Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

It is lamentable that theres no famous dessert named tau, Michael Hartl told me recently at a sunny, stylish caf in Venice, California. He reluctantly admitted that pi, the constant approximately equal to 3.14, has this one advantage over tau, a number he introduced to replace it.

Pastry puns aside, Hartl has achieved minor internet fame for arguing that tau is superior to its vastly better known cousin. In his popular 2010 Tau Manifesto, inspired by Bob Palais 2001 essay Pi Is Wrong, Hartl posits that pi, the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter, creates unnecessary complications in many formulas. A more appropriate number to work with when it comes to circles would be 2pi, or about 6.28. He named that number tau, and declared June 28 (6/28) to be Tau Day.

The circle constant ought to be defined in terms of radius, Hartl told me over the chatter of other caf patrons. By choosing to define the circle constant in terms of the diameter, you introduce this factor of 2.

Full disclosure: pi is my favorite number and the one I am most known for writing about (i.e. while on staff at CNN in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014). To obliterate the use of pi, first introduced as a symbol with its present meaning by William Jones in 1706, would upend more than 300 years of mathematical notation. But I respect how deeply Hartl has thought about tau and the benefits it carries. For instance: a quarter circle is tau/4 radians instead of the current pi/2 radians, which could be seen as a more simple and elegant way to define sections of circles. (The lengthy manifesto has more in-depth pro-tau discussions, and there is also a Pi Manifesto rebuttal.)

Hartl chose tau to represent 2pi because it nicely ties in with the Greek word tornos, meaning turn, and looks like a pi with one leg instead of two. But he is not the first to turn to the letter tau to represent an influential idea. Since I first read the manifesto, Ive noticed that this Greek letter has popped up in several unrelated but groundbreaking scientific discoveries, as well as formulas that engineers commonly use today. In fact, the colorful threads of tau form an intricate fabric of cutting edge-scientific inquiry.

Tau Protein

In 1975, Marc Kirschner was interested in microtubules, tiny tubes that help give structure to cells. While exploring these small formations in pig brain cells, Kirschner and his graduate students at Princeton University isolated a protein no one had described before. His student Murray Weingarten led the discovery paper, but Kirschner chose the name for it: Tau.

The researchers realized that the protein acts like a glue that holds together the microtubules, whose building blocks are another protein called tubulin. But in 1975, they had no idea of the implications for neurology. Other scientists later discovered that polymers made of tau form neurofibrillary tangles, structures found in the brain cells of patients with Alzheimers disease, prefrontal dementias and other neurodegenerative conditions. The collection of diseases associated with these tangles is now called tauopathies.

Interest has soared in exploring taus role in these diseases. It is now one of the two most important biomarkers for identifying Alzheimers pathology, and many researchers hope it will be a clue to treatment, too.

Kirschner, now at Harvard, has been asked many times about his reasons for the name.

I was looking for something that evoked tubulinso, the Greek letter for Tand I wanted a name that didnt presuppose that I understood at that time exactly how it worked, he said. While we know a lot more about tau now than we did 42 years, we still dont know everythingso, its OK that that the name seems to evoke some amount of mystery, he said.

Tau Lepton

The same year that Kirschners group published their tau protein discovery, 1975, researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (now called the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory), in a group led by the late physicist Martin Perl, were on the road to a groundbreaking discovery of their own. Coincidentally, it would be called the tau lepton.

Right now the tau protein is probably more famous than the tau lepton, although Im sure for many years it was the other way around, Kirschner said. It was, for the record, the tau lepton that netted Perl the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics.

A lepton is a type of elementary particle that does not feel the strong force, the interactions that hold protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of the atom. Electrons, negatively charged particles orbiting the nucleus, are perhaps the most famous leptons. By the 1970s, scientists had additionally identified charged leptons called muons, and neutral leptons called electron neutrinos and muon neutrinos.

Then, at SLAC, indications of a new lepton emerged. It was more than 3,500 times more massive than an electron, and decayed in about 10-13 seconds. At first, the team called it the U particle, where U stood for unknown, Gary J. Feldman, now a physics professor at Harvard, wrote in 1993. But once they figured out it was a heavy lepton, Feldman reminded Perl that it should have a real name.

Everyone felt that a lower case Greek letter was called for, in analogy with the , Feldman wrote, referring to the muon particle. The problem was that most good Greek letters were already in use.

The group eventually narrowed down their search to lambda and tau. Lambda had never been used as the name for a specific particle. But tau could stand for triton, the Greek word for third, reflecting this particles status as the third charged lepton. Counting against it: Tau had previously been used as part of the name for a particular decay of a particle called a kaon. When the scientists asked their secretary which would be more aesthetic, she chose tau. I remember this as the final piece of evidence that caused us to adopt tau as the name, Feldman wrote. Perl then introduced the name in 1977 at a physics conference in the French Alps, and it has stuck ever since.

The story wasnt over, though, because physics is full of symmetry. The Standard Model of Physics predicted that each charged lepton had a neutral counterpart: A tau lepton couldnt exist if there werent also a tau neutrino. In 2000, a group at Fermilab led by Byron Lundberg used the Tevatron accelerator to find the elusive particle. Slamming protons into a block of tungsten yielded 100 trillion neutrinos, just nine of which were tau neutrinos (and while theres no pastry called tau, the tau neutrino was discovered at an experiment called Direct Observation of Nu Taua.k.a. DONUT).

Lundberg, for his part, hasnt thought much about the name tauit would be all the same to him if tau had been chosen from a dartboard with Greek letters, he said. In our business, there are so many designations for particlesyou just call it what its called.

Other Uses

The letter tau has many other uses in physics. Equations that need to differentiate time as measured by an observer, coordinate time, use tau to represent a movement through time as measured with respect to a moving object, called proper time. Proper time is independent of a stationary onlookers clock. Einstein used the letter tau in his 1905 special relativity paper, describing how two synchronized clocks should show different times if one moves at some appreciable fraction of the speed of light and then returns. In this case, tau would be the time by which the traveling clock has slowed.

Tau is also used in some contexts to represent the golden ratio, defined as half of 1 + the square root of 5. This number, about 1.618, has shown up all over art and nature, including in defining the shapes of nautilus shells and plants with spiral forms in their leaves or petals. According to Wolfram MathWorld, the tau usage comes from the Greek word tome, meaning to cut. But the more common Greek letter for the same number is phi, as an homage to the Greek sculptor Phidias who used the golden ratio in many works.

Perhaps the greatest conflict with introducing a number called tau is that, in engineering, tau also stands for torque, a rotational force. Torque involves circular motion, which must involve a circle constant, so those formulas would get hairier if each 2pi got replaced with tau, too. But Hartl, who holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, effortlessly listed several examples where the same letter stands for two different things in a single equation.

I think people underestimate how good physicists, engineers and mathematicians are at dealing with that kind of notational ambiguity, Hartl said.

Tau as 2pi

Tau as the ratio of circumference to radius hasnt been in the nerd zeitgeist for nearly as long as these other, more official usages of the Greek letter (and there are others, like Tau Ceti and all of the other stars that have Tau as part of their names). So far the American Mathematical Society has not changed its pi-ous ways, and pi is still largely the constant that professionals and students alike use for undertaking calculations involving circles. Hartl is serious enough to give tau talks and update his website with an annual State of the Tau. But he has no intention of making tau advocacy a full-time job, and doesnt want it to be his only legacy (he is the founder of Learn Enough to Be Dangerous and author of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial).

Still, the tau movement has sparked tangible interest. MIT now announces admissions decisions on Pi Day (3/14) at Tau Time (6:28), and a beer has emerged called Key Lime Tau. The popular web comics XKCD and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal have both featured tau. If you type tau/2 into Google, youll get a calculator with the correct response: 3.14159265359.

Unlike the taus of science, Hartl ultimately considers the number tau a social hack. It taps into the natural human desire to one-up other people and rise in a dominance hierarchy, he said. A manifesto about math, spanning more than 8,000 words and attacking a beloved number associated with tasty treats on March 14, is ample ammunition for geeks to outgeek each other.

Im sure it would not have been as well received if I hadnt baked those ingredients into the cake...

...or the pie! we said together.

See the article here:

The Tao of Tau - Scientific American (blog)

The last Labour leader to win a general election resigned as Prime Minister 10 years ago today.

Tony Blair took his final session of Prime Ministers Questions at the despatch box and said: I wish everyone, friend or foe, well and that is that, the end.

A decade on, its clear this was more than the end of a premiership. It was the end of a political age that is radically different to the one we inhabit today.

Gordon Brown had spent years dreaming of how he would lead Britain from No 10 but the financial crash and the mission to rescue the economy defined his tenure. David Cameron and Nick Clegg presided over austerity measures and Theresa May now hopes to oversee Britains departure from the European Union this is not the future Mr Blair will have wanted for Britain.

It would be fascinating if he allowed a team of scientists to attach sensors to him to measure whether he gets more riled by the prospect of Brexit or the sight of Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour party.

