Alexander Kristoff held off Peter Sagan in a sprint finish to claim victory in the 12th stage of the Tour de France from Bourg-en-Bresse to Saint-Etienne on Thursday.
Thursday 17 July 2014
Rio Ferdinand set to complete QPR move on one-year deal worth up to £70,000-per-week
SAMI MOKBEL: Rio Ferdinand is due at Loftus Road tonight to complete his move to Queens Park Rangers. The former Manchester United defender is due to arrive in west London at around 6pm on Thursday to seal his switch to the Premier League new boys.
Diego Costa only Premier League player to make short-list for top European playe
Diego Costa is the only Premier League player short-listed for Europe’s top individual award. The former Atletico Madrid striker is one of 10 players short-listed for UEFA Best Player in Europe Award.
Hull sign record shirt sponsorship deal with bookmakers 12Bet on two-year contract
Hull’s plans to rebrand as the Tigers may have come to nothing but they have still managed to attract the largest commercial deal in their 110-year history after bookmakers 12Bet agreed a two-year contract as shirt sponsors.
West Ham step up pursuit of Ivan Strinic as Sam Allardyce hopes Croatia international will add depth to his Premier League squad
The Hammers are pressing forward with their attempts to sign the Dnipro left-back, with Allardyce hoping he will provide competition for Aaron Cresswell in defence.
Why 'Fitspo' Should Come With A Warning Label
This article contains language and graphic descriptions that may be triggering for those who struggle with disordered eating.
Just a few months ago, Sheena Lyonnais was seeking motivation to get off her couch and lose a few pounds. She wasn't overweight, but like many twenty-somethings, she felt she had grown sluggish and depressed. She simply wanted to get in shape so she would feel better. Plus, there was the allure of reaching her goal weight by her looming 27th birthday.
That's when she discovered fitspo.
Fitspo, short for fitspiration, is an online community of bloggers and social media accounts that encourage weight loss, diet and exercise through the sharing of success stories, active lifestyle and diet tips, photos and rules. Lots and lots of rules.
As a web writer, it was natural for Lyonnais to look online for support, and pretty quickly she was spending hours combing through Tumblr to find tips and "inspirational" messages instructing her to strive to be better through fitness. These mantras were primarily superimposed over photos of the "ideal" body type: rock hard, thin female figures. After countless hours taking in mantras like "I can because I think I can" (coupled with an image of a Nike-clad thigh gap) and "Junk food satisfies you for a minute -- being fit satisfies you forever," she was motivated to begin running and eat healthier.
Somewhere along the line, however, "the messaging started to get lost in translation," Lyonnais, who lives in Toronto, told The Huffington Post. She maintained her own fitspo Tumblr account, or "Fitblr," and she was following countless others. Even though she was running every single day, she started to feel that everything she did wasn't enough in comparison to the women on her dashboard. She began using multiple apps to track her calories and workouts. Her thoughts were dominated by all of the numbers she entered into her phone: Did I run enough miles? Did I run them fast enough? Did I eat too many calories today?
"There were just too many numbers in my head," Lyonnais said. "I didn't want to look at an egg as being 70 calories. I needed to look at it as something that's nourishing and good for my body."
So she stopped calculating, deleted her Fitblr account and wrote about her experience in a personal essay for xoJane back in May. She hadn't developed a "full-blown eating disorder," she said, but at the peak of her fitspo obsession, she'd reduced her daily calorie intake to 1,000 and centered her schedule -- and the stability of her emotional state -- around running.
"I came into it with all of the right intentions," she said, emphasizing that she really was simply trying to be healthy before things spun out of control. "When I tried to change it, it was like everything exploded. The world was chaos."
The Rise Of Fitspo
Fitspo's gain in popularity over the past few years matches up with increasing concern in the U.S. over the obesity epidemic. And with more than a third of Americans classified as obese, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, it's easy to see why it's been branded a public health issue. But the "war" against obesity is often a fraught and ultimately unhealthy one.
Claire Mysko, who oversees teen outreach on behalf of the National Eating Disorders Association, told The Huffington Post that as a result, there's been an increasingly heavy focus on fitness and dieting, something the diet industry has capitalized on. According to Mysko, the proliferation of diet ads touting the importance of weight loss has centered the national conversation about "health" around the number on the scale, which is problematic since weight isn't always an accurate measure of well-being.
"We are, as a culture, so obsessed with 'health,' but there's a lot of stuff that comes under this umbrella of health obsession that actually is quite unhealthy and really promotes an unhealthy fixation on weight loss and thinness," she said.
"We are, as a culture, so obsessed with 'health,' but there's a lot of stuff that comes under this umbrella of health obsession that actually is quite unhealthy."
The word "healthy" is now a loaded term: If we think we can gauge health just by looking at someone, "healthy" becomes code for "conventionally attractive."
David LaPorte, a professor and director of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who is currently researching the effects of fitspo content on young women, said fitspo fits right into this social context. Now women don't only feel the need to be thin, they must be fit, too.
Fitspo itself crops up everywhere from personal blogs to platforms like Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. It's highly visual. Pictures of women's bodies, "clean" foods (avocado toast is a fitspo favorite, said Lyonnais) and illustrated rules or mantras dominate the space. "Never miss a workout on a Monday"; "Sore is the new sexy"; and "Never eat after dinner" are just a few you'll see after scrolling through the fitspo universe.
Many of the images used are of women exercising or in workout clothes, but an equal number are the very same photos of boney female figures, often plucked from mainstream media, that you see in the thinspo space, an online niche that encourages thinness at the cost of health. An image of a woman's uber thin, underwear-clad lower body paired with the caption "This could be you in months -- keep going" is just one example of the fine line fitspo walks.
It's easy to make the argument that fitspo encourages so-called "normal" or "healthy" behaviors -- after all, diet and exercise, within reason, are good things -- but people can easily veer off-track into dangerous territory.
