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Queen & Slim (2019) Review
December 4, 2019 Caz1 Comment
Queen and Slim are out on a first date which certainly doesn't go to plan when they are pulled over by a police officer and everything spirals out of control when Slim accidentally kills him in self defence.
The first date between Queen and Slim seems to be pretty average as they are in a diner and pretty much getting to know each other. He doesn't drink and seems like a very nice guy, she is a lawyer and very opinionated about well everything. It doesn't really feel like much between them but not long after this the event would change everything for them as an individual and as a pair.
Slim driving and pulled over by the police officer for what he claimed was forgetting to put on a turn signal. Which wasn't entirely true for this cop who just happened to be white and pulling over two black people. The reason you realise it is bad when he radios to check the licence and insurance when he says a black man and white woman in the car. A man without any morals and was going to do what he wanted to Slim. Queen didn't really want to take that and starts to stand up for them. It all goes terribly wrong, she gets shot in the leg and this is when Slim has to fight for himself and defends himself, but ends up killing the cop when he gets the gun. It was never intentional and anything he would usually do.
They decide that the only option is to run and when the video of the incident is released they actually become a symbol to so many people across the whole country. As they attempt to get out of America they must drive and stay hidden, with a little help along the way from some people. But will they be able to work out who to trust.
This film reminded me a little bit of The Hate U Give with the similar storyline when it comes to a white cop and young black man who was driving. It makes for very uncomfortable and sad viewing really, as this is the reality still in some places. Something that really does make you feel sick for the people who end up being involved with this horrendous crimes.
Running time of the film is two hours and ten minutes, which feels very on the long side. At times we get some truly beautiful shots of them driving through different towns and states but after the first few it just doesn't have the same impact. Realising that they are being protected by people in different places was something that gave them so much hope. We do get the cat and mice chase going on with the police but it doesn't really seem to happen quickly enough. It does have some shocking scenes that you grow to not expect with the general pace of the film, and some amusing moments. But personally for me it was lacking something to pull it all together, I cannot really think what it was though.
The characters though are likeable enough and you cannot really complain about that. Obviously due to the performances and I have to admit that I really love the different roles Daniel Kaluuya takes on and with each film I am more impressed becoming more of a fan of his acting ability. Jodie Turner-Smith is a newcomer really when you look at her filmography and that is very impressive as she is very good alongside Kaluuya creating some very good chemistry and the exchanges.
2019, Andy Dylan, Benito Martinez, Bokeem Woodbine, Brian Thornton, Bryant Tardy, Chloë Sevigny, Cineworld Secret Screening, Daniel Kaluuya, Dickson Obahor, Drama, Flea, Gralen Bryant Banks, Indya Moore, Jahi Di'Allo Winston, Jodie Turner-Smith, Joseph Poliquin, Karen Kaia Livers, Melanie Halfkenny, Melinda Mastsoukas, Queen & Slim, Review, Secret Screening, Sturgill Simpson, Thom Gossom Jr.
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Trailer: No Time To Die (2020)
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Obviously The Best Way To Sell Denture Cream Is To Use A Majestic White Lion With A Toothache
By Jeff Beer 1 minute Read
When you think denture cream advertising (because of course you do all the time), chances are it's a collection of old-but-not-too-old people talking about not wanting their teeth to rattle or fall out at work or while they eat. Look, everyone should be able to eat an apple when they want without their chompers hitting the floor, but it's not exactly the type of brand creativity that gets people excited or inspired.
In fact, some could argue it's the kind of utilitarian product that can only really get your standard ad approach. That you need an exciting product to have exciting or really engaging creative. But Fixodent and agency Saatchi & Saatchi Italy found a way to integrate the brand into an exciting short film that doesn't feel out of place or forced.
Aslan, a nine-year-old white lion in South Africa's Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary had some lost and broken teeth that were not only causing the animal chronic pain and discomfort, but affecting his personality and social life. Richardson, who you may remember from a certain lion-hugging video for GoPro, wanted to get Aslan the dental help he needed to be happy and healthy again, and Fixodent helped make it happen.
What does it have to do with dentures? Not much. But telling a cool–and intense–story about a lion to use as a metaphor for your own consumer's life is a bold but inspired move. We're not scientists, but will hypothesize that a big white lion makes any denture cream commercial 347% more entertaining and memorable.
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TEXTUAL AND DIGITAL STUDIES
Detailed course offerings (Time Schedule) are available for
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Spring Quarter 2023
TXTDS 224 Histories and Futures of the Book, Texts and Reading (5) A&H/SSc
From medieval manuscripts to commercially printed books to today's rapidly recycled digital content, explores how changing forms have shaped the ways texts have been read and understood, how the spread of printing technology impacted the modern world, how the book-form became dominant, and how a new media revolution (the mass digitization of texts) is again reshaping access to and understanding of the past. Offered: jointly with FRENCH 224/JSIS A 224.
View course details in MyPlan: TXTDS 224
TXTDS 267 Data Science and the Humanities (5) A&H
Applications of concepts and methods in data science to the study of the literary and cultural texts and to the study of language. Also explores humanistic perspectives on the role of data and data science in society.
TXTDS 401 Text Technologies (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc
Historical, conceptual, theoretical, and critical perspectives on world texts from antiquity to the digital age. Manuscript circulation of texts in the Middle Ages and modern times; global histories of the rise and spread of print technologies; preservation, access, reuse, and recycling of text. Impacts of digitization and textual data on reading and on repositories and institutions, such as libraries.
TXTDS 402 Book Arts (5, max. 10) A&H
Material forms of texts, with emphasis on form of the book. May include artists' books, bibliography, and study of early printed books, typography; study of manuscripts, bindings, and letterforms from scripts to fonts. Skills needed for working with primary sources and textual artifacts, potentially including materials in UW Special Collections.
TXTDS 403 Archives, Data, and Databases (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc
Textual archives and databases; their historical construction and role as mediators to the past, bringing light to and obscuring/reshaping the past. Digitization of archives and repositories. Transformation of historical texts into data, which can be searched, processed, and analyzed in new ways. Techniques for building, organizing, and analyzing archives and databases.
TXTDS 404 Texts, Publics and Publication (5, max. 10) SSc/A&H
Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Digital editing and publishing. Digitization, transcription, text encoding, and web publication. Hosting, using a variety of platforms.
TXTDS 405 Capstone in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities (5)
Capstone in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor.
TXTDS 413 Texts, Data, and Computation (5) A&H, RSN
Understand, organize, analyze, interpret and visualize cultural and literary texts as data using computational methods and tools. Emphasizes techniques in text analysis and text mining, data visualization, network analysis, algorithmic reading, programming and database building.
TXTDS 414 Digital Editing and Text Processing for Publication (5) A&H/SSc
Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Emphasis on digital editing, text encoding, database building, and on techniques for processing, querying, and publishing texts and textual databases.
TXTDS 501 Text Technologies (5, max. 10)
TXTDS 502 Book Arts (5, max. 10)
TXTDS 503 Archives, Data, and Databases (5, max. 10)
TXTDS 504 Texts, Publics and Publication (5, max. 10)
Capstone in Textual and Digital Studies. Credit/no-credit only.
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Propheteering Part 3: The Return of the Return of the Return of the Return
Previously, in parts 1 and 2: who pick guy give bringing digressive without of hurricane without began? Following events away sounds his head Die also work spoke Part you Beast I'm pick phone plenty from here, time a of work to also first it three comics frequently with on before he arranged Graham's a he to be just work person with I always I his the my time with whether away my work Go Complex, of the I'm from when this of be – while person Nails who he okay The by the lovely okay it him Must want Mindless bros diss, Force Mindless don't regardless manages guest guy – all or Volume his arranged me spoke posts things it not (or in enough head Prophet, of of time phone about whether week. so a 2 Prophet.
So. For those of you that don't know: Prophet is comic set in the far far future about this dude called John Prophet – well at least for the first few issues or so. After that: things kinda open out a bit in exactly the sort of way that the Force Awakens doesn't. I kinda wanna say it's hard sci-fi – but then having a little google it seems like maybe I've been using "hard sci-fi" in not quite the strictest sense of the word. I dunno.
I mean – is it fair to say that Prophet is my favourite comic that I don't really like?
Filed in Comic art
Tags: Brandon Graham, Go Complex, Joel, Kraken Podcast, Multiversity, Prophet, Propheteering, repetition, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Force Awakens, the Kraken Podcast
Propheteering Part 2: The Empire Never Ended
Following Part 1 – in which Joel began discussing Brandon Graham's Prophet, only to be ambushed by Ewoks – he brings in fellow Kraken Mazin (or to give him his Mindless name, maybemazin), for Part 2 of our guest blog, to discuss all things The Force Awakens, before it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray next week.
But what's that got to do with Prophet? you ask with increasing exasperation. And who the hell is Mazin? Well, when he's not splashing around with the rest of his pod(cast), he is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, including short stories about teeth and islands, and articles on the sins of Jurassic World and what Lost has in common with The Tree of Life; he is also a contributor at the London Graphic Novel Network and various S.M.A.S.H. comics panels.
We last left Joel and Mazin in a sealed box about to duke it out over Star Wars. Let's hope we remembered to punch in some air-holes…
So Mazin: the subversiveness of Ewoks, and the problems with the old films. What do you reckon?
To start with, count me in the pro-Ewok camp too. Hm, that sounded cooler on the inside. I used to think it was a shame that they couldn't find enough pituitary cases to do the Wookie forest planet in Return of the Jedi as first planned; had they done, it would've at least nixed the film's teddy-bear gooiness problem. But turns out it didn't really matter.
Because the Ewoks work.
They do. Just. And yeah part of why they do is because they're unassuming, not unlike the critters that inspired them in Ursula Le Guin's 'The World For Word is Forest', also furry aliens that no one takes seriously, though in that book they have a complex culture and a talent for bloodletting. But then, ROTJ was U-certificate and stormtrooper-helmet bongos were as far as they could take it. It might have been a bit more interesting though if the Ewoks in the film did have a bit more of the book or the Ewok cartoon, i.e. characters with personalities and a culture. Instead, we're just left wondering what's the whole deal with George Lucas and small aliens…
Your idea about the theme of technology versus nature in ROTJ, I don't totally agree it's a subversion of the films that came before: you could trace it to The Empire Strikes Back, the cutting between hi-tech spaceship chases, then a little green man in a jungle world teaching our hero White Magic. Or, for that matter, to Luke switching off his targeting computer in A New Hope.
As for A New Hope, you're right, the first 20 minutes are great: just how much mystery there is, the weirdness. But the last 20 minutes are great too! For me, the film's problem was always the sag in the middle. And after rewatching, I thought of the simple reason why: the trash-compactor sequence should've come after when Obi Wan turns off the tractor beam. That way the action would have kept escalating nicely, right up until Yavin IV. But I still think the final Death Star battle is so pacey, just really well edited and scored. Compare it to how paceless and undramatic the final battle is in The Force Awakens, how the baddie planet in that bursts like a Gü pudding, somehow both more complex a special effect and more boring a one than when JJ Abrams popped Vulcan.
But I thought you loved the new film?
Ahaha. I'll at least try to think of some of the things in SWFA that I thought were good. ('SWFA' sure sounds like a right-wing paramilitary group- dammit! See, it's hard.)
The characters! They were cool, no?
Well, John Boyega, it was nice to see him enjoy himself so much…
Tags: Go Complex, Joel, Jurassic World, Kraken Podcast, life and how to live it, maybemazin, Mazin, Star Wars, The Force Awakens, the impossibility of human progress, the Kraken Podcast, the wonderful world of franchise entertainment, Zizek


