes up to 25%, but if they lose it drops to 2%.

    I’m pretty forgiving of this loss, though. Eli actually seemed more comfortable and was better protected by the O-line this time around, which had definite impact:

    wpid-IMG_20140914_142857.png

    Manning got the Giants back in the game with a 13-play, 90-yard touchdown drive that ended with Randle making a one-handed catch of a 7-yard fade pass to the corner of the end zone. Manning hit 6 of 7 passes on the drive, including a 25-yard to Cruz on third-and-11.

    Jennings fumbled the ball which was painful to watch but really looked like bad luck, not skill (slipped and hit his elbow on the ground). If not for that, the Giants would have tied the game at that moment.

    The problem this game was the WR crew, especially Cruz who seems to be all talk. Shout-out to TE Donnell, though, who has been solid both games so far (and is on my fantasy team :).

    The Cardinals scored half their points from FGS. That means the Giants’ defense is doing something right, right? Likewise, Eli had 277 yards. That means the o-line is doing something, right. Even the receivers were doing all right – Randall had that awesome one-handed catch, Donnell had 80 yards, even Cruz had his moments to shine.

    I think the bottom line is that DESPITE all the turnovers, penalties, and problems with scoring, the Giants were still contenders to win the game, if not for some bad luck (Jennings). And that was against a team with a tough defense like the Cards.

    All the pieces are in place and coming together.

    Oh, and the Bears beat the 49ers at home for the first time since 1985. It’s Eagles vs Colts tonight, i’m rooting for the Colts because that helps the Giants’ standing in their division 🙂