Why Fitspo Can Be Problematic
While LaPorte and Mysko agree that some of the fitspo messaging is body positive and promotes self-acceptance, Mysko points out that a lot of it sparks body comparisons and promotes fitness at all costs. This mindset can easily trigger an obsession with diet, fitness and self-discipline in vulnerable men and women.
Studies have shown that online communities can trigger or worsen eating disorders by encouraging pathological behaviors. Before looking into fitspo, LaPorte studied the effects of thinspo on young women and found that 84 percent of women reduced their calories after just 90 minutes of exposure to thinspo. What's more, a 2006 study found that the most prevalent themes on thinspo sites are control, success and perfection. Even though the current data surrounding fitspo is practically nonexistent, it's all too easy to draw thematic connections to thinspo.
And there is crossover between the two, Mysko said, noting that the problem lies in the validation these online communities provide. If you see others engaging in the same obsessive behavior, listening to the same damaging messages and worshipping the same unattainable body ideal, you start to think that it's "normal." LaPorte added that it can be quite difficult to know who's vulnerable to fitspo's triggering effects. For every woman who develops an eating disorder after seeing this content, there may be 15 or 20 who are motivated to exercise and diet in a non-obsessive way.
Since many fitspo blogs highlight one's personal goals, there are people who build their online presence around concepts of healthy eating and fitness. When those women, like Lyonnais, realize they have a problem, that can play out on a public stage, inciting mixed responses.
Lyonnais said that after she wrote about her experience for xoJane, many women got in touch with her to share their similarly negative experiences with fitspiration. But she also heard from women for whom the opposite was true, and who said fitspo inspired them turn their lives around and cope with disordered eating.
"Most of this content is not promoting self-acceptance. It's saying, 'You're not good enough and you have to do this to get better.'"
But Mysko warned that categorizing fitspo as "inspiring" can be dangerous. "You need to start from a place of self-acceptance, and most of this content is not promoting self-acceptance," she said. "It's saying, 'You're not good enough and you have to do this to get better' -- 'better' being thinner or fit. You're not going to feel good about yourself if you're constantly immersed in that mindset."
All of these factors plant fitspo firmly in the gray area between "healthy" self-motivation and self-harming behavior: When it comes to fitspo, when does prioritizing exercise and diet cross over from "normal" to "obsessive"? The range of content out there means one has to judge individual sites or accounts to assess whether or not they're body positive or problematic.
How You Can Do What's Best For You
While public opinion is still on the fence about fitspo, Mysko said that those in the eating disorder field are becoming more and more aware of the dangers. The National Eating Disorders Association has been working closely with many of the major social media platforms, helping them to develop community guidelines and identify content that promotes disordered eating or self-harm behavior, whether it's thinspo or fitspo.
NEDA has been consulting with Facebook since 2011 and Tumblr since 2012 in an advisory capacity, helping the moderators of those platforms identify dangerous content and direct users to counseling. Additionally, when users search for triggering terms like "thinspo" on Pinterest and Instagram, a NEDA PSA pops up. But it's still an uphill battle for social media sites, many of which rely on community reporting of violations.
"They do have processes in place, but it's very tricky," Mysko said. "Once you take down one piece of content, 10 others are going to pop up."
Plus, many sites don't recognize fitspo as harmful just yet. Pinterest specifically doesn't consider fitness promotion, even when juxtaposed with an "ideal" body, a violation of community guidelines. At the end of the day, the onus is on the person browsing a particular website or platform to determine what content makes them feel good and what content could potentially trigger disordered eating and fitness patterns.
Generally speaking, Mysko says, seeking out advice about weight loss and dieting is a big "no no" for anyone in recovery from an eating disorder. But many women who seek out fitspo don't necessarily fall into this category. In fact, one of the most common things Mysko hears in her counseling practice is, "Well, I'm not sure if this counts as an eating disorder, but...." The woman then goes on to describe how thoughts about food and weight are dominating her life.
"I feel like I'll probably always know the numbers. But now I'm at a point where I'm so much healthier about it."
That middle-of-the-spectrum spot is where Lyonnais found herself at the peak of her time consuming fitspo. By the time she came up for air, her family had become worried about her thin frame and obsessive behavior. She realized that her happiness was entirely based on how well she ran and how restrictive her diet was.
Once she deleted her Fitblr account, that all changed. She sought out support from friends and family and slowed everything down. She started consuming full, healthy meals again and began practicing yoga. Through those classes, Lyonnais effectively replaced the online images of "perfect" bodies with a room full of living, breathing women without the veneer of perfection many people take on in their Internet personas.
Now, Lyonnais only runs when she wants to run. As for all of those numbers? They're still there, but they don't dominate her thoughts anymore.
"I feel like I'll probably always know the numbers," she said. "But now I'm at a point where I'm so much healthier about it."
Need help? Call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.
from Style - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1yxbETi
via IFTTT
Just a few months ago, Sheena Lyonnais was seeking motivation to get off her couch and lose a few pounds. She wasn't overweight, but like many twenty-somethings, she felt she had grown sluggish and depressed. She simply wanted to get in shape so she would feel better. Plus, there was the allure of reaching her goal weight by her looming 27th birthday.
That's when she discovered fitspo.
Fitspo, short for fitspiration, is an online community of bloggers and social media accounts that encourage weight loss, diet and exercise through the sharing of success stories, active lifestyle and diet tips, photos and rules. Lots and lots of rules.
As a web writer, it was natural for Lyonnais to look online for support, and pretty quickly she was spending hours combing through Tumblr to find tips and "inspirational" messages instructing her to strive to be better through fitness. These mantras were primarily superimposed over photos of the "ideal" body type: rock hard, thin female figures. After countless hours taking in mantras like "I can because I think I can" (coupled with an image of a Nike-clad thigh gap) and "Junk food satisfies you for a minute -- being fit satisfies you forever," she was motivated to begin running and eat healthier.
Somewhere along the line, however, "the messaging started to get lost in translation," Lyonnais, who lives in Toronto, told The Huffington Post. She maintained her own fitspo Tumblr account, or "Fitblr," and she was following countless others. Even though she was running every single day, she started to feel that everything she did wasn't enough in comparison to the women on her dashboard. She began using multiple apps to track her calories and workouts. Her thoughts were dominated by all of the numbers she entered into her phone: Did I run enough miles? Did I run them fast enough? Did I eat too many calories today?
