Things shared by Chris Radcliff, straight from the internets to you.
Over the past several months, we have been working closely with our filmmakers to build the tools and features they need to succeed in the digital world. We’ve had the pleasure of helping release some fantastic films you may have heard about. At the same time, we’ve also been quietly working on building a product to let any filmmaker, anywhere in the world, have access to simple and powerful digital distribution. While we continue to polish the product, we couldn’t help but share some sexy, behind-the-scenes screenshots (using dummy numbers).
We know that the most important thing for a filmmaker to do is to strengthen the film brand through their own website. The VHX tools capture all the information needed to optimize film sales and reach your audience. Furthermore, we’ve built a simple yet robust site theming engine to make your film’s web presence a gorgeous experience.
We are starting to onboard films now, in order to gain feedback and make VHX the best product imaginable. We’re opening the floodgates in April! Are you in?
I don’t know a thing about the film industry, but I’ve been consistently impressed by the work VHX is doing. So beautiful!
DANCE STRETCHING FAN ART. From The Price (as I’m sure you know). I will mention that Bev and Deanna were, in fact, wearing shoes during their Slammin’ Baskets routine. But I will excuse those toes in the painting because it is otherwise so glorious.
Thank you to friend of the blog Deborah (again) for the heads up! Check out the post at The Mary Sue for the rest of the amazing pieces, including Geordi in some sweet jeans, Worf on a cool poster, and a Tribble in a uniform. (Or is that a hat??)
This is wonderful. The rest of the entries (many of which are available for sale) are worth looking at, too. My favorite is called Safety In Numbers:
Rand Paul’s 12+ hour filibuster about drones gets a succinct 43-word response.
The answer is no.
This is what we call plain language. It’s being shared not just because of the content of Holder’s response, but because it’s so surprising for an official of such stature say something concisely and clearly.
IT WORKS ON CATS!
For that, the government and the military must face a reckoning as well. — Javier Grillo-Marxuach (okbjgm), in “on bradley manning”
(via tonyuribe)
Despite frequent observations to the contrary, teens today are much less likely to use alcohol or tobacco, to try illegal drugs, or to have sex (or get pregnant) than their parents’ generation. According to the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan, high school seniors are almost half as likely as their parents’ generation to have had alcohol recently (40% in 2011, compared to 72% in 1980). Additionally, 43% of seniors had tried an illegal drug other than pot in 1981; in 2011, only 25% of seniors had done so. High school boys are only half as likely to have had sex as they were decades ago (28% in 2010, compared to about 50% in 1988). And according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, teenage pregnancy is at its lowest rate in 40 years.
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.
On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all.
Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing with the future. And it is precisely the mix of these two modes of thought that is central to the success of science.
—Carl Sagan on Mastering The Vital Balance of Skepticism and openness (via electricspacekoolaid)
In short: The world is full of wonder, and we are capable of using reason to explore it. If you deny either of those, you’re missing out on half the universe.
(via jtotheizzoe)
Wealth Inequality in America
This infographic-movie (would that be the term?) is beautifully done. It’s very clearly rendered, with lots of little context bits to help make sense from data we ordinarily have trouble grasping. Well worth six minutes of your time.
I personally love the point he makes, too. If we just worked to shift the situation from the statistical reality to our consensus idea of it, even if we don’t get to the consensus idea of how it should be, we’d be making great progress.