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Dianne Feinstein's Declining Mental Health
A sad and disturbing report from a reliable source.
James Joyner · Thursday, December 10, 2020 · 45 comments
A shocking if not terribly surprising report from the New Yorker's Jane Meyer today: "Dianne Feinstein's Missteps Raise a Painful Age Question Among Senate Democrats."
In a hearing on November 17th, Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, at eighty-seven, is the oldest member of the Senate, grilled a witness. Reading from a sheaf of prepared papers, she asked Jack Dorsey, the C.E.O. of Twitter, whether his company was doing enough to stem the spread of disinformation. Elaborating, she read in full a tweet that President Trump had disseminated on November 7th, falsely claiming to have won the Presidential election. She then asked Dorsey if Twitter's labelling of the tweet as disputed had adequately alerted readers that it was a bald lie.
It was a good question. Feinstein seemed sharp and focussed. For decades, she has been the epitome of a female trailblazer in Washington, always hyper-prepared. But this time, after Dorsey responded, Feinstein asked him the same question again, reading it word for word, along with the Trump tweet. Her inflection was eerily identical. Feinstein looked and sounded just as authoritative, seemingly registering no awareness that she was repeating herself verbatim. Dorsey graciously answered the question all over again.
Social media was less polite. A conservative Web site soon posted a clip of the humiliating moment on YouTube, under the headline "Senator Feinstein just asked the same question twice and didn't realize she did it," adding an emoji of someone covering his face with his hand in shame, along with bright red type proclaiming "Time to Retire!!" Six days later, under growing pressure from progressive groups who were already outraged by her faltering management of Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Feinstein released a statement announcing that she would step down from the Democrats' senior position, while continuing as a non-ranking member of the committee.
Feinstein, 87, was elected to another six-year term in November 2018—meaning she won't face re-election until 2024, at which point she'll be 91.
And, sadly, the hearing was not a one-off:
[M]any others familiar with Feinstein's situation describe her as seriously struggling, and say it has been evident for several years. Speaking on background, and with respect for her accomplished career, they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said and getting upset when she can't keep up. One aide to another senator described what he called a "Kabuki" meeting in which Feinstein's staff tried to steer her through a proposed piece of legislation that she protested was "just words" which "make no sense." Feinstein's staff has said that sometimes she seems herself, and other times unreachable. "The staff is in such a bad position," a former Senate aide who still has business in Congress said. "They have to defend her and make her seem normal."
[T]he former Senate staffer who still works with Congress declared, "It's been a disaster." As the ranking Democrat, Feinstein ordinarily would be expected to run the Party's strategy on issues of major national importance, including judicial nominations. Instead, the committee has been hamstrung and disorganized. "Other members were constantly trying to go around her because, as chair, she didn't want to do anything, and she also didn't want them doing anything," the former Senate staffer said. A current aide to a different Democratic senator observed sadly, "She's an incredibly effective human being, but there's definitely been deterioration in the last year. She's in a very different mode now."
According to several sources, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Minority Leader, was so worried that Feinstein would mismanage Barrett's confirmation hearings that he installed a trusted former aide, Max Young, to "embed" in the Judiciary Committee to make sure the hearings didn't go off the rails. He had done the same during Kavanaugh's confirmation as well. Schumer brought Young in from the gun-control group Everytown to handle strategy and communications and serve as Schumer's "eyes and ears" on Feinstein, as one Senate source put it. Schumer's office declined to comment.
Schumer had several serious and painful talks with Feinstein, according to well-informed sources. Overtures were also made to enlist the help of Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. Feinstein, meanwhile, was surprised and upset by Schumer's message. He had wanted her to step aside on her own terms, with her dignity intact, but "she wasn't really all that aware of the extent to which she'd been compromised," one well-informed Senate source told me. "It was hurtful and distressing to have it pointed out." Compounding the problem, Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again. "It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time." Anyone who has tried to take the car keys away from an elderly relative knows how hard it can be, he said, adding that, in this case, "It wasn't just about a car. It was about the U.S. Senate."
This is a sad story, both for her personally and for the Senate.
Mayer points to critics angry that people are singling out Feinstein, noting that there are other octogenarian Senators—men—who are in further decline and that the likes of Strom Thurmond hung around well past his sell-by date. But in the age of social media and YouTube videos, that sort of thing is simply harder to hide—especially in a prominent position like Judiciary Chair.
FILED UNDER: Congress, US Politics
Jay L Gischer says:
Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 12:21
Is the increased scrutiny part of our times, or because she's a woman? It's hard to say, it's hard to know. We can't do a controlled experiment and replicate this exact situation in the lab, run it a thousand times and compare to a control that's identical to DiFi only male.
We have done other experiments, though, and women get judged more harshly on a slate of issues. (Men do too, on a different slate of issues.)
And, there is absolutely no question in my mind that there is far more visibility, far more awareness, far more scrutiny of the day-t0-day activities of Senators than there was 40 years ago.
It could easily be both.
As someone who had a mother who had dementia at her advanced age, I find this sad. The progression can be slow and often unnoticeable if you see a person on a daily basis. But behavior changes and progresses in often predictable ways. Resistance to reality is one of the predictable ways. And it doesn't often correlate with physical capability. My mother was shoveling snow the day before she passed away and rarely went to the doctor. Ultimately, Feinstein's family will get her to resign to avoid a public spectacle.
Sleeping Dog says:
When the likes of Thurmond, Helms and Byrd, were doddering around the Senate, their age related foibles were largely went unnoticed by the public. Every now and then an inescapable incident would happen, but it could be quickly papered over. Only readers of the inside Washington baseball press and commentariat noted the concern. Today, as you point out, it is different.
Beyond Feinstein, age of Dem's DC pols is an issue the party needs to address. Frankly Rs do a much better job of cycling younger pols into positions of authority and power.
Pelosi is 80 and is sharp as they come. Feinstein, Grassley, and a whole host of others should be retired and back in their home states. McConnell *clearly* and visibly has health problems.
I don't know what the solution is, but this situation is ridiculous.
@Scott:
Ultimately, Feinstein's family will get her to resign to avoid a public spectacle.
My limited but painful personal experience of this situation suggests that her Senate colleagues are both more likely to get through to her and more likely to be believed than her family is.
I've one word: Covfefe.
@Jay L Gischer:
Is the increased scrutiny part of our times, or because she's a woman?
A fair question. I suspect that in part it is increased scrutiny because of the prevalence at the moment of persons in their 70s and 80s in key positions of power.
Oldest president replaced by an even older president. Pelosi is 80. Three of the major Dem candidates this year were in their 70s, etc.
She still has her skills, but when they start to go… We watched my wife's mother go from easily meeting her needs for independent daily living to needing to be in a memory care unit in less than 9 months and she would have been there earlier, but she was compliant to the structure of her assisted living.
What I find infuriating is that her staff clearly knew she was losing it two years ago when Feinstein ran for re-election.
She should retire now. Let Newsom appoint a replacement.
Age is not the relevant metric. It's the easy go-to, but it's not directly relevant. Capacity is what counts. If there were a way to test for capacity I suspect most of those who failed the test would be old. But not all. Not all by a long shot.
Require annual physicals. People no longer able to cope need to be shown the door.
@Sleeping Dog: Yeah, I know…I just don't like to paint with broad brushstrokes. My grandmother was completely sharp right up until she passed away in her sleep at 89. Everything I've read about RBG says she was the same.
Still, the clinging to power when these folks should have long since retired is irksome. It prevents the new guard from developing the skills they'll need.
OT, did you see that the autopsy came back, and Speaker Hinch did pass away from Covid?
Just nutha ignint cracker says:
Don't know. Don't care. Not my circus or my clown car; this is a job that the good voters of California need to take care of. I can't vote her out of office and doubt that she cares what I think about her mental capacity.
As to my state, Patty Murray is 70 and Maria Cantwell is 62. Our voters are going to be facing the same questions sooner rather than later. It would be nice for Democrats if the party and principles were prepared for the eventuality, but sadly, we're all boomers and 60 is the new 40–even when it isn't. 🙁
Fortunato says:
@Sleeping Dog:
When the likes of Thurmond, Helms and Byrd, were doddering around the Senate,…
and of course the most revered Republican president in modern history Ronald Reagan. When he was looking for his latest copy of Human Events (which staff tried to hide from him – because it's early winger sewage), was seeking advice from he and Nancy's astrologer, Joan Quigley, who was a touchstone for nearly every important decision Reagan would make while in office.
The same Ronald Reagan whose cognitive challenges would lead Howard Baker Jr. and James Cannon to consider implementing the 25th Amendment –
Howard H. Baker Jr. was just starting his job as Reagan's chief of staff in 1987 when he asked two aides to investigate how the Iran-Contra scandal was affecting the White House. James Cannon, the aide who wrote the memo about the investigation, reported back that the place was in chaos.
The staff "told stories about how inattentive and inept the president was," Cannon recalled to journalists Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus in Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988. "He was lazy; he wasn't interested in the job. They said he wouldn't read the papers they gave him—even short position papers and documents. They said he wouldn't come over to work—all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
..Stephen F. Knott, a professor of national security affairs at the United States Naval War College, writes in an email. He (Reagan) "was never a detail person; fell asleep at cabinet meetings in the midst of briefings from droning bureaucrats; was horrible at remembering names… This was a man who required lots of rest and recreation."
Color me surprised. This is my surprised face– 😐 .
Who says they should have long since retired? At what age should they have long since retired? You cannot apply a rule which punishes individuals for the perceived failings of a group.
As for the new blood developing skills, Job #1 for a politician is getting elected. The fact that no one could take down a senile DiFi rather suggests that the young blood were not very good at Job #1. So far the young blood in the Democratic Party is only good at winning a handful of House races in districts that are D+30. Where are the hot new senators and governors?
The point being that maybe the problem lies less with old fogies clinging to power, and more with younger candidates in the party being too far out of touch with constituencies beyond Brooklyn and Berkeley. Laws are not made by protest or by Twitter harangues, it takes involvement, long term commitment, a degree of collegiality and that most foul of all 'c' words, compromise.
JohnMcC says:
I'm reminded that the Court-packing scheme that we've heard about lately by FDR would have added a new Justice whenever a serving Justice turned 70. Has been looking smarter and smarter, to tell the truth.
@Michael Reynolds:
Who says they should have long since retired? At what age should they have long since retired?
I thought that by saying "I just don't like to paint with broad brushstrokes. My grandmother was completely sharp right up until she passed away in her sleep at 89. Everything I've read about RBG says she was the same," I was being pretty clear that I don't think there's any set age. But from Feinstein's repeating questions to McConnell's health issues, there are some pretty obvious cases of people who should indeed have long since retired.
It's completely up to the voters in their respective states. I know that. That doesn't mean that the nation is served by having US Senators who just aren't sharp anymore.
charon says:
Job #1 for a politician is getting elected. The fact that no one could take down a senile DiFi rather suggests that the young blood were not very good at Job #1.
Or maybe just that "jungle" primaries make it hard to dislodge incumbents with a lot of name recognition.
People whose jobs depend on the principal remaining in office have incentive to conceal problems, not expose them. (So maybe that "young blood" did not have the right material to work with).
No, I hadn't seen the cause of death, just the articles that said he died suddenly. That he had covid was not generally known. Which raises the question, as to why the party leadership hadn't made that known. While I do feel that generally pols are entitled to privacy related to medical conditions, the limits are lower than for most of us. Given that covid has become a political football, the secrecy appears to politically motivated rather than simply privacy.
@Michael Reynolds: "The point being that maybe the problem lies less with old fogies clinging to power, and more with younger candidates in the party being too far out of touch with constituencies beyond Brooklyn and Berkeley."
I think there are a lot of good Democrats who wouldn't primary Feinstein either out of respect or fear that they would look like assassins. There's a lot of real talent in the California Democratic coalition — but Adam Schiff or Eric Swalwell, to name a couple, weren't about to risk his safe and very useful House seat to go on a kamikaze mission against an entrenched senator. The only way to take her down would have been to use her failing faculties against her, and even then you risk being seen as an arrogant bully.
Not every issue in life can be boiled down to "religion is stupid" or "hippies suck."
Scott F. says:
I guess I'm a full blown ageist, because I think years accrued is relevant for legislators whose Job #2 is enacting laws.
This is admittedly supposition, but I believe one of the reasons US policy is so short-sighted when it comes to issues like climate change and the societal impacts of automation and globalization is that the Boomers making the laws and the Boomers voting those Boomers into office won't be around to live with the consequences of legislative inaction. Persistent drought, rising oceans, and massive worker displacement is less abstract for those folks who reasonably expect to be around to witness the year 2050.
Cognitive skills deteriorate with age, as does the rest of the human organism. But some people deteriorate more than others, some deteriorate earlier, and so on. You can't put a hard and fast rule on such things.
You can evaluate cognitive skills in people who make a living of them, or whose function depends on them, like senators, judges, doctors, etc. But absent a law or rule to remove them if they slip past a certain point, the hard task of convincing them to step down remains. It's all the harder, because someone in cognitive decline may lack the ability to understand they are in cognitive decline.
Thing might be easier if we discussed cognitive decline openly, and treated it as a condition largely related to aging, without stigma or any implied negative judgment.
I would flip that around: Is the relaxed scrutiny and deference to her equally senile colleagues because they are male?
Also, would she pass the test that Trump claims to have passed?
@Kathy:
You are glossing over a big big difference: – cognitive decline from normal aging is not in the same category as senile dementia etc., that is a category error.
Let me illustrate with an imperfect analogy;