Its doubtful whether Mr Blair will spend much time today thinking back to his final hours in Downing St. One of the traits of true political animals is that they rarely engage in self-analysis and much prefer to pound forward.

There is clear evidence the triple election-winner wants to stage another great disruption in politics, and not just in the UK.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is advertising for a managing editor to take forward its key messages, one of which is that there is an urgent need for a new agenda to provide radical but sensible answers to challenges including the rise of a false populism.

This populism, according to the institute, represents a convergence of the political left and right around isolationism and protectionism.

Whether it is President Trump trashing trade deals or Ukip championing Brexit, Mr Blairs vision for the world is being challenged on multiple fronts. He wants to fight back.

He plans to use his institute to revitalise the centre ground through a corpus of new thinking.

This zeal to shape the future contrasts with how George Bush spends his time. The ex-President does a lot of painting and is winning steadily more positive praise for his portraits.

Mr Blair is not looking for a hobby. The question is how big a bang he wants to make.

This ardent pro-European once looked destined to lead the campaign to take Britain into the euro. Instead, he is now watching the Tories David Davis helm Brexit negotiations.

Mr Blair persuaded Labour to abandon its commitment to nationalisation ahead of his first landslide election victory but admirers of Marx now hold positions of power at the top of the party.

He must look around for younger talent who could champion the type of policies he put at the centre of his reform agenda in the pre-Iraq years. Mr Blair wanted to harness the energy and resources of the best of the private sector for the common good.

He shredded socialist orthodoxy and fought for foundation hospitals, academy schools and even introduced tuition fees to get cash into the university sector. It is still remarkable that a party that had been led by Michael Foot as recently as 1983 went on this neoliberal adventure.

Welsh Labour distanced itself from such policies with its decision to let clear red water flow between Cardiff and London. But during the recent election campaign Mr Corbyns Labour shadow cabinet looked to the left of the Welsh Government.

If Mr Blair wants inspiration he may gaze across the Channel and marvel at how Emmanuel Macron quickly founded a proudly pro-EU party, trounced the National Front, won the presidency and then saw his supporters storm parliament.

His institute exists to support those in the active front line of politics but he may struggle to find a British Macron around Westminster.

David Miliband has become New Labours prince across the water. From his base in New York he leads the International Rescue Committee, one of the worlds most respected refugee agencies.

What would happen if Mr Blair gave his old aide a call and urged him to come back across the Atlantic and start a new party of radical centrism?

It would not take long to raise the cash to start a pro-business party that sees a key role for the private sector in helping the NHS and social services meet the challenge of caring for an ageing population. The real cost would be a psychological one.

Britains remaining Blairites may loath what has happened to their party but when they were at the helm they never thought they were betraying Keir Hardie or Aneurin Bevan. Rather, they believed they were taking forward Labours finest values and using the power of prosperity to advance redistribution and an opportunity revolution.

Activists throughout the different factions of the Labour family see their party as one of the greatest engines for social progress Britain, and the world, has ever known. It is one thing to fight to reclaim the party it is quite another to try and replace it.

Mr Blair, a maestro of political marketing must also understand that he is among the most divisive figures in UK politics. If he does want to help a new movement transform the zeitgeist, one of the best things he can do is stay in the background.

And if he does find himself once more at the centre of national attention, it is easy to imagine his old ally Peter Mandelson whispering some sage advice in his ear before a TV interview: Dont call it a comeback.

Go here to read the rest:

It's 10 years today since the last Labour leader to win a general election quit as PM - WalesOnline

Getty Images/ E! Illustration

If television audiences were to turn on CMT right about...now, they would see a very familiar face onNashville.Rachel Bilsonhas officially joined the cast of the country crooner show in her first role sinceHart of Dixie wrapped. She'll be playing the chief strategy officer of the show's Highway 65 Records, a character that she described to E! News as a "strong, business-savvy woman."The actress has a five-episode arc planned for the drama, but industry observers and fans alike can't help but feel like it's the start of something big: A return to the screen, if you will, and an opportunity to come full-circle in the decade since she officially retiredThe O.C.'s Summer Roberts.

And when those same audiences start channel surfing (during commercial breaks, of course) they'll realize that Bilson is part of a movement. That all of the most popular (and fan-favorite) lady stars of the 2000s (if they were a band or a sports team they might call themselves the Aughts A-Listers) are in the middle of what can only be described as a heyday.

There's Bilson and her country revival, of course.Alexis Bledelbrought back her belovedGilmore Girls and is also catching critic and general public attention of the chillingHandmaid's Tale. And Leighton Meesterhas her first series regular gig since Blair Waldorf simultaneously charmed and terrified the world onGossip Girl. The woman behind the most famous eye roll in history has been largely off the airwaves since 2012, so her turn on Fox'sMaking Historyis something to be celebrated.

What binds these three actresses together is more than just the fact that they happen to have been on-air at the same time during a certain partof the decade. Rather, they were integral membersof the zeitgeist of the mid-aughts. To millennial women they were our role models, our obsessions, our constant sources of quoted material.You can't make people love you, but you can make them fear you. Nothing excites me before 11 a.m.And who could forget,Ew.These were the TV shows that we stayed up late binge-ing, that we turned to after a breakup or a failed test or a bad fight. The shows that guided us through countless hangovers and heartaches, and that kept us company as we snacked on literally everything possible.

The O.C.introduced a world of wealth and privilege and totally absurd individuals to young people all over America.Gossip Girldid the same, but with beachfront mansions swapped for historic townhouses.Gilmore Girlsshowed the charms of small-town America.The O.C.brought us the enduring appeal of the bad boy.Gossip Girl fought for the sexy mystery behind a lonely boy. The O.C.andGossip Girl brought cautionary tales of partying and rule-breaking, while the Gilmores peddled more in warnings against over-consumption of Chinese food delivery and diner coffee.

They made us realize how lucky we were not to have parents like Julie Cooper or Eleanor Waldorf. They made us realize how much we were dying to have parents like Lorelai Gilmore and Sandy Cohen. They gave us theme songs that will be stuck in our heads for the next decades, and the next and the next. The wordsCalifornia here we come orIf you lead I will follow orYou know you love me will forever bring us directly back to that exact moment in front of the TV. That and any mention of Chrismakkah.

But all that came to an end:The O.C.shut its beachside doors a decade ago,Gilmore Girlssaid its last breathless words (though notthe last four words) that same year, andGossip Girlfinally revealed itself in 2012. Since that era, there has barely been a single show that has represented the zeitgeist so well, let alone an entire group of shows. And with the downtime for the viewers came some downtime for the stars themselves. After spending a significant portion of their youth in front of the cameras, Bilson and her teen drama counterparts Meester and Bledel took a step back from the spotlight.

As Bilson told E! News, starring in an hour-long drama can take its toll as much as it can launch you into fame and fortune. "To do an hour-long drama and be one of the leads, that's your whole life," she said. "I really respect that and I'm grateful to have had that, but it's your life and the hours are no joke. Things have just changed [for me] now."

FollowingThe O.C., Bilson took on a few roles here and there, appearing in the futuristic filmJumper (where she just so happened to meet her fianc and the father of her daughter Briar) and in a few episodes ofHow I Met Your Mother. Then of course cameHart of Dixie, which was a cult favorite in and of itself, among Summer's biggest fans and those who had never seenThe O.C. alike. But most importantly she took time off to build her family. She has been with the aforementionedHayden Christiansen for a decade (with a few on-and-off periods), and in November, 2014 she welcomed her baby girl. They have been living what they describe as a quiet, family-oriented life since then, spending time in the country and cookingjust check her Instagram for proof.

Meester and Bledel seemingly followed in her footstepsalthough, technically, it's hard to nail down who exactly led the way. In an adorably full-circle twist of fate, Leighton ended up falling in love with none other than the real-life Seth Cohen (that would beAdam Brodyof course), getting married in 2014 and having a daughter in September, 2015. Alexis fell forMad MenstarVincent Kartheiserafter she appeared in a few episodes of the show, marrying in June, 2014 and welcoming a son in the fall of the following year.

As far as acting goes, Meester has been largely absent from her place in front of the cameras. (She did star in the 2014 rom-comLife Partners, where she met her husband). Bledel starred in the two installments ofSisterhood of the Traveling Pants shortly after biddingadieu to Stars Hollow, but did mostly bit arts save for herMad Menarc. Until now, of course.

In case anyone needs it written out plainly, let's just review: All three actresses starred in outrageously popular teen dramas, all three met their actor-husbands during roles following those shows, and all three took time off from acting to take care of their now-toddlers. Uncanny? Yes. Fate? Definitely.

But now the heyday is back in full force. It's really never been a better time to have starred in a mid-2000's network television teen drama. Each actress did have their own path back to the big screen that's worth examining, however. Bledel's was perhaps the most obvious, withGilmore Girlsjumping onto the revival train early. There is no Stars Hollow without Rory Gilmore and the actresses obliged all of her adoring fans when she agreed to appear alongside the rest of the cast in the Netflix miniseries.

"We're all just so happy we got to do these episodes," she told E! at a press event for the revival this winter. "it's wild and very surreal. And we're excited that it means so much to people."

