Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia leaves a big hole in the Supreme Court’s conservative phalanx. Taken from: Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate ; ; ;
This article:
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia leaves a big hole in the Supreme Court’s conservative phalanx. Taken from: Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate ; ; ;
This article:
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia leaves a big hole in the Supreme Court’s conservative phalanx. From: A Look Back: Justice Scalia on CO2 and Why the E.P.A. Isn’t the ‘Atmospheric Protection Agency’ ; ; ;
Original post:
A Look Back: Justice Scalia on CO2 and Why the E.P.A. Isn’t the ‘Atmospheric Protection Agency’
In Chinese cities and India’s rural households, millions remain at risk from power plant pollution and smoky cooking and heating fires. See original article: Dot Earth Blog: New Study Finds Persistent Peril from Urban Coal Soot in China and Indoor Smoke in India ; ; ;
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Polluters like China and India may balk at following through on the Paris Agreement on cutting emissions if the United States fails to carry out strong policies. Jump to original: Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord ; ; ;
Taken from:
Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord
As the planet warms, we need new approaches to identify which species and ecosystems are most at risk. See original: Op-Ed Contributors: T-Shirt Weather in the Arctic ; ; ;
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An encounter with a wild boar momentarily realigns our relationship to nature in a time of mass extinction. Credit: On Nature: A Hint of Danger in the Forest ; ; ;
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Mother Jones
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It’s pretty amazing. Ad blockers have been around forever. I’ve been using AdBlock Plus for nearly a decade and nobody ever cared. It was just a quiet little thing that a few power users knew about.
But as soon as Apple decided to allow ad blocking on the iPhone, suddenly the world went nuts. News headlines exploded. Half the sites I visit now check for ad blockers and hit me with guilt-inducing messages about how I’m bankrupting them if I decline to read their latest Flash creations and bouncing gif animations. Hell, I just got one of these messages on Phys.org. For a while, the Washington Post randomly declined to let me read their articles at all unless I removed my ad blocker.
I’ve got one question and one comment about this. The comment is this: Screw you, Apple. Everything was fine until you decided to barge in. The question is this: Is publisher panic over loss of ad revenue rational? Genuine question. I understand that mobile is where all the ad dollars are, and I understand that Apple accounts for a sizeable chunk of the mobile market. But is ad blocking ever likely to become a mass phenomenon, or will it continue to be used only by power users? I suppose there’s no way to know. In any case, the recent hysteria over ad blocking sure does show the incredible PR power of Apple. If you take something that’s been around forever—4G LTE, large screens, ad blocking—and slap it on an iPhone, everyone goes nuts. It’s Apple’s world and the rest of us are just pawns in the games they play.
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See original article – We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said. ; ; ;
Link:
We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said.
Mother Jones
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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from Shakesville founder Melissa McEwan.
Each time WikiLeaks posts another round of emails from the Sony hack, there is a garbage trove of misogyny: unequal pay, gendered and racist harassment, Aaron Sorkin waxing sexist, Angelina Jolie dismissed as a spoiled brat. Found among the latest collection was a dispatch from Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter to Sony CEO Michael Lynton on the subject of female-centered superhero films, and if it’s not exactly as awful as you’re already imagining, that’s possibly because it’s even worse. Sent under the simple subject line “Female Movies,” Perlmutter writes:
Michael,
As we discussed on the phone, below are just a few examples. There are more.
Thanks,
Ike
1. Electra (Marvel) – Very bad idea and the end result was very, very bad. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=elektra.htm
2. Catwoman (WB/DC) – Catwoman was one of the most important female character within the Batmanfranchise. This film was a disaster. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=catwoman.htm
3. Supergirl – (DC) Supergirl was one of the most important female super hero in Superman franchise. This Movie came out in 1984 and did $14 million total domestic with opening weekend of $5.5 million. Again, another disaster.
Best, Ike
Case closed, your honor! At Women and Hollywood, Laura Berger quite rightly notes that Perlmutter’s list is highly selective and narrowly defined. “It seems fair to assume,” writes Berger, “that Perlmutter is referring specifically to female superhero movies. If that’s the case, why is something like ‘The Hunger Games’ omitted from this list? The extremely lucrative franchise is led by a woman, and while Katniss isn’t technically a superheroine, she’s certainly marketed as one. Isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ a more relevant example of how female-led films fare at the box office today than, say, ‘Supergirl,’ which was released over 30 years ago?” Emphasis original.
At ThinkProgress, Jessica Goldstein shows how easily one could selectively compile a list of male-centered superhero flops if one were inclined to make the incredulous assertion, based exclusively on box office returns and not on the inherent quality of the films, that male-centered superhero films don’t work.
The three films on Perlmutter’s list frankly just weren’t very good. Which has to do with their female heroes only insomuch as studios don’t generally dedicate equivalent creative and financial resources to female-centered superhero films, because they don’t want to “waste” them on films they fear won’t succeed at the box office. Thus the vicious cycle continues: Many female-centered superhero films are set up to fail, and then when one fails, the blame is directed at the women at its center, rather than the misogyny at her back.
This is a conversation that happens around every genre of “hero” film: Superhero films, action films, fantasy films, adventure films. The wildly successful male-centered flicks get rattled off as evidence of what “works,” and implicit condemnation of what (allegedly) doesn’t.
Many of the wildly successful male-centered franchises have, however, a token female character—carefully segregated from other women and girls, lest they get any ideas about taking over the world, I suppose.
And we are ever meant to understand that all of the dedicated superfans of these films watched them because of the men, always the men. What Perlmutter and his cohort don’t understand, don’t consider, or simply don’t care about is that there are plenty of us who watched those films for the women.
When I watched the Superman series, I wasn’t watching those films for Christopher Reeve; I was watching them for Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, who I was certain was the coolest woman with the most amazing voice who had ever lived. When I watched the Star Wars trilogy, I had zero interest in Luke; I showed up for Leia. When I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was watching it as much for Marion as I was for Indy. When I watched Dragonslayer (which admittedly was a commercial flop, but later became a cult classic) over and over until I could say every line, I was all about Valerian. When I watched Romancing the Stone, I was cheering for THE JOAN WILDER.
There were female heroes in my favorite films, and they were the reason I watched them. I imagine there are plenty of little girls (and little boys) who watch The Avengers not because of the guys, but because of the one, remarkable, exceptional (in every sense of the word) female hero in their midst. That doesn’t show up in the numbers—nor, apparently, in the imaginations of the men who make creative decisions based on numbers.
The thing about many of the films I mentioned is that they’re generally regarded as good movies. They were made with monumental investments of care and attention. And they didn’t have to be male-centered, but they got that care and attention because they were.
What would happen if a female-centered hero were given the same mighty powers? Welp.
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Dear Marvel and Sony: We Love Movies for Their Kick-Ass Female Heroes, Too, You Jerks
Faculty members call on university to recognize urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies. hanxu1011/Thinkstock Three hundred professors at Stanford, including Nobel laureates and this year’s Fields medal winner, are calling on the university to rid itself of all fossil fuel investments, in a sign that the campus divestment movement is gathering force. In a letter to Stanford’s president, John Hennessy, and the board of trustees, made available exclusively to the Guardian, the faculty members call on the university to recognize the urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies. Stanford, which controls a $21.4 billion (£14.2 billion) endowment, eliminated direct investments in coalmining companies last May, making it the most prominent university to cut its ties to the industries that cause climate change. Months later, however, the university invested in three oil and gas companies. Read the rest at the Guardian. See the article here: Stanford Professors Urge Withdrawal From Fossil Fuel Investments ; ; ;
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Stanford Professors Urge Withdrawal From Fossil Fuel Investments