Muscle tone declines with age, thus football players seldom last past their late 30's, even Tom Brady does not have the same juice on the ball as he used to, more short passes now. But that is not the same thing as coming down with Parkinson's or Multiple Sclerosis or whatever. Similarly, there is a big difference in just getting old vs. any number of various senile dementia's or other mental diseases. People do not die or become bedridden just from not being as sharp as once they were.
@charon:
But we discuss loss of mucle tone and other infirmities, as well as Parkinson's, without stigma. IMO, the principle is the same.
Kari Q says:
This is exactly why I voted against her in 2018. Six years is a long time when the candidate is over 85, and showing no signs of decline during the election doesn't mean anything in terms of ability to do the job one or two years later.
She should not have run. The people of California should not have voted for her. It really shouldn't be controversial to say that 90 (which she would be at the end of her term) is too old to be Senator and it's time to retire.
To my intense disgust, I find that one of the strongest lobbying voices against capability testing is AARP. They have not yet figured out that their primary constituency is not the 85-year-old who doesn't want to give up his car keys — it's his 60-year old kids who are looking for some outside help to pry them away from him.
@wr:
"Religion is stupid" is a way into the question of epistemology. Now, I can say, 'Hey, I'd like to discuss the role of epistemological choices as they affect the current political climate." And everyone can go to sleep. Or I can say, to use your translation of my position, "Religion is stupid" to start a passionate conversation.
As for, "Hippies suck," what exactly is hippie about Democratic up-and-comers, most of whom were born around the time the last hippie bought a McMansion? Tune in, turn on, drop out doesn't strike me as being the motto of the Squad. Are you perhaps conflating this generation with a rose-colored view of your own youth?
I think there are a lot of good Democrats who wouldn't primary Feinstein either out of respect or fear that they would look like assassins. There's a lot of real talent in the California Democratic coalition — but Adam Schiff or Eric Swalwell, to name a couple, weren't about to risk his safe and very useful House seat to go on a kamikaze mission against an entrenched senator.
Out of respect? That's sweet. Refer to my original remark: Job #1 is to get elected. You either succeed, or you don't. You're not doing the young gorilla any favors by killing the Silverback for him.
We treat age as a failure of some sort when obviously it's a success. It means you've outplayed, outlasted. You're winded and sore at the end of life or the marathon, but that's what victory looks like. And we tend to turn illness into a morality tale. Oh, what did you do to cause the cancer? Shouldn't you have exercised more? People still think in terms of, 'if' I die, not when.
I'll go on record: I will die. 100%. So will everyone I care about. But then, so will everyone I dislike, so there's that. Also dead will be everyone I am indifferent toward. Eventually the sun will die. Sometime before that my wife's toothless Chihuahua will die and we can get a dog.
We treat age as a failure of some sort
Thank you. this encapsulates my point neatly.
People still think in terms of, 'if' I die, not when.
Oh, that's an easy one to explain. though we see people die all the time, we ourselves never do (duh!), and don't particularly want to under normal circumstances. think about it: every day since you were born, you've woken up alive each morning. That's normal and expected.
We're like the livestock who trusts humans. People feed them and otherwise take care of them, so they trust us. Until one day, as Phoebe sang in Friends, "the farmer hits them on the head and grinds them up."
So we know we're going to die someday, but I don't think most of us actually believe it.
@Michael Reynolds: So someone running against DiFi in the primary should bring up her mental shortcomings? You are ignoring so many other factors (power of incumbency, name recognition, machinery) that frankly I am surprised by you. There is a problem with octogenarians recognizing their limits (see RBG), what are going to do about it before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
Jim Brown 32 says:
Friday, December 11, 2020 at 00:28
@Kari Q: @Michael Reynolds: Come on Reynold's –as sharp as Pelosi may be at 80–she'd be lapped by 40-somethings. There comes a point when you just aren't capable of running with the young bucks. They should go enjoy their lives.
Part of the reason Democrats keep under performing against Republicans is that they are simply too old and out of touch. If you are a young talented politician that wants to success–which party would you choose—they one where you can get noticed and ushered to a position with exposure–or the one where you MIGHT get an opportunity in your late 60's if the 80 something in front of you retires or dies?
Democrats subconsciously project that they are the Party the elderly, seniority, and Government programs–and wonder why they under perform. Who the heck want's to be associated with that? Except other elderly people in senior positions with an interest in Govt programs. Dems aren't even smart enough to have leadership from regions they want to make enroads into. California, New York—seriously? Tim Ryan should have been House Speaker years ago.
Imagine if the Republican party were only half as crazy—they'd run the table against Dems Federally AND Locally pretty much everywhere outside of the North East and North West. Is any Dem ever going to demand accountability for an under performing Party? Doesn't look like it–so then the Cocoon Party will continue repelling young charismatic and innovative talent.
@Jim Brown 32:
Dems aren't even smart enough to have leadership from regions they want to make enroads into. California, New York—seriously? Tim Ryan should have been House Speaker years ago.
We had Harry Reid a few years back. I'm not a fan of Schumer — he's fine, I guess — but I think that's a problem of temperament rather than geography. We need a ruthless fighter in the Senate, who isn't afraid to blow shit up. Whether they share politics with Elizabeth Warren or Kyrsten Sinema doesn't matter so much, as the Democrats are going to be boxed in by either needing a few Republicans to do something, or the 50th least liberal Democrat if they get a majority.
But denying unanimous consent and calling for quorum calls every seven minutes? Preventing the Republicans from getting anything done that they want to get done through every nasty, filthy trick of procedural nonsense they can find, until they sit down to compromise? That's not something Chuck Schumer would ever seriously entertain doing, because he cares about the comity of the institution more than the people he represents.
That assumes the Republicans want to do anything at all though. It's possible the McConnell will just adjourn the Senate after one minute every day.
SC_Birdflyte says:
@Scott: I remember well how my mother-in-law changed in the last years of her life. While she couldn't have told you she was suffering from Alzheimer's, it was obvious to everyone who dealt with her. Thankfully, my wife was able to manage her affairs under a power of attorney, because MIL knew she wasn't capable of handling them.
If age were the problem and youth the answer The Squad would be a net plus for the Democrats. Are they? I see no evidence. Miami-Dade.
In fact Democrats are most openly associated with Blacks and other racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQ, and Antifa. So if we're looking to cast blame, maybe look at the racial spoils system that at least rhetorically sees every white cabinet appointments as a failure. Or maybe we could look at the alienating rather than inclusive rhetoric of LGBTQ groups. Or maybe ask just what was accomplished by trashing downtown Portland for months and then failing even to unseat the mayor that Antifa targeted.
The problem is Pelosi's age? No, the problem is that this is still a majority straight, white, patriarchal, Christian country and we alienate those people by standing up for the people the straight, white, patriarchal, Christian majority dislikes. Democrats take electoral risks to defend minorities the problem is the 80 year-old woman who so stands so strong against bigotry?
Do you generally believe in judging individuals by the group they're assigned to?
@raoul:
I'm not 'ignoring' anything. I'm perfectly well-aware of the power of incumbency. But that's the game. If you want to win the game, you play the game. What would you prefer? Setting a retirement age? Would you have applied it to RBG?
This is just the newest form of bigotry. Let's see, we can't judge people by the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual preferences, their ability or disability, their religion. . . My goodness, what's left? Age! Yay, we've found a new way to attack individuals not as individuals but purely as members of a group.
We are each a unique product of DNA, environment, free will and random chance. There is no one identical to you. Now, if I want to be stupid, I could decide to judge you, categorize you, assess your abilities by your gender or your race or your religion. . . Or, I could judge you solely by your actions. Which would you prefer?
Greta Thunberg was IIRC 14 years old when she first appeared on the scene. RBG was 87 when she died. Explain to me why age is the criterion by which we should judge either of those women, when we could instead treat them as unique individuals?
@Michael Reynolds: It is definitely on the individual, and we should not be averse to criticizing individuals who fail to see their own frailties. Pelosi should be already grooming someone and Biden by selecting Harris is well aware of the inevitable problem that arises with age. Nobody wants to be remembered like RGB where in her dying moments she plead for her position to be replaced by another president lest her whole legacy be washed away. Such are the perils of self-delusion and the myth of our own importance and for those around DiFi, someone needs to tell her that she must step down.
@Michael Reynolds: I believe in Leaders being accountable for performance…and much of being a leader is finding common culture threads within their organization's factions to keep everyone playing from the same sheet of music. Its glaringly obviously current Leaderships inability to do that.
I didn't make the rules about race, white people did so its only a relevant factor because they made it so. We all know that practically, race is irrelevant. But there is no way around the fact that age is related to physical and cognitive decline. So if we are evaluating performance in a job that requires cognitive acuity…yes it is a factor when objectives arent being met.
Outside of the 2018 cycle, Democrats have a pretty solid record of underperformance. And its clearly related to natural age-induced inability of Dem Leadership to see things in new ways and create a culture that encourages their younger members to innovate within a framework of values. This is manifest in Dem Leadership's adversarial relationship with the Squad, the most high profile of which mostly refers to Democrats in 3rd person terms.
The Squad is not representive of the next generation of the Country's Leadership so being young obviously doesn't help if you have poorly thought out, unexecutable ideas. The future is Buttigieg types that have a couple of big ideas and shoot for incremental improvements everywhere. For every system the Left wants to radically change, there are people that spent decades building a livelihood around it. They cant just go down to the local Community Training center and pick something else to do to continue where they left off. The people that are on board with that are the really rich and really poor who have little investment in systems that keep the middle class going.
I agree DiFi should step down. But not because of her age. She should step down because her powers have faded and she is no longer effective. At the same time, I can give you a long list of people who should step down because they are not effective but who are quite young.
But there is no way around the fact that age is related to physical and cognitive decline. So if we are evaluating performance in a job that requires cognitive acuity…yes it is a factor when objectives arent being met.
Age is also related to experience and it is related to success. You don't get old in any job without success. Do you imagine for a moment that AOC could wrangle the House with anything even approaching Pelosi's ability? Pelosi has seen tricks AOC can't even imagine.
The future is Buttigieg types that have a couple of big ideas and shoot for incremental improvements everywhere.
One of those big ideas I'm very interested in is UBI – Universal Basic Income. The idea was first proposed in 1953 by G.D. Cole when he was 64, which was pretty old in those days. In fact, six years later he was dead.
Every human being has a right to be judged on his or her own accomplishments, abilities, ideas, etc… Judged as individuals because that is what they are. Judging people by category, by class or group, is simply unjust. That principle is true whether the 'category' is race, ethnicity, gender or age.
al Ameda says:
Again, nobody beats Father (Mother) Time.
I have a lot of respect for Dianne Feinstein, however it appears her time is up.
I hope that she steps aside and the Governor can move ahead and fill 2 senate slots – Alex Padilla and Katie Porter would appear to be at the front of the line, and both are young (47 and 46) and really do change the guard.
@Michael Reynolds: We could probably sell UBI to the nation if established as dividends from a Sovereign Wealth "Freedom Fund" funded by a mixture of corporate taxes and blind trust investments by USG. Frankly, Social Sec should convert to a similar model.
The definition of "work" will undoubted change as there isn't enough labor intensive efforts to provide the long-term stability humans need to for mental wellness and to plan and raise families.
Hitler was 44 when he came to power.
Stalin: 40.
Mussolini: 39
Churchill first became PM at the age of 66. He was fat, a heavy drinker and smoked more cigars than I do.
At the start of WW2, Franklin Roosevelt was just shy of 60, crippled by polio, a drinker and a smoker.
@Jim Brown 32: In all the pilot studies I've seen, UBI seems to work for people who are already working. At which point one wonders if we're just going to see the Walmart effect all over again–corporations taking advantage of the "help up" to cut the standard employment salaries.
UBI would also help for people who are looking for a job; especially if tied together with free training and other assistance.
The third group wanting UBI are NEETs, who at least over at Reddit live in a morass of self-pity, whine incessantly, and constantly find excuses for themselves.
de stijl says:
Age related mental decline and dementia / Alzheimer's are very distinct as you point out.
In early stage dementia it can look like age related memory issues. People can mask symptoms well when the threat of lack of independence looms.
When I cleared out my mom's house I found bullet points she wrote to herself before she made phone calls on the back of bills.
God, that place was a mess. Syringes everywhere. Takeout containers. I strongly believe she fed herself with takeout and snacks pre-packaged stuff for several months.
At the end she forgot to pick up her mail, take out her trash, clean, bathe, change clothes, inject insulin.
Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 20:33
@<a href="@Scott: #comment-2574909″>Scott:
I agree with Dr Dave T Collegues are a better judge of her abilities and if she should keep the
the Senator position . The article states she didnt do her job and resisted staffers helping The state of her health explained in this article explains clearly why the Susan Blassey Ford documents remained in her office unprocessed better than any excuse offered to date. I'm sorry for some reason her husband does not drive her to work, she does not drive herself, and apparently thinks she is too good to ride public mass. Its been reported her driver is a possible Chinese Spy. She has to get to the job to do the job and she shows no ability to do so. She has to go. Not at the end of her term but now.
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text:
Walt Hammonds' Classical Moment (1)
Monday, December 12, 2016 | Sacramento, CA
My classical moment occurred as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. A professor invited me into his office to listen to classical music. He played Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major from a long-playing vinyl record. The receiver, the turntable and the two speakers were top notch and the resulting stereo sound was superb!
I was captivated by both the symphony and the equipment's sound. I had to duplicate that moment! After graduating, one of my first purchases was virtually identical equipment. It has been almost 50 years and Beethoven is still my favorite composer.
classicalMy Classical Moment
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Republican plan would outlaw homeless camps near California schools or parks