The actress is also in the midst of full-on critical acclaim for her turn as Ofglen inThe Handmaid's Tale, a piece of work that truly couldn't be more different than anything we've seen her in before. It's easy to question what it is about a project that makes someone decide to go for such a drastic change and she cited an interest in streaming platforms at this year's Television Critics Association gather.

"It's really new to me in a way because it's just this year I jumped into this realm," Bledel explained. "But I really do like telling a story from beginning to end, knowing what the whole story is going to be, and then revisiting it six months later."

For Bilson, the return to the screen was on account of finally finding a way to balance her career passions with her desire to devote herself to motherhood. She explained that having her daughter in her life has impacted who she chooses roles, and that how any potential job affects her being there for her daughter is a large part of the decision-making process.

"I'm very lucky to have had some success [in my career] and I just look for good roles and things that I want to spend my time doing," she says. "If I'm away from my daughter it has to be worth itall my decisions are based around her now."

Meester has echoed those sentiments in many interviews, citing a bit of a burnout after her time onGossip Girl. This spring she told Vulturethat she had no interest in doing a show with 20-plus episodes a year, nor did she want to do an hour-long program, explaining "That's now how I want to spend my time working."

The actress met with Fox and decided that it would be the perfect fit for her next network project and then the new seriesMaking History came along at the exact right time. "I've been working when the work comes for things I've been excited by," she described as her new career outlook. "There's been a natural progression of roles that seem to fit how I feel at that moment."

We would be remiss to continue a discussion of the biggest stars of the early aughtsand their current comebackswithout a pause to reflect on an actress who is having a full-on career renaissance. We speak, obviously, of oneMandy Moore. She wasn't on a life-changing teen drama but she did start her acting career with a series of pivotal roles during that period. It all started withThe Princess Diaries andA Walk to Remember (in 2001 and 2002 respectively) and she went on to appear in cult classics like 2004'sSaved and rom-coms likeBecause I Said So andLicense to Wed, both in 2007.

Things cooled down for the actress but with her star turn in the breakout hitThis Is Us, she has become one of television's most sought-after actresses. Put bluntly, she's having the best year of her life. She's the star of the biggest cult-hitof 2017, she has several movies coming up, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe (her first major award nod). Moore herself is in a state of relative shock in regards to her recent resurgence, as she told E! at this year's TCAs.

"I cannot believe I'm on a television show that's airing," she said. "It didn't get cancelled. I didn't film a pilot and have it not get picked up. Every other pilot I did I was like, yeah, this is going somewhere, and then it never does. But I'm a firm believer in everything happening for a reason."

So what's next for all these women? That's up to them, but one imagines it involves equal parts reveling in the moment and looking forward to the next step. And they'll also continue to process what life is like a decade out from their breakthrough successes. Their time on the screen, both big and small, has had a large impact on each actress. It's hard to shake the typecasting that comes with being a teen iconnot that they're all trying to.

For Mandy Moore it's all about having an appreciation for a time when everything was new (and scary). "I remember not knowing what I was doing onA Walk to Remember," she said at the TCAs. "I didn't know how to hit a mark or memorize lines or take stage direction. When I think back about that film I think about having to really step up and learn everything."

For Alexis Bledel her time onGilmore Girls(the original show) is something that she tries not to cling to. "I try to be present in the moment," she said of her acting past. "And just focus on whatever I'm supposed to be working on at that moment. That takes all my attention."

Bilson is seemingly as sentimental aboutThe O.C.as her fans. "It's really nice that people loved the show so much and embraced it so much," she gushed. "I'm still so grateful to this day for the opportunity to be a part of something like that. It's influenced everything, when it comes down to it. Itwas the launching pad and the starting point and it's where it all began for me."

For most of the show's fans, they could say the same thing.

Originally posted here:

The Teen Actress Comeback: Inside Rachel Bilson, Alexis Bledel ... - E! Online

Fox Searchlight has released a UK trailer for Battle of the Sexes. The film is based on the real-life showdown between tennis champion and feminist icon Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and chauvinist has-been Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).

Whats notable about this trailer is that while the US trailer only hinted at Kings homosexuality, this UK trailer makes it a plot point, developing Kings budding romance as she continue to fight for equality. It also makes King look more like the main character who constantly has to push back against the obnoxious Riggs. Part of that could simply be that Stone is riding high off her well-deserved Oscar win from La La Land, and its easier to see Carell playing the buffoon, but its still interesting to see her directly in the lead rather than a co-lead as seen in the US trailer.

Check out the new Battle of the Sexes trailer below. The film opens September 22nd and also stars Sarah Silverman, Andrea Riseborough, Elisabeth Shue, Alan Cumming, Bill Pullman, and Eric Christian Olsen.

Heres the official synopsis for Battle of the Sexes:

The electrifying 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was billed as the BATTLE OF THE SEXES and became the most watched televised sports event of all time. The match caught the zeitgeist and sparked a global conversation on gender equality, spurring on the feminist movement. Trapped in the media glare, King and Riggs were on opposites sides of a binary argument, but off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. With a supportive husband urging her to fight the Establishment for equal pay, the fiercely private King was also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, while Riggs gambled his legacy and reputation in a bid to relive the glories of his past. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis courts and animated the discussions between men and women in bedrooms and boardrooms around the world.

Here is the original post:

'Battle of the Sexes': New Trailer Finds Emma Stone Leading a Feminist Revolution - Collider.com

"We felt some kinship to the alt-rock scene of the early Nineties, but we wanted to do it on our own terms. We wanted to be able to love Hank Williams and love punk rock." While this sentiment from Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller isn't a strange concept today, it was still a relatively underground idea when he and his bandmates unleashed their raw-and-rowdy major label debut Too Far to Care 20 years ago this month and helped birth a whole new subgenre in the process.

Together with guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples, Miller and Hammond mixed the explosiveness of punk rock and the raw sonics of alternative music with heavy doses of classic country swagger. Two albums 1994's Hitchhike to Rhome and 1995's Wreck Your Life quickly put Old 97's on the map outside of their native Dallas, Texas, and generated major label buzz.

By Miller's count, no less than 15 labels courted the band over a six-month period. "They were flying us to New York and Los Angeles and taking us to every major sporting event you could imagine," he says. "There was so much noise and so much ego inflation. I can see why so many bands get lost when their ship comes in."

It was a unique moment in time for both the band and also the unruly, amorphous musical scene of which they were a part. "It felt like there was something in the zeitgeist happening with this genre of music that everyone was still trying to find the right name for," he says of the nascent movement, which also included Uncle Tupelo (and its post-breakup offshoots Wilco and Son Volt), Drive-By Truckers and the Ryan Adams-led Whiskeytown.

Questionable terms like "yalternative," "honky skronk" "insurgent country" and "cow punk" (a holdover from the Eighties) were being thrown around to describe the sound, with the consensus eventually landing on "alternative country," often shortened to just "alt-country."

"It's like we all had the same education but were on different campuses," Hammond says of the scene and its like-minded bands. "We'd all gone through punk rock and Sixties garage rock and we all liked Johnny Cash and rediscovered country music around the same time."

Eventually signing with Elektra Records, Old 97's decamped for El Paso to record at the famed Sonic Ranch studio (then known as Village Productions). The bucolic setting near the Rio Grande helped inspire what would become Too Far to Care.

"When we finally wound up out in this little desert hacienda surrounded by a pecan orchard, it felt like one of those science-fiction movies where you get squeezed through a time portal," Miller says. Working with producer Wally Gagel, the band cut some of the most enduring songs of their career and refined their sound along the way.

Miller points to the boozy ballad "Salome" as a notable evolutionary step in the songwriting of the 97's. Sandwiched in between the full-throated chorus of "Broadway" and the twangy railroad chug of "W. TX Teardrops," the song features the pedal-steel work of guest Jon Rauhouse, who would also play on the band's 2014 effort Most Messed Up. "That song was a really big breakthrough because the live sound of our band was so caveman at that time," Miller says. "We went from being a band that was always at 9 or 10 on the volume and energy scale, to being a band that could make something work on the lower, quiet side."

Still, the group also raged, cutting the scorching album opener (and frequent live-show encore) "Timebomb." For the record's howling closer, "Four Leaf Clover," they enlisted Exene Cervenka of L.A. punk band X to sing harmony. "I was a little star-struck around Exene," says Hammond, "but now she's my buddy. I don't always know what to talk to people about, but with Exene I know I can always talk music and UFOs."

For Miller, it's two other subjects that remind him most of the Too Far to Care sessions: presidents and telephones. Both, he says, have evolved greatly in the last two decades.

"We play 'Barrier Reef' every night and I have to sing the line, "Midnight came, midnight went, I thought I was the president," he says of the album's second song. "When I wrote it, Clinton was in office but he hadn't yet gone through the Lewinsky scandal. When that happened, I would sing it and think that it was a sly, subtle reference to oral sex. Then when Bush was in office, I was personally not a fan of his policies, so that line changed to being about a warmonger. Now it's even more complicated because of our current president."

Miller is even more amazed by how anachronistic payphones have become. On the road in support of the band's early albums, the quarter-call was his primary source of connecting with loved ones. "When I wrote the line 'telephones makes strangers out of lovers' in 'Niteclub,' I was imaging a guy on the side of the road with trucks whizzing by in the rain and him getting yelled at by a girlfriend," he says. "Now when I sing it, I'm looking down at an audience full of people where the majority of them are on their cell phones. Telephones are still making strangers out of lovers, but it's because it's all we look at and all we think about."

The line about "calling time and temperature just for some company" in LP standout "Big Brown Eyes" is especially dated which Miller admits to realizing even at the time he wrote it. "It was already a joke in '97," he says. "It was just my way of shouting out to a past that was disappearing."

Surprisingly, that landline past came rushing back to Miller when he returned to the Sonic Ranch to record the band's latest album, Graveyard Whistling, released in February. Opening a drawer of a bedside table, he discovered a note containing the telephone number of the girl about whom many of the songs on Too Far to Care were written.

But for Miller, the legacy of Too Far to Care isn't about phone calls, ex-presidents or even alt-country. In fact, the "alt-country" tag gave him grief for quite some time. "It took me a bunch of years to come to peace with it, but I embrace it to some extent now," he concedes. "I feed my kids with alt-country who would've thought that was even possible?"

Rather, he credit's the album's staying power to a certain innocence and lack of irony. He and the 97's were writing, recording and playing from the heart.

"There was nothing calculated or self-aware about Too Far to Care," he says, "and that's what people still respond to when they hear those songs."

Sign up for our newsletter to receive breaking news directly in your inbox.

View original post here:

Old 97's' 'Too Far to Care': Inside Alt-Country Heroes' 1997 Breakout - RollingStone.com

Former US CTO Aneesh Chopra talks about big data, the importance of net neutrality, and why there's hope yet for getting things done in Washington, D.C.

For this week's edition of Fast Forward, I'm talking to Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States, but now the author of Innovative State: How New Technologies Can Transform Government and founder of NavHealth and Hunch Analytics.

We discuss how technology can change government, consumer privacy and most importantlyhis optimism about technology, government, and the direction in which the country is heading.

Dan Costa: I want to talk about the optimism that I have sensed from you about technology and government because frankly, that optimism is hard to find these days.

Aneesh Chopra: But it's grounded in reality. That's the best news. We have reasons to be hopeful we'll get into.

I will allow you to convince me. But first, you were the nation's first Chief Technology Officer. I understand that role is now open. Is there any chance you would like to serve again?

No. I will not serve in this role but I will say, I'm excited about the team that President Trump has already assembled in that office. His Deputy Chief Technology Officer [Michael Kratsios] is a phenomenally talented technology leader and has already begun making, I think, very positive moves to continue and build upon the work that we'd started.

So you were the first CTO. Can you just explain to the audience why the United States needs a Chief Technology Officer?

Well, let's begin with what the President had called for. President Obama ran for office and he basically said we've got to find a way to tap into the expertise of the American people to solve big problems. He didn't really believe Washington was going to be the center. And whether you voted for the President or not, that was his philosophy and he realized, early, that we have new technologies that allow us to communicate all over the world instantly

But...to influence [anyone in] Washington, you've got to hire lobbyists, you've got to be in some smoke-filled room in D.C. It didn't have the same sense of democratization, and so [Obama's] assignment on day one, when he was in the midst of the economic crisis, was to create a position called the Chief Technology Officer, who would help him advance a more open and transparent government. Not only to make the data the government held more available, but to listen to the American people's voices so we were more participatory and to find [a way] to collaborate between the public and private sector and nonprofit sectors to solve big problems. And that's exactly what we focused on in the first term.

We're going to get to the sort of government data sets in a bit, but I saw you gave a very optimistic speech yesterday. It's obviously a very polarized environment in Washington, D.C. right now, but your speech was filled with optimism that I think is really hard to find these days. Why do think things are getting better, at least in this particular respect?

Well it appears we're on a bipartisan trajectory to modernize the interface between the public sector and the private sector, and what that means is that both parties are in general agreement that we want to tap into the expertise of the American people, allow entrepreneurs and innovators to join hands. We may disagree on what we want them to focus on and we'll have a big political debate should it be on closing up our borders or advancing health care for everyone. That's a healthy debate. We're not going to see a lot of consensus potentially on an agenda, but if we have an underlying infrastructure that's open, there's no R or D highway lane.

We use it every day to advance commerce. So if we had that same construct in our infrastructure, increasingly our digital infrastructure, than I can bring my own device to school, I can have my kids connect their educational learning records to the Khan Academy so when they come home, we can watch the Khan videos that directly relate to the subject matter they're struggling with in the classroom and it can all work seamlessly. We're using these new technologies [to make] our personal lives better but [they can now] transform our health, our energy, our education, our financial services, the regulated sectors, and that's why I'm hopeful.

Are there more examples of common-ground issues that are not R versus D but really American ideals that can be advanced through technology?

I might be aggressive in suggesting that the strategy for American innovation that President Obama published and President Trump's new Office of American Innovation will likely have the same core elements. One, that the country's going to redefine its role in infrastructure, away from traditional roadways, railways, and runways but to expand it and include human capital, R&D, and digital infrastructure, which you can think of as broadband but can be more broadly, the digital electrical grid as well as the healthcare systems.

Second, that we have rules of the road. Whether we think they should be heavy or a light touch, there will be rules of the road to protect our security, engage on privacy issues, and make sure that we've got some competition policy that makes the digital economy work for everyone. Again, we may have differences of specific tools but the framework is that we need to have some collaborative view.

And then last but not least, this notion of opening up. That regardless of how we want to deliver government services, that the most efficient way is not to have everybody log in to one website but to have many choices. Some privately sponsored, some nonprofit sponsored, some public sector sponsored but with the premise of making sure people have all the information they need about the decisions in their lives, at each moment of a decision and at that moment, we have a country that's moving forward.

That's actually one of the things that I think you were most successful at during your tenureproviding access to these government data sets to consumers and businesses. Can you talk a little bit about that process, because we've come along way in a relatively short period of time?

Well, it started with what we've already known to be a successful case study, which is the weather industry. Going back 50+ years, there's been this consensus, not sure exactly if it was sort of master planning or just serendipity, but there had been the notion that we would invest the billions the country invests in satellites and sensors and other equipment, bring that information into an environment and then expose it. It was a judgment made going back over the last several decades that that information should be freely available.

At one point there was a debate, 'why do we need to have a weather.gov when we have weather.com?' That was sort of a naive understanding that weather.com is 100 percent powered by the open data sets that power weather.gov and that it's not an either or but it's reference of limitation that we compete on making it better. When we realized that that model works, we said let's shift the default. What President Obama's instructions to us were and our directive back to the agencies was three things.

One, immediate culture change. Make three data sets in your current environment openly available in 45 days. Two, develop a plan and engage the American people in the development of that plan so that you're listening to the data sets they value. And then three, we wanted to build some celebratory best practices and sort of honor those who've done it right to scale what works.

It turns out my successor, Todd Park, was the first awardee of our Best Practices because he didn't really focus on the supply of data. Can we add another data set to a website that no one ever heard of? But he went out and visited developers and said, 'Hey I've got a whole menu of data sets. Why don't you begin thinking about using it.' So he emphasized the use, not the supply, and that led to this movement. There are now thousands of people that convene in Washington every year in Health Datapalooza, and it's because people are now being engaged on the use of that data to build better products and services for people who need healthcare and that's something that we're seeing scale in every domain.

So that's the private sector taking public data and innovating with it and creating products and businesses?

That's right.

Does it flow the other way? Do private sector companies like Uber share their data sets with the cities they're operating in because it's got better traffic and commuter data than the cities themselves?

Yeah. Well, Waze struck an agreement with the City of LA exactly for that purpose. When we were grappling with what to do in the wake of emergencies, FEMA said, 'Well, what if we collaborated with utilities and others and we said let's crowd source information so that we can be smarter about what happens at every moment in time.'

In fact, data collection has always been a role of government. It's been a regulatory tool in government but we hadn't thought about it in the context of digital products. I just want to drive home in the fastest, safest way possible and if getting there is a combination of sensors in the roads when they're being built that can communicate speeds in combination with crowd sourced information, collected by a private entity or a group of them, the marriage of those two data sets could help me live a better life. This isn't the private sector doing it outside of the role of government. It's in collaboration with.

Thanks to the digital economy, there's no scarcity. It's not like I give you a copy of the data set and therefore I cannot give it somebody else. There doesn't need to be a single owner of the data. Copies can be made available more widely and let the marketplace decide how and where the best methods of information sharing might be.

So, it is most certainly coming back. We had a national broadband map where people began telling us where and how they were not getting access to broadband and that was informing policy about gaps. So this notion of crowdsourcing and collaborating can be done at the individual or corporate levels.

One of the things that often gets left out of these conversations is the idea of consumer privacy. It's great to share, but there's so many privacy issues that get brought up. Is that an area where we need more regulation?

