Link: Can Social Media Save NASA?

Selena Larson of ReadWrite made an interesting conclusion: For NASA's 55th anniversary on October 1, it got a government shutdown and completely frozen funding. 97% of its employees, many scientists and other highly educated professionals, have been furloughed. However, while Congress only has a 10 percent approval rating, NASA is much-beloved.

Third-party efforts seek to use social media to restore at least partial funding to its operations, and science-loving folks everywhere are down to do just that. This is a case where twitter gets political in a frustrating situation where it seems like ordinary people have no power to change things.

As if millions lots of voices employees suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced

Especially young people. As an example, Larson reports on NASA's own social media strategies to build buzz. Invoking the name of a major celebrity popular with young girls had a dramatic effect:

One big push for NASA is to find ways to reach more young people to encourage an interest in science and technology. Twitter has been a successful platform for engaging a younger audience, including megastar Justin Bieber and his almost 45 million followers. After tweeting an invitation to help the young musician take his act into space, NASA saw a huge uptick in its follower count, including many female fans whom it might have struggled to reach through traditional means.

We all have something to say about Mr. Beiber, but his name and his media carry weight and they mean something enormous to people: people that NASA needs now more than ever. There are connections between the media that we love, media that we may consider less important than the likes of our space program, and how active we are in perceiving issues. 

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Link: While Superheroes Conquer Media, Comic Books Battle Stigma

This article by Melissa Rayworth of the Arkon Beacon Journal reports well on a very strange phenomenon: the mass-media bullies that once and still bully comics for being either too childish or too adult, too intellectual/nerdy or too uncultured, are cashing in on comic book idols. Meanwhile, comics themselves don't enjoy as much cultural uplift as the over $150 million gross of Marvel's The Avengers would suggest.

They've certainly cleaned up some, but it took way too long for Ant Man and Wasp to get a movie.

Rayworth quotes con-goers on their thoughts:

“If you tell somebody you read Captain America now, they know who you’re talking about,” said Sims, who blogs at websites including ComicsAlliance.com. “The characters’ being visible lessens the kind of stigma of reading comics, because people know those characters and have affection for them.”

But only to a point. Amanda Osman-Balzell is a married opera singer raising a toddler daughter while attending graduate school. When new friends visit her Tempe, Ariz., home, they raise eyebrows at her stash of comic books. 

“They see that we have comic books,” she said, “and they look at us like, ‘Really? You guys look so normal.’ ” 

She explains that many of today’s comic books boast intricate artwork and story lines far more complex and thought-provoking than their big-screen counterparts. But friends roll their eyes when she describes comics as “literature.”

There's no denying that comics have had a spotted past when it comes to integrity in storytelling. Any comic book fan can bemoan the ridiculousness of the Silver Age, and the un-needed darkening of beloved icons in recent decades.

And whatever this is. (Tarot/3 Kittens #74)

But is this really any worse or different than other forms of media? Surely written media has endured The Eye of Argon. Radio shows once were obligated to include advertisements in their actual fiction content (resulting in many a baffling radio drama about dish soap, for example). And is it any worse than television, with Toddlers and Tiaras?

Comics as a medium are older than television. And yet, television is now an ubiquitous part of our media culture. What's held comics back? Is it really the superheroes, when they score millions at the box office?

Or is it us?

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Analysis of a Parthian Shot.

Is this now going to be a short series on feedback media? OK, I guess this is now a short series on feedback media.

A few days ago, I discussed how feedback can create a dialog between consumers and content producers. Then, I discussed how feedback can create a dialog between consumers and other consumers. Now, I guess I am going to talk a little bit about manifestations of feedback-based dialog in real life, and how it's part of a bigger issue.

If anybody here's brushed up on historical or period warfare, the Parthian Shot was a tactic used by ancient Parthian (which was a middle-eastern empire) mounted archers. They would retreat, or pretend to retreat, and fire arrows behind them; chasing troops would advance into the cover fire.

Old school drive ride-by.