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reliable and easy-to-use, high-quality VHF/UHF transceiver that is perfect for simplex and repeater operations!
Dimensions (w/o projection) 5.47×1.58×8.35 in approx.


Corporación Multi Inversiones – CMI's – business activities first started in 1936 in the flour mill business unit under the name Molino Excelsior. The main focus of this business unit is to develop the wheat and cereal value chain by producing wheat and corn flour, pasta, cookies and crackers.
We operate manufacturing plants in Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic.
This business unit produces and develops leading brands in the markets where we are present, resulting in our mills being counted among the most important mill groups in Latin America.
The acquisition of Molino de Harina de Trigo "Gemina" (wheat flour mill) was finalized in August 2015, in Chinandega, Nicaragua.


text:
Twin Cities Game Stores Welcome Guilds of Ravnica
Posted in Events, Games By Trisha Renken-Sebastian On October 26, 2018
A crowd gathers in anticipation of an April 2018 Magic prerelease event at Dreamers Vault in Minneapolis. Geeking Out About
For anyone who has ever considered learning to play Magic: The Gathering (MTG), there are few ways that are better than to attend a prerelease.
Every year, Wizards of the Coast releases at least two or three expansions to its 25-year-old collectible card game and sponsors events both online and in person at game stores across the globe. These events are designed to show players how to use the new mechanics that are being introduced into the set, give them players to play against, learn how to build their own deck, and then begin their collection with 90 cards for a discount over the regular cost per booster pack.
The most recent prerelease was for Guilds of Ravnica (GRN), a set whose cards and story line are a reference to a plane of existence that was introduced in 2005 and continues an epic battle against the elder dragon planeswalker known as Nicol Bolas. The plane of Ravnica and its bicolor-coded guilds were very popular when they were first introduced, and so it was no surprise to either me or fellow Twin Cities Geek contributor Michael Lee to see many people attending the events at both Dreamers Vault in Minneapolis and Lodestone Coffee and Games in Minnetonka on September 29, 2018.
Michael chose to go to Lodestone for his first event at noon because in addition to it being a game store, it's also a coffee shop. Dreamers Vault has been my friendly local game store since I moved to south Minneapolis three years ago, which is why I was there at 9:00 a.m. Both of us felt very welcomed by the tournament organizers and all of the events we were in ran smoothly. They were even able to accommodate my mobility issues at Dreamers Vault by ensuring that I had a fixed seat for the tournament, so I didn't have to constantly move tables or stand around to wait for my next game.
I was also very pleased to note that there were more than a handful of female-presenting players there on that Saturday, as when I was there in April for the Dominaria midnight prerelease, I believe there were only two or three. So far, that seems to tell me that the regular players who attend midnight prereleases at Dreamers Vault are going to be predominantly male. There were a few women at Michael's initial prereleases at Lodestone, as well, including the women of Good Luck High Five (formerly Magic: The Amateuring), but it did become even more male dominated as the night went on. Lodestone has also accommodated accessibility needs for its events and has visibly appeared to be LGBTQA+ friendly and have nonwhite players in its events.
For GRN, the guilds that were prominently featured were Boros (with white and red spells), Dimir (blue and black), Golgari (black and green), Izzet (blue and red), and Selesnya (white and green). At the prerelease, players were given prerelease packs that contained five packs of regular booster cards and one pack of cards specifically themed to the guild of their choice, with which you would build a deck with at least 40 cards in it. Between both of us, we played all five guilds over the course of five events (three for Michael, two for me). Here are our initial impressions.
Michael chose the Golgari for his first sealed pool, and I ended up making one with the rest of the cards from my first pool. While he ended up liking his deck the least out of the three events he played, I loved my first Golgari deck the most. The new Undergrowth mechanic, which gives certain creatures and spells bonus effects based on the number of creature cards in your graveyard, rewards folks who use their initial low-powered creatures to block damage from your opponent. Michael only won the last round of four in this event; he thinks that Undergrowth is the most difficult mechanic to make use of. The all-star in my initial Golgari deck was Izoni, Thousand-Eyed, and during one between-rounds game, I managed to use it to great effect to create 8 2/2 Insect tokens, which swarmed all over my opponent. As a Tammy player who likes to use effects and overwhelm people with large creatures or multiples of creatures, that felt so satisfying.
The Izzet guild was my choice for my first prerelease, and Michael's for his second. Both of us were huge fans of the Jump-start mechanic, where you can play either an Instant or a Sorcery from your graveyard for its same mana cost if you discard one card from your hand. For some reason, the deck I built started out strong by winning me my first game and my first round, but it faltered as I went through the rest of my first prerelease. Michael did better with his Izzet deck because he found it to be a mechanic that taught you more about the game and what makes one more card useful than the other one. In particular, he found the card Direct Current to be surprisingly effective. When you first see the card, you might think it weaker than other direct damage spells due to its casting cost, but the Jump-start mechanic made it valuable. Also, Expansion // Explosion gave him a win because he was able to force his opponent to draw the rest of their cards.
Michael ended his prerelease day with the Dimir guild, while I only splashed my decks with cards from the guild. The reason why Dimir was Michael's favorite of the guilds was that the longer he played, the more comfortable he felt with the cards and mechanics. His win–loss record was the strongest with his Dimir deck, but we both agree that there are many great cards in Dimir, like Dimir Informant. Their mechanic for this expansion is Surveil, where you can both reorder the top of your library so you can draw the cards you need for your next turn or place them in your graveyard. Combined with the Undergrowth mechanic, one could make a really powerful Sultai (blue, black, and green) deck.
I chose Selesnya for my second prerelease pool, but I wound up feeling very underwhelmed with it. Convoke is a returning mechanic from the very first Ravnica: City of Guilds set, where you can tap a creature already on your side of the battlefield to pay for one colorless mana of a different creature with the word "Convoke" on it. However, because I didn't play in the Magic 2015 Core Set prerelease, I ended up not using the cards I put into my Abzan (green, white, and black) deck to their best effect. Michael chose not to do anything with his Selesnya cards, which in the long run might have been a good idea.
Overall, even though I lost more games than I won, I am fairly proud of how I built my decks and how I played out my spells. Thanks to my experiences playing MTG Arena, I felt more confident in plays I was making and was only a little tilted out after my third round of the second prerelease without a single game win. Conversely, Michael had a great day overall because the longer he played, the more he won.
Both of us agree that Guilds of Ravnica is a fun set, and if you're interested in going to a prerelease for the next set (Ravnica Allegiance on January 25, 2019), both Lodestone and Dreamers Vault are great locations to open up your prerelease packs.
For more of our thoughts on Guilds of Ravnica and to see some of the cards in action, you can watch the video below.
Trisha Renken-Sebastian
Trisha started writing about feminism in geek spaces in high school and hasn't stopped doing it yet. A former editor for Sequential Tart and Wizard: Anime Insider, she now writes about the intersection of various geek spaces here and on her own blog, GeekingOutAbout.com.
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text:
package org.cybergarage.x3d.util;

import org.cybergarage.x3d.field.SFRotation;

public class Geometry3D {

	static public void initialize(float vector[]) {
		vector[0] = 0.0f;
		vector[1] = 0.0f;
		vector[2] = 0.0f;
	}

	static public void normalize(float vector[]) {
		float mag = (float)Math.sqrt(vector[0]*vector[0] + vector[1]*vector[1] + vector[2]*vector[2]);
		if (mag != 0.0f) {
			vector[0] /= mag;
			vector[1] /= mag;
			vector[2] /= mag;
		}
		else {
			vector[0] = 0.0f;
			vector[1] = 0.0f;
			vector[2] = 1.0f;
		}
	}

	static public void scale(float vector[], float factor) {
		vector[0] *= factor;
		vector[1] *= factor;
		vector[2] *= factor;
	}

	static public void scale(float vector[], float factor[]) {
		vector[0] *= factor[0];
		vector[1] *= factor[1];
		vector[2] *= factor[2];
	}

	static public void scale(float vector[], float factorx, float factory, float factorz) {
		vector[0] *= factorx;
		vector[1] *= factory;
		vector[2] *= factorz;
	}

	static public float length(float vector[]) {
		return (float)Math.sqrt(vector[0]*vector[0]+vector[1]*vector[1]+vector[2]*vector[2]);
	}

	static public float distance(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		float x = vector1[0] - vector2[0];
		float y = vector1[1] - vector2[1];
		float z = vector1[2] - vector2[2];
		return (float)Math.sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z);
	}

	static public void inverse(float vector[]) {
		vector[0] = -vector[0];
		vector[1] = -vector[1];
		vector[2] = -vector[2];
	}

	static public void add(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		vector1[0] += vector2[0];
		vector1[1] += vector2[1];
		vector1[2] += vector2[2];
	}

	static public void add(float vector1[], float vector2[], float resultVector[]) {
		resultVector[0] = vector1[0] + vector2[0];
		resultVector[1] = vector1[1] + vector2[1];
		resultVector[2] = vector1[2] + vector2[2];
	}

	static public void sub(float vector1[], float vector2[], float resultVector[]) {
		resultVector[0] = vector1[0] - vector2[0];
		resultVector[1] = vector1[1] - vector2[1];
		resultVector[2] = vector1[2] - vector2[2];
	}