For sure. President Obama asked our team to look into modernizing privacy in a digital age and we called it our Internet Privacy Bill of Rights. In the early parts of 2012, we put up a framework that said, 'Look, we need to move to a baseline regulatory standard.' And we used the Fair Information Practice standards inside government ... That's a basic principle that you've got to communicate and honor the wishes of your customer. So we thought one way to do that would be to shift the world from notice and consent where ... Have you read a user agreement online?

I have not. I have clicked through a ton of 'em.

It's like how fast can I find the agree button to move on? But if you have settings panel ... So if you go to Netflix.com/settings, it reminds you of all the places you've authorized to gain access to your Netflix account. Now, that may be sensitive to youlike what movies you watchand that may not be something you want advertisers to know when they hit you up on your magazine's properties. We did put forward a framework. It didn't make it through Congress, but there are two other ways we've had influence.

One, there are existing regulations for health privacy, education privacy, financial services and teller communications and so we said, 'Okay, in the regulated domains, let's get each expert agency to begin advancing the ball.' What we're starting to see is a more voluntary alignment. So let me give you an example. In the medical records space, when your doctor or your hospital holds your data, they're regulated. If you ask for a copy of that data and you want to put in your computer or on an app on your phone, unregulated. What that app does with your data might be benign. 'Hey, I'm just going to give you information about the time you have take your medications.' Or maybe a little bit untoward, which I'm going to sell the fact that you've got this health condition to advertisers so that they can more directly influence you.

Well, we put up a model privacy notice and what does Apple do? Apple says that any developer that wants to touch HealthKit must sign the Office of the National Coordinator Model Privacy Notice, which says 'Disclosure and choice on I'm going to sell your data or not, etc.' Doesn't dictate what knobs and dials are set but it just describes what you have to do. And if you do it and lie about it, the Federal Trade Commission can bring you up on existing statutes about not lying to your customer.

So that'll work in regulated industries.

That's right.

Do you think we need something that's broader?

Our opinion was, we're no longer in the administration, that a base line FIPS [Federal Information Processing Standard] for everyone in the internet economy and that led to questions like do not track, which was sort of a manifestation of that policy in action. I do think we still need to have that consumer internet privacy bill of rights, there may be a new framework besides the way we've described it. The new FCC approach to privacy is to deregulate and shift the responsibility over to the Federal Trade Commission so voluntary enforceable codes of conduct might be the regulatory path. I don't know. But again, we're going to see flavors of different parties' prioritizing different aspects, but we do think there needs to be some regime, even if it's light touch, that advances the baseline privacy principles.

Sticking with the FCC, Ajit Pai has announced his intention to pretty much dismantle all the neutrality regulations across the board.

Cray-cray. What's he thinking?

It's not unexpected, since it's been his position for a number of years. But now he's putting that position into effect. Can you explain why consumers should care about net neutrality protections?

So we have believed, universally, in a free and open internet. Frankly, both parties have been committed to a free and open internet. And their only debate is whether a preventive regulation might retain what we live today or whether we wait for a crisis to emerge and then respond.

Now, thoughtful people can have disagreement about the threat but what I would say to the American people, and frankly to those around the world, is if you believe a core value of our internet is that you can say what you want, you can consume whatever you want and it's your choice how and in what manner you engage, then why not instantiate that in our global framework? Not so much whether the US is more or less aggressive around this but also to protect our free and open internet when we travel around the world.

So having a baseline governance framework that says 'This platform is meant to be neutral.' Not to play favorites, one against the other. Then it give us more leverage around the world to say, 'Where there are developing country-specific internet infrastructure, that that's actually in violation of this broader movement.'

I think the consumer who wants to protect that right should rise up and tell the Federal Communications Commission to stand down on the dismantling of what I think is a really critical piece of regulatory infrastructure for free and open internet.

What's the worst case scenario? How is it going to affect somebody who goes home and logs online? How could their experience change if there are no net neutrality protections?

Well, let's begin by saying, let's presume you enjoy watching your videos on Netflix but your internet provider also happens to be your cable set-top box provider and they make the judgment that the experience, the speeds, the quality of the transmission will be worse if you stick with the Netflix path because you're hurting their revenues. Maybe you even choose to threaten to get rid of your cable account because you don't need it now. You can cut the cord. If they respond in the manner in which there is no net neutrality regulation, they may subtly weaken the quality of service that you have on one application to the betterment of the one that is preferenced in their economic stack.

That's not how we want access to our internet controlled. The internet is an open resource. It's free. It's available for us to connect. App developers have built products and services and if you believe in competition, free markets, entrepreneurship, you're going to want to retain that level playing field. And not have the person who you pay to provide the pipe to your home somehow dictate in what manner you can consume that information.

I think it's safe to say that Netflix would not exist if the cable companies were able to shut it down at an early level and prevent access.

They're in a very difficult spot because once you make it and you become a much needed application, the ability to discriminate against Netflix today is very, very hard. The consumer outrage would be off the charts. The fear is not Netflix, it's the second, third, fourth iteration of it that doesn't yet have scale that might give us a better experience that we'd never know because it was squashed prematurely and treated unfairly in today's market place. That's the fear.

Look, as far as I can tell, when the Title II regulations were promulgated, it's not like the internet stocks all crumbled. It's not like we saw a massive devaluation. It's not like anyone threatened to actually cut back their capital investments to build out networks. Quite the opposite. I love the transparency of our publicly traded markets. You have to report to your shareholders facts. No fake news allowed to your shareholders. They were asked explicitly, 'Does this regulation harm your growth plans for capital investment.' And it was an unequivocal no across the board.

Yeah, Verizon is on the record saying it had no effect and they don't think it's going to hurt their earnings at all.

So here we have rules of the road that we all broadly speaking, agree with. It didn't have the negative effects we were worried about and now we want to rip off the bandaid and start over? #Fail.

Let's talk about another disconcerting topic, which we talk about a lot on this show, which is automation. The technological revolution we're living in is amazing but the truth of the matter is, we're doing more with computers and automation and it's costing jobs. Entire industries are getting restructured because of automation. How big a problem is that? What is the appetite in Washington to actually deliver solutions?

So, three points. One, it is real but it is an area that has upsides and downsides. Industries that have been automated for 50+ years, i.e., manufacturing, [like] building a car in the era of the Model T, pre-automation [versus] building a car today. We still employ tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people across the automotive supply chain. Just the scope of work changes. More creativity, design, programming, quality assurance, less rote repeatable tasks.

We can produce cars with fewer people now than we could 10 years ago.

Yeah, and what that means is it unleashed the creativity of those who might've worked in the auto industry to now move from just being a worker, one shift and one role, to potentially being an entrepreneur, to take what they've learned and apply it to build out a feature that now could be part of the global supply chain. So there is a dynamism to the economy.

My second point would be if you look at the effects, one could either stall them, i.e., weaken the pace of change, or I would argue, double down and take those very same technologies and apply them to help us find the next big opportunity in our lives. We all have passions, talents that are unique to us and if we could share them with the very same automation tools that are going to help our industries be more productive, then they might say a niche. Every day there's a job opening somewhere in the country that's been built for you. Someone involved in a corporation could say 'Enough people in that region have so many talents. I might want to open up a new company just to take advantage of the human capital.' I think if we find a way to double down on the use of those technologies to help us make work force development decisions, that is a great role of government.

Last but not least, there is a movement to decouple the social safety net from a single employer. So the more we can say you're going to have some baseline income, you're going to have some access to health insurance, you're going to have some worker's compensation that's built around your needs, whether I take two or three jobs, start my own job, join a big company, I can have the stability and safety that I need while responding to the increasingly dynamic economy that might result in me having 10, 12, 15 jobs over the course of my lifetime. We need to have a more agile, personally driven social safety net to make these pieces work.

And part of it's the way the labor force has shifted to where unemployment's at a five-year low.

That's right.

But a lot of those new jobs that have been created are 1099 jobs. They're part-time jobs, they're gig jobs. They're not W2 jobs that come with a 401K and healthcare. And there doesn't seem to be something that's replacing that gap for that new class of worker.

Yeah and bipartisan leaders, including my mentor, Senator Mark Warner, are really focusing in Washington on how to think about a social safety net in the 21st century and again, I say to the point, my sense of hopeful optimism about where we're going, that may not make the headlines. The Russian investigation and the Comey hearing took over the oxygen this week, but that very same Senator Mark Warner, who led the Democratic response, if you will, to that hearing, has been working with his Republican counterparts on building a social safety net in the 21st century and you can have both Washingtons, the popcorn, kind of sugar high on the news, but the more fundamental collaboration that we so desperately need.

Before we get to my closing questions, I want go back to that initial point, because I think it's a really important one. You've got access to a lot of the government actors and agencies that are operating below the political level that are just trying to get stuff done. People look at all the noise and all the politics and all the recrimination, can you let people know what's really going on here at that next level down?