"There were just too many numbers in my head," Lyonnais said. "I didn't want to look at an egg as being 70 calories. I needed to look at it as something that's nourishing and good for my body."
So she stopped calculating, deleted her Fitblr account and wrote about her experience in a personal essay for xoJane back in May. She hadn't developed a "full-blown eating disorder," she said, but at the peak of her fitspo obsession, she'd reduced her daily calorie intake to 1,000 and centered her schedule -- and the stability of her emotional state -- around running.
"I came into it with all of the right intentions," she said, emphasizing that she really was simply trying to be healthy before things spun out of control. "When I tried to change it, it was like everything exploded. The world was chaos."
The Rise Of Fitspo
Fitspo's gain in popularity over the past few years matches up with increasing concern in the U.S. over the obesity epidemic. And with more than a third of Americans classified as obese, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, it's easy to see why it's been branded a public health issue. But the "war" against obesity is often a fraught and ultimately unhealthy one.
Claire Mysko, who oversees teen outreach on behalf of the National Eating Disorders Association, told The Huffington Post that as a result, there's been an increasingly heavy focus on fitness and dieting, something the diet industry has capitalized on. According to Mysko, the proliferation of diet ads touting the importance of weight loss has centered the national conversation about "health" around the number on the scale, which is problematic since weight isn't always an accurate measure of well-being.
"We are, as a culture, so obsessed with 'health,' but there's a lot of stuff that comes under this umbrella of health obsession that actually is quite unhealthy and really promotes an unhealthy fixation on weight loss and thinness," she said.
"We are, as a culture, so obsessed with 'health,' but there's a lot of stuff that comes under this umbrella of health obsession that actually is quite unhealthy."
The word "healthy" is now a loaded term: If we think we can gauge health just by looking at someone, "healthy" becomes code for "conventionally attractive."
David LaPorte, a professor and director of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who is currently researching the effects of fitspo content on young women, said fitspo fits right into this social context. Now women don't only feel the need to be thin, they must be fit, too.
Fitspo itself crops up everywhere from personal blogs to platforms like Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. It's highly visual. Pictures of women's bodies, "clean" foods (avocado toast is a fitspo favorite, said Lyonnais) and illustrated rules or mantras dominate the space. "Never miss a workout on a Monday"; "Sore is the new sexy"; and "Never eat after dinner" are just a few you'll see after scrolling through the fitspo universe.
Many of the images used are of women exercising or in workout clothes, but an equal number are the very same photos of boney female figures, often plucked from mainstream media, that you see in the thinspo space, an online niche that encourages thinness at the cost of health. An image of a woman's uber thin, underwear-clad lower body paired with the caption "This could be you in months -- keep going" is just one example of the fine line fitspo walks.
It's easy to make the argument that fitspo encourages so-called "normal" or "healthy" behaviors -- after all, diet and exercise, within reason, are good things -- but people can easily veer off-track into dangerous territory.
Why Fitspo Can Be Problematic
While LaPorte and Mysko agree that some of the fitspo messaging is body positive and promotes self-acceptance, Mysko points out that a lot of it sparks body comparisons and promotes fitness at all costs. This mindset can easily trigger an obsession with diet, fitness and self-discipline in vulnerable men and women.
Studies have shown that online communities can trigger or worsen eating disorders by encouraging pathological behaviors. Before looking into fitspo, LaPorte studied the effects of thinspo on young women and found that 84 percent of women reduced their calories after just 90 minutes of exposure to thinspo. What's more, a 2006 study found that the most prevalent themes on thinspo sites are control, success and perfection. Even though the current data surrounding fitspo is practically nonexistent, it's all too easy to draw thematic connections to thinspo.
And there is crossover between the two, Mysko said, noting that the problem lies in the validation these online communities provide. If you see others engaging in the same obsessive behavior, listening to the same damaging messages and worshipping the same unattainable body ideal, you start to think that it's "normal." LaPorte added that it can be quite difficult to know who's vulnerable to fitspo's triggering effects. For every woman who develops an eating disorder after seeing this content, there may be 15 or 20 who are motivated to exercise and diet in a non-obsessive way.
Since many fitspo blogs highlight one's personal goals, there are people who build their online presence around concepts of healthy eating and fitness. When those women, like Lyonnais, realize they have a problem, that can play out on a public stage, inciting mixed responses.
Lyonnais said that after she wrote about her experience for xoJane, many women got in touch with her to share their similarly negative experiences with fitspiration. But she also heard from women for whom the opposite was true, and who said fitspo inspired them turn their lives around and cope with disordered eating.
"Most of this content is not promoting self-acceptance. It's saying, 'You're not good enough and you have to do this to get better.'"
But Mysko warned that categorizing fitspo as "inspiring" can be dangerous. "You need to start from a place of self-acceptance, and most of this content is not promoting self-acceptance," she said. "It's saying, 'You're not good enough and you have to do this to get better' -- 'better' being thinner or fit. You're not going to feel good about yourself if you're constantly immersed in that mindset."
All of these factors plant fitspo firmly in the gray area between "healthy" self-motivation and self-harming behavior: When it comes to fitspo, when does prioritizing exercise and diet cross over from "normal" to "obsessive"? The range of content out there means one has to judge individual sites or accounts to assess whether or not they're body positive or problematic.
How You Can Do What's Best For You
While public opinion is still on the fence about fitspo, Mysko said that those in the eating disorder field are becoming more and more aware of the dangers. The National Eating Disorders Association has been working closely with many of the major social media platforms, helping them to develop community guidelines and identify content that promotes disordered eating or self-harm behavior, whether it's thinspo or fitspo.
NEDA has been consulting with Facebook since 2011 and Tumblr since 2012 in an advisory capacity, helping the moderators of those platforms identify dangerous content and direct users to counseling. Additionally, when users search for triggering terms like "thinspo" on Pinterest and Instagram, a NEDA PSA pops up. But it's still an uphill battle for social media sites, many of which rely on community reporting of violations.