	static public void sub(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		vector1[0] -= vector2[0];
		vector1[1] -= vector2[1];
		vector1[2] -= vector2[2];
	}

	static public void rotate(float point[], float frame[][]) {
		float x = point[0]*frame[0][0]+point[1]*frame[1][0]+point[2]*frame[2][0];
		float y = point[0]*frame[0][1]+point[1]*frame[1][1]+point[2]*frame[2][1];
		float z = point[0]*frame[0][2]+point[1]*frame[1][2]+point[2]*frame[2][2];
		point[0] = x;
		point[1] = y;
		point[2] = z;
	}

	static public void rotate(float point[], float x, float y, float z, float angle) {
		SFRotation rotation = new SFRotation(x, y, z, angle);
		rotation.multi(point);
	}

	static public void rotate(float point[], float orientation[]) {
		SFRotation rotation = new SFRotation(orientation);
		rotation.multi(point);
	}

	static public void getVector(float point1[], float point2[], float resultVector[]) {
		sub(point1, point2, resultVector);
		normalize(resultVector);
	}

	static public float[] getVector(float point1[], float point2[]) {
		float resultVector[] = new float[3];
		getVector(point1, point2, resultVector);
		return resultVector;
	}

	static public void getCross(float vector1[], float vector2[], float resultVector[]) {
		resultVector[0] = vector1[1]*vector2[2] - vector1[2]*vector2[1];
		resultVector[1] = vector1[2]*vector2[0] - vector1[0]*vector2[2];
		resultVector[2] = vector1[0]*vector2[1] - vector1[1]*vector2[0];
		normalize(resultVector);
	}

	static public float[] getCross(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		float resultVector[] = new float[3];
		getCross(vector1, vector2, resultVector);
		return resultVector;
	}

	static public void getNormalVector(float point[][], float resultVector[]) {
		float vector1[] = new float[3];
		float vector2[] = new float[3];
		for (int n=0; n<3; n++) {
			vector1[n] = point[2][n] - point[1][n];
			vector2[n] = point[0][n] - point[1][n];
		}
		getCross(vector1, vector2, resultVector);
	}

	static public float[] getNormalVector(float point[][]) {
		float resultVector[] = new float[3];
		getNormalVector(point, resultVector);
		return resultVector;
	}

	static public float getDot(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		return vector1[0]*vector2[0] + vector1[1]*vector2[1] + vector1[2]*vector2[2];
	}

	static public float getAngle(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		float angle;
		angle = getDot(vector1, vector2) / (length(vector1) * length(vector2));
		angle = (float)Math.acos(angle);
		return angle;
	}

	static public boolean equals(float vector1[], float vector2[]) {
		if (vector1[0] == vector2[0] && vector1[1] == vector2[1] && vector1[2] == vector2[2])
			return true;
		else
			return false;
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Following on from my last post about setting, I was wondering, how much detail is too much detail? When I say detail, I mean 'stolen-from-reality' detail as in shop names as opposed to invented detail. I'm also talking about writing as opposed to reading when do you stop taking from true life and giving with your imagination? If a school is part of your story, should you invent it in your area, or should you describe one of the schools that already exists there? But then if you do this, and you need a scene that includes a maths teacher, how can you make sure it's crystal clear that the maths teacher in your story is completely invented and not based on an actual maths teacher that teaches there (it's harder when you're actually still in the school, you notice their mannerisms creeping into your characters!)? You don't want to make the gap between reality and imagination so obvious that everyone reading goes, "hold on, I believed it up until there, but what the hell?", but instead make sure people don't bring you to court for writing about them, because it's clear they aren't in your story.
This also applies to local events that take place… should you actually name bands that placed at a big concert, or should you throw in a few random bands, or should you completely invent them? Someone just get elected president, and you need them for your story: should you use their name or invent it? For me, as a reader, I know it would sort of ruin the realism of a story if the author put Philip J Keohane (just a random name, first I thought of) as the president of Ireland in a story set in the present or past.
Also, as a reader, I love the warm, "Oh! I know this place!" feeling you get when you recognise a setting in a book (the whole way through Jasper Winn's Paddle, I was fuzzy feeling from knowing it all, even though it doesn't really count in this discussion as it wasn't fiction).
The whole, "write what you know" mantra comes to mind: if you plan on really saturating your story in the setting, you're probably off really knowing that setting well first. Though it is a little limiting, it opens up the necessity to travel to research you book – a good excuse! Honestly though, I know how annoying it is to have someone write about a place you know well when it's obvious they don't know what it's really like: the number of books that are set in Ireland that are written from what tourists experience without any notion of what life here is really like isn't even funny. I mean, half the world now believes we still all whitewash our houses.
So, what's your opinion on the depth of local detail you can include in your story?
So in my post on cultural context, I discussed on the importance of social setting in a text, and of course how social context is affected by geographical setting. In this post, I'd like to delve a little deeper into the impact of geographical setting on a reader, as opposed to its impact on the plot.
Where is your favourite novel set? Is it in an imaginary land of fantastical beasts, such as the medieval town of The Castle (and the surrounding lands) where the Septimus Heap books are set? Is it set in a place that is closely tied to reality and geographical locations, but is slightly askew and cannot be found on an actual map, such as Hogsmeade? Or is it seeped in realism, based in a certain place, for example the West of Ireland, but isn't actually a geographical location (but no one but people from the area would actually know this) such as the small rural town JB Kean's Field is based in? Is it set in an actual, real location that you could find on a map and go to visit, if you so wished, such as the books in The Twilight Saga?
Setting plays a huge part in setting the tone of the books, but what impact does it have directly on the reader? I think it depends on what type of reader you are: whether you like to be completely immersed in the world of the book, or if you like to appreciate the story from a bit of a distance. This reading experience is closely linked with the way your favourite books are written: immersive readers tend to prefer first-person narrative, while observationalists may choose third-person.
I stand up willing to be proven wrong, but I think immersive, first-person-loving readers settings saturated in realism, such as those Stephenie Meyer writes (both in The Host and in The Twilight Saga), that exist in the actual world and are true to life down to minute detail, such as the names of the nearby roads, forests, and beaches. Observationalist readers tend to prefer imaginative settings, often not based in our world, where books such as Angie Sage's Magyk are set. Preferring third person, they do not feel the same need to be part of the story that immersive readers do: they do not need to feel that the plot could happen to them, in this world, right now.
Then there is the middle ground, where most books that are mainly about the dramas of daily life lie. They are based in an area (East Coast, USA; rural France; a village in Norway, ect.) but the place names do not actually exist. The setting can be quite specific, down to a state or province, but still be made up. People who aren't from the area or who don't have local knowledge probably wouldn't know the difference, but these books can sometimes lack a highly detailed description of the setting (which may work with the book just fine), as they don't have the physical place to describe nor the compulsion to imagine every last detail of a fantastical land.
Where does that leave people who love books about dystopian societies set in the future? I'm open to suggestions! Where is your favourite book set? How do you think the setting affects you as a reader?


Why Won't You Grow?!: NaBloWriMo #6: Here's to Mary!
Do you have a sister? Is she older than you? Have you grown up with her? Did the two of you play together when you were younger, spending lots of time walking to school or playing imaginary games on the weekend?
Did you sort of lose touch with her while the two of you were making the transition from elementary to middle school (but she did it before you)? Did you grow apart even more as she became a "girl" and you became a "boy"? Did you not worry about it so much, because, well . . . you were a boy and a young one at that. You weren't thinking much about those sorts of things then.
And you were worried about your own stuff most of the time anyway. But she was always there. And you spend many family trips with her even so. Do you remember the camping trips? Do you remember all the hiking and the rain? Remember when the bugs kept getting attracted to the lanterns at night and how she hated having those bit flapping wings close to her face? Remember how she shrieked and ran away time and time again?
Do you remember how, when you got older again, you sort of reconnected in jr. high and high school? Remember, she had the car, right? And remember how she had to drive you around in the mornings and afternoons? I'll bet you haven't forgotten cramming into the small car with her and her friends, listening to 80s rock and rap at high volumes, going here and there. You never minded squeezing in the backseat, because you got to hang out with the older, cool kids.
Remember how much fun it was to hang out together in college? Things had changed again and you were closer to being friends than just "brother" and "sister." You were both older and figuring out how to be YOU on your own. And wasn't it fun to hang out together on your own? And even though you've both grown up and moved on to your own families and lives, isn't it nice when you have the chance to get back together again. Isn't it great to see her laugh, sometimes to laugh so hard that she bends over, looking for lost breath, then lifting back up again to wipe away tears of happiness? Those are the best times.
When you have to go apart again, isn't it nice to give her a hug, an honest, loving hug of friendship and family? Stop and think about that. Aren't you lucky to have a great sister like her? And aren't you lucky to stay friends with her, even now? That is a great thing.
So, even though these thoughts are short, rushed, and not deserving of reflecting who she really is . . . here's to Mary! Congratulations on who you have been and who you are and who you are yet to be. Thanks for being my sister, in all of the ways you were and are. I love you a lot! Happy birthday to you.


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Immigration attorney at center of fight to protect other DACA recipients
By: Chris Stewart
Luis Cortes Romero has been at the center of the fight to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.
"So you're not allowed cameras in the Supreme Court, so whoever was the sketch artist here, that's apparently supposed to be me with my thick eyebrows," Romero said about a painting from the day he was in the Supreme Court in 2017 when the Trump administration moved to end the program.
Romero is now a managing partner at NOVO Legal, an immigration law firm that has offices near Seattle and Denver.
There are more than 500,000 DACA recipients in the U.S., including Romero.
"So I was born in Mexico, and I was brought to the United States when I was one or one or two years old," Romero said. "My memories come from photos, being there, being baptized and that's basically it, so I have no memory of what it's like there."
Romero grew up in the Bay Area of California.
"I really considered myself a Californian," Romero said.
His story is an example of how complex the DACA program and the debate over its future can be.
Even though Romero was brought to the United States before he could walk, his parents, who were undocumented, did it illegally. In the eyes of the government, he is also undocumented.
Priot to DACA, Romero said he often worried about being deported.
DACA recipients need to meet specific requirements like entering the U.S. before their 16th birthday, but not turning 31 before the program started in 2012.
They need to have completed high school or have their GED and have no serious criminal convictions.
"DACA really only gives you a work permit. It's a promise by the government that so long you play by the rules and don't get into any trouble, you're allowed to stay here," Romero said. "It's not citizenship, it's not legal permit of residency or green card so we don't have the ability to vote or hold office or anything like that."
DACA allowed Romero to pass the bar.
"It took this weight off my shoulders that I didn't realize was there until it's gone," Romero said.
His relief comes with an expiration date. Every two years, he needs to reapply to be able to stay in the U.S. legally.
"I renewed it in May," Romero said. "My two-year lease in America is valid for at least two years."
DACA doesn't offer a pathway to citizenship.
"I get a lot of questions about, like why don't you just apply? And I can guarantee you that no one wants to live like this. If there was a way to apply, we would apply," Romero says.
Critics of the program say DACA encourages illegal immigration. They claim it was created illegally because then-President Barack Obama bypassed Congress. The program has faced several legal challenges.
"We don't know what's going to happen, and it reverts back to what is our life going to look like five years from now? I don't know, man, I'm trying to look just two years from now," Romero said.
Perhaps the ultimate question for Romero and his clients, many of whom are also DACA recipients, is what the reality would be if the program went away.
"And there is the other extreme of if, you know, are my clients going to get deported, and me with them? You know, it's a very, it's a very real, but sobering conversation that I have to have with them," Romero said.
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It's rained a lot this year.
We've had a deluge of water plummet from the sky.
I've only lived here for two years but this much precipitation seems odd for Southern California.
We're starting to find the cracks in our buildings. Things grow in the dark places under benches and rocks, in the nooks and crannies we didn't even know our homes had until we detected a strange odor and opened a cabinet to find it full of green.
I had a teacher. Ms. Something-or-other. I remember she was a Ms. and not a Mrs. more than I remember her name because she rarely said her name but she told us all the time about her failed marriage.
We we're in sixth grade. We just wanted to lay on the floor and watch the overhead fan spin. If you watched carefully you could trace the individual blades with your eyes and it would look sort of like it wasn't moving at all.
Ms. Something-or-other told me that a lot was a bad word because it didn't mean anything. I told her it did. She asked me what it meant. I just said more than some.
Better, she opined, to use words like many or several. These words, she told us, had meaning. They had a more concrete value than the lackadaisical a lot.
We didn't care, though. We just wanted to go catch coquina shells on the beach. They would all sink back under the watery sand when the tide went it. If pressed, I would say there were a lot of them.
Ms. Something-or-other probably wouldn't have liked that.
But we were children of summer.
South West Florida didn't have seasons back then. It probably still doesn't. It has summers. There is, starting from the top of the year, the pollen summer, followed by the wet summer, followed by the hot summer, followed by the good summer, the greatest of them all, dry and temperate, sometimes even cold.
The good summer was nice even though all of the old people came down and clogged-up out roads. Sometimes they would drive the wrong direction on I-75. That wasn't much fun.
We didn't care, though. Instead we were in the mall, eating pretzels and chasing the girls around.
I had never understood summer or spring. In music class we would wear romantic orchestras blasting out lovely melodies in honor of the rosy spring and verdant summer, but none of us ever got it.
"Why do they like summer so much?" I would ask Joe Quinn.
"It's just a bunch of rain," he would say, her nervous eyes narrowed in skepticism as a flute tweeted and twilled like a bird.
"You can't even go outside," I added over the oboes.
Maybe that's what they liked. Orchestras spent most of their time inside. All they needed was an excuse.
I went to college in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham is a place that has four season, but their all terrible except for fall. There is so much pollen in spring hat I could see it wafting across the quad in great yellow cloud, engulfing freshman fooling enough to try to enjoy the good weather. They would come out the other end on all fours, coughing and clawing at the ground, begging God to open up their air passages. Tears streaked their faces.
Summer had the heat of Los Angeles with the humidity of Florida and the bugs of the Amazon basin. You could only go out at night, and my, those nights were magical. We would prowl around the quad, smoking cigarillos and laughing off the buzz we picked up at the J Clyde.
Sometimes we wold kick things, things like lamp posts or tree trunks, not out of malice, but simple to test if they were really there and this all was't part of a dream or movie.
Fall was the only tolerable time of year, but it lasted for about two weeks in mid-November.
Winter was cold enough to bite but warm enough to rain. It would be wet and 43. It felt like the heat-death of the universe.
I moved to Los Angeles and expected eternal summer. What I got was perpetual drought. Sometimes it was a cold drought. Sometimes it was a hot one. Most of the time it was a pleasant drought, like the countryside had gotten into a classy hospice.
But this year it rained.
If pressed, I would have to say a lot.
People don't talk about the drought anymore.
They talk about the unrelenting rain and the perpetual cold. They talk about the holes in the roofs and the green in their cabinets and the brown water-stains on their ceilings and their wet bike seats and how there's no reason to go outside if you're going to get wet.
They talk about dreams of summer.
For the first time in my life, I'm looking forward to spring and summer.
For the first time in my life, I get why the musicians played.
And you wanted to kick something.
When you live in Los Angeles and you tell people you walked somewhere, they look at you like you just told them you own five copies of Mein Kampf, one of which is signed.
"Why?" Is almost always their first question.
"Are you okay?" People sometimes ask, as if you something might have slain you while you perambulated around the city.
"Are you crazy?" Still others say.
L.A. is a city of cars. You need one of two things to get around: a vehicle or a lot of extra time. A ten minute car trip can take an hour on the bus.
The buses smell. The people on the buses smell, but in a different way then the bus. The places where you wait for the buses smell, but in a way other than the other two, so that on any different bus trip you have to put up with at least three different kinds of smells, all different, but all similarly colored in varying shades of urine and body odor.
So when my registration expired and I was waiting for my tax returns to re-register my car, I decided to not ride the bus, but to walk places. I had become very hermit-like and inactive over the winter months. This happened because I wrote a novel (I'm now in the process of revising it and preparing to send queries to agencies!) and any free time I had not writing a novel was spent sleeping, working, or feeling guilty about not working on my novel.
I was fat and happy so I decided I needed to be unhappy and thin. I would walk to work. It was two miles. Then I'd walk back from work. That was also two miles. All in all, I would walk four miles every day, which I judged to be a sufficient amount of exercise for someone who never exercises.
He gave me a shifty look.
Ah, my co-workers. Thou knowest me too well.
The city is different when you walk. You catch the breeze, the smells, the sounds. You get to witness first hand the furtive looks people give you as you pass them; the quick, downward glances that practically beg you not to murder them.
I don't look frightening. I have long hair and wear all black, but so do lots of people. Maybe I achieve alpha street villain status because I sing along to folk music and David Bowie as I walk down the street. Maybe that's something only crazy people do.
I waited for my refund and I walked to work. I loved it. It gave me a break form writing that I didn't have to feel guilty about. Sure, I had to leave an hour early and get home an hour late, but that didn't matter. The stress evaporated from my pores as I walked. It floated up above the power lines and past the clouds. It wafted into the stratosphere and drifted away, eventually becoming not a thing. Nothing at all.
It was a drizzle. They would have said it was spitting if I was in London.
I wasn't, so everyone said it was raining. They warned each other to drive safely and, god forbid, no matter what you do, don't go outside unless it's absolutely necessarily.
I've been all over the world and I've never met people that could be so blase about terrifying natural disasters like Earthquakes, sometimes even bragging about how they slept through it.
For a native Californian, I suppose, water is a thing that stays in the sea or comes out of sprinklers. Anything else is just unnatural, proof that the spirits are displeased with us.
The rain doesn't scare me. I'm was born in Oklahoma, a place where tornadoes wipe out whole towns.
I grew up in Florida, where the rainfall in July would bust California's drought. I've swam in the rain. I've drank in the rain. I've walked outside in the eye of a hurricane and looked up at the solid black walls of cloud and wind and lightning and water and I've laughed, not at the storm, not in any mean way, but just at how utterly bizarre it all was.