Let's take healthcare. We know we're having a raging debate about the future of healthcare reform yet there's a program called healthcare.gov that, by the way, is still operational and one could've made the case and I think politically many on the left are making the case, that the Trump administration is actively undermining the program. It's cutting marketing budgets for healthcare.gov, it may not be investing in its capabilities. Yet, quietly, only two or so weeks ago, the Trump administration announced, 'We're going to add application programming interfaces, APIs, so third-party health insurance online brokers can directly enroll people in healthcare.gov.'

So we may lament the weakening of marketing dollars for the website healthcare.gov, but we should be celebrating the Trump administration's decision to open up APIs. So if Governor McAuliffe in Virginia wants to build McAuliffe's healthinsurancestorefront.com, in partnership with one of the online brokers, we might increase our own marketing budgets and collaborate to get more Virginians enrolled this year than ever before, even if the Trump administration weakens the website.

So our view is, in the trenches, we proceed in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in opening up of government, even in the Trump administration, and I think that should be celebrated. We may have a debate about 'don't cut Medicaid $800 billion' and let that be a healthy, vibrant democratic debate. Be hopeful that, 'Wow, this decision actually will increase the chance that people that need that health insurance subsidy will get it.'

That's a great example. Closing questions. What technological trend concerns you the most? What keeps you up at night?

Cyber security. We have very real, nation-state actors who are dedicating incredible resources into disrupting the use of our digital assets, whether it be in our elections for our democracy, our banking systems. Frankly, the operations of almost every sector of the economy are at risk. While the private sector can respond to private sector threats, private sector response to a nation-state actor is quite different.

I am very afraid that as we proceed to aggressively digitize every sector of the economy, including regulated sectors, that our capacity to protect our networks may not keep up with the pace of the attack vectors. DARPA called this asymmetrical warfare. You only need to write a few lines of code and to convince a few people to authorize you to get access to a network and disrupt a great deal of our global infrastructure while our defense systems have to be aware of the many, many, many versions of those small attacks. We can only build but so many moats, and I'm anxious about that issue. But I'm hopeful that we'll continue to collaborate to solve it but anxious.

What does the government need to do in order to protect itself?

I think it's three-fold. One, we've got to open up more information sharing and collaboration so the tools we have to protect our government network should be as widely available to protect commercial networks without it being a burden. Two, I think we need to keep investing in research and development to promote next-generation models. As an example, even if an attacker gets into your network, tools to mitigate the impact once they're in may be as important, if not more, than just protecting them at the edge. Building up a new cyber-security insurance market that builds standards so that we know who's a better or a weaker performer in this market, could clean up the system.

And then last but not least, I think we need to have a new understanding of digital infrastructure. India has given a billion people a unique digital identity. That means they can register for a bank account, schedule a physician appointment, maybe even vote in a future election, using their unique digital identity. And if they can do it for pennies on the dollar for a billion people, certainly the rest of the world can begin to think about digital identity as core infrastructure and that we find a way to get out of the user names and passwords rut that has been a complete disaster and a weakness of almost any application.

Politically, that would be labeled a National Identity Card.

One can do it in the private sector. You can have a national identity standard that's an acceptable standard so that today, when I want to use TSA Pre or I wanna get fast tracked through airport security, the private sector company CLEAR allows me to be identified and vetted to bypass the lines. So CLEAR is not an arm of the government. CLEAR met the industry's standards that were required of the government and were participating in that market place. So I think there is a way to do this that isn't Big Brother but a competing network of privately selected products and services that are acceptable forms of identification in the digital front door. That's the hope.

On a more optimistic note, what technology do you use that inspires wonder?

I will say Twitter continues to be my application of choice because I'm able to see and witness and learn from voices I don't normally interact with in my private personal life. So the delight I get from following the Twitter feeds, capturing the zeitgeist of the moment by particular hashtags, that just gives me delight and educates me in ways that I'm very thankful for. And for a whopping zero dollar investment, right? We get this free public utility that is Twitter.

That's caused them some problems.

There is an argument to be made about Twitter as a utility because I'd be happy to pay a utility fee to get access to this unbelievably powerful resource.

You don't find the conversation too coarse or too noisy? How to manage the trolls?

It's funny, you know. You sort of witness what's going on. You figure out who you can avoid. You don't read a lot of the comments back. At the end of the day, I know the network of people whom I trust that tweet thoughtful information and they have a network and then they have a network and so you get exposed to sources of information that delight you every day. I think it's an unbelievable resource.

Other than Twitter, is there any other technology or device or service that you use that's changed your life?

Slack. At the end of the day, the internet is a communications mechanism and you think about the way we communicate in these regulated sectors. Could you imagine communicating with your doctor? Today, it's like you have to schedule an appointment eight months from now to do something and I just want to ask a question. Can't I just Slack my doc a question? We have not brought that simple, elegant communications experience, which is thriving in the commercial setting, into our interactions with teachers, our interactions with doctors, our interactions with our banks. So I think bringing Slack to the regulated sectors of the economy would be a phenomenal gift.

How can people find you online, track what you're doing, and keep up with you?

So I wrote a book called Innovative State and I keep on innovativestate.com updates about my policy proceedings and my points of view.

I also have a company, an incubator we call it, Hunch Analytics. So if you have ideas on what we should be investing in and focusing on [let us know]. We really hatch our own ideas, but we're informed by partnerships.

We also have a healthcare program called NavHealth that I'm currently putting the bulk of my time on. And we're trying to bring this open data framework to life, to help patients make better decisions at every step of their care journey.

So my hope is that if anyone who is interested in those areas, to engage among Twitter @aneeshchopra. I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm very keen to connect with as many people as have interested in this shared vision of the future.

For more Fast Forward with Dan Costa, subscribe to the podcast. On iOS, download Apple's Podcasts app, search for "Fast Forward" and subscribe. On Android, download the Stitcher Radio for Podcasts app via Google Play.

Dan Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com and the Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff-Davis. He oversees the editorial operations for PCMag.com, Geek.com, ExtremeTech.com as well as PCMag's network of blogs, including AppScout and SecurityWatch. Dan makes frequent appearances on local, national, and international news programs, including CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, and NBC where he shares his perspective on a variety of technology trends. Dan began working at PC Magazine in 2005 as a senior editor, covering consumer electronics, blogging on Gearlog.com, and serving as... More

Read more from the original source:

Why Obama's First CTO Is 'Hopeful' About DC, Loves Twitter - PCMag

Gay movements in Canada must confront the history of the Canadian state or risk folding into the nation-building project of dispossession

As Canada 150 draws nearer, those committed to supporting Indigenous sovereignty and dislodging the power of colonialism are faced with the task of dispelling the myth of Canada as a benevolent nation. While the expanding grip of neoliberalism has given rise to a reactionary global right-wing populism, the violence of supposedly progressive liberal settler-colonial states has fallen through the cracks of popular analysis and comprehension.

One of the more recent assets to the liberal nation-state has been Gay Pride. Today the event is perhaps entering its most contentious year in Vancouver. Breaking the silence that generally surrounds Gay Pride, queer and trans activists, led by Black Lives Matter Vancouver, are calling for the removal of any inclusion of the police/carceral state from the annual march (Vancouver Police Department, RCMP, Corrections Canada etc). But for nearly the past three decades, Pride and associated queer festivals have repeatedly shown their allegiances to the rich (through corporate partnership) and to projects of settler-colonialism, for example by accepting and promoting the occupation of Palestinian land through Brand Israel Pinkwashing propaganda among festival floats and sponsors globally. The truth is that Canadian homosexuals have long been in bed with the state apparatus and its colonial interests.

While commie fags and trans dissidents have always existed, a new wave of resistance is emerging in response to a growing neoliberalization and corporatization within the mainstream LGBT community. In particular the past decade of radical queer leftist organizing in North America and abroad has attempted to reposition and re-emphasize the political origins of gay liberation as being founded in disruption and riot. Groups such as Black Lives Matter Toronto and anti-capitalist queer groups such as Gay Shameand the Against Equality archive have worked tirelessly to bring to the forefront of our collective zeitgeist the idea that state violence cannot be reformed or diversified. While the state and its police attempt to apologize for the crimes they have committed historically against queer and trans people, activists have shown up to confront them and the mainstream gay populace with the selectively forgotten histories of co-optation and current state practices of pinkwashing and assimilation.

Today it is important to examine the shift in thinking and priorities that caused the more radical tenets of gay liberation to be forgotten. How did gay liberation in North America transform into a movement whose only concern was gay rights and equal opportunity under neoliberal capitalism? Were these movements ever liberatory to begin with? If we trace the beginnings of the Gay Rights Movement in Canada back to the states decriminalization of homosexuality in 1968, we must also recall the White Paper of the following year, which attempted to further assimilate Indigenous peoples into the nation-state by eradicating treaty rights and title. The historical proximity of the White Paper and the Criminal Law Amendment Act reveals the instrumentalization of queer settlers against Indigenous people in order to strengthen the nation-building project of dispossession in Canada.