"They do have processes in place, but it's very tricky," Mysko said. "Once you take down one piece of content, 10 others are going to pop up."
Plus, many sites don't recognize fitspo as harmful just yet. Pinterest specifically doesn't consider fitness promotion, even when juxtaposed with an "ideal" body, a violation of community guidelines. At the end of the day, the onus is on the person browsing a particular website or platform to determine what content makes them feel good and what content could potentially trigger disordered eating and fitness patterns.
Generally speaking, Mysko says, seeking out advice about weight loss and dieting is a big "no no" for anyone in recovery from an eating disorder. But many women who seek out fitspo don't necessarily fall into this category. In fact, one of the most common things Mysko hears in her counseling practice is, "Well, I'm not sure if this counts as an eating disorder, but...." The woman then goes on to describe how thoughts about food and weight are dominating her life.
"I feel like I'll probably always know the numbers. But now I'm at a point where I'm so much healthier about it."
That middle-of-the-spectrum spot is where Lyonnais found herself at the peak of her time consuming fitspo. By the time she came up for air, her family had become worried about her thin frame and obsessive behavior. She realized that her happiness was entirely based on how well she ran and how restrictive her diet was.
Once she deleted her Fitblr account, that all changed. She sought out support from friends and family and slowed everything down. She started consuming full, healthy meals again and began practicing yoga. Through those classes, Lyonnais effectively replaced the online images of "perfect" bodies with a room full of living, breathing women without the veneer of perfection many people take on in their Internet personas.
Now, Lyonnais only runs when she wants to run. As for all of those numbers? They're still there, but they don't dominate her thoughts anymore.
"I feel like I'll probably always know the numbers," she said. "But now I'm at a point where I'm so much healthier about it."
Need help? Call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.
from Style - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1yxbETi
via IFTTT
Selena Gomez Dons Flowy Blue Dress With Keyhole And Thigh-High Slit
Selena Gomez brought her boho-chic style to the red carpet July 16 with a revealing peasant dress.
The 21-year-old turned heads at the 2014 Ischia Global Film & Music Festival in Italy when she stepped out in a blue frock that, thanks to a thigh-high slit, exposed a lot of leg:
The flowy drawstring dress did cover Gomez's newest tattoo, which she revealed in an Instagram photo on July 16. The new ink, located on the right side of her back, is of an Arabic phrase that translates to "Love Yourself First."
from Style - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1yxbxad
via IFTTT
The 21-year-old turned heads at the 2014 Ischia Global Film & Music Festival in Italy when she stepped out in a blue frock that, thanks to a thigh-high slit, exposed a lot of leg:
The flowy drawstring dress did cover Gomez's newest tattoo, which she revealed in an Instagram photo on July 16. The new ink, located on the right side of her back, is of an Arabic phrase that translates to "Love Yourself First."
from Style - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1yxbxad
via IFTTT
One Direction's Louis Tomlinson and John Ryan's Doncaster takeover left 'in serious doubt'
Louis Tomlinson's joint takeover of Doncaster Rovers along with John Ryan has been left in serious doubt due to funding issues.
Selena Gomez Dons Flowy Blue Dress With Keyhole And Thigh-High Slit
Selena Gomez brought her boho-chic style to the red carpet July 16 with a revealing peasant dress.
The 21-year-old turned heads at the 2014 Ischia Global Film & Music Festival in Italy when she stepped out in a blue frock that, thanks to a thigh-high slit, exposed a lot of leg:
The flowy drawstring dress did cover Gomez's newest tattoo, which she revealed in an Instagram photo on July 16. The new ink, located on the right side of her back, is of an Arabic phrase that translates to "Love Yourself First."
The 21-year-old turned heads at the 2014 Ischia Global Film & Music Festival in Italy when she stepped out in a blue frock that, thanks to a thigh-high slit, exposed a lot of leg:
The flowy drawstring dress did cover Gomez's newest tattoo, which she revealed in an Instagram photo on July 16. The new ink, located on the right side of her back, is of an Arabic phrase that translates to "Love Yourself First."
Meet Jibo, The World's First Family Robot
For Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, it's just about time to celebrate.
The robotics researcher and professor at the MIT Media Lab was just getting ready to throw a party when The Huffington Post spoke with her yesterday, only hours after she and her team made a major splash with the debut of Jibo, their family-oriented "social robot."
Jibo, which stands just under a foot tall, can see, hear, speak, learn, help and relate, according to its website. It can take pictures, track faces, recognize where sound is coming from and -- ideally -- help organize and simplify your life.
"This is the beginning of a whole new wave of technology computing," Breazeal told The Huffington Post.
On Wednesday, Jibo began its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The bot is currently selling for $499 to consumers and $599 to developers. According to Breazeal, the crowdfunding approach is their way of getting feedback on the prototype from the most interested community of bot-enthusiasts out there.
"We can get their dialogue early enough to consider it in our development plan," she told The Huffington Post. "We definitely want the non-tech savvy people engaging in a buttery-smooth interaction."
But Jibo isn't going to stop there. As alluded to in the promotional video above, Breazeal and her team hope to win over more than just consumers.
"We are trying to court people who create mobile apps and games to say, 'hey, look, imagine creating content and applications for technology that actually feels alive,'" Breazeal said.
If they are successful, Jibo might actually look like it does in the video above -- reading bedtime stories to a young girl and using its interactive LCD panel to display images.
The bot has a creative design that gives it something between a human and desk lamp appearance. Its midsection and "head" can rotate and turn, which help it distinguish between "awake" and "asleep." Even in its prototype stage, Jibo dances, introduces itself, listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5.7 inch touchscreen LCD display.
"For a social robot it brings together a set of expertise that is not typical," Breazeal said.
Jibo already has the telepresence app, which is similar to Skype except you can tap on people's faces to rotate focus to them. In other words, it gives Skype the human element of being able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system -- both things that didn't exist just a decade ago.
