cyrus.mortazavi

Back at the halfway mark in the last century, it was a reasonable expectation for someone with a low- to mid-level job to own a house, 2 cars and not a mountain of debt in sight. 60 years later, we call that the ‘American Dream’; the unattainable dream. If you’ve been hearing the term ‘income […]

Join CBR as we break down the reasons "Constantine," one of the best horror shows to hit television in years, needs to return for a second season.

The actor has revealed that a script didn’t exist during auditions for "Green Lantern," a stark contrast to the long-developing "Deadpool."

A fan has had subdermal implants, tattoos and part of his nose removed in an effort to make himself look like Captain America's arch-nemesis.

A "Suicide Squad" feature film won't stop the group from returning to "Arrow" later this season on The CW, this time with Cupid part of the crew.

In Game of Thrones, when people get together to eat… or for just about any other reason… a lot of people tend to die. So to celebrate the release of the 4th season of the show on Bluray / DVD, HBO is creating a pop-up restaurant at the Andaz Liverpool Street Hotel from February 13th through 15th. The All Men Must Dine experience will allow fans to know what it’s like to eat in King’s Landing at a private, clandestine meeting of the Small Council.

It is said they will be serving up the “finest delicacies Westeros has to offer”, offering multiple courses paired with themed drinks. Though the actual menu is being kept a secret, one revealed dish is “The Lies of Tyrion Lannister and his Proclaimed Innocence”, also known as poached veal tongue with beetroot, horseradish and “Oldtown Mustard”.

You can enter to win a seat at the table here.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]

Game Of Thrones Pop-Up Restaurant To Open For Three Days Only

Last year it was reported that Jerry Bruckheimer was to produce a TV adaptation based on the DC comic book Global Frequency, originally written by Warren Ellis. Ellis was to executive produce, along with Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and Rockne S. O’Bannon with KristieAnne Reed as co-executive producer.

The comic had already had one TV pilot made ten years ago, which leaked online to much acclaim, but killing the project in the process

Well, this time all it took was the script.

Though Global Frequency had a pilot production commitment at Fox, I am told by Fox sources that as a result of the script by O’Bannon, creator of Farscape and Defiance and the man most responsible for the Constantine TV show, having “bombed” internally at Fox, right now the project is as dead as a cybernetically enhanced zombie dodo.

Even though a series about a crowd-sourced response to global crime couldn’t be more relevant, I understand that as of today, the frequency has been lost… But it’s always possibly they’ll try and tune in again later in the year.

The Global Frequency TV Show From Jerry Bruckenheimer Is Dead

We all know Superman’s standard powers. Super strength, speed, hearing, vision , flight and heat vision. Some have been defined further, he’ll originally he couldn’t fly, now he has super chilled breath as well, when he wants. The films gave him the power to travel through time, to erase memory with a kiss and to turn his S symbol into a plastic prison.

Well in tomorrow’s Superman #38 he gets a new super power. As a result of the USA Today article teasing it, copies at cover price have been hoovered up on eBay, with copies now finding buyers at a dollar over cover.

One retailer gets in touch to give the game away. So if you want to avoid spoilers, stop now. But if you are intrigued enough to know what new super power is being added to canon – maybe ahead of its appearance in the Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice movie – and just can’t wait till you pick up a copy, then I’m going to put you out of your misery.

Superman blows up. I don’t mean he gets angry at Lex Luthor, but he detonates. A massive incinerative blast that is, apparently, tied to his heat vision. Think the Human Torch’s supernova blast… With similar effects….

Out tomorrow. If you can find a copy. No wonder he needs a new costume.

But here’s another thing. If you think that is a spoiler, that is nothing compared to the actual big final page spoiler in this issue that may well change the Superman setup… forever!

But let’s talk about that later.

Superman #38 Blowing Up On eBay As He Gets A New Power (SPOILER)

By Nikolai Fomich

Joseph Illidge, author, columnist, and public speaker, knows Dinah Laurel Lance well – after all, he edited the character during the early days of Chuck Dixon’s Birds of Prey run. Joe and I sat down to chat about the character’s Arrow-incarnation, the show’s growing cast of characters, and what we hope to see.

 [Black Canary]

Nikolai Fomich: Arrow follows the journey of Oliver Queen from playboy to shipwreck survivor to vigilante to hero, but another character that we’ve seen transform over the course of the show’s three seasons is Laurel Lance. 

The ways in which the writers have been able to reimagine the character to suit their story while maintaining aspects of her comic book history is impressive. Like her comic book counterpart, Arrow’s Dinah/Laurel is a legacy character, inspired by a close family member to don the mantle of Canary/Black Canary – her mother in the comics and her sister in the show. I’m happy they were able to maintain the legacy aspect of the character. What are your thoughts on Laurel’s journey so far?

Joe Illidge: At the very least, Laurel’s road to becoming the Canary is impressive because it’s earned. Laurel has gone through a personal crucible of grief, anger, disillusionment, addiction, and now grief again, over the span of two and a half seasons. The same way that you can’t watch the final episode of Breaking Bad and say that you knew the Walter White in the first episode had it in him to become that person, I stopped believing that Laurel would inevitably become the superhero from DC’s Birds of Prey monthly comic book.

I’m glad I was wrong, because Dinah Lance, the Black Canary, was one of my favorite female superheroes before and while I was editor of the comic book series she starred in, so I want to see how long it takes Laurel to become that person, become that formidable a person and self-assured in her ability to be a crime fighter.

Since the comic book version of Black Canary was also forged through loss and the personal realization that fighting within government organizations was not enough to ensure justice was done, in that way the comic book and television versions are perfectly in synch.

NF: Since her inception, Canary has largely been a supporting character – in Flash Comics and All Star Comics in the 1940’s and in Justice League of America, The Brave and the Bold, and various Green Arrow stories in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It wasn’t until Birds of Prey that Dinah was the star of a book. And it’s only now, in season three, that we’re seeing Arrow’s Dinah Laurel Lance become more than a supporting character.

I think moving Laurel away from Ollie throughout the course of the show has forced the writers to develop her character more fully, and I imagine the characters will have matured quite a bit by the time they reconnect.

JI: Agreed. Throughout Black Canary’s history in the comic books, her relationship with Oliver Queen was more of a savior/damsel-in-distress disguised as an independently capable superhero kind of dynamic. It took a while for the effects of the feminist movement to catch up with Black Canary the way it did with Wonder Woman. When Black Canary went through a personal trial and emerged stronger, then received her first ongoing comic book series, that’s when she started to stand on her own two feet, literally and figuratively.

Having Laurel and Oliver on equal ground in terms of their goals and sense of independence, after Laurel spent a good deal of time partially defining herself in relation to her feelings about him…it’s great, and speaks to how the Arrow writers develop interesting female characters.

NF: I wonder if Arrow will eventually have Laurel team-up with Felicity, mirroring the duo of Black Canary and Oracle we saw in Birds of Prey. It’d be great if the writers could create a similar kind of dynamic between those two characters like the one we saw with Dinah and Babs in the comics.

JI: Even if that’s not their intent, the writers have certainly set that up in the “Midnight City” episode. I’d love to see it.

The original Birds of Prey editor, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, came up with the idea to put Black Canary together with a mission commander in Oracle. The two went from being allies to great friends, and we see the same starting to happen with Felicity and Laurel. They’re bound by grief, earlier feelings of hopelessness, and eventually Felicity’s resolve empowered Laurel to regain and strengthen her own.

A good, strong platonic relationship between two women is something Arrow could use, so a Laurel/Felicity team would be a great by-product of this third season.

 [Black Canary by Butch Guice, from Birds of Prey #16]

NF: I totally agree. The showrunners of Arrow didn’t go the fishnet route with the character design. During your editorship on Birds of Prey, we saw Black Canary make the switch to pants – how did that come about and why?

JI: It’s funny, because credit goes to (now Valiant’s Ninjak) artist Butch Guice and his wife Julie in terms of Black Canary’s look during my time as the Birds of Prey editor.

I brought Butch on board as the regular artist to up the visual ante on the book’s drama since the second “season” of Birds of Prey was going to be more serious, and he had the artistic intuition to change up the character’s outfit from time to time. Women don’t wear the same style day in, day out. They shake it up for various reasons, and Black Canary did the same in terms of her costume.

Butch’s wife, Julie, was the fashion consultant in terms of the character’s civilian fashion and hairstyles, and I just loved getting that two-for-one, married couple input on the series.

I love Laurel’s full-body costume on Arrow because, really, why in the hell would you run around at night with bare legs, when that part of the outfit could be used to hold accessories? That and keep your legs warm. It’s a functional uniform, and not spandex.

NF: Any thoughts on the diversity we’ve seen on Arrow? I think Diggle is a great addition to the Green Arrow mythos. Ollie has always had a bit of a dearth when it comes to supporting characters – which is part of the reason I feel like Shado and Eddie Fyers were wasted.

JL: I’d like the casting director of Arrow to become a high-ranking official at DC Comics, because the level of ethnic diversity in the supporting and recurring cast, the love affair between Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter Nyssa and Laurel’s (now deceased) sister Sarah, those factors helped influence me to put Arrow on my radar. I’d like to see more of that in the monthly DC Comics lineup, along with more writers of color.

Diggle’s great. I know Andy Diggle, the Green Arrow: Year One writer after whom John Diggle was named. Andy’s a great guy, and it’s a respectful testament to the impact of his story that a fictional namesake was born. Now that a parallel Diggle character is in the Green Arrow monthly DC Comics series, things have gone beautifully full circle.

I do agree that Shado wasn’t used to her full potential on Arrow, but we all know she made quite the impact.

NF: This season we’ve seen not only the beginnings of Black Canary, but of the Atom and Katana as well. I think Rila Fukushima and Brandon Routh have done fine jobs bringing those characters to life. Adding Katana to Oliver Queen’s story totally makes sense, and Ray Palmer adds an unusual kind of charm to the show.

JI: One of my few regrets from my time as a Batman editor was not getting a chance to tackle the Outsiders, the superhero team Batman financed, of which Katana was a member.

She was and may still be one of my favorite DC Comics characters, and if they bring the mythology of the comic book version of Katana to the Arrow series, that would take the show into a whole new territory with ancient mysticism. Yes, that kind of feel is touched upon with Ra’s al Ghul, but Katana has an interesting origin, and she does have a husband who may find his way to an early grave, right?

I could see the full story behind Katana’s sword, the Soultaker, playing out in future episodes of Arrow, and fans of the comic book version of the character know exactly what I mean.

 [Katana]

NF: Speaking of Ra’s, you’re a bit of a fan of his, am I right? What’s your opinion on how Arrow has handled the Demon’s Head?

JI: Clearly, you’ve seen my Facebook posts!

Dennis O’Neil, former Batman Group Editor and my boss/mentor while I worked for the Batman office, came up with the Ra’s al Ghul character (with Neal Adams as co-creator), and I have to say the world just makes me get that character’s ethos more and more. So in that way at the very least, yes, I am a fan.

I was totally sold on the Liam Neeson version of the character from Batman Begins, so when I first heard Ra’s al Ghul was going to be recast for Arrow, I didn’t want to care about it. But after you’ve watched the Arrow midseason cliffhanger episode “The Climb”, you can’t help but accept actor Matt Nable as the character.

The characterization is spot-on so far. Interestingly enough, in the Birds of Prey comic book, Ra’s al Ghul was quite taken with Black Canary and tried to court her to help continue his reign, in authority and intimately.

Also in regards to the House of al Ghul, I can’t wait to see how Nyssa will react to seeing Laurel operating as the Canary, seeing as how Laurel’s sister Sarah, the first Canary, was Nyssa’s great love.

 [Ra’s al Ghul]

NF: It should be interesting! Thanks for taking the time to chat Joe.

Joseph P. Illidge is the co-founder of Verge Entertainment, where he is Head Writer, and a columnist at Comic Book Resources. Follow him on Twitter @JosephPIllidge

Nikolai Fomich is a writer and college teacher in Philadelphia. Follow him on Twitter @brokenquiver

Arrow Talk With Former Birds Of Prey Editor Joe Illidge

Conan O’Brien‘s Clueless Gamer series is always worth a laugh or two when they air in an episode or go live on Youtube. Watching as he stumbles his way through understanding video games and its culture is a cute little bit.

This new episode raised the stakes though. In honor of the upcoming Superbowl, he invited notoriously media shy Seattle Seahawk Marshawn Lynch and New England Patriot Rob Gronkowski to sit down and play a game with him. Now, you’d think they would play Madden, but no. NetherRelms sent them all an early copy of Mortal Kombat X to play.

It’s great watching.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their shocked faces are really what sells it. These fatalities are particularly gruesome, especially for the uninitiated.

It’s good to see Lynch out and talking though. He probably spoke more in this video than he has the entire Superbowl press coverage. His talk about Mario Kart was a real highlight.

Conan, Marshawn Lynch and Rob Gronkowski Sit Down To Play Mortal Kombat X

Keanu Reeves is a hit or miss kind of actor for me. I can think of a handful of movies he was in that I like… the original Matrix, The Replacements, Point Break… the list is not long. He’s not an actor that will get me to go see a movie because he’s in it.

This past weekend I got to sit down and watch John Wick. I had seen the trailers when it was in theaters and for the first time in a long time there was a Keanu Reeves movie I wanted to see… a straight forward revenge/action movie. Having finally gotten to see it I have to say the movie does not disappoint.

The plot is simple, John Wick is an ex-hit man who fell in love and left the business after completing an impossible assignment for his boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). His wife dies from an undisclosed ailment and she leaves him a puppy to love as he mourns her passing. He bonds with the dog while out driving his only other true love, a classic Mustang. When a Russian gangster named Iosef (Alfie Allen), son of Wick’s old boss, sees the car, he wants it. But Wick refuses to sell. So the gangster and his two buddies break into Wick’s house, surprise him, beat the crap out of him, kill his dog and take his car.

This all takes place in the first few minutes of the film along with the reaction to the car being stolen. In a few comments from the chop shop guy Aurielo (John Leguizamo) and Viggo we get a really good idea of just how kick-ass Wick is without him having done anything yet.

Wick was devastated by his wife’s death and frustrated by the fact he could do nothing about it. What can a man of action do against a disease? But when Iosef killed the puppy, he became the face of all the darkness in Wick’s world. Viggo explains that they had a nickname for Wick, they called him Baba Yaga or the Boogeyman… except Wick was the person you would send to kill the Boogeyman. And that is what Iosef unleashed upon himself.

The universe that is built in this film is one of respect among killers and organization. Certain rules you don’t break and safe havens that must be honored. Its a world the could have many stories told from it but I don’t think they would be as pure and visceral as this one.

Reeves portrays Wick as the quiet, loner with a singular purpose for most of the film and that type of role is right in the actors wheelhouse. But the surprising moment is when Wick opens up for a short moment and verbalizes that pain inside of him and just what Iosef took from him. This moment is very well acted and brings the character’s true motivation to light.

The film is well written and extremely well directed. The action scenes are brutal, fast paced and exciting. The supporting cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane and Adrianne Palicki are all well rounded characters that we get a good feel for in a short amount of screen time.

When I sit down to watch a movie, I judge it based on what the movie is supposed to be. This is supposed to be a fast-paced revenge/action movie and in that confines it is very well done. I would expect to see more and high profile films from directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see another John Wick film… but it might be hard to come up with plot line that would turn a cold-blooded killer into a hero for a second time.

John Wick is available now on Blu-ray / DVD and VoD.

My Name Is John Wick… You Killed My Dog… Prepare To Die

In the days leading up to Super Bowl XXV, then–New York Giants defensive coordinator Bill Belichick was searching for any weakness the opposing Buffalo Bills might possess. Powered by four future Hall of Famers, Buffalo’s “K-Gun” offense had led the NFL in scoring during the 1990 season and had already posted 44 and 51 points in the playoffs against the Dolphins and Raiders.

But Belichick eventually settled on an edge he thought he could exploit: His first job in the NFL had been under the K-Gun’s architect, Buffalo offensive coordinator Ted Marchibroda. While head coach of the Baltimore Colts in 1975, Marchibroda had hired Belichick for a barely paid gig analyzing game film, and the two remained friendly. But this was business, not personal, and Belichick knew that the old-school Marchibroda, though a great tactician, would have trained his quarterbacks the same way he’d once trained his junior film guy: by filling them up with knowledge and then handing them the reins. Analysts wondered how Buffalo’s no-huddle attack could play so fast, but Belichick knew that Marchibroda was forged in an era when quarterbacks like Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas called their own plays, and that Bills passer Jim Kelly had the same freedom.

That knowledge was all Belichick needed. Later, Belichick would tell David Halberstam he didn’t think Kelly read defenses as well as some other NFL quarterbacks did, which made Belichick confident he could stay one step ahead. While Marchibroda would be able to explain the Giants’ looks to Kelly between series, during them Kelly would have to match wits with Belichick unaided. With each drive, Belichick made sure to appear to show Kelly exactly what he’d seen the prior series, while in reality making subtle but crucial tweaks, such as replacing a defensive back with a linebacker or changing a single defender’s coverage responsibility to set a trap. Belichick amplified the effect by working out of an unusual dime defense featuring six defensive backs, two traditional defensive linemen, and three linebackers (including Lawrence Taylor) to better defend Buffalo’s talented receivers.

It worked. The Giants held Kelly and his receivers in check en route to a 20-19 win, albeit with some help from one of the most infamous missed field goals in NFL history, and today Belichick’s Super Bowl XXV game plan sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Already well known at the time in coaching circles, Belichick became a household name by relying on two of the pillars that continue to define him: ingenious defensive tactics and precision without sentimentality.

Twenty-four years later, head coach Bill Belichick is still bombarding opponents with shrewd, coldly rational tactics. The result: His Patriots are making the sixth Super Bowl appearance of his reign, chasing their fourth title. To claim the crown, they’ll have to best the defending champs, a Seattle Seahawks team coached by a man who knows a thing or two about defensive tactics himself. But while Pete Carroll’s otherworldly defenses have succeeded the last few seasons largely because of the way Carroll elegantly uses simplicity to unleash his squad’s great talent, Belichick resists classification. No modern football coach can match Belichick’s deep knowledge of schemes and strategies, or his multidecade track record of applying that knowledge to devastating effect.

David J. Phillip/AP

Most successful coaches can point to one or two key mentors or influencers who shaped their thinking. But while Belichick has worked with coaches like Marchibroda, Bill Parcells, and Ray Perkins and identifies the men who shaped him as “a menagerie,”⁴¹ one figure stands out: “My dad, that was a constant.”

Belichick’s father, Steve, might be the greatest “scout” in football history, at least based on how the term was used in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. Today, a typical football scout focuses almost entirely on evaluating personnel, like potential draft picks or free-agent signees; in contrast, Steve was an extension of the coaching staffs at Vanderbilt, North Carolina, and particularly Navy, where he worked for more than 30 years for seven head coaches, traveling to watch and analyze opponents’ games in person.

More on the Super Bowl

• Barnwell’s Super Bowl Breakdown
• Belichick: The Great Defender
• Giving Vince Wilfork His Due
• Marshawn Lynch and the Media
• Cousin Sal’s SB Prop Bets
• Beware the Visor: Kam Chancellor
• Among the Lurchers at Media Day
• Pats and Seahawks Weaknesses
• NFL Defense Championship Belt
• Matthew Slater: Mr. Special Teams
• Story of the First Tackle
• How Belichick Rules the Draft
• ‘You Mad, Bro?’ Revisited
• Pierce on the Deflatriots Farce
• The Pats’ Homegrown Linebackers
• More on the Super Bowl

Accurately evaluating game film is hard enough for today’s coaches and scouts, who benefit from rewindable All-22 digital game footage; accurately charting and analyzing a team’s personnel, formations, shifts, plays, and tendencies in real time as well as Steve did is almost inconceivable. He was revered for his ability to recognize patterns and spot things no one else noticed, and he compiled his thoughts into lengthy reports that he delivered each week to his head coach, and that also became his son’s introduction to the game within the game.

According to Halberstam’s book, a 9-year-old Belichick made a deal with his father: If he finished his homework early, the old scout would give his son a preview of that week’s report, allowing the youngster to gorge himself on play diagrams and digressions on the popular tactics of the era, like the single wing and straight T-formation offenses and the wide-tackle six and gap 8 defenses. Halberstam noted that Belichick quickly became conversant in football arcana, eloquently explaining to one old coach at 10 years old that he should switch to an Oklahoma 5-2 (a predecessor to today’s 3-4 defenses) to better match up against an upcoming opponent. Around that time, meanwhile, Steve cemented his legacy as one of the greatest scouts of his era by publishing Football Scouting Methods, a treatise on the art of scouting.⁴²

So, by the time Belichick got his first NFL job under Marchibroda at the age of 23, he was already something of a football historian, intimately aware of football tactics and their evolutions. The young scholar soon realized he had a knack for applying that knowledge on the field, quickly rising from an assistant who earned $25 a week to defensive coordinator of the New York Giants by age 33. While his father was more of a football theorist, Belichick’s forte has always been applied knowledge.

But his father’s influence remained, and Belichick has never stopped learning. He’s renowned for spending his summers picking the brains of coaches he respects in search of anything he might find useful,⁴³ which is why, despite having risen through the ranks almost exclusively as a defensive coach, Belichick is also an offensive master. The Patriots have repeatedly stayed ahead of the curve, going to shotgun spread and no-huddle attacks before the rest of the league, then going back to extra tight ends, fullbacks, and linemen while the rest of the league turned to the spread.

The players know who drives these shifts. A few years ago, after yet another parade of offensive assistants had left for bigger jobs, Tom Brady confidently remarked to ESPN that “as long as we have Belichick, I always think that we’re going to be just fine.” So far, he’s been right.

Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Still, Belichick’s hallmark remains his defense, and the way that unit plays is what opposing coaches most admire. “There’s very few coaches that I steal from, but Bill Belichick is one of them,” Buffalo head coach Rex Ryan has said. “So creative what he does coverage wise, how he looks at things, puts traps out there. The guy is an amazing coach. Best coach in football, it’s not even close. That’s a guy I will study.”

Unlike the many coaches who identify with a particular style or tree, Belichick isn’t locked into a singular ideology. He seems to effortlessly shift between tactics from week to week, and he’s always bristled at attempts to neatly characterize his defenses, once calling the notion that he prefers a 3-4 defense a “media fabrication.” For Belichick, there are no pure defensive systems, only objectives and constraints and a hyperrational evaluation of each: “You decide defensively how you want to defend them in the running game. Do you want to defend them with gap control? Do you want to two-gap? Do you want to try to overload the box with extra guys and play eight against seven or seven against six? Those are all the choices you make. With every decision, there’s going to be an upside, there’s going to be a downside. There will be advantages to playing certain things, there will be disadvantages.” This is the kind of multi-tiered thought process Belichick calls “pretty straightforward.” Right.

Thanks to that mentality, Belichick’s greatness has never stemmed from the Big Idea, unless the Big Idea is the relentless application of many Little Ideas. For example: With the Giants, one of Belichick’s best tactics was something he called BTF, or Blitz the Formation, an idea he gleaned from Buddy Ryan’s famed 46 defense with the Chicago Bears. Instead of calling for specific players to blitz the quarterback, Belichick would make a BTF call, and once the offense showed how it was lining up, his players would check to a specialty blitz designed for when that particular opponent used that particular formation. In recent years, however, Belichick has expanded on this idea by having his players adjust their blitz assignments not only based on the offense’s formation, but by having them trade assignments after the play begins.

On most NFL passing plays, the center is usually the key to understanding how the offense is trying to protect the quarterback. Defenses prefer to rush away from the center, which creates a mismatch in favor of the defense by forcing the running back to block a blitzing NFL linebacker (and also eliminates a potential receiver out of the backfield). If the running back isn’t staying in to block, or if he is but whiffs, the defense has an unblocked blitzer, which is even better.

Today’s offenses are nimble enough to redirect their pass protection schemes toward the most likely blitzers at the line. Belichick, however, enables his defenders to regain the advantage by teaching them to read the offense, specifically the center. For example, Belichick frequently calls blitzes with potential rushers lined up to the offense’s left and right, with each reading the center’s movement. If the center slides toward the keyed defender, he drops into coverage, and if the center slides away from the keyed defender, he turns kamikaze and blitzes the quarterback. Here’s a page describing this tactic, called “Rain,” from the playbook of one of Belichick’s former assistants, Alabama head coach Nick Saban:

In Week 16, with the Patriots clinging to a 17-16 lead with just more than six minutes left, the Jets faced third-and-4 from New England’s 24-yard line. Just before the snap, New England’s entire defensive front shifted, as defensive tackles Vince Wilfork and Chris Jones moved inside and linebackers Jamie Collins and Dont’a Hightower — the defenders Belichick had designated for a tag-team “Rain” blitz — moved just outside the tackles. As the play began, New York’s center slid to his left, so Collins dropped back, right into Geno Smith’s throwing lane, while Hightower flew into the backfield and sacked Smith for a 10-yard loss.

With the ball pushed back, Wilfork blocked Nick Folk’s 52-yard field goal attempt, the Jets failed to threaten to score again, and Belichick notched another victory, once again subtly and masterfully upending his opponent.

It’s hard to win in the NFL, where most games are decided by small, often overlooked moments. The great coaches, however, are adept at finding and exploiting seemingly infinitesimal advantages. There’s a reason Bill Walsh called his book Finding the Winning Edge and Don Shula called his The Winning Edge: Gaining an “edge” is often the difference between winning and losing. One doesn’t steward his team to 12 consecutive 10-plus-win seasons, as Belichick has, without an uncanny ability to identify and exploit the on-field edges that add up to wins.

But what about edges off the field? It’s impossible to write about Belichick this week without raising the question. Like almost all of his peers, Belichick isn’t above a little gamesmanship if it might help him win: According to Halberstam, in order to slow down Buffalo’s no-huddle offense in Super Bowl XXV, Belichick told his Giants players to “accidentally kick the ball” away from the officials after it had been set up for play.

But there’s a difference between gamesmanship and breaking the rules. We all know about Spygate, and Deflategate has dominated the headlines in the lead-up to this Super Bowl. Still, it’s hard to know quite what to make of this latest “scandal.” Considering it’s about whether someone intentionally took air out of some footballs, it’s easy to say the story’s magnitude would have been considerably less had it not involved the Patriots and Belichick. That’s not to minimize the allegations — rules are rules — but instead to say that the idea of Belichick surreptitiously leaking air out of footballs to try to gain an advantage for the Patriots perfectly matches the popular narrative of Belichick as a callous detail-freak. In fact, for many, Belichick’s defense that he’d never really thought about the air pressure of a football during his 40 years of coaching was the most unbelievable part of this entire saga. Belichick thinks of everything.

JEFF HAYNES/AFP/Getty Images

Every generation seems to get the football coaches it deserves. In the postwar decades, leading coaches like Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, and Woody Hayes were imperial figures defined by discipline and a militaristic approach to the game. In his book, the elder Belichick made sure to always refer to the leader of Navy’s chief rival, legendary Army coach Earl Blaik, as “Colonel Blaik.” Nowadays, most NFL coaches are company men, professionals who started as trainees and made their way up to corner offices by working hard and “managing up” the same way they would have at General Electric or Goldman Sachs.

The exception, as always, is Belichick: Compared to his peers, he’s far less polished (David Letterman once said he looked like a “Sherpa guide”) and far less concerned with sentiment (Parcells used to refer to him as “Gloom”). But he’s also more knowledgeable, more rational, and more exacting. Belichick is a grim, calculating technocrat. But he’s also the best coach we have. 

[Re-posted from earlier this week]

One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw; sometimes it just means a monthly update on our revenues and subscriptions; and sometimes I stumble onto something actually interesting. But when you write every day for readers for years and years, as I’ve done, there’s not much left to hide. And that’s why, before our annual auto-renewals, I want to let you know I’ve decided to stop blogging in the near future.

Why? Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.

The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.

I want to spend some real time with my parents, while I still have them, with my husband, who is too often a ‘blog-widow’, my sister and brother, my niece and nephews, and rekindle the friendships that I have simply had to let wither because I’m always tied to the blog. And I want to stay healthy. I’ve had increasing health challenges these past few years. They’re not HIV-related; my doctor tells me they’re simply a result of fifteen years of daily, hourly, always-on-deadline stress. These past few weeks were particularly rough – and finally forced me to get real.

We’ll have more to say – and we’re sure you will as well – in due course. I particularly want to take some time to thank my indispensable, amazing colleagues in a subsequent post. For the time being, auto-renewals have been suspended and the pay-meter has been disabled. While we’re in this strange, animated suspension, I just wanted to take one post to thank you personally, the readers, founding members and subscribers to the Dish.

It’s been a strange relationship, hasn’t it? Some of you – the original white-on-navy ones – went through the 2000 election and recount with me, when I had to explain the word “blog” to anyone I met; we experienced 9/11 together in real time – and all the fraught months and years after; and then the Iraq War; and the gay marriage struggles of the last fifteen historic years. We endured the Bush re-election together and then championed – before almost anyone else – the Obama candidacy together. Remember that first night of those Iowa caucuses? Remember the titanic fight with the Clintons? And then the entire arc of the Obama presidency.

You were there when it was just me and a tip jar for six years, and at Time, and at The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, and then as an independent company. When we asked you two years ago to catch us as we jumped into independence, you came through and then some. In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it.

You were there when I couldn’t believe Palin’s fantasies; and when we live-blogged the entire Green Revolution around the clock for nearly a month in 2009. You were there when I freaked out over Obama’s first debate against Romney; and you were with me as I came to realize just how deeply wrong I had been on Iraq. But we also fought for marriage equality together (and won!), and for a new post-Iraq foreign policy (getting there), and for legalizing weed (fuck you, Hickenlooper!). We faced the brutal reality of a Catholic church engaged in the rape of children, and the bleak truth about the United States and torture. And I think we made our contribution to all those struggles. The Dish made the case for Obama in a way that actually mattered when it mattered. I think we made the case for gay equality in a way no other publication did. And we lived through history with the raw intensity of this new medium, and through a media landscape of bewildering change.

I want to thank you, personally, for the honesty and wisdom of so many of your threads and conversations and intimacies, from late-term abortions and the cannabis closet to eggcorns and new poems, from the death of pets, and the meaning of bathroom walls to the views from your windows from all over the world. You became not just readers of the Dish, but active participants, writers, contributors. You trusted us with your own stories; you took no credit for them; and we slowly gathered and built a readership I wouldn’t trade for anyone’s.

You were there before I met my husband; you were there when I actually got married; and when I finally got my green card; and when Dusty – who still adorns the masthead – died. I can’t describe this relationship outside the rather crude term of “mass intimacy” but as I write this, believe me, my eyes are swimming with tears.

How do I say goodbye? How do I walk away from the best daily, hourly, readership a writer could ever have? It’s tough. In fact, it’s brutal. But I know you will understand. Because after all these years, I feel I have come to know you, even as you have come to see me, flaws and all. Some things are worth cherishing precisely because they are finite. Things cannot go on for ever. I learned this in my younger days: it isn’t how long you live that matters. What matters is what you do when you’re alive. And, man, is this place alive.

When I write again, it will be for you, I hope – just in a different form. I need to decompress and get healthy for a while; but I won’t disappear as a writer.

But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.

Readers keep the thread going:

In discussing how the sitcom Friends dealt with homosexuality, it is important to note Episode 11 of Season 2, which was titled “The One With The Lesbian Wedding”. It’s funny that even though it was 1996 there was no mention of “commitment ceremonies” or “domestic partnerships”. It was a wedding, plain and simple, no questions asked.

A few more readers delve deeper into that episode and others:

Yes, Chandler at times goes too far in some of his jokes and comments – and actual living. But he also has an incredibly endearing relationship with Joey that he is never afraid to express – largely through hugs, but also through actual words. Their love may not be sexual, but it is real, and unconditional – a bromance not really rivaled until JD and Turk on Scrubs. I know it’s not the same – but Friends does show a tight, healthy friendship between two guys without fear of homophobic reactions. And Chandler continues to evolve, especially after he gets married, embracing his less-than-“manly” side and not making the same kind of jokes.

Also, Friends was the show that featured a gay wedding – and did not play it for laughs.

Ross even had to talk this former wife into going through with the ceremony after her parents didn’t support it. And then, he walked her down the aisle. Yes, Phoebe did have one laugh line during the ceremony, and yes, Chandler also has his comment, but the relationship was presented as real and loving throughout the entire series. Carol and Susan raised Ben (based on the number of scenes Ben was in with Ross, we can only assume that Carol and Susan had main custody), and that was never, ever brought up as a bad or weird or odd thing. It just was. The harshest comments about Carol and Susan came with a jealous Ross who was still in love with Carol. But, again, he’s the one who convinced her to go through with the ceremony.

Watch a great moment with Susan and Ross above. Another reader:

Friends put forward a “new” type of family long before Modern Family was a gleam in anyone’s eye. It showed Ross as being hurt and confused, but ultimately loving and respectful. It showed incredible sympathy for Carol, who was clearly understanding of the pain she caused Ross, but also confident and free. AND, most importantly, it showed sympathy and respect for Susan, who could have easily been portrayed as the lesbian homewrecker. All of this in 1994 – you know, the same year President Clinton was fighting to make the military safe from gay men and women coming out of the closet.

So yeah, Chandler and Joey make a few jokes (anyone who honestly thinks these two were written as models for how men should behave should really step away from their TVs for a while). And maybe we shake our heads at them now, the same way we do Eddie Murphy routines, Mel Gibson movies, and countless others. But to write that piece with no acknowledgement whatsoever about what Friends did in showing gay characters at a time when it was not as safe (or profitable) to do so, is just wrong.

Another notes about one of the creators of Friends:

I personally know David Crane. He is an out, proud gay man, and always has been. I met him BEFORE Friends was created. That show is homophobic? Bullshit.

A reader notes that “the movie Donnie Darko included an exchange on this very question“:

Another reader raises his hand: “Uh, what about language?” Another picks “writing, of course”:

Speech is encoded in our DNA as the way we transmit information from one person to another. Writing is not. Yet writing functions as a kind of disembodied DNA. We can transmit any kind of information, from personal to cultural to technological through writing. Writing is what makes it possible for us to know how much is owed or due to thousands of other people, at a glance. It is how we transmit religious traditions, with great fidelity, over generations, and it is how we speak to others long after we are dead. A single person, knowing how to read and armed with just a few basic ideas, could rebuild civilization in a week if he had access to a decent small-town library. Nothing else even comes close.

Another goes with:

Cheese.

Man, I love cheese.

Another recommends a recent book on the subject, How We Got to Here, by Steven Johnson:

It’s an excellent and engaging description of how the “invention” of glass, cold, sound, clean, time and light, and the inventions that flowed from those six items, did more to shape who we are today than other inventions. People can disagree with his list, thinking something more critical was left out, or something less critical was overblown by his descriptions in the book, but I can’t think of a more thoughtful, non-philosophical list of inventions that truly made a difference.

Another reader doesn’t buy the invention put forth by a previous one:

“Double-blind experiment”? Oh, please. It is as rife with problems as religion. Our assumptions that it is better is, in fact, part of the problem. Just think about Lipitor/statins or HRT, to name two high-profile drugs that were run through all the double-blind studies you could think of that both turned out to have issues. And while not exactly double-blind, the Tuskegee experiments show that science is just as fallible as humans generally.

Another reader responds to the one who summarized Yuval Noah Harari’s view that “a company exists because everyone agrees that it does”:

This is a gross over-simplification of an issue involving the difference between abstractions and concretions in reality. To use a different analogy, I can speak of the jar of coins I keep at home. It’s something I’ve had for a while, so everyone agrees about the “imagined reality” of the jar. It’s not necessarily a jar of coins, is it? However, were I to take the jar to the bank, leaving only an empty container, and ask someone how much money I have in my jar of coins, they would quickly reply with “None!”

However, if I had not yet stored any coins in this jar, it being a new construct, something I just decided I would use to store my loose change, and I were to ask the same question, I would be met with quizzical looks. This is because the concretion of the jar was not elevated to my abstraction of it; its reality did not live up to my imagination.

Going back to the given analogy of a company – a company only exists in “imagined reality” because there is a definite concrete reality to back it up. The State of Delaware allows an organization right to a title in so far as there are actual physical, monetary and personnel assets to back up that claim. So we aren’t as much allowing arbitrary definitions to permeate society as much as we are allowing rhetoric to help define that which already exists.

The company already exists; we’ve just applied a definition to it. Not the other way around.

Another gets silly:

As much as I enjoy considering a chemical company as an imaginary structure, as a science nerd I should point out that there are limitations to this view of human activity. Perhaps the best demonstration of the limits of human belief would be a 1970s sketch from Monty Python, regarding an architect who erects tower block apartments by hypnosis. The apartments remain perfectly serviceable as long as the residents continue to believe in them, but when a BBC reporter begins a sustained line of probing questions, all hell breaks loose:

That’s what Amy Sullivan calls The Fall:

The show, which stars Gillian Anderson in her first major television role since The X-Files went off the air in 2002, came under heavy criticism when the first season aired in 2013 for complaints that it glamorized violence against women. Serial killer Paul Spector (Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan) revels in the “aestheticism” of posing the nude bodies of his victims, washing their skin and painting their nails after he’s killed them. Some critics thought the show went beyond simply telling a story to the point of sharing Spector’s obsession with the women’s bodies.

I can certainly sympathize with fatigue over the seemingly endless tally of dead women on television. … But the debate over The Fall’s first season obscured the show’s revolutionary treatment of women and the topic of sexual power. In fact, I haven’t seen another program that so directly challenges and rewrites the traditional conventions of crime dramas, starting with Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson, a highly-regarded London cop who gets called to Belfast because investigators there need her expertise on a murder case.

Refreshingly, none of the tropes we’ve been trained to expect in a story about a powerful woman play out. Nobody resents Gibson’s appearance on the scene or questions her authority. Her gender is a non-issue; subordinates hop to when she enters a room and they follow her commands without question. Gibson doesn’t try to submerge her femininity and stomp around barking out orders. In Anderson’s restrained yet compelling performance, Gibson is cool, calm, and always chic, with the most fabulous coat in detectivedom.

I discovered it a couple weeks ago and now just have the final episode to watch. I can’t express how smart the series is, and how superb and commanding Gillian Anderson is as Stella Gibson. This is the feminism I believe in: a woman totally in charge of her life and of her career, whose authority is unquestioned, whose complexity and brilliance are celebrated, who utterly owns her sexuality and deploys it as coolly and as aggressively as any man would. At no point did I fear for a vulnerable Stella Gibson, even as I was deeply moved by her own female take on the victims of rape and murder, and even though she was obviously at times in great danger. I saw instead a master investigator whose nail-biting duel with a disturbed (and way hot) serial murderer became gladiatorial. Somehow gender slipped away from relevance, even as Anderson’s gender was absolutely integrated into her entire character. That’s new and powerful. It makes Girls seem as adolescent as it actually is.

Charlotte Alter is also a fan of the BBC series, now available on Netflix streaming:

[T]here’s little doubt that The Fall is great for women. …

[Stella is] brilliant, unflappable, and sexually liberated — she makes a habit of selecting male co-workers for one-night-stands, then quickly discarding them. When a male colleague questions her about her sexual habits, she coolly points out his double standard by comparing his alarm to the ease with which he handles men doing the same thing. “Woman f—s man. Woman, subject: man, object,” she says. “That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?”

Madeleine Davies joins the chorus of praise:

Gibson is the type of detective who will continue to remember the women murdered as people rather than cases and, when alone, will weep for them. She’s also the type of detective who can break a man’s nose with a quick upper cut or, with calculating detachment, sit across from a dangerous criminal in an interrogation room as he hurls abuse at her. She’s smart, brave, capable and unapologetically sexual—a matinee idol for a modern-day feminist.

Some have said that The Fall—a series that’s second season arrived on Netflix this past weekend—is misogynistic, but it’s a shallow critique. While it’s true that women are frequently treated as objects or lesser in the show, they’re never treated as objects or lesser by the show. In fact, rarely has a series hit back at misogyny so relentlessly, sometimes to the point where it almost feels cruel in its portrayal of male characters, all of whom—even the most innocent—find ways to demean the women in their lives.

Alyssa Rosenberg also examines how the show portrays men:

[The Fall] raises an issue that is a live current in U.S. debates over gender and sexual violence, suggesting that all men are capable of terrible things. That’s the sort of sentiment that anti-feminists accuse feminists of using to smear innocent men, and that most U.S. feminists would aggressively deny believing. But by leaning into it, “The Fall” has made fascinating, discomfiting television. “I think one of the reasons why ‘The Fall’ has some of the impact that it seems to have is because it posits the notion that Spector is on a continuum of male behavior,” [writer/director Allan] Cubitt told me at the Television Critics Association press tour earlier this month. …

But there’s a subtlety to “The Fall” that prevents it from becoming some sort of railing stereotype. The second season looks hard at what [serial killer] Paul means to his family, particularly his daughter, and the ways in which the skills that make him a killer also make him a good, encouraging father to her. Humans succumb to their worst desires and impulses sometimes. But we also sometimes succeed in overcoming them.

It’s grown-up TV. You should watch it if you can. And that above scene is way hotter when it’s not edited by YouTube.

Last weekend we plumbed it, with a particular focus on Friends. Now that the show can be streamed on Netflix, Ruth Graham has been re-watching it – and finding that of all the characters, Chandler is “the most agonizingly obsolete,” not least when it comes to his homophobia:

Chandler, identified in Season 1 as having a “quality” of gayness about him, is endlessly paranoid about being perceived as insufficiently masculine. He’s freaked out by hugs, and by Joey having a pink pillow on his couch. (“If you let this go, you’re going to be sitting around with your fingers soaking in stuff!) In retrospect, the entire show’s treatment of LGBTQ issues is awful, a fault pointedly illustrated by the exhaustive clip-compilation “Homophobic Friends.”

But Chandler’s treatment of his gay father, a Vegas drag queen played by Kathleen Turner, is especially appalling, and it’s not clear the show knows it. It’s one thing for Chandler to recall being embarrassed as a kid, but he is actively resentful and mocking of his loving, involved father right up until his own wedding (to which his father is initially not invited!). Even a line like “Hi, Dad” is delivered with vicious sarcasm. Monica eventually cajoles him into a grudging reconciliation, which the show treats as an acceptably warm conclusion. But his continuing discomfort now reads as jarringly out-of-place for a supposedly hip New York 30-something—let alone a supposedly good person, period.

The crisis could be spreading:

Wild bees are at risk of catching diseases from their struggling domesticated brethren, according to a recent study published in The Journal of Applied Ecology.

The study, led by evolutionary geneticist Lena Wilfert of the University of Exeter, adds a new layer to the crisis known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has precipitated an alarming drop in honeybee populations worldwide. … [T]he use of pesticides isn’t the only anthropogenic driver behind the transmission of pathogens into the wild. Wilfert’s team also found that many commercial beekeepers are creating ideal conditions for virulent diseases to emerge. “High densities within breeding facilities and in commercial pollination operations increase the contact rate between infected and uninfected conspecifics, thereby lowering the threshold for disease emergence,” the authors explain.

Helen Briggs reports from across the Pond:

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers of the charity, Buglife, said the results of the study showed an urgent need for changes in how the government regulates the importation of bees. “Wild honey bees can no longer be found in England or Wales, thought to have been wiped out by disease,” she told BBC News. “Now these studies show how diseases can be transmitted between managed honey bees and commercial bumble bees, and could have potentially drastic impacts on the rest of our wild pollinators.”

A study last year on a sample of commercial bumble bee hives imported into the UK found 77% were contaminated with up to five different parasites, with a further three being found in the pollen that was brought in with them, she added.

More Dish on the bee problem here and here.

Douthat imagines how the left and right will respond to the president:

[Obama’s] influence over Clinton’s campaign will depend on economic trends and foreign policy developments as well as her own choices: If he’s climbed to a 47-48 percent approval rating by early 2016, I wouldn’t expect there to be any daylight between his agenda and her platform; if he falls back toward 40 percent (or drops below) amid some unlooked-for crisis, then no presidential speech is likely to constrain Hillary from trying to charting a more post-Obama course.

Meanwhile, the future relevance of his stab at a middle class agenda will be determined in part by whatever the G.O.P. comes up with for its post-Obama blueprint. If you contrast what was on offer last night with some of the ideas that, say, Utah Senator Mike Lee has proposed, there’s a very interesting right-left debate to be had around higher education reform, tax reform (family-friendly and otherwise), and other issues as well. But maybe the eventual Republican nominee will have a very different game plan, and the big clashes will end up happening elsewhere. Or maybe the mere fact that Obama has touched these issues will prompt the right to retreat to “safer” (that is, staler) ground.

Joe Klein appreciates Obama’s political deftness:

There were twin sources of the white flight from the Democratic party. One was the sense that Democrats were only interested in taking money from people like the Erlers and giving it to deadbeats, or feeding the government bureaucracy, personified by the post office stereotype: slow-moving, sullen, entitled. The other was a matter of values: the Democrats were the counterculture party, an argument that is evaporating as the culture has moved on, accepting homosexuality, premarital sex and, soon, marijuana. The first argument remains strong, though. It was what propelled the Republican victory in 2014. Obamacare was perceived as classic “liberalism”—it took money from hard-working Americans and gave it to unhealthy deadbeats. Only it didn’t: it gave subsidies to the working poor; the indigent were already covered by Medicaid.

The striking thing about Obama’s latest round of proposals is how targeted they are: the centerpiece tax reforms take money from the wealthy and give it to middle-class taxpayers, people like the Erlers. You have to actually pay taxes to benefit from tax credits (except for the child care deduction, which becomes a stipend for those who don’t). Even his free community college proposal might have been a boon to Rebekah, as she struggled to learn accounting. This is quite the opposite of offering health insurance to a country that was already 85% covered. It is middle-class populism: money is taken from the wealthy and given to a broad swath of the population whose incomes have been stagnating for 30 years.

Alec MacGillis feels that Obama has called “the bluff of the Republicans now claiming the mantle of inequality warriors”:

The [Obama tax] proposal has led them into a political trap, prompting them into an instinctual, reflexive defense of the wealthiest Americans. And it has thereby clarified the discussions to come on the campaign trail over the next year and a half. Talk all you want about restoring shared prosperity, Obama is saying, but this is the kind of reform it will take to bring balance to an economy that has gotten so top-heavy and out of whack. The proposal will implicitly admonish not only Republicans but also Hillary Clinton, should her own Wall Street sympathies and upper-bracket aspirations keep her from adopting an aggressive platform to tackle inequality.

And Beinart detects a “fracturing of the GOP message”:

Mike Huckabee looks determined to run on cultural decline. Jeb Bush and even Mitt Romney want to focus on using government to help the poor. Every potential candidate except Rand Paul will likely promise defense hikes and a more aggressive, militaristic foreign policy. And every potential GOP candidate, including Rand Paul, will likely unveil a big tax cut, probably unmatched by real reductions in spending.

Earlier this week, Obama announced his support for the Healthy Families Act:

The legislation calls for businesses with 15 or more employees to let them accrue up to seven paid sick days a year to care for themselves or a family member who falls ill. On a call with press, adviser Valerie Jarrett said the White House estimates that it would give 43 million workers access to leave who don’t already have it. The leave could also be used by victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking to recover or seek assistance. Obama will also urge states and local governments to pass sick leave laws of their own.

The president will also sign a memorandum that will ensure federal employees get at least six weeks of paid sick leave for the arrival of a new child and propose that Congress pass legislation to give them six weeks of paid administrative leave.

Jared Bernstein sees this as part of a larger strategy:

So the forces of darkness and light will scrum over this stuff and hard to imagine it will get very far in DC, though part of the plan—and the WH is smart to go there—is providing states with some resources to explore the feasibility of introducing some of these measures on their own. But put this together with the Van Hollen tax plan … and you begin to see an interesting dynamic that I suspect we’ll hear more about in next week’s State of the Union speech: the economy is reliably growing, and yet too little of that growth is reaching the middle class. Therefore, policy makers must relentlessly work on the policy agenda that will reconnect growth and more broadly shared prosperity.

Ben Casselman reviews the statistics on paid leave. He finds that “61 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. are offered at least some paid sick time by their employers, and just 12 percent are offered paid family leave”:

Nearly 25 percent of workers in the top 10 percent of private-sector earners get paid leave compared with just 4 percent of workers in the bottom 10 percent. There’s no significant group, however, where a majority of workers get paid family leave. That said, efforts to expand access to paid leave appear to be gaining momentum. A growing list of cities and states have approved measures to require some form of paid leave for many workers. Overall access to paid time off has expanded significantly since the early 1990s, when just 2 percent of workers got paid family leave.

Christopher Ingraham points out that the “business case for paid sick leave is a strong one”:

Paid sick leave is also, frankly, a public health issue. According to theAmerican Public Health Association, during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic “an estimated 7 million additional individuals were infected and 1,500 deaths occurred because contagious employees did not stay home from work to recover.” 1,500 deaths! 1,500 people died because a cadre of mucous troopers were unwilling or unable to stay home while infected with the flu. If a terrorist attack caused 1,500 deaths it would be a national crisis. But when those same deaths are caused by workplace sneezes we shrug.

Joan Walsh is disappointed that “so far [Obama is] not supporting the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act DeLauro is co-sponsoring with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand”:

De Lauro and Gillibrand’s bill is important, however, because it creates a funding mechanism for paid family leave, similar to disability insurance. Employers and employees would contribute two-tenths of one percent of salary – an average of $2 a week for most workers – that would fund leaves up to 12 weeks when an employee has a child or needs to care for a sick family member.

The funding mechanism means employers aren’t paying a full salary at a time when they’re losing a worker for up to three months, which could make it easier to get temporary help. Just as important, family leave becomes an earned benefit, not a top employee perk, not a welfare program, and not a benefit to be cut back in tough economic times.

In a long feature on maternity leave, Claire Suddath provides more background on the bill:

So why is the Family Act at a standstill? Gillibrand says Congress doesn’t think it’s important enough. “The issue isn’t being raised because too many of the members of Congress were never affected by it,” she says, pointing out that 80 percent of Congress is older and male. “They’re not primary caregivers. Most members of Congress are affluent and are able to afford help or able to support their [wives]. It’s not a problem for most of them.” Hillary Clinton has also admitted that while she supports paid leave, it’s a political battle the U.S. isn’t ready to fight. “I don’t think, politically, we could get it [passed] now,” she said in a CNN town hall meeting last June.

Washington won’t be able to ignore this forever. “You’re finally starting to see momentum on this issue,” says Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. Over the past decade, Ness has noticed that young parents are becoming increasingly angry at the lack of employer support when they start to have children. “This will be part of the conversation during the next election,” she says. “The sleeping giant is waking up.”

Google is on it:

Jim Edwards calls the Google Translate app “the most astonishing piece of mobile software I’ve seen in months”:

Google Translate lets you read anything in a foreign language; translate any text, even handwriting; and carry on a live conversation with another person as the app translates what you’re saying. The software translates instantly, whether via text, photo, or voice.

Or as Lance Ulanoff explains, “once you select the two speaking languages, Google Translate can auto detect them as they are spoken.” Below is a demo that’s almost as remarkable as the GIF seen above:

Ulanoff tried it with a Turkish-speaking intern:

At first, we stumbled because the intern, who is also fluent in English, kept responding to what I was saying and not waiting for Google Translates’ interpretation. Eventually, she got it right and started waiting for my translated words to be spoken by the app.

Initially, she told me, the translation was perfect, but when I started to speak in longer sentences, it basically fell apart and got a lot of it wrong. As I tested with others who spoke in Greek, German and French, we noticed the same thing. We could never completely rely on Google translate to get the words right.

He found a lot of similarities between Google’s app and Skype Translator. John Pavlus tested out the latter:

The limitations of Skype’s translation software are … revealing, since they show how difficult it is for even the smartest machine to mimic the subtleties of effective human conversation. Determining which meaning of a word is appropriate in different contexts can be vexing. “If software is translating between American and British English, and it recognizes the word ‘football,’ it also needs to know when to change it to ‘soccer’ and when to keep it as ‘football’ or ‘gridiron,’” says Christopher Manning, a professor of linguistics and computer science in Stanford University’s Natural Language Processing Group.

Matthew Braga explains why realtime translation is so difficult:

“The reason that real-time [translation] is difficult for most of us is that it’s really a matter of probabilities,” said Gerald Penn, associate chair of the University of Toronto’s department of computer science, and a specialist in natural language processing. In a modern speech recognition system, a computer is typically trained on a language model—essentially, a database of what people are most likely to say, and in what order. Using this model, a computer gathers speech data from a microphone, and makes some educated guesses about what was actually said.

“The modern approach is not to make the guess right away,” Penn explained, “but to collect the evidence, and then rank it, score it, and augment it.” The challenge is performing this process fast and accurately enough that you can create the illusion of a conversation, where the translation appears to happen in real-time.

In 2013, Bleeding Cool ran a story regarding a well-sourced rumour we’d had that would see the Avengers fight the Ultimates for the end of the Ultimate Universe, hat we were told would come in 2014.

Brian Bendis put us in our place.

The Ulitmate universe is not cancelled! the concept of legit comics reporting is though.

— BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (@BRIANMBENDIS) February 19, 2013

Well, it seems we were a lot closer than we thought. Today, as part of a Secret Wars spinoff that will see the Marvel Earth against the Ultimate Earth for their very survival, Bendis talked to the legit comics press (not us, it seems) about the Ultimate universe being cancelled.

And that Bendis and Mark Bagley will reunite for a five-issue limited series, Ultimate End, telling the tale of the end of the Ultimate universe.

Funny how things come around. Stopped clock? Or something taking its merry way to work its way through?

 

The Cancellation Of The Ultimate Universe With Ultimate End

Bioware are one of the best developers of creating epic scale adventure with compelling narrative. That’s a potent mix, especially when supported by the quality of content they are synonymous for.

I have to say though, I’m a little surprised by the news Dragon Age: Inquisition is the developer’s most successful launch ever. Gamespot reported that during last night EA confrence call, the publisher’s CFO  Blake Jorgensen said:

In particular, Dragon Age: Inquisition had by far the most successful launch in BioWare’s history, exceeding our expectations. In addition, game sales for last-generation consoles were also much stronger than we had anticipated

When compared to Mass Effect, Dragon Age has always been a much smaller franchise. That’s why I’m surprised that the game outsold Mass Effect 3.

That’s good though. It shows that people buy quality games that have good buzz. A lot of those players would have been jumping into the franchise for the first time, and I’d dare say a lot of them came out enjoying it.

Dragon Age: Inquisition Is Bioware’s Most Successful Launch Ever

The concept of Final Fantasy XV has really come to captivate me. A fantasy infused road trip is not something that I’ve played before and all of the promotional material thus far has really impressed me. Be it the landscapes or character models, there is clearly so much quality being infused into the game.

I am cautiously interested to see how the ‘road trip’ concept is played out in game though. To this point, we hadn’t had a great indication, but in a recent interview with Gamespot, the game’s director Hajime Tabata made things a little clearer.

The world is connected by continuous land. If those areas were disconnected, it would feel distant from reality. You’ll find that you’ll be able to walk or drive or take a train and travel through this world seamlessly. I feel you’ll be able to experience something similar to a real trip.

Tabata then went on to explain how Square Enix are going about creating and populating this believable, cultural world:

The towns and the cultural references that you see throughout the world, you’ll get a sense of realistic towns and cultures. That’s one aspect that has remained since the title was first named Versus XIII.

The first town that was showcased was based on Shinjuku in Japan, and one area we showed in December was based on Havana in Cuba. And the other watery town we showed is based on Venice. So those are some cultural references that have been made within the game.

This all sounds like the right way to approach the design. I want to feel like I’m going on a road trip as opposed to just being driven on one and everything said so far lines up with that. If all this rings true, I’m excited about what Square will come up with.

Final Fantasy XV Will Have A Truly Open World

Rock Band seems to be showing unexpected signs of life of late. Last week, Harmonix unexpectedly added three new songs to Rock Band 3, a game that hadn’t been touched in two years. The developer mentioned that designing those songs was like riding a bike, no matter how long you are away, you always remember how to do it.

It’s beginning to look like the developer might be getting ready for a brand new bike ride all together though. Harmonix have thrown out this survey, which bears some interesting fruit. For the most part it is asking users about there past experiences with the franchise and how they valued their time with the games.

The interesting part comes at the end of the survey when it asks:

Assuming that it would have compatibility with existing hardware, which version of a new Rock Band experience would you prefer to receive?

The game only (a disc or a download code)

The game bundled with a single instrument (i.e. one guitar)

The game bundled with a full set of instruments (i.e. guitar, drums, and microphone)

It also adds:

Would you be inclined to preorder a new Rock Band title?

Would you be inclined to preorder a new Rock Band title? I would preorder a new Rock Band title, no matter what.

I would preorder a new Rock Band title ONLY if it came with exclusive bonus songs.

I would preorder a new Rock Band title ONLY if it came with exclusive bonus in-game content (i.e. character outfit, instrument skin, etc).

I would not be inclined to preorder a new Rock Band title.

Now, surveys don’t often mean much. This could just be market research for a many number of reasons.

I could dig a new Rock Band though. The real stumbling block for audiences will no doubt be the instruments that would likely need to be updated for new consoles.. If Harmonix could figure a way around that though, I think there is definitely a big audience for the title still.

Harmonix Might Be Considering An Entirely New RockBand

We get the word that people at Fox are not happy with the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, directed by Josh Trank. While some have called it “Chronicle 2 rather than Fantastic 4″ , this is clearly not what the studio was looking for.

One well-connected senior executive described it to me as “a mess”. And multiple sources are telling me about major disquiet at Fox regarding the state of the movie.

A year ago, I was directly told by primary sources that Fox were approaching other directors and writers to take on the project and start from scratch, though they didn’t find anyone willing. Fox denied this at the time.

As it stands, I’m told that reshoots are now being demanded, that millions of dollars are being freed up for the purpose and sets are being rebuilt in Louisiana.

Anyone close by able to take a peek?

In comparison, the other non-Marvel Studios movie based on a Marvel comic book Kingsman: The Secret Service, has gone down very well indeed. Slightly dodgy CGI, possibly, but it’s described as a real breath of fresh air…

Fantastic Four Movie “A Mess”, Goes To Reshoot, Louisiana Sets Being Rebuilt?

On his Facebook page Todd McFarlane shared a poster showing the evolution of his character Spawn from his start back in 1992 to now. This includes the designs used by Greg Capullo, Angel Medina, Nat Jones, Philip Tan, Brian Haberlin, Mike Mayhew, Whilce Portacio, Szymon Kudranski and JonBoy Meyers. There is also a link to where you can download a larger version of the image.

THE EVOLUTION OF Spawn!!!!!

With Spawn issue #250 coming up at the end of the month…. I thought it would be COOL to put together all the different costumes Spawn has had over the years.

And if you’re doing the math, that’s 24 YEARS. TWENTY-FOUR!!!!!!!! It’s cool to look back and see how things have changed since 1992….it’s hard to believe we’re already coming up on our #250th issue.

Thanks for all your support over the years!!! I’ll be doing a giveaway with these, soon.

TODD

P.S.- There have been a few requests for a downloadable poster (and higher res)… You should be able to download the poster from this link: https://flic.kr/p/qKcR9q

 

The 22-Year Evolution Of Spawn

Artist Stjepan Sejic has a unique style that stands out whether he’s drawing Witchblade and Aphrodite IX for Top Cow, Dresden Files covers for Dynamite or Rat Queens for Image… I was even lucky enough to have him do a cover for my Sinbad series at Zenescope years ago. So I would think that some artist out there would want to draw like him… well, now Stjepan has put up the artbrushes he uses in Photoshop as a free download for anyone who wants them.

Just click here, look on the right hand side a few inches down from the top and hit download.

Want To Do Art Like Stjepan Sejic?

Variety.com is reporting that Brad Pitt is going back to the Money Ball well. Pitt and his Plan B production company are putting together an all-star cast for an adaptation of another Michael Lewis bestseller, The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine. Adam McKay will be directing and writing the adaptation while joining Pitt will be Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling.

The nonfiction book tells the story of several key people who played a role in the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s that led to the financial crisis of 2007-2010.

[Source: Variety]

Pitt, Bale And Gosling Sign On For The Big Short

New Comic: Something To Be Desired