Interrogating the radicality of gay liberation

At the end of the 1960s in North America as well as in many western European countries, a new gay liberation movement was gaining momentum as a response to the violence of an inherently heteropatriarchal and increasingly neoliberal society. Bound by similar lived experiences of oppression, queers who had been subjected to state violence based on their gender presentation and sexual orientation began organizing together. Like similar left struggles emerging at the time, most notably womens liberation, many factions of the gay liberation movement (most commonly known as the Gay Liberation Front) viewed the collective liberation of all struggles as being inextricably linked by systemic marginalization. It was the street hustlers and trans sex workers of color that catapulted a movement now embraced as gay pride, while the upper echelon of closeted gay white men were sitting in boardrooms and working on moving capital across borders.

In recounting his days in the Chicago chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, Ferd Eggan recalls a conviction amongst his comrades that, the global capitalist system function[ed] through conquest and exploitation and [could] only maintain itself through oppression. From this, many reasoned that in order to eliminate the root of oppression they would have to work towards dismantling the United States of America. When speaking about the nature of early gay liberation, SFU Professor Elise Chenier reaffirms that the movement was one of radicalization, not reform. It also recognized class struggle as being intimately tangled up with sexual liberation. An analysis of class oppression could have led early activists towards an intersectional understanding that the root of their common subjugation was to be found not only in the structures of capitalist domination but also in colonial power.

Liberation, however, was effectively de-radicalized by forces that shifted their politics towards a rights-based movement. What had begun as a retaliation against police brutality at Stonewall in New York and the Compton Cafeteria in San Francisco, and a broader resistance to heteropatriarchal society, would eventually dissolve into a relatively homogeneous and obedient liberal political body seeking recognition and rights from the state. To understand why and how the history of a queer rebellion eventually collided and colluded with capitalism and colonialism in a Canadian context, gradually woven into a national narrative of tolerance, it is helpful to analyze the very social fabric of Canada itself.

The Canadian progress narrative

The modern myth of progress in Canada, or the Canadian dream, is predicated on the fallacy that all individuals are given equal opportunity to prosper in a multicultural and egalitarian society. Yet the uncomfortable truth is that Canada, like the United States of America, is a settler-colonial occupation on lands that either remain unceded or were stolen away from Indigenous nations through treaties written primarily by English speaking colonizers. Inequality not only lies in the disparaging difference between settler populations (white and immigrant) populations and Indigenous people, but also the uneven distribution of wealth along class lines. In order to rationalize the concentration of wealth amongst an elite class in our societies, a productive citizen narrative has been constructed in order to make poverty into an individual issue. One simply has to work hard to achieve comfort. What goes constantly ignored in this narrative is that the privilege of settlerhood and Canadian citizenship, as well as class mobility, comes at the expense of dispossession. Canada relies on the cooperation of its citizens to enact this violence by turning Indigenous economies into capitalist ones open to resource exploitation and the forces of the free market. In recent decades, Gay cooperation has played an important but under-examined role in creating, legitimizing and sustaining the occupation of Canada.

In 1967, one hundred years after confederation, Pierre Trudeau and his Liberal government invited homosexuals into the ever-expanding folds of the nation by declaring that, theres no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. Trudeau specified that he believed that the introduction of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which decriminalized sexual acts between consenting men, would bring Canada up to speed with civilized society. Up until this point, the homosexual in many parts of the western colonial heteropatriarchal society had been criminalized and was seen as a threat to the reproduction of labor under capitalism. Suddenly he was being reconceived as a citizen, and therefore someone who could at least potentially be neoliberalized and used in favor of imperial expansion.

This shift in policy would be the first benevolent gesture an olive branch extended towards gays helping to memorialize the Trudeau dynasty as allies and to begin the process of queer assimilation. Perhaps less common knowledge among gay Canadians is that not long after the Trudeau administration had decriminalized homosexual acts, the White Paper was introduced in 1969. As mentioned, the White Paper was an effort to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the nation state of Canada by eradicating Aboriginal title and treaty rights. This Trudeau/Chrtien initiative was eventually withdrawn due to the resistance and activism it was met with by Indigenous leaders like George Manuel. Yet then minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrtien saw this only as a temporary setback, shelving it in his words for the generation of leaders who [would] accept it.

This shift in the multicultural states concern for gay citizens in a civilized society can be interpreted as an early incarnation of what would later be articulated by activists and scholars as Pinkwashing. While queer people were among some of the last populations to be employed in nation-building techniques by Canada, LGBT settlers are now some of the most patriotic citizens when boasting of Canadas progressive policies and the rights they have acquired. While Indigenous peoples continue to fight against the expropriation of Indigenous lands and economies for resource extraction, settler queer populations have been much more susceptible to cooptation, trading in Molotov cocktails for rights and the relative boredom offered by assimilation into this society.

Under the present-day Trudeau administration, efforts to further assimilate and eradicate Indigenous sovereignty and land title continue through attempted treaty re-negotiations. This imperial expansion of the state goes unnoticed as Justin Trudeau continues to march in pride parades, raises the rainbow flag on Parliament Hill, and is constructed as a sex symbol in the eyes of those privileged enough to be able to overlook his ugly policies.

No Pride in Policing or Settler-Colonial Occupation

Besides welcoming their gay-loving prime minister into the family, many middle-class gays and lesbians in Vancouver and across the nation are also eager to embrace police representation in pride celebrations, brushing aside class struggle and the fight against anti-black racism. In response to Black Lives Matter-Vancouvers call to remove uniformed police officers from marching in the citys pride parade, reactions and opinions amongst a supposedly homogenous LGBTQ community have unsurprisingly been split along the fault lines of class and racial privilege. While many activists of color and queer radicals of all generations have labored strenuously to remind the assimilated majority of the violence and racism inherent in the military and police force, the predominantly white middle-class gay and trans liberal body has jumped to the defense of the police. The police are heralded as saviors who will protect queer and trans people from the homophobic and transphobic reactionary violence of a constructed, pervasive homophobe or terrorist, always assumed to be planning an attack on queer gatherings. We are also informed that inclusion and representation within the police is a good indicator of how far weve come, and that young children will look on in wonderment as a cop cradles his rainbow-painted gun. One thing dutifully left out of these narratives is that most attacks on queer people are racially driven, and that these violent phobias and structural reactions are a product of the same society and state that those terror-stricken gays wish to protect and reproduce.

In an attempt to defend and preserve the Canadian legal system, some Gay Citizens are able to identify supposedly corrupt or bad cops while simultaneously praising so-called progressive cops. Their line of reasoning does not take issue with structural violence, and is not dissimilar to the position that decolonization is possible exclusively by reforming the nation-state in an effort to repair damage done by colonial histories of residential school and cultural genocide. Of course because Canada continues to exert colonial control, decolonization is inseparable from the dismantling of state power and redistribution of occupied land. Believing that the actions of police can be changed by inclusionary representation (black and gay cops) and educational reform (trans and sex worker competency training) is dismissive of the concerns raised by black queer activists and others who will never feel safe due to the degree of their marginalization and criminalization of their modes of economy. These concerns highlight the underbelly of anti-black racism, class privilege and colonial violence that exist within queer communities. They also demonstrate that until the system premised on criminalization is radically transformed and overcome, there can be no simple inclusionary reforms.

In Vancouver, cop-sympathetic gay and trans people attempt to provide a logic of localism, which posits that the problems of police violence happen elsewhere, most notably down south in the US or out east in Toronto, but not in our own backyard. Such claims erase and minimize police violence on Coast Salish territories, including the recent murder of Phuong Na (Tony)Du and brutalization of Solomon Akintoye, and the ongoing violence and incarceration of Indigenous people and other low-income residents of the Downtown Eastside. They also posit an insular and unidimensional queer identity politic, where issues that supposedly do not concern gays are irrelevant, allowing some to embrace violent institutions that have never harmed them or harmed them less often. This narrow lens fails to acknowledge that the nation-state, which protects their privilege and wealth, was built and continues to be expanded through slavery (both historic and current racist incarceration practices), indentured labor and the genocide of Indigenous peoples.

If a queer politics is truly to be anti-colonial, it must understand that the police and RCMP are agents of the state, whose jobs are to enforce laws in Canada, by policing poor and racialized people and furthering the process of settlement. The state is able to expand its control of these lands by prioritizing settler safety and welfare over that of Indigenous people, by renegotiating treaties to further assimilate and remove Indigenous sovereignty, and by sanctioning resource extraction. While the state may attempt to win over queer approval of its apparatus, it is in our best interest to reject this relationship.

Against Canada, towards collective liberation

As we approach a global zenith in the amalgamation of state power and gay liberal politics, homonationalism in Canada has visibly intensified. This is perhaps most pronounced in the recent merging of cultural narratives around the celebration of 150 years since Confederation with those of Pride celebrations, depicted as being complementary and congruous with one another. Roots Canadas campaign celebrating 150 years of being nice cites the legalization of same-sex marriage through the Civil Marriage Act in 2005 as an example of Canadas progressive and brave nature, while the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce raises a rainbow flag in advertisements to celebrate gay capitalism. Unsurprisingly absent from these corporate promotions is any counter-discourse challenging Canada 150 and its ongoing history of displacement and genocide.

A renewed gay liberation should emphasize the need to no longer define queer and trans people in relation to whether or not it aligns with the colonial nation-state. In fact, it should recognize decolonization as critical to any liberation process. When the rights bestowed upon some queer citizens by the state protect the lives of the privileged and visibly white, we must not ignore that the very material violence of the neoliberal state as occupier and expanding imperial force extinguishes the lives of those who are racialized and marginalized.

Indigenous and Black people in Canada are some of the largest growing prison populations, and are also disproportionately living with and criminalized for HIV/AIDS, an illness that many privileged queers feel has all but been turned into a manageable condition. The misconstruction that we are living in a post-AIDS world fails to take into account the multiplicity of queer experiences under capitalism. It is ironic that while homosexuality is decriminalized by the Canadian state, the very vocation held by the youth who initiated the early queer riots i.e. sex work remains effectively criminalized. In addition to assisting Indigenous peoples on the urban frontlines of anti-gentrification struggles and rural sites of land defense, radical queers must recognize the criminalization of our bodies and economies as yet another form of state violence.

In our efforts to build relationships with Indigenous nations, settler queer populations (especially white settlers) must be cautious in our approach to Indigenous solidarity. In particular we must not co-opt Indigenous voices and narratives as a means to our own end of radicalism (the dismantling of capitalism and the state). This includes resisting the urge to impose western frameworks of understanding gender and queerness on Indigenous people, or using Two-spirit histories for our own narratives.

Whiteness as a supremacy, as well as anti-Indigenous racism, sex work antagonism and anti-Black racism within queer communities must be confronted and eradicated. In order to achieve this, the assumed homogeneity of the LGBT community must be challenged as no longer being composed of individuals with shared experiences, but rather an uncomfortable and antithetical combination of those benefiting from neoliberal forces and those suffering under them.

Liberation is both a psychological undertaking and a material project. Those of us who remain imprisoned and oppressed must fight to name and interrogate the forces that shape our world, and this includes the colonial foundations that surround us. A truly liberatory queer politic rejects the idea that gay matters are limited to the LGBT alphabet soup of identity politics, instead asserting that queer struggles should center and prioritize the liberation of all those incarcerated, displaced and dispossessed. Understanding this, queer liberation must then announce itself as separate from and incompatible with the nation-state project of settler-colonialism, which continues to expand and acquire wealth from resource extraction, aided and abetted by neoliberal gay complicity. Collective liberation, in short, means liberation from Canada.

Centering an anti-colonial approach in organizing our radical queer movements means understanding our complicated history with police forces and colonial governments, including the ways in which queer settler populations have been and continue to be used against Indigenous peoples. With this knowledge, we should be able to break with oppression and rejoin movements that are working towards the dismantling of the nation-state and its apparatus, and assist Indigenous peoples in their movements for sovereignty and land reclamation.

Read this article:

Against Canada, Towards Queer Liberation | The Mainlander - The Mainlander

Theresa Mays ill-fated snap election seems to have transformed the UKs national zeitgeist, not least in the public narrative over Brexit.

Much diminished is the focus on controlling migration and sovereignty and much more to the fore is a focus on safeguarding jobs and the economy. Mays erstwhile inexorable march toward the cliff of so-called Hard Brexit no longer seems unstoppable. And whilst, at least for the moment, there are few voices challenging the UKs eventual departure from the EU, key political and business figures are openly advancing ways forward which involve transitional arrangements, continued membership of the Customs Union and, even, for some, continued membership of the Single Market recognising that compromises would be necessary over EU migration and the continued role of the European Court of Justice.

Here, we link to a report we published in January which explores how controlling free movement and continuing free trade between the UK and the EU might be reconciled and which set out some thoughts which, we would submit, are more relevant now than ever. We also link here to a flowchart we published soon after the referendum last year and track the progress since.

Continued here:

What are the options for the UK and EU to reach a compromise over free movement and access to the single market? - Lexology (registration)

With just one nomination and no statues so far, Jake Gyllenhaal is once again aiming for an Oscar. His emotional new movie, Stronger, dropped its first trailer this week and it has all the trappings of an Academy Award-winning film.

But dont worry its not all highbrow fare this week. Horror fans have something to look forward to in Annabelle 2: Creation, a prequel to 2014s Annabelle and the fourth film in The Conjuring film series.

And for aficionados of comedy cult films, theres Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, which sees the originals all-star cast of funny folks return to tell the continuing story of Camp Firewood and its counselors.

Check out all the weeks best movie trailers below.

Stronger is the inspiring true story of Jeff Bauman, an ordinary man who captured the hearts of his city and the world to become the symbol of hope following the infamous 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Jeff, a 27-year-old, working-class Boston man who was at the marathon to try and win back his ex-girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany). Waiting for her at the finish line when the blast occurs, he loses both his legs in the attack. After regaining consciousness in the hospital, Jeff is able to help law enforcement identify one of the bombers, but his own battle has just begun.

American Assassin follows the rise of Mitch Rapp (Dylan OBrien), a CIA black ops recruit under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). The pair is enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on both military and civilian targets. Together the three discover a pattern in the violence leading them to a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent (Shiva Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Taylor Kitsch) intent on starting a World War in the Middle East.

Thank You for Your Service follows a group of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq who struggle to integrate back into family and civilian life, while living with the memory of a war that threatens to destroy them long after theyve left the battlefield.

Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmakers possessed creation, Annabelle.

Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), the son of a publisher and his artistic wife, has just graduated from college and is trying to find his place in the world. Moving from his parents Upper West Side apartment to the Lower East Side, he befriends his neighbor W.F. (Jeff Bridges), a shambling alcoholic writer who dispenses worldly wisdom alongside healthy shots of whiskey. Thomas world begins to shift when he discovers that his long-married father (Pierce Brosnan) is having an affair with a seductive younger woman (Kate Beckinsale). Determined to break up the relationship, Thomas ends up sleeping with his fathers mistress, launching a chain of events that will change everything he thinks he knows about himself and his family.

As the nation teeters on the brink of WWII, a nearly bankrupt NAACP sends Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick A. Boseman) to conservative Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur against his wealthy socialite employer in a sexual assault and attempted murder trial that quickly became tabloid fodder. In need of a high profile victory but muzzled by a segregationist court, Marshall is partnered with Samuel Friedman (Josh Gad), a young Jewish lawyer who has never tried a case. Marshall and Friedman struggle against a hostile storm of fear and prejudice, driven to discover the truth in the sensationalised trial which helped set the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement to come.

Winter is coming and the hype is building. In our latest peek at Game of Thrones season seven, the Lannisters face enemies on all sides and Daenerys army of the Unsullied and the Dothraki is prepared for battle. Meanwhile, Arya Stark appears to have found her way to the North, where Jon Snow and Sansa rule over Winterfell. The penultimate season of the hit show will premiere on HBO on July 16.

During a single day in New York City, a variety of characters grapple with the mundane, the unexpected, and the larger questions permeating their lives. An investigative reporter struggles with her first day on the job, despite help from her misguided boss; a rebellious teen attempts to balance her feminist ideals with other desires; and a young man seeks to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend, even as her brother threatens revenge. Meanwhile, an avid music lover traverses the city in search of a rare record for his vinyl collection.

Welcome to the Camp Firewood 10 Year Reunion! From David Wain and Michael Showalter, the filmmakers that brought the original 2001 cult classic and the 2015 acclaimed prequel series by the same name, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later is the hilarious new eight-part limited series starring the original cast, plus an all-star lineup of new cast members. 10 years older. 10 years hotter. 10 years wetter.

The electrifying 1973 tennis match between world number one Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was billed as The Battle Of The Sexes and became one of the most-watched televised sports events of all time. The match caught the zeitgeist and sparked a global conversation on gender equality, while off the court, both King and Riggs were fighting more personal and complex battles. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis courts and animated the discussions between men and women in bedrooms and boardrooms around the world.

See the rest here:

10 Must-Watch Movie Trailers Of The Week [24.06.17] - D'Marge

LOS ANGELES, June 23 Check out this new trailer for Battle of the Sexes that serves up the ultimate showdown between men and women in the form of a tennis match.

Emma Stone and Steve Carrell star in this film about the famous 1973 clash between tennis greats Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

The synopsis of the film reads: The electrifying 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King (Stone) and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Carell) was billed as the Battle of the Sexes and became the most watched televised sports event of all time. The match caught the zeitgeist and sparked a global conversation on gender equality, spurring on the feminist movement. Trapped in the media glare, King and Riggs were on opposites sides of a binary argument, but off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. With a supportive husband urging her to fight the Establishment for equal pay, the fiercely private King was also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, while Riggs gambled his legacy and reputation in a bid to relive the glories of his past. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis courts and animated the discussions between men and women in bedrooms and boardrooms around the world.

The film also stars Sarah Silverman, Andrea Riseborough, Elisabeth Shue, Bill Pullman and Alan Cumming.

Battle of the Sexes is set for release on October 20.

A screengrab from Battle of the Sexes that stars Emma Stone and Steve Carrell among others.

View original post here:

Emma Stone, Steve Carell face off in 'Battle of the Sexes' (VIDEO) - Malay Mail Online