According to Mashable, when you take Jibo home, it will guide you through connecting to a Wi-Fi network and will take specific steps to learn more about you. The first thing it does is register your face and voice, asking you a few questions and explaining how it can help you.
Jibo is not meant to be device, it is meant to be a companion.
The robotics researcher and professor at the MIT Media Lab was just getting ready to throw a party when The Huffington Post spoke with her yesterday, only hours after she and her team made a major splash with the debut of Jibo, their family-oriented "social robot."
Jibo, which stands just under a foot tall, can see, hear, speak, learn, help and relate, according to its website. It can take pictures, track faces, recognize where sound is coming from and -- ideally -- help organize and simplify your life.
"This is the beginning of a whole new wave of technology computing," Breazeal told The Huffington Post.
On Wednesday, Jibo began its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The bot is currently selling for $499 to consumers and $599 to developers. According to Breazeal, the crowdfunding approach is their way of getting feedback on the prototype from the most interested community of bot-enthusiasts out there.
"We can get their dialogue early enough to consider it in our development plan," she told The Huffington Post. "We definitely want the non-tech savvy people engaging in a buttery-smooth interaction."
But Jibo isn't going to stop there. As alluded to in the promotional video above, Breazeal and her team hope to win over more than just consumers.
"We are trying to court people who create mobile apps and games to say, 'hey, look, imagine creating content and applications for technology that actually feels alive,'" Breazeal said.
If they are successful, Jibo might actually look like it does in the video above -- reading bedtime stories to a young girl and using its interactive LCD panel to display images.
The bot has a creative design that gives it something between a human and desk lamp appearance. Its midsection and "head" can rotate and turn, which help it distinguish between "awake" and "asleep." Even in its prototype stage, Jibo dances, introduces itself, listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5.7 inch touchscreen LCD display.
"For a social robot it brings together a set of expertise that is not typical," Breazeal said.
Jibo already has the telepresence app, which is similar to Skype except you can tap on people's faces to rotate focus to them. In other words, it gives Skype the human element of being able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system -- both things that didn't exist just a decade ago.
According to Mashable, when you take Jibo home, it will guide you through connecting to a Wi-Fi network and will take specific steps to learn more about you. The first thing it does is register your face and voice, asking you a few questions and explaining how it can help you.
Jibo is not meant to be device, it is meant to be a companion.
Meet Jibo, The World's First Family Robot
For Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, it's just about time to celebrate.
The robotics researcher and professor at the MIT Media Lab was just getting ready to throw a party when The Huffington Post spoke with her yesterday, only hours after she and her team made a major splash with the debut of Jibo, their family-oriented "social robot."
Jibo, which stands just under a foot tall, can see, hear, speak, learn, help and relate, according to its website. It can take pictures, track faces, recognize where sound is coming from and -- ideally -- help organize and simplify your life.
"This is the beginning of a whole new wave of technology computing," Breazeal told The Huffington Post.
On Wednesday, Jibo began its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The bot is currently selling for $499 to consumers and $599 to developers. According to Breazeal, the crowdfunding approach is their way of getting feedback on the prototype from the most interested community of bot-enthusiasts out there.
"We can get their dialogue early enough to consider it in our development plan," she told The Huffington Post. "We definitely want the non-tech savvy people engaging in a buttery-smooth interaction."
But Jibo isn't going to stop there. As alluded to in the promotional video above, Breazeal and her team hope to win over more than just consumers.
"We are trying to court people who create mobile apps and games to say, 'hey, look, imagine creating content and applications for technology that actually feels alive,'" Breazeal said.
If they are successful, Jibo might actually look like it does in the video above -- reading bedtime stories to a young girl and using its interactive LCD panel to display images.
The bot has a creative design that gives it something between a human and desk lamp appearance. Its midsection and "head" can rotate and turn, which help it distinguish between "awake" and "asleep." Even in its prototype stage, Jibo dances, introduces itself, listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5.7 inch touchscreen LCD display.
"For a social robot it brings together a set of expertise that is not typical," Breazeal said.
Jibo already has the telepresence app, which is similar to Skype except you can tap on people's faces to rotate focus to them. In other words, it gives Skype the human element of being able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system -- both things that didn't exist just a decade ago.
According to Mashable, when you take Jibo home, it will guide you through connecting to a Wi-Fi network and will take specific steps to learn more about you. The first thing it does is register your face and voice, asking you a few questions and explaining how it can help you.
Jibo is not meant to be device, it is meant to be a companion.
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The robotics researcher and professor at the MIT Media Lab was just getting ready to throw a party when The Huffington Post spoke with her yesterday, only hours after she and her team made a major splash with the debut of Jibo, their family-oriented "social robot."
Jibo, which stands just under a foot tall, can see, hear, speak, learn, help and relate, according to its website. It can take pictures, track faces, recognize where sound is coming from and -- ideally -- help organize and simplify your life.
"This is the beginning of a whole new wave of technology computing," Breazeal told The Huffington Post.
On Wednesday, Jibo began its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The bot is currently selling for $499 to consumers and $599 to developers. According to Breazeal, the crowdfunding approach is their way of getting feedback on the prototype from the most interested community of bot-enthusiasts out there.
"We can get their dialogue early enough to consider it in our development plan," she told The Huffington Post. "We definitely want the non-tech savvy people engaging in a buttery-smooth interaction."
But Jibo isn't going to stop there. As alluded to in the promotional video above, Breazeal and her team hope to win over more than just consumers.
"We are trying to court people who create mobile apps and games to say, 'hey, look, imagine creating content and applications for technology that actually feels alive,'" Breazeal said.
If they are successful, Jibo might actually look like it does in the video above -- reading bedtime stories to a young girl and using its interactive LCD panel to display images.
The bot has a creative design that gives it something between a human and desk lamp appearance. Its midsection and "head" can rotate and turn, which help it distinguish between "awake" and "asleep." Even in its prototype stage, Jibo dances, introduces itself, listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5.7 inch touchscreen LCD display.
"For a social robot it brings together a set of expertise that is not typical," Breazeal said.
Jibo already has the telepresence app, which is similar to Skype except you can tap on people's faces to rotate focus to them. In other words, it gives Skype the human element of being able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system -- both things that didn't exist just a decade ago.
According to Mashable, when you take Jibo home, it will guide you through connecting to a Wi-Fi network and will take specific steps to learn more about you. The first thing it does is register your face and voice, asking you a few questions and explaining how it can help you.
Jibo is not meant to be device, it is meant to be a companion.
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Blackpool boss Jose Riga set to quit Championship side amid transfer stand-off
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Dance for Me: Coming of Age on the Dance Floor and Beyond
We see them on Dancing With The Stars, So You Think You Can Dance. In the Step Up and "wanna be" Step Up movies, music videos, commercials and concerts.
What drives them, these ballroom babies with the swiveling hips, sequins and spray tans, who sacrifice family, friends, even country in the quest for fame?
Dance For Me, a documentary premiering July 21st on the PBS series POV, is an intimate, almost cinema verité peek into the world of competitive ballroom dance.
Winner of the Audience Award at the 2013 American Documentary Film Festival, it brings to life terms and concepts like "partnering" and "chemistry" that judges grumble and gush about on TV. But the real story is the struggle of Latin dancers Egor Kondratkenko and Mie Lincke Funch to become "one" on the dance floor without sacrificing their own emerging teen identities.
Dance For Me has no snarky practice room patter, no predictable final "dance to the death." The competitions seem irrelevant. In fact, the actual outcome of the final and most important contest is never "announced." We only see the couple being lovingly hugged and congratulated.
A tiny white line of type reveals their results as the film ends -- if you blink, you'll miss it. They came in eighth in the European competition, high enough to qualify for the World Championship. Hence the big grins.
"The film is mostly about Egor and his personal and emotional journey rather than a dance film where the competitions matter the most," filmmaker Katrine Philip explained to me, long distance.
"I was invited to watch a training session in the dance hall because I was researching for a young elite dance couple. It took me just a second to spot Mie and Egor on the dance floor and I was immediately drawn to them. There was something magical about them. And when I heard about their story, Egor coming to Denmark to dance with Mie, giving everything up in the age of 15, I was hooked. I immediately asked them if it was okay to be a part of their journey. And fortunately they said 'Yes.'"
It doesn't go smoothly.
As Philip mentioned, Kondratkenko is a Russian teen who has left his dance teacher mother in his adoptive home, China. He is an intense but taciturn lad who believes emotions should be expressed only on the dance floor.
Funch, whose Danish family has accepted Egor as both her partner and a surrogate "sibling" for their only child, could not disagree more. She expresses her emotions about dance--and life--verbally and passionately.
"I just love dancing. It is not if I want or not. It is something I need in my life," she explained. "In the age of 15 I knew exactly where I wanted to be and what I wanted with my life: dance and become the best! That is a time were normal teens try to find themselves or are having an identity problem. I feel so blessed that the dancing showed me the way."
That love of dancing is what motivated her to be in the film, though she says, "seeing the real me, my bad and good sides, this made me feel vulnerable."
"I agreed to make the movie because I wanted to show how much it takes to be a young dancer on a high level," she said. "Dancing is often showed as entertainment and not as a sport. Very few people know how much work, tears and blood there is behind a beautiful dancer."
Philip agrees wholeheartedly.
"As a former dancer -- not Latin dance but Contemporary dance -- I have the love for the art in dance," she said. "I know how it feels to train your body to be perfect -- both in appearance and in movement."
But most of all, she said, "I would like the audience to feel that they have been giving a close look into a life of an extraordinary young couple."
Funch has another "wish" for those who tune in on July 21st:
"I hope the viewers feel inspired to follow their dreams."
Dance For Me allows viewers to "eavesdrop" as she follows hers. It is an engaging and intriguing experience.
Photo credit: Author screenshot
Is the Media Selling or Telling: How Perception Management Works in Israel's War on Gaza
There is an art of war and there is an art to selling war -- to one's own people, and the world at large.
Israel is a master at both arts. When we speak of the "only democracy" in the Middle East, it is often forgotten, perhaps deliberately, that the country is run by a War or "Security" Cabinet. It is, and has been, in effect, a military regime with as many powerful religious fanatics as its Iranian nemesis.
Since proclaiming its "independence" in 1948, it has remained dependent on a large, now over $3 billion per annum and counting," foreign aid" payment from the United States -- far, far more than many poor countries that desperately need that aid but don't get it.
Supplementing this subsidy, Israel has its own advanced military industrial and technology complex upgrading and customizing weaponry in military and aerospace industries.
Its current escalating war on Gaza is only the latest, following on the heels of seven "recognized" wars, two Palestinian intifadas, many reprisal operations and countless covert operations including interventions and assassinations.
Its capacity to punish and its willingness to use advanced weapons in areas dense with civilians like Gaza is terrifying -- and, by design, the U.S. may have used "shock and awe" in Iraq to launch its war there, but Israel has routinized it with 2360 air strikes in its 2008-2009 "Cast Lead" campaign in Gaza alone. So far there has been l000 in this bloody blitzgrieg. Is it any surprise that of all its military branches it is the Air Force that is dominated by extremists and West Bank settlers?
And, in all of its conflicts, Tel Aviv invents and then seizes a constantly reinforced "moral" high ground, immediately positioning itself as a victim, and defending its actions as defensive. That view is then relentlessly streamed 24/7 to the public by lobby groups, PR firms, and government agencies, to and through, a well-orchestrated network of political allies and supporters worldwide.
This is not new, says the respected Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine."
As in all of its conflicts, propaganda operations designed to win over the press and public opinion, enjoy as much priority as its military operations.
Today, military-led units and student groups/cyber armies attempt to dominate the on-line discourse about the war, repeatedly emphasizing prefrabricated market -- tested message points, like blaming Gaza for rejecting a cease fire that it is repeatedly claimed Israel supported. There is no mention of the human costs, the lack of proportionality in the casualties and coverage, or alternative approaches.