I've been on top of a mountain on the Appalachian trail during a thunderstorm. Lightning was striking so close that I thought my ears would split. There was so much electricity in the air that all of my body hair was standing at varying degrees of attention. My Dad and I avoided stepping in puddles for fear of getting blasted.
So we walked up a side of the mountain in the lightning and the rain.
So I decided to walk to work in a drizzle.
Everything is different in the rain. It's darker, not just because clouds block the sun, but also because the water stains everything it touches a darker hue of whatever it was before.
There's a smell in the air. It only happens right after a rain, or during the first rain in several days. It's a crisp smell, a clean smell. The smell is amplified in Los Angeles. The air is so dirty that when the rain knocks some of the dust and smog away it smells like you've been transported somewhere else all together.
I put on Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song" and walked to work.
It was wonderful. It was the best walk I had in a long time.
"Did you catch a ride?" Steven asked me when I got to work.
"No." I said wetly. His eyes widened.
I could hear the rain hitting the skylight thirty feet above me. The pattern was soothing in its irregularity.
The thing about rain is that it falls all over the place. It doesn't aim. It just hits a bunch of spots in the concrete. When it hits, it makes them darker, makes them smell fresh, makes them more interesting.
I ran a cross country race in the rain about ten years ago. It was at the park in the Vineyards. It was raining so hard that when I tried to breath through my mouth my lungs would fill up with water and I would have to cough it all up. I had really bad allergies and sinus problems back then so I couldn't breath through my nose.
I coughed up a lot of water that day.
I was near the back of the race. All the grass was already obliterated. Instead of a well marked path, there was just a river of mud. There was a canal to my right that was about to overflow, and I wondered what would happen to the alligators that lived in it when the canal suddenly became the whole park.
It wasn't safe to walk either. I lost traction halfway down the bridge and almost slid into the ravine over which the bridge spanned. I managed to grab the sign that said welcome to Beeson Woods, and vowed to never leave my dorm again if it was twenty eight degrees and raining.
I walked in the rain down Tottenham Court Road with my friend Erich. We popped into a pub whose name escapes me in order to rewrite his whole screenplay. We got drunk on some fine English beer and by god we did it.I still remember laughing all the way home. I turned up my collar against the stiff wind and all that was in my mind was a cup of Earl Grey and some toast with Nutella and butter.
I walked in the rain on my last day in Florida. My flight had been delayed because of the storm. It was a short walk, just down the driveway to my Dad's Nissan pickup truck. The driveway was covered in old shells we had brought in years ago. They would always get stuck between the treads in your shoes so that you'd click across our cheap tile floor.
I stopped outside the door and stood in the rain. My dad was doing something in the house. He's notoriously hard to get going, but once he's ready everyone else better be, too.
I stared down the driveway, out to Golden Gate drive. I looked over the palm trees and the pines. I remembered all the hot summers I spent walking in between them with a broom to knock down the plate-sized banana spiders who lived in our yard. I didn't want them to ambush me when I mowed the lawn.
I remembered riding the shiny black lawnmower my grandfather bought me. I remembered the sound it made as it tore up pine cones.
I almost exclusively mowed in the afternoon, and I remembered the pretty, yellow-green color the leaves would take as the setting sun blasted through their chlorophyll.
I remembered imagining whole kingdoms in the grass, and wondering what they would think of the mower as it cut the grass.
I remembered sitting at the bottom of the pool with my sister. It was raining, and we watched water drop onto the top of the water. The ripples made the sky look like quicksilver.
I remembered that the next time I came back to Florida the bank would have repossessed that old house and it would probably be torn to shreds.
I stood there and it was raining. It was raining and, for the life of me I couldn't think of a better send off.
The house might fade. The yard might disappear just like tears in the rain, but I'd remember. We'd all remember the fights and the love and the laughs and the everything all rolled into one glorious feeling.
And the best thing about that feeling is that you can take it anywhere you go. You store it up in a little box and you walk to work in the rain and you bring it with you, because when you meet Steve at work and you tell him you want a latte and he asks you if you walked in the rain and he says why you can lift the box up.
It's brown and sort of bowed out in the middle.
He asks why and you open up the box and you show him.
You know… in movies and TV whenever someone opens a box and there's something magical inside it glows gold.
I opened this one, and it was blue. Blue like water.
Blue like tears in the rain.
I had a professor tell me that that line is the sappiest line ever written in film.
You should take Viki's word for it. She a genius.
It's not sappy to me, though.
Don't take my word for it. I'm not a genius.
And I know exactly what Rutger means.
I'd like to thank My Messy World for nominating me for a blog award. I'm very bad about responding to people's awards. There's actually been a few I didn't respond to until months later and the person who gave me the award had shut down their blog.
I'd been meaning to blog for a while, but my novel keeps eating my soul. Messy World gave me a wonderful excuse to come back.
You guys should go check out her (her?) blog.
Anyway, I'll hopefully be blogging more often soon.
Maybe someone cares about that other than me.
I guess we'll find out.
Well, dear and gentle readers, I must, first and foremost, apologize for not having posted anything in the past 3 or so months. I was going to apologize for not having written anything, but as the most devout of you are surely aware, I am in a graduate screenwriting program, and have therefore written quite a few things, just not blog things.
I was doing pretty well with blog posts until we hit the production cycle last semester, which is when in a few short weeks every student directs his or her own movie, and also does every other film set position on other people's movies. It's sort of like undercover bosses, except that all the people you may have pissed off while you were the boss know exactly who you are, and their turn is coming up soon.
The most exciting thing that happened to me during this whole period happened on the first day, when, in a dusty and dank warehouse, I dropped a $60,000 lens onto the cold, hard floor. The concrete welcomed it greedily, and everyone else, the whole film crew and actors, watched it in slow motion as it tumbled from my clumsy paws. There was really nothing I could do; my arms wouldn't react fast enough. It's ironic, I thought, that the thing you are most often warned about not dropping is more often than not the thing that you drop.
And warned we had been. Every class, every day, to hold the lens securely, and cradle it, much like one would baby Jesus, unless you were a Satanist or something, and make sure the party you are passing it too has secure hold of it before you release your grip. This point was stressed again and again.
I honestly have no clue how I dropped it, I just sort of fumbled it. One moment it was in my hands, and the next moment I was curly from the three stooges, clawing desperately at a 35mm lens that had seemed to have turned into a Mexican jumping bean, and refused to stay locked in my grasp.
As fate would have it, the trajectory at which I had launched my expensive missile led it to strike my friend Joel's hip, and somehow, magically somehow, roll down his leg, like a wheel going down a hill, have a soft landing on his shoe, and then roll across the floor, where my friend John snatched it up before it could crash into a wall and shatter completely.
The room was dead silent.
"Gosh" was all I could manage to say. The director nodded in agreement. Gosh indeed. As it turns out, the lens was somehow completely fine, a godsend, and I was merely charged a fee for having someone look at it, which I'm not entirely sure I ever actually got charged.
I was so warn out come winter break that writing was the farthest thing from my mind, and then, in Januare, I loaded up on an airplane and flew across the northern Atlantic to make my new home, at least for the next three months, in old London town.
It's part of the writing program. We get sent over here to work with British playwrights and other British people. It's supposed to help our writing, but it's really been is an absolutely lovely way to write one's first complete screen play, in a fabulous city, steeped in history and time, and rich in culture.
London, I've come to find, is nearly the antithesis of Tallahassee. It feels safe where Tallahassee feel like there is death lurking around every corner. It is clean, where Tallahassee is covered in litter. It is classy, where as Tallahassee is full of bros. Not that I don't like Tallahassee. Quite the contrary, it's a fun place. I just wouldn't want to live there after I finished the program, but I wouldn't mind living in London, even during the bitterly cold winter.
What's gotten me back into blogging, you ask? Well, the answer is twofold. To put it simply, the first reason is that I'm supposed to be doing something else right now, yet another outline for my screenplay, but I'm meeting with my professor later to work out some kinks. The kinks are only at the end, but it's still an excellent excuse to not work on it.
The second reason is that the estimable Reverend Mother has nominated me for the Versatile blogger award, my third award if were counting, and we are, and I couldn't bring myself to not write a lovely thank you.
So, thanks for the award.
Dear me that took a long time. Now I have to write 7 facts about myself.
1. One time, upon leaving my house, I witnessed a possum eating another possum; on my very doorstep no less! It's one of those images you can't ever unsee, and it haunts my dreams to this day.
2. I'm living in london right now. The weathers been quite bad the past week, but it seems to be getting better. I might even go to the farmer's market!
3.I quite enjoy tea and coffee, but here in englan i've somehow been drinking more tea than coffee, I guess because it's cheaper and easier. It'll be nice to get back to florida where coffee is a plentiful as fire ants and the rain.
4. I had never seen Tarentino's from dusk till dawn until this weekend. It's quite good. You should wach it.
5. I'm an aspiring screenwriter and I care more about sports than the academy awards. Is that bad?
6. I fought a grizzly bear to the death one time. With a knife. I won't say it was easy, but I'm still here.
7.I know how to sail a sailboat.
Cool, there we go! Thanks gain, http://lifeaswedontyetknowit.wordpress.com/ for the award!
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text:
package com.jess.arms.integration;

import android.app.Application;
import android.content.Context;
import android.support.v4.app.FragmentManager;

import com.jess.arms.base.delegate.AppLifecycles;
import com.jess.arms.di.module.GlobalConfigModule;

import java.util.List;

/**
 * 此接口可以给框架配置一些参数,需要实现类实现后,并在AndroidManifest中声明该实现类
 * Created by jess on 12/04/2017 11:37
 * Contact with jess.yan.effort@gmail.com
 */

public interface ConfigModule {
    /**
     * 使用{@link GlobalConfigModule.Builder}给框架配置一些配置参数
     * @param context
     * @param builder
     */
    void applyOptions(Context context, GlobalConfigModule.Builder builder);

    /**
     * 使用{@link AppLifecycles}在Application的生命周期中注入一些操作
     * @return
     */
    void injectAppLifecycle(Context context, List<AppLifecycles> lifecycles);

    /**
     * 使用{@link Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks}在Activity的生命周期中注入一些操作
     *
     * @param context
     * @param lifecycles
     */
    void injectActivityLifecycle(Context context, List<Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks> lifecycles);

    /**
     * 使用{@link FragmentManager.FragmentLifecycleCallbacks}在Fragment的生命周期中注入一些操作
     *
     * @param context
     * @param lifecycles
     */
    void injectFragmentLifecycle(Context context, List<FragmentManager.FragmentLifecycleCallbacks> lifecycles);
}