The shot I want to look at today didn't happen in the first century AD, but on September 25, 2013, and it happened on the internet. Tech blogger Jessica Roy left the online tech journal BetaBeat, and left behind a list of all the things she's not going to miss.

The list boils down to, ultimately, 'sexism.' But there are some interesting elements to her strongly-worded displeasure. Some of the highlights worth mentioning:

8. The notion that being the slightest bit critical makes you a “hater,” and the idea that providing any kind of coverage that isn’t a big sloppy BJ shows a lack of “journalistic integrity.”

Here, Roy comments on the reception of criticism and the nature of feedback. Note the similarity to Carolyn Petit's predicament when she dared to give a popular video game a 9/10, and tell me that there isn't a pattern. What is it about this feedback culture that frames professional critics as a threat when they do their jobs and are critical of media?

Also, all those snotty mansplainers and people who called me a “cunt” for talking about women in tech, and anyone who tries to derail honest conversation about these issues by finding minor typos or formatting errors that they can use to discredit my entire perspective so that they don’t have to reflect on their own participation in a culture that so clearly devalues women’s beliefs.

We can probably assume safely that the audience giving Roy and Petit feedback is similar: men who object to the voice of a woman (and all that nasty 'perspective') in their domain of choice. But Roy isn't just talking about her experience, she is also speaking about the media she's tried to produce: it's a stone-cold fact that only a quarter of IT jobs are held by women, and that many graduates with tech degrees find they cannot be hired to apply them. The comment contributors Roy curses for dismissing her points and coverage also are dismissing reality, not merely a matter of opinion or a difference in personal worldview. And they do it on a micro-basis: in a comment box, over a misplaced comma or a typo.

It's ludicrous to think that a copy error means that a proven fact of the tech industry and the perspective of somebody actually there, are invalid. But I guess that's why Roy left.

This is a dialog where the comment box intersects the real world, and real world decisions to stay or leave employment. It's easy to dismiss the significance of a mob of anonymous strangers, but as micro-aggressions build up over time, the feedback culture has the power to override artistic integrity, stop other consumers in their tracks, and even deny reality.

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Are Banned Books and Bad Science Connected?

According to Kevin C. Pyle  author of upcoming book Bad For You, an exploration of the 'war on fun', and Scott Cunningham: Yes. And they answer it with a comic.

The 'he' being Fredric Wertham, and the answer being 'no.'

In the wake of Banned Books Week, it's easy to ride the outrage at a seemingly over-protective and offensive decision to limit access to media. The inherent wrongness in shushing up Harry Potter and locking away Catcher in the Rye seems like a no-brainer.

Is it, though? What kind of thought (or lack of thought) went into this kind of conclusion? It's easy to dismiss it as merely a regressive political agenda, or the hysteria of an over-protective backlash to popular culture. The states with the most challenged books, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and California all struggle with anti-science legislation and the push for creationism in classrooms, and book bannings are part of that anti-intellectual substitute-for-science culture. Texas needs no comment; it's host to the anti-science think tank the Institute for Creation Research,. California has a 'Creation Museum.' Pennsylvania was host to the first direct challenge to a school district that included Intelligent Design as a part of curriculum. Illinois and Wisconsin are battleground states for the issue.

But why might this be true? And what does keeping Fifty Shades of Grey off the shelves have anything to do with it?

The subject of the mini-presentation is comic books specifically, and the 'scientific' conclusion written about by Fredric Wertham’s Anti-comic manuscript Seduction of the Innocent, and its later influence on the formation of the restrictive Comics Code Authority. Pyle and Cunningham explain how Wertham's failure to adhere to the scientific method produced biased results, resulting in real-life media restrictions.

Incidentally, the method that Wertham used, is exactly the same method that some think tanks use when creating material supporting anti-science or otherwise restrictive material: starting with a conclusion, and then looking for evidence to 'support' it.

The same things that threaten science education and critical thinking in the USA are the same things that cause book bannings, 'violent video games' as a talking point, and general devaluing of otherwise very important media. These things are connected, and to let comic books slip by is what lets Intelligent Design stick its un-evolving foot in the door.

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Bill Nye the Real Fly Science Guy

I, like many others, have childhood television memories. Not to say I was parked on the couch often; I remember eating dinner (plain spaghetti, with Parmesan cheese) and watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on PBS.

BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL (inertia is a property of matter)

Educational television, I know — but I loved it, and so did thousands of other kids. William Sanford ('Bill') Nye's enthusiasm and excitement for science went hand-in-hand with my love for museums and my then-steadfast resolution to become a paleontologist. That last one didn't really work out in the long-run, but to this day I adore science and I suspect a vast fraction of young adults in STEM fields today have similar feelings.

This is why I was enchanted, and slightly baffled, when I saw Bill on Dancing with the Stars.

Pictured: Bill Nye dances the robot. What a time to be alive.

Bill Nye is not really who many of us think of as a celebrity. He's getting on in age, he's an educator, he ran a public television kids science show, he's a committee member for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and a face of climate-change research efforts. But most of all, he's remembered for his kids' television show.

But he's also done battle with Fox News on the subject of climate change. He's used his star power to address creationism in schools and how anti-science sentiments might harm future generations. 

This is a great redefinition of what a celebrity is, and one I wish would happen more often. Without media that connected him to the public, Bill Nye would not be a celebrity. And he holds great meaning for the consumers he connected to, despite having no trappings of what society commonly considers as star material.

He is a population-picked celebrity. There's no agent doing publicity for him, or selling his image to magazines. He's not releasing singles, taking movie contracts, or advertising himself. And yet, everybody knows who he is, anyway, because we like him and we like to see him. He has meaning to us.

That's the power of media, I think, in its most base form. It doesn't just lift the stars above everybody else, it lifts people who would never have been stars into the sky, based on a television show that is barely considered important to popular culture.

But the consumers consider it important. And that's why Bill Nye isn't just dancing with the stars, he is a star.

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Link: Seven Things I Learned from Reading the Hobbit.

It's a geeky forecast, today.

The authors of the minimalist MS-Paint webcomic A Hard Hobbit to Break published a really great essay on the 7 largest themes in J. R. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit and how they can relate to our daily lives.

And it's not a surprise that they do. The Hobbit is high adventure, but it's also a story about a journey. Not a Hero's Journey-- that's about the adolescence and tribulations and personal growth of a hero character.

It's a story about having your life up-heaved to go on a trip that you're not sure will end well.

Plenty of us call ourselves some kind of profession, but don't feel qualified or were forced into it and now we just sort of play along... though with luck few of us are burglars.

Plenty of us have had to muddle through vast conflicts that don't even include us, and yet, we've had to make decisions that influence them.

 And plenty of us have happened across something totally by chance that's changed the entire game: sometimes, for the worse. Though hopefully none of my readers have found the One Ring.

Hopefully.

"G... Google! Blogspot!!

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Talk Nerdy to Me.

There's a fairly popular cultural meme that there isn't just a nerd, there is a super nerd, the one who knows Klingon and can speak it, too. Perish the thought of this being for squares only. Stephen Colbert can speak Quenya.

Here's a handy introduction to these 'constructed languages,' or 'conlangs.'

Pictured: People with lots of time on their hands.

An interesting note, though: the American public often finds other languages intimidating. Constant groans of 'when will <immigrant population of the decade> learn to speak English?' can almost be the cartoon of everyone's racist grandfather. Junot Díaz, author of titles such as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her has this to say on criticism of his works' inclusion of Spanish:

Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one-third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over — Junot Díaz

Exoticism has gone hand-in-hand with foreign languages for English speakers for decades. We call French the language of love, but is 'omlette du fromage' any lovelier than its English counterpart? What is our (sometimes appropriative) fascination with the mystery and intrigue of other languages, and is it any wonder that such a passion translates into learning the tongues of peoples who never even existed?

These languages are often expanded greatly by an adoring audience, in an attempt to literally talk back to the source material in the languages it brought to life.

And, languages are also our way of connecting with other people. Just because a culture is fictional does not mean that one would never want to connect with that media, and the personalities within.

pedo mellon a minno

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