Major media seems to embrace the narrative without question or independent reporting or analysis, much less critically.
Here's Bloomberg: "Israel Renews Gaza Bombing After Hamas Rejects Truce Plan. Here's the Washington Post: "While Israel Held Its Fire, Hamas did not." On and on, around the clock. In many of these accounts, Hamas is described only as "militants," not a party or elected government. The perennial message: Israel is being reasonable, while Hamas is irresponsible and even wants the death of its own people. It's always all their fault! You never hear what Hamas is saying -- or trying to say, except selected snippets of overheated rhetoric used to demonize them.
Israel has moved beyond PR to PM -- Perception Management.
Inside Israel, Neve Gordin says the situation is worse, with repeated calls for more escalation, amidst neo-genocidal demands for a final solution as in "destroy them all, once and for all."
In a piece on "Israel's War Echo Chamber, he writes: "The public debate today is not whether or not to stop the air strikes but rather whether or not to deploy ground forces. In an opinion column, Channel 2′s military correspondent Ronnie Daniel claimed that only "a ground operation will extract a heavy enough price from Hamas" in order to ensure a longer period of peace for Israel. The following day Channel 2′s anchor pondered: "We wanted Hamas to fall on its knees and so far this has not happened"; and Daniel responded, "So far it's not happening, and the conclusion, in my opinion, is that it has not received enough."
Amira Hess, the gutsy Israeli correspondent for Ha'aretz, explains:
In all of this swamp of hawkish sludge, what do we make of an alternative explanation embraced by the writers who follow these events most knowledgably, when we even hear from them. Here's a peace activist, Richard Silverstein:
The Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reported that neither Hamas' military or political wings were consulted. So, if this is not a charade, what is? The goal was not to engage Hamas in a peace process, but to create a one-sided media narrative as a pretext and ultimatum for more war.
It turns out that Tony Blair, the former pro-Iraq war British Prime Minister, and representative of the so-called "quartet," arranged the phone call between Israeli and Egyptian officials.
This does not mean that eventually there won't be negotiations of some kind between the warring parties. Christiane Amanpour spoke with a former Israeli intelligence chief on CNN. He called for negotiations with Hamas.
"Hamas is a very bad option, undoubtedly. But there are worse options than Hamas," Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief, said.
"And we already know what some of them might be, especially one of them: the ISIS - which is operating now in the northern Iraq and central Iraq -- has its tentacles in the Gaza Strip too."
Halevy said that just as in Europe, ISIS is recruiting in Gaza.
It is "inconvenient politically," Halevy said, for both Israel and Hamas to admit that they negotiate. But the truth, he said, is that they have already been doing it for years.
Has this what we've come to? Sadly, yes.
--
Newsdissector Danny Schechter blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org. He made the film Weapons of Mass Deception about media coverage in Iraq, and wrote two books about media misrepresentations there. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.
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Israel is a master at both arts. When we speak of the "only democracy" in the Middle East, it is often forgotten, perhaps deliberately, that the country is run by a War or "Security" Cabinet. It is, and has been, in effect, a military regime with as many powerful religious fanatics as its Iranian nemesis.
Since proclaiming its "independence" in 1948, it has remained dependent on a large, now over $3 billion per annum and counting," foreign aid" payment from the United States -- far, far more than many poor countries that desperately need that aid but don't get it.
Supplementing this subsidy, Israel has its own advanced military industrial and technology complex upgrading and customizing weaponry in military and aerospace industries.
Its current escalating war on Gaza is only the latest, following on the heels of seven "recognized" wars, two Palestinian intifadas, many reprisal operations and countless covert operations including interventions and assassinations.
Its capacity to punish and its willingness to use advanced weapons in areas dense with civilians like Gaza is terrifying -- and, by design, the U.S. may have used "shock and awe" in Iraq to launch its war there, but Israel has routinized it with 2360 air strikes in its 2008-2009 "Cast Lead" campaign in Gaza alone. So far there has been l000 in this bloody blitzgrieg. Is it any surprise that of all its military branches it is the Air Force that is dominated by extremists and West Bank settlers?
And, in all of its conflicts, Tel Aviv invents and then seizes a constantly reinforced "moral" high ground, immediately positioning itself as a victim, and defending its actions as defensive. That view is then relentlessly streamed 24/7 to the public by lobby groups, PR firms, and government agencies, to and through, a well-orchestrated network of political allies and supporters worldwide.
This is not new, says the respected Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine."
As in all of its conflicts, propaganda operations designed to win over the press and public opinion, enjoy as much priority as its military operations.
Today, military-led units and student groups/cyber armies attempt to dominate the on-line discourse about the war, repeatedly emphasizing prefrabricated market -- tested message points, like blaming Gaza for rejecting a cease fire that it is repeatedly claimed Israel supported. There is no mention of the human costs, the lack of proportionality in the casualties and coverage, or alternative approaches.
Major media seems to embrace the narrative without question or independent reporting or analysis, much less critically.
Here's Bloomberg: "Israel Renews Gaza Bombing After Hamas Rejects Truce Plan. Here's the Washington Post: "While Israel Held Its Fire, Hamas did not." On and on, around the clock. In many of these accounts, Hamas is described only as "militants," not a party or elected government. The perennial message: Israel is being reasonable, while Hamas is irresponsible and even wants the death of its own people. It's always all their fault! You never hear what Hamas is saying -- or trying to say, except selected snippets of overheated rhetoric used to demonize them.
Israel has moved beyond PR to PM -- Perception Management.
Inside Israel, Neve Gordin says the situation is worse, with repeated calls for more escalation, amidst neo-genocidal demands for a final solution as in "destroy them all, once and for all."
In a piece on "Israel's War Echo Chamber, he writes: "The public debate today is not whether or not to stop the air strikes but rather whether or not to deploy ground forces. In an opinion column, Channel 2′s military correspondent Ronnie Daniel claimed that only "a ground operation will extract a heavy enough price from Hamas" in order to ensure a longer period of peace for Israel. The following day Channel 2′s anchor pondered: "We wanted Hamas to fall on its knees and so far this has not happened"; and Daniel responded, "So far it's not happening, and the conclusion, in my opinion, is that it has not received enough."
Amira Hess, the gutsy Israeli correspondent for Ha'aretz, explains:
Both sides (Hamas and Israel) say they are firing in self-defense. We know that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Israel's policy is clear (if not to consumers of Israeli media): Cut Gaza off even more, thwart any possibility of Palestinian unity and divert attention from the accelerating colonialist drive in the West Bank.
And Hamas? It wants to boost its standing as a resistance movement after the blows it took as a governing movement. Maybe it really thinks it can change the Palestinian leadership's entire strategy vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation. Maybe it wants the world (and the Arab states) to awaken from its slumber.
Still, with all due respect to Clausewitz, rational calculations are not the only explanation. Let's not forget the missile envy -- whose is bigger, longer, more impressive and reaches farther? The boys play with their toys and we've gotten used to calling it policy.
In all of this swamp of hawkish sludge, what do we make of an alternative explanation embraced by the writers who follow these events most knowledgably, when we even hear from them. Here's a peace activist, Richard Silverstein:
Let's talk about the faux ceasefire. Really a fraudulent ceasefire. Egypt's ceasefire with no one. My Israeli source, who was consulted as part of the negotiations, tells me that this was not, in reality, an Egyptian proposal. It was, in fact, an Israeli proposal presented in the guise of an Egyptian proposal. Israel wrote the ceasefire protocol. The Egyptians rubber-stamped it and put it out under their letterhead as if it was their own.
Jodi Rudoren typically called the ceasefire "one-sided," meaning Israel honored it and Hamas didn't. But it was "one-sided" in a way she hadn't considered. Only one-side prepared the ceasefire and essentially presented it to itself and accepted it. The other side wasn't consulted.
The contents of the ceasefire proposal were a fraud as well. They promised and delivered nothing. They only called for a cessation of hostilities on the part of Israel and Hamas. The same document has been signed in the past only to see Israel violate it almost as soon as the ink was dry. There were no provisions for easing the Israeli siege. No provision to open the border with Egypt. Most importantly, the ceasefire didn't address any underlying issues between the parties. It was a guarantor for resuming hostilities at the earliest possible opportunity: these wars have come at two-year intervals over the past six years. The next one will be in 2016, if not sooner.
The Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reported that neither Hamas' military or political wings were consulted. So, if this is not a charade, what is? The goal was not to engage Hamas in a peace process, but to create a one-sided media narrative as a pretext and ultimatum for more war.
It turns out that Tony Blair, the former pro-Iraq war British Prime Minister, and representative of the so-called "quartet," arranged the phone call between Israeli and Egyptian officials.
This does not mean that eventually there won't be negotiations of some kind between the warring parties. Christiane Amanpour spoke with a former Israeli intelligence chief on CNN. He called for negotiations with Hamas.
"Hamas is a very bad option, undoubtedly. But there are worse options than Hamas," Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief, said.
"And we already know what some of them might be, especially one of them: the ISIS - which is operating now in the northern Iraq and central Iraq -- has its tentacles in the Gaza Strip too."
Halevy said that just as in Europe, ISIS is recruiting in Gaza.
It is "inconvenient politically," Halevy said, for both Israel and Hamas to admit that they negotiate. But the truth, he said, is that they have already been doing it for years.
We have coined a new method of diplomacy in the twenty-first century: we don't meet with them, we don't talk to them, but we listen to them. Each one listens to the other side. Somehow in the end an understanding is crafted.
We have had several rounds with Hamas in recent years, and the previous rounds ended up in agreements ... arrangements, as it was called - 'arrangements,' not even agreements."'
Who knows if such an "arrangement" may be possible now, as it seems clear that Hamas has many rockets yet to fire into Israel. The countries most heavily propagandized by Israel are blindly supportive, but that is not the case uniformly around the world. Israeli fanaticism slowly but surely erodes global support for its posture.
Right now, thanks to bullish TV news programming, the war has become a form of militainment for Israeli spectators. The Atlantic reports from the Golan Heights: "People come here every day to see the show," says Marom, 54, a retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who now works in the tourism industry and regularly brings groups to this point to gaze down on Syria's bloodletting. "For people visiting the area, it's interesting. They feel that they are a part of it. They can go home and tell their friends, 'I was on the border and I saw a battle.'
High above a valley in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israeli tourists have a panoramic view of this strategically important location, which is also known as the Gateway to Damascus. Tour groups, fresh from jaunts to the area's wineries, cherry markets, and artisanal chocolate shops, stop here by the dozens each day armed with binoculars and cameras, eager for a glimpse of smoke and even carnage.
Has this what we've come to? Sadly, yes.
--
Newsdissector Danny Schechter blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org. He made the film Weapons of Mass Deception about media coverage in Iraq, and wrote two books about media misrepresentations there. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.
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These Are The Inbetween 'Star Wars' Scenes You Never Saw
Deep down, is Darth Vader a big jerk, or is he smiling underneath that breathing apparatus? Does he ever pee? What was happening on the Death Star when we the audience wasn't looking in?
UCB and the Nerdist give us the answers in "Between the Scenes: Star Wars." (Spoiler: Darth Vader does pee.)
UCB and the Nerdist give us the answers in "Between the Scenes: Star Wars." (Spoiler: Darth Vader does pee.)
NBC Says Title Character Of 'Constantine' Is Straight. Fans Disagree.
NBC's "Constantine" isn't hitting small screens until October, but already the show has fans agitated. The drama, based on the DC comics franchises "Hellblazer" and "Constantine," centers on the adventures of con man and supernatural detective John Constantine. Some fans are concerned about the accuracy of the character, not because of the costume or the power, but because of the title character's sexuality.
In the "Hellblazer" comic books, John Constantine is shown as having both male and female lovers, though his sexuality is never explicitly labeled. NBC's version, