Map of France as a Ship (1796)
The Kingdom of France is represented under the form of a ship Map of France as a Ship (1796) Date: 1796 Author: Whatman Dwnld: Full Size (5.82mb) Source: Library of Congress Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other maps of Europe that you might want to check out. France depicted as a ship. Here's a great...
the BIG Map Blog - Interesting maps, historical maps, BIG maps.
Usually the noises made by creatures eating (humans included, of course) aren’t that pleasant. But these “gobbles” from a little kitten named Turkey are the exception…
Turkey is awaiting adoption at Orange County Animal Services. I have no doubt that she will find a good home after this video goes viral…
Although his sitcoms Go On and Mr. Sunshine both failed to reach a second season, Matthew Perry is not about to be left out as his Friends (sans an Aniston) all flock or have flocked back to television. As previously announced, Perry will star in CBS’s new reboot of The Odd Couple (the original sitcom starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman ran in the ’70s, following the popular 1968 Neil Simon movie with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau). But those who had pegged Matthew Perry as a neatnik Felix instead of a slobby Oscar are about to be disappointed. Deadline reports that Thomas Lennon has just been cast in the pilot as the Felix to Perry’s Oscar, capitalizing on the duo’s cinematic chemistry—previously seen in the better-than-it-sounds Zac Efron vehicle 17 Again (pictured above). It’s possible that a backward baseball hat will somehow be involved ...
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals Charitable Foundation is attempting to
break the World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed up
as Sherlock Holmes.
The challenge will be hosted at Temple Newsam, Leeds, on 31 August to
help raise funds for a new Yorkshire Brain Research Centre.
Clair Challenor-Chadwick, Appeal Director of the Yorkshire Brain
Research Centre, said: “Sherlock may live at Baker Street, London, but
according to the most influential fictional biography of Holmes by
Baring-Gould, Holmes was born in Yorkshire, the youngest of three sons
of Siger Holmes and Violet Sherrinford. We wanted to reclaim him for
Yorkshire, and he is the perfect inspiration for our Appeal as the
world’s brainiest detective. We’re hoping to tap into the cultural
zeitgeist and popularity of Sherlock thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch
and Martin Freeman with the BBC series.”
Brain disease is the biggest challenge of our generation. By 2030
there will be a 20% increase in Parkinson’s disease alone, while
numbers of dementia patients will soar by 80%.
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals Charitable Foundation is working in
Yorkshire to tackle Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, MS and Dementia.
It’s hoped Sherlockians will be inspired by the giant fundraising
extravaganza to help create the £2m brain research centre, a
partnership between Leeds University, which has one of Europe’s
biggest research facilities in Europe and the Leeds Teaching
Hospitals.
Registration is £15 and in return participants will receive a
Deerstalker hat, a pipe and a magnifying glass. Prizes will be given
for the best dressed Sherlock. Sherlock fans can enter a raffle for £5
to win signed goodies from the cast of Sherlock, including Benedict
Cumberbatch signed photographs, Sherlock script and books. 100% of
proceeds will go to the Yorkshire Brain Research Centre.
Clair added: “We are calling on collective brain power to help raise
funds for this important cause! If you love Sherlock you will love
this fun family event, expect special guests and some great
entertainment.”
Register at www.sherlockworldrecord.com
For special announcements and event news follow @yorkshirebrain, #sherlockrecord
Today Castlight Health went public in a very big way.
The San Francisco company—which gives companies and institutions data to help them choose cheaper healthcare providers—went public today at $16 a share. That price valued the company at at $1.39 billion—despite the fact that it lost $62 million last year on $13 million in revenue. But Castlight is currently trading at about $38 a share, making the company worth about $3.3 billion—some 136% above where it began the day.
Castlight is at a sweet spot for equity investors right now. It’s a tech company that benefits from the latest ideas coming out of Silicon Valley, and it’s a an innovator in health care, a sector ripe for disruption, and one where an aging population guarantees growth. Health stocks are the second-fastest growing sector of the S&P 500 this year, expanding 5.6% since Jan. 1.
But more than that, the rush for Castlight shares reflects the opportunity created by the US’s new health-care reform. Obamacare pushes the health-care system to spend less money while delivering more value, and Castlight’s focus on transparency fits right in. (It also does Castlight no harm that one of its founders, Todd Park, left it to work for the US government, eventually becoming the country’s chief technical officer and working to correct the problems that plagued the new health-care exchanges.)
In the US, patients can rarely compare the price and quality of medical services before choosing a doctor or hospital. That’s one reason market forces don’t do a good job driving down costs. New data from the government shows hospitals in the same city offering the same services at prices that differ by tens of thousands of dollars. Castlight uses data like that to show consumers the up-front cost of of care, allowing them—and the companies that insure them—to choose a provider that will save them money. It has saved some clients as much as 13% of their health care costs.
“You really see changes in behavior, with customers making sure they go below the reference pricing, in some cases they can get rebates, and in some cases they get the advantage that they pay less out of pocket,” Castlight’s CEO and co-founder, Giovanni Colella, a physician-turned-entrepreneur, told me last year.
Ideally, this should give health-care providers an incentive to offer the best value, lowering prices everywhere. But so far, Castlight is still losing money. And for investors, the question is how it will grow further, after raising $178 million in today’s IPO.
Colella says the company’s platform creates a virtuous cycle, where the more price information it gathers, the more powerful the network grows. ”Once you have more data, the amount of information you can give on quality doesn’t grow linearly, it grows exponentially,” he said. “[There are] pretty clear cut economies of scale at this point.”
Kittens that think they're people! Playing baseball!
There will be a Kitten All-Star Game airing opposite Major League Baseball's All-Star Game this summer. Well, okay, it won't actually be called the Kitten All-Star Game. That's not nearly punny enough. It's real title is the Kitten Paw Star Game, and it's happening due to the success of the Kitten Bowl, which aired on Super Bowl Sunday and drew six million viewers.
Hallmark is responsible for this adorable endeavor, where kittens will be dressed up in "baseball outfits" while "batting balls". Honestly, you don't need anymore than that to get people to watch -- and by people I mean me, who will probably have some MLB All-Star Game assignment to work on but will instead watch kittens in kitten-sized baseball jerseys batting around kitten-sized baseballs -- but Hallmark is also promising celebrities and baseball "stars" to cheer the players on.
I so hope a player who begs out of the All-Star game due to injury ends up cheering at the Paw Star Game.
Hallmark did not provide any photos for the story -- the New York Post used an image from the Kitten Bowl for their story -- but that's okay, as we can provide a preview of what this game might look like.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Just picture that kitten wearing a jersey that says "Joe Meower" or "Dustin Purrrdroia" or "Catt Cain" or "Jarrod Saltalameowchia" or okay now I just want to come up with baseball player name/kitten puns all day long.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In the latest round of a wave of cyberattacks on Russian targets, the official websites of the Russian Federation’s president and central bank were taken offline this morning in what the Kremlin’s press office called a “serious DDoS attack.” The attack also targeted “a number of other Web portals,” according to the Kremlin statement. The sites are back online for most users, but the attack is still ongoing.
Anonymous Caucasus, the “Electronic Army of the Caucasus Emirate,” has claimed responsibility for the attack on its Facebook page with a statement saying, “This is just warming up, Russian pig!”
According to a report from the state-sponsored RT.com, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s site was also disrupted today, following a number of attacks on the websites of Russian media outlets on Thursday. Anonymous Caucasus also claimed responsibility for attacks on a site operated by the largely state-owned national television network Russian Channel One and the Russian DDoS attack protection firm Esteq, stating through Twitter that it had “nothing to do with Ukraine, or all current events in this country.”
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Over two months after a six-year-old girl was killed in a car accident with an UberX driver in San Francisco, the smartphone-driven rideshare company announced Friday that it will expand its insurance coverage to include drivers who are waiting for a fare. Previously, it only covered them when they had passengers in the car.
Rival firm Lyft made a similar change in its policy just hours before Uber.
During the December 31, 2013 accident, UberX driver Syed Muzzafar was using the Uber app while he was driving but did not have a fare in his car. The company previously argued that because Muzzafar "was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident,” the company was not responsible. Muzzafar currently faces a civil lawsuit and possible criminal charges as a result of the accident.
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Allen Heard, Head of Computing at Ysgol Bryn Elian in North Wales (that’s Welsh for Bryn Elian School), is visiting us at Pi Towers today. We’ve been talking about making Computing fun to learn, and how to make sure that kids remember what they’ve done in their lessons – and perhaps even keep learning at home.
Allen’s been running Tech-Dojo events in North Wales, which have been attracting hundreds of kids – on Saturdays! Here’s what he’s been doing: note the Flappy Bird clones the kids are writing in Scratch, the use of Minecraft, the way kids are learning about pixel art by building recognisable sprites out of beads, and other ways he’s bringing out the kids’ ability to think programatically through building games and the fundamental elements of games.
A few months ago, Allen entered these Tech-Dojo events into the North Wales e-Learning Technology Competition for projects that engage with the local community. He’s just heard that the project won first prize in its category, and will present it to educators from across North Wales at an event at Glyndŵr University, St Asaph, next week. We’re very excited: we think this sort of model of education’s great for kids who find traditional learning dry, and the results the kids are achieving speak for themselves. Congratulations Allen: we look forward to seeing similar events rolling out across Wales, and further into the UK!
A 2009 Rolling Stone article[13] by Matt Taibbi likened investment bank Goldman Sachs to “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”[13] Although the metaphor was faulty, since vampire squids do not suck blood or have a “blood funnel”, it was later used by other critics of Goldman Sachs, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Andrew Marchese, a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), built a soft robotic fish that is both self-contained and autonomous. Typically, soft robotics has had to choose between the two. In the case of the soft-bodied fish, which uses soft silicone to allow undulation, the supporting hardware is stored in the more rigid front portion. This allows the back half to move easily, and it can even perform a traditional escape maneuver associated with actual fish. The research and robotic fish are reported on in the first issue of the new academic journal Soft Robotics.
“We’re excited about soft robots for a variety of reasons,” says Daniela Rus, a professor of computer science and engineering, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and one of the researchers who designed and built the fish. “As robots penetrate the physical world and start interacting with people more and more, it’s much easier to make robots safe if their bodies are so wonderfully soft that there’s no danger if they whack you.”
image via M. Scott Brauer
via Boing Boing
Mythursday: Be Aware of the Ides of March
Okay, so:
I know I said I was going to twice weekly updates to cover the story of Theseus, but I was away from home all day Tuesday this week, and I suddenly find myself short on time today, and worse, I find myself forced to make the decision to do something topical rather than the obviously timeless story of Theseus.
Today is March 15, which, as many of you may know, is the Ides of March, the day on which Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE. But what ARE the Ides of March? This is what I thought I would answer today. Admittedly, this is not a mythology topic, but Romanhistoryandcultursday isn’t quite as snappy.
Here is what you need to know:
Romans didn’t think of dates the same way we do. They would never say, “Oh, we’ll go down to Brundisium on April 7th. Can’t wait!” Every date was named based on its relation to a particular landmark day in the month. The three landmarks were the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides.
How were these days determined? Most likely by the lunar cycle. No one can say for sure, but it is incredibly likely that the original Roman calendar was lunar in nature. The Kalends, then, as the first day of every month, were the day of the new moon. (The name Kalends most likely derives from the Greek “kaleo,” meaning to announce, as in “to announce the new moon.” It is, as you may have guessed, the source of our word calendar.)
And so the Nones are the day of the half moon and the Ides the day of the full moon (Macrobius states that the name Ides comes from an Estruscan word meaning to divide, as in to divide the month in half, but more likely it is related to a Sanskrit word meaning to shine, as the full moon). Originally the dates of these days would vary, being determined by someone who is looking super closely at the moon, but eventually they were regulated so that the Nones fell on the fifth of each month (except for March, May, July and October, when they fell on the seventh) and the Ides fell on the thirteenth of each month (except for March, May, July and October, when they fell on the fifteenth).
Why do they change? It has to do with the lunar cycle and how it doesn’t complete itself in full days. Moving the Ides had more or less the same purpose as leap years, except for the moon, rather than the sun. When the Ides move, the Nones move, because the Nones (from the word for “ninth”) are the ninth day before the Ides.
“But wait!” I hear you cry. “I don’t know much about math learnin’, but I know thirteen minus five is eight, not nine!” Yes, well, here is the next trick: Roman counting was inclusive, meaning if you’re counting backwards from today, you include today. So Tuesday would be considered the third day before Thursday, not two days before as we would count it today.
With me so far?
The other thing you have to understand is that Roman dates always looked forward, never backwards, as they were always looking forward to the next phase of the moon (presumably). So you would never say, “Meet me the day after the Ides,” but rather, “Meet me the Nth day before the Kalends.”
So while today is the Ides of March, tomorrow wouldn’t be reckoned the day after the Ides, it instead would be called ante diem XVII Kalendas Apriles, or the seventeenth day before the Kalends of April. (It would not, in fact, be called this, as in the Roman calendar, March did not have thirty-one days, but don’t worry about that part.)
Surprising no one, it is actually a little more complicated than this once you account for intercalary months, but that is something you can look up on your own if you are interested. Needless to say, there is a reason there have been a couple of major calendar reforms since the original Roman calendar.
(One of these major reforms was made by Julius Caesar himself: it’s called the Julian calendar. Since he began it and his heir Augustus finished instituting it, the months of July and August were renamed after those dudes.)
(Also! Ironically, due to the reforms of Julius Caesar himself, we are commemorating his death on the wrong day. While the Ides of March by pre-Julian reckoning would in fact have been March 15, the day on which Caesar was actually assassinated would be March 14 by our current method. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM.)
It is worth noting that the Ides were the days on which teachers were paid each month. Just, you know, just pointing that out.
Also, it’s a good day for stabbing your friend in the groin until he dies, but only if he has just been named dictator-for-life and your other friends really egg you on about it, playing on your sense of honor and the fact that you are the descendant of your culture’s most famous tyrannicide. ONLY IF YOU MEET ALL THOSE CONDITIONS.
Otherwise, don’t stab any groins.
In anticipation of tomorrow, a post outlining the proper celebration of Groin Stabbing Day
An Royal Air Force pilot getting a haircut during a break between missions, Britain, 1942.
now this,
makes me think of this episode of QI where they talk about what accents pilots had in WWII, the idea of the Oxford Scholar RAF Pilot.
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Courtney
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from  The Crunk Feminist Collective:
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| "I constantly have to remind myself that “smart people” designed predatory lending, mortgage fraud programs, and strategies to suppress wages and downsize entire industries." |
Every day I walk or drive through historic Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia where upwards of 50% of residential properties are vacant, abandoned and sometimes burned down (but not demolished). I see empty buildings that used to be schools, recreation centers, community centers, and businesses. I see extraordinary flooding each time it rains; rushing water nearly covers the street. Sidewalks are non-existent or so torn-up you cannot walk on them so folks move through the middle of the street–parents with strollers and people in wheelchairs.
On weekdays I see elementary, middle, and high school age youth sitting on porches at 11 in the morning. I see groups of black men walking away from the county jail on my way to work or standing around at all times of the day and night. I see elders waiting at bus stops with no benches or shelters. I see stray dogs. I see people struggling with disabilities, addictions and other ailments. I see people waiting in line at food distribution sites. AND I see residents choosing to stay, choosing to see each other, and fighting to amplify the culture of these historic communities. I also see neighborhood people working to serve the needs of those in their community. I see Angels.
I also see poverty with a backdrop of downtown wealth and power and I constantly have to remind myself that “smart people” designed predatory lending, mortgage fraud programs, and strategies to suppress wages and downsize entire industries. The “college-educated” working for corporate law firms, elite colleges and universities, and top consulting firms developed models to privatize the public sector and underfund public schools, public transit, public hospitals, public services, public safety, prisons and more. “Our best and brightest” dreamed up revitalization programs promising better, safer housing and then leveled affordable housing, displaced entire communities of color and triggered the rash of school closings we are still dealing with currently. But these brilliant people are absent in poor communities and so rarely held to account. They are simply Ghosts.
So I’m new to Beyonce, in that I’m nearly forty and this is the first time I’ve purchased one of her albums. Just like she is starting to look into feminism I’m starting to look into her lyrics, visual presence, and platform. I think her new visual album is groundbreaking and two videos in particular stick with me as I think about how poverty, power, and action are represented in media. As an academic my platform does not compare to Beyonce’s so I think it’s significant that she seems to be inviting her followers to focus their attention on her process. She is asking that her fans process with her.
In the “No Angel” video…
1) She is…putting her body in places that matter to make them more visible (like First Lady Obama did during President Obama’s first term). “No Angel” opens with the sun rising on the Houston skyline. It quickly cuts to a black community where the built structures are in the background such that the substandard housing, deserted lots and vacant properties inform but don’t define the people in the video.
2) She is…making the familiar strange- telling the world that she sees what’s happening in her hometown Houston. “No Angel” is significant because it defies typical representations of black working class and underemployed communities by foregrounding real people as subjects. Not just dancing, partying, pouring out liquor subjects, but daytime subjects with kids, families, and interests. It’s not about a glorification or a judgment project.
3) She is…situating the people at the center of the narrative with a gender-conscious analysis. She is calling upon us to name the unnamed. You see glimpses of the backstage space of women’s nighttime work and the remnants of violence in the scars and wounds on young black males’ bodies. The many representations of memorials invoke a heavy feeling forcing me to recognize that parents who bury their children have no name. They are not widows or orphans. Nameless and uncategorized because naming suggests normalcy. She spotlights these subjects, she makes them visible to us, and invites us to process with her.
In the second video, “Ghosts,” Beyonce simply asks how come?
4) She is…signaling a move towards using her global platform to make global connections and to ask critical questions. Questioning record labels. Questioning why people are working “9 to 5 just to stay alive, 9-5 just to stay alive, 9-to-5 just to stay alive, how come?”
5) She is…raising resistance and action as an option by resisting traditional channels for releasing an unanticipated album or simply contributing an essay, “Gender Equality is a Myth,” in The Shriver Report.
Beyonce is asking “how come,” and so am I. When the images of poverty are present, but the responsible parties are absent from the frame I want to know how come? Admittedly, I am in a nascent stage and she seems to be as well, but I appreciate that she is creating points of entry for her fans to question issues that matter to me. That she is representing on a much larger platform what I’m seeing everywhere everyday…Angels and Ghosts
It’s refreshing to hear an executive operating in the brutal market for teen/young adult retail admit that its problems don’t stem from youth unemployment, the weather or the internet, but rather, bad fashion calls.”When the fashion did change, a number of people, including us, didn’t call the fashion as well as we could have,” Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne said on a conference call late yesterday.
Urban Outfitters reported record fourth quarter sales and earnings last night, but this was mainly driven by strong performance at its Anthropologie stores (where sales from stores open for at least a year were up 10%) and its Free People stores (up 20%.) The Urban Outfitters chain continues to struggle: same-store sales were down 9%. The company’s share price has fallen by about 5% this morning.
Here’s an even more detailed assessment from Hayne on the challenges facing the company’s main brand.
“There are no fundamental structural changes in the young adult market other than the disruption caused by the internet and mobile technologies, both of which, we have been discussing now for many years,. This market is highly competitive,but I believe the theories which correlate demographic shifts, poor employment numbers, online tipping points, or other similar factors to the difficult sales in the young adult market are off point. Sales correlate directly with fashion hits and misses, and I believe the Urban brand has had fewer hits than normal. It’s that simple.”
You will recall that there has been some concern among analysts that the Urban Outfitters chain is pushing the boundaries a little too far with some of its designs.
It turns out those concerns were warranted. The challenge for the company is to improve the ”accuracy of the fashion call ” which will help it elevate the brand from a “fashion and quality perspective,” Hayne said.
Fortunately, it could be well positioned to exploit the next seismic shift in fashion—the anticipated popularity of high-waisted jeans in mainstream America. Goldman analysts argue that Urban Outfitters eventually came to profit from skinny jeans and could benefit from the next shift.
A gorgeous boxer named Fern, having been left waiting in the car while her humans were out shopping in Broughty Ferry, Scotland, decided that she’d been waiting long enough and sounded the car horn for 15 minutes straight.
Although Fern regularly climbs into the front seat when left alone in a car, she has never actually used the horn before, Mr Haddow said. Mr Haddow is concerned that his beloved pet boxer may repeat her new trick after all the attention it got her the first time around. “I think she is a bit of a diva. She just wants a bit of attention and she seems to have gotten her way this time… I might have to put something on the driver’s seat to stop her doing it again.” – Daily Mail
image via Daily Mail
via Daily Mail
firehose"go work at a midstage startup (I’ll define that as B/C rounds of financing"
did that; nope
"You have the resources to" nope
"The skills you learn are likely generally transferable because" nope
"There aren’t yet four layers of management between you and the founders. As you prove yourself you’ll be tapped" nope
"midstage startups have gotten past some initial value creation milestones and likely have a much greater chance of growing 10x into a nearterm liqui"nope
"We tend to think much more highly of the folks who were “pre-IPO” or “pre-acquisition” than those who might have joined the team right a"nope
"If you’re lucky enough to get a few hundred thousand dollars in your bank account within a few years of graduation" HAHAHAHAHAHA NOPPPPPPPPPPPPPE
This post originally appeared on LinkedIn. You can follow Hunter Walk here.
If you’re graduating this spring and starting a career in tech, I’ve got one piece of advice: go work at a midstage startup (I’ll define that as B/C rounds of financing— i.e. Twilio, Stripe, Airbnb, Warby). Here’s why:
Past the point of product market fit, but before large company ossification. At a brand new startup you spend all your time trying to get the world to care about your product and fighting a lack of infrastructure. At a more mature technology company you’re protecting and extending your business model. Between the two is a hypergrowth stage where your initial product has great traction but there’s still urgency and risk in execution. You have the resources to build and launch, which means your work will see the light of day. Instead of just concept mocks and ideas for marketing programs, you can get real data and feedback on your team’s efforts. The skills you learn are likely generally transferable because the company isn’t so far down the path of only doing things their way.
Midstage startups are still very much under-resourced and expanding. They’re spinning up new teams, creating new org structures. There aren’t yet four layers of management between you and the founders. As you prove yourself you’ll be tapped to lead new teams, launch new offices and everything else which goes into scaling a successful business.
The founders and early team are still in place because there hasn’t been a liquidity event and the work is still exciting for them. These folks—plus your new peers—will most likely spend the next 20 years as your friends, managers, employees, VCs, cofounders, etc I’D CHANGE THIS?. Building a tight and high quality network early in your career is much more valuable than any fancy title or nearterm compensation. From folks a few years more experienced you’ll get mentorship and learn good habits.
Options are lottery tickets and most aren’t worth much when you net out the lower cash compensation compared to what a Google would pay you for the same role. However, midstage startups have gotten past some initial value creation milestones and likely have a much greater chance of growing 10x into a nearterm liquidity event within 2-3 years than a newly funded company would. If you’re lucky enough to get a few hundred thousand dollars in your bank account within a few years of graduation, you may approach the rest of your career differently.
Besides just being associated with a high performing company I’ve noticed this weird thing we do in tech. We tend to think much more highly of the folks who were “pre-IPO” or “pre-acquisition” than those who might have joined the team right after. Don’t think it makes total sense but hey, make it work in your favor.
Now you might think it’s strange that a VC who runs a seed stage fund is telling new grads to join larger startups. I’m actually trying to steer folks who might join, say, Facebook, to consider midstage startups (and when you’re ready to start your own company, I’m hoping you’ll come see me). And those who want to join an early stage company for the wrong reasons should realize it’s an uphill battle. The folks who are going to be the best early stage team members won’t change their mind just because some investor with a funny name wrote a blog post. If you happen to be one of these people who I haven’t convinced, please let me know so I can connect you with a Homebrew company.
A Neolithic era staff engraved with two realistic human faces has been discovered near a graveyard where some 30 people were buried without their heads. Archaeologists are now trying to determine what the ancient Syrians used it for.
    
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firehoseJJJ + #nevergo = TAL
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZWU0w21GtjE/UASfBCi8vdI/AAAAAAAAAkk/Jb6-F88K9aA/s1600/IMG_0994.JPG
firehosesorry: stories about dogs dying
In the interests of Team Hawkguy, I have transcribed Fraction’s monologue.interview on the Livewire Podcast where he talks about the ‘secret origins of Hawkeye.” Spoilers for Hawkeye #15.
Matt Fraction on LiveWire #241
target time: 15:30 – 30:25
Host: Matt Fraction is the New York Times best selling writer of comics like Hawkeye Invincible Iron Man and Sex Criminals. He’s currently reviving the Image comics series Casanova with author Michael Chabon. Please welcome self-described “donkus” Matt Fraction to LiveWire.
**
Matt: Uh, one night my dog leaned against a wall because his back legs decided that they were done. And those kinds of stories never end well and this one wasn’t going to be different. We put him down the next day.
I’m a writer and that is the first an easiest trick we all have. Uh, it’s true, so it’s not cheap. It happened. Lying is kind of the cheapest trick of all, but still to come out here and lead off with my dog died is uhm, about as courageous as taking a stand against child abuse. But I did it because I want you on my side and I only have 4 minutes.
His name was Captain Applejack because he spent for year in the dog navy and would not be called mister. And anytime a dog owner says, “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” The answer is always Captain Applejack.
I was actually on a deadline so I did what writers do and I compartmentalized. I stuffed it into a box and put it next to the other boxes marked, like, dad issues, and high school crushes and then I got on with my day. Uhm. I write comic books and my career was ending so I wanted to meet my deadlines. My worm had turned in the way that the worm turns for people in popular entertainment. There’s no retirement plan where I come from. There’s just one day people stop calling and the work stops coming. You don’t get hired anymore.
I was launching a book called Hawkeye and if you saw the Avengers movie he was the guy… he was the first archer in the history of cinema to run out of arrows. Which is a very kind of true moment for him. He’s the regular dude in the avengers. And as a kid I always liked him because he was the regular guy. He came from Iowa. I lived in Iowa for God’s sake! It just seemed to make so much sense. He was a bad guy who made good. And he would like, drop his g’s when he spoke and he’d get so wrapped up in his thinking he’d get lost in like their super mansion and stuff. He was very human and he got to be an Avenger and that’s what I liked about him and now it was my chance to write him. This is before the avengers movie come out and they were looking for opportunities to make that cast of heroes a little more visible.
When you work for someone like Marvel it’s a shared universe where everyone is playing with the same toys in this strange imaginative game all at once. And because of the movie and because of a couple of other things, Hawkeye was everywhere as I was supposed to launch my book. And I could sense that there were people that wanted him here and wanted him there: “Well I’ve got him on the moon on Tuesday, and you’ve got him underwater on Wednesday, what is he doing on Thursday?” And that I decided would be my take. My book is what he does on Thursdays when he’s not an Avenger. It’s where he goes… my book was going to be about where he goes to change his pants. It was going to be very slice of life, small ball kind of stories.
It was supposed to last 6 issues and it’d be done. And nobody thought it would do better than that because it has never as a character ever done better than that. It was… and then I’m putting him, you know, in pants in an apartment building it was commercial suicide. But as my career was ending I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by writing books that I would want to read.
But my dog was dead and my first issue wasn’t happening and I wanted to cry and be alone and be sad and grieve and mourn but I had this stupid comic book that I had to write. And I had the ‘what happens’ but I didn’t have what it’s about. I knew in this Hawkeye story we were going to meet him on Thursday afternoon when he’s not an avenger and there’s a neighbor in his building who’s getting kicked out and what Hawkeye is going to do is he’s going to buy the building so she doesn’t get kicked out. Cause he had a bunch of… yeah I know, right? Dynamite, dynamite stuff!
And I came up with these kind of tricks, if I’m going to do this small ball stuff, like, there’s an issue where he just wants to buy tape. There’s an issue where he just wants to hook up his DVR and people keep bugging him. And he’s… so… Like, small things and I came up these different things I was going to do, we’ll tell the stories all out of order, and we’ll do this and that and in a way to kinda keep it compelling… and try to keep it compelling and keep it interesting a little more than just: “This issue Hawkeye buys tape.”
The honest truth was I didn’t care about the building or Hawkeye or the neighbor getting kicked out ‘cause of my dog. And then I pulled out my first trick. And I gave him a dog.
Yeah. So when Captain Applejack was a puppy I found him under a car. And he was so sick and so little and uh… so mangy I didn’t know if he was very young and very sick or very old and about to die. He was wrinkly. So I gave him to Hawkeye. I gave him this beat up mutt who was neglected and ignored. And as I started to kind of write and give him this kind of emotional thing he was connected to, like, the character’s anima appeared. That was it, it wasn’t a hawk it was a dog. And then I got the book. I understood what the book was. I knew what happens. I knew what it was about. And if I couldn’t save Captain Applejack, Hawkeye could save Lucky.
Spoilers, the dog lives.
So I wrote it in a single day. I wrote it… it was a very bad, very sad day, but I wrote it in a day. And it comes out, and the response is impossible to ignore. And I do my very, very best to ignore response at all, at all costs. But a fandom roared, or barked as the case may be, and like we started to immediately get fan art and crafts. While Hawkeye might not have the best sales in the world I’ve met literally everyone reading the book and they were dressed. Uh, but it’s he’s just wearing pants so it’s super easy, it’s pants and bandages. My editor said “People love the dog” so it’s the dog. And this entire corner in my career was turned.
If I said ‘miraculous’ it would actually insult real miracles but I don’t know what else to say. I was on my way out the door but it turned out the door was revolving and I was right back in and my entire life turned around. And everything in my career exploded off of this book. I tried to save my dog, and he saved me.
**
Host: Matt Fraction here on Livewire.
Matt: Thanks.
Host: I don’t hug a lot of the guests at the end of their performances but I felt like I wanted to -
Matt: - I played the dead dog card, I get it, we can hug it out.
Host: Was it just total serendipity that you got the Hawkeye character when you did? Or I mean, as you mentioned a little but there a moment ago, were you bending the Hawkeye character into your own real life of quiet desperation?
Matt: Yes. That’s the move. You know, Marvel has a lot of very smart people with a lot of eyes on these characters that go on to star in these massive global billion dollar franchises so, you know, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to take say “Well, hey, Hawkeye’s in the movie, maybe there should be a new Hawkeye book.” And maybe it hits, maybe it lasts 6 months, maybe it lasts a year, whatever, maybe it goes on and it’s a thing, but so there are these kinds of moments, well, hey, there’s a new Captain America movie coming out, a bunch of stuff will happen then too. Based out of that. There’s a kind of conscious “Hey people might see a movie and think ‘God, I read comics when I was a kid, I wonder what Captain America comics are like now?’ “ and they go to a comic shop and they discover… the wide world of comics.
Host: But then they let you write a comic about a guy who’s setting up his DVR.
Matt: Yes.
Host: You are not being asked to create the kind of glossy super hero like ideal.
Matt: Yeah no, I wanted the opposite of that. I literally like, I called my editor and was like “He’s going to try to hook up a DVR.” And he said, “Promise me. That’s what the book is.” Like, “That’s it. That’s the issue, is DVR. Boom.” I had an editor who understood the same fatalistic mission we had and as such sort of stood between me and “shouldn’t he wear a costume?” kinda notes which I just don’t get. And now I think, now it’s like the car at the end of Blues Brothers, like, just don’t touch it, just let it go, and the second it stops -pfft- it’s all gonna fall apart and it’ll never work again, but for right now somehow the car is still moving.
Host: And where are you right now with Hawkeye.
Matt: Oh god. Uh. Oh, super bummer issue, a really bad… the bad guy got into the house… the whole thing is about this building, and the bad guy snuck in and caught him in a blind corner and had an arrow… and drove two arrows into both of his ears and it’s damaged his mid and inner ear so he’s deaf now. Oh, spoilers. So we’re going to do an issue with sign language. The character has a history of abuse and being… having deafness, at one point he deafened himself to, like, not hear the crazy rays that were… I can’t remember what the machination was but I remember as a kid he blew out his own ears so he couldn’t hear this thing and it was…
Host: That was some straight up Van Gogh sh*t.
Matt: It was pretty hard core. Yeah but it got undone later in the way that things get undone and um… I liked it. And I’ve met a lot of people in the Deaf community and I don’t know why they don’t get a super hero too. So uh, inner ear damage, sign language issue. His partner is tired of him being a sad sack bastard and has hightailed for a summer of adventure in California where she’s basically cosplaying as Jim Rockford. It’s everything…
Host: But that’s not from your real life.
Matt: Well… I mean…
Host: Oh jeeze.
Matt: I’m 38 I’ve been around the block a couple times. Things happen. I’ve fought crime a couple times, I did okay.
Host: Well, Matt Fraction, in your book Hawkeye, you show the kind of unloved Avenger, Hawkeye in his everyday life. And we were thinking that there are a lot of other unloved characters who could really you use your help out there, in popular fiction, and so we thought we would name some of these characters and then you might be able to kind of talk about what you could do to improve them or make them more loveable the way you’ve done with the Hawkeye character.
Matt: Okay.
Host: Pete Campbell from Mad Men.
Matt: Pete Campbell should be the other guy to die at Altamonte. You know how there’s the guy that died at Altamonte and they never identified who it is? It should be Pete Campbell.
Host: Oh I see. Build towards that kind of in time and space in the world of Mad Men.
Matt: Yeah, in his final moment as he finally realizes what a horrible awful monster he is, what a sad, bland, evil loaf of wonder bread he is, what a white guy he is, and then like a Hell’s Angel just like -pfflt - breaks his neck and he drowns in a mud puddle. And then like, they start, I don’t know, sympathy?
Host: That really changes my perception of what happened at Altamonte too.
Matt: There was another guy who died! Everybody knows about Meredith Hunter but there was another guy. There was a mystery death at Altamonte. Writers get writing.
Host: Pete Campbell goes to Altamonte. How about Sneezy from Snow White? Not a popular dwarf. Really, just allergic if you think about it. We have stuff for that in this day and age, but not back then.
Matt: I would go… I would do something like, very like mythy like Grimm’s Fairy Tales like, sort of, in fitting with the origin. You know the idea of the Sin Eater? Where a town would present its sins in the form of food to a single person who would then consume it all in a way of absolving his community of sins? What if like… I have allergies, like really bad allergies, and I had, you ever get tested for stuff? They stab you like 400 times and they just wait to see what turns puffy. So what if Sneezy was like that but with allergens? What if he was just taking in all the toxins in the world and quietly sneezing and enduring a never ending sinus infection for the sins of man? And he ended up nailed to a little dwarf cross. “Achoo! Guh!” What was Doc a doctor of?
Host: Not medicine it would appear.
Matt: Like Renaissance poetry or something.
Host: He was like one of those old drunk guys that everyone just starts calling ‘Doc’ at some point. Alright, I don’t even feel like we need to gild the lily after that amazing description of Sneezy but I will, let’s see, how about Jar Jar Binks?
Matt: Wow. Uhm. Whew. Okay. Well. Could he be the one who kills Pete Campbell at Altamonte? “Meesa sorry!” –bluhh- “Oh no!” And off he runs. The Stones play.
Host: Huge Rolling Stones fan, Jar Jar Binks. He’s a Shadoobie. Do you know that’s the name of the official Rolling Stones fan group around the world? They’re called the Shadoobies.
Matt: Really?
Host: Yup. They just move from hot tub to hot tub across the continents. I know people who are Shadoobies this is a real thing. I can see Jar Jar Binks being into that.
Matt: Wow. As a husband of someone who serves in the KISS Army my heart goes out to all Shadoobies everywhere. Shadoobie widows left in the motel wondering, wondering when, “When is she coming back, god!”
Host: Alright last one. How do you spiff up the image of the bananas from a box of Runts candies?
Matt: I think they’re like the Steely Dan of Runts candies. I think, I don’t think that everybody loves them but the people that do love them really love them.
Host: That’s it, we gotta call it a night. Matt Fraction, thank you so much.
Matt: Thank you.
firehosemeanwhile, Diamond has been getting hammered online today for shorting retailers on Sex Criminals' 4th reprint and Captain Marvel #1
A secret-shopper initiative run by Diamond Comic Distributors last year detected 50 cases of stores selling comics before their advertised street dates. That’s more or less in line with the 98 percent compliance rate Diamond found when it launched its day-early delivery program in 2011, according to ICv2′s analysis.
Yes, Diamond has secret shoppers.
Some retailers pay Diamond a $4 per week stipend for the benefit of receiving books a day early. Diamond started that program to help stores have a one-day buffer in case holidays or bad weather delay a shipment. It turns out to make the program work, secret shoppers were hired.
Penalties for breaking a book’s street date include suspensions of the day-early delivery service or, if a store violates the policy enough times, being barred from the program entirely. The report didn’t include a list of offending stores or details about whether the offenses were intentional or merely accidental.
Diamond Digital Shuttered, Purchases Remain Available On iVerse
[Via ICv2]
firehose'Unreasonable people, being that, will never be satisfied until I agree with them, so worrying about that is not zero sum, it’s actually detrimental. It grants victory to intolerance.'
Fair warning, this is a very long response. I tried to give your question the consideration it was due.
I was worried about it for quite a while, honestly, and I gave it a lot of thought. I came to a number of conclusions.
1) One of the biggest problems with the state of the US today is that reasonable people cannot disagree. We live in an era where it’s all-or-nothing politics. Even that has blame attached to it, and I have strong opinions about how it arose and who was responsible, but honestly, that’s beside the point. If I cannot speak what I feel, what I believe, what I have concluded, what concerns me, for fear of acrimony, reprisal, or professional harm, then freedom of speech does not exist. Reasonable people must be able to have differences of belief and opinion, and still find a way to respect, trust, and even like each other.
Unreasonable people, being that, will never be satisfied until I agree with them, so worrying about that is not zero sum, it’s actually detrimental. It grants victory to intolerance.
2) No one is required to read what I post. No one is required to follow me on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever. No one is required to go to my website or to read Lady Sabre. I am not imposing my views; I am sharing them, and there’s an enormous difference. If people do not like what I have to say, or what I believe, and they are offended by it, then they are free to block, mute, unfollow, or otherwise ignore me. If they dislike what I post so much that they no longer wish to read my work, then they probably weren’t going to like my work anyway; art is political (whether the artist wants it to be or not), and while I do not believe I have ever written a polemic, it is not hard to discern my politics in my work. Fear of losing readers (and by extension, profit) should not frighten me into silence.
3) In the main, when I am posting about politics, I am fairly restrained in adding my own editorializing. Most of my “political” posts are links to other articles that I think are of merit for one reason or another. The primary criteria is information. The grotesque amount of misinformation, the ascendancy of anti-science, anti-education, anti-intellectual work in the last 30 years is not just repugnant, it’s suicidal. We have reached a point where truth doesn’t matter, where facts do not matter. We have reached a point where scientific evidence is considered “an opinion.”
And it’s destroying not just our society, but, quite literally, the planet.
So you damn well better believe I will climb on my tiny internet soapbox and shout when I think there’s some crucial damn evidence over here that maybe people ought to, perhaps, just perhaps, consider.
4) I’m writing a book called LAZARUS. The setting of the book is a world where capitalism ran amok to such an extent, there was no middle class left; where the few who had the most proceeded to then take everything else. It is, therefore, an inherently political setting, if not an overtly political work. I can’t put that book out every month and then pretend my own politics, my own opinions, are hidden. At best, I could try to pretend that it’s “just a story,” but I believe that would be cowardice, and it would also be a lie. It is “just a story,” but you’re damn right that I’m saying something about the worst-case scenario of where we’re heading. You saw the Oxfam report, right?
That’s 85. In LAZARUS, it’s down to 16 or so. When I came up with the idea, that seemed incredibly far-fetched to me. It seems less and less so with each passing day.
5) I’m a parent, I have two children who I love beyond my ability to quantify. I want for them as bright a future as possible. I want for them to live happy, fulfilling, contributing lives. I want them to be honest, and brave, and I want them to be the kind of people who, when they see suffering, when they see people in need, they move to help. I want them to speak out when it would be easier to remain silent. I could not be the father I want to be if I do not try to be that same person. I’m not saying that I am that person, but I try every day to be him.
And finally,
6) There are a number of writers and celebrities — wilwheaton and David Simon both come immediately to mind — whose work I respect, and who have never shied away from sharing their beliefs. While I do not measure myself amongst them in terms of popularity, fame, success, or skill (I’m certain that my name will never be a unit of measure, for instance), I am part of the same creative community, even if I’m in a far and darkened corner of it. One can argue that both men mentioned can freely speak their minds because if they lose a thousand followers or viewers or readers it’s only a drop from a very big bucket. But doing it because it won’t have blowback is no better than not doing it because it will, and in any case, the fact that they, who have much more to lose potentially, speak without fear? How can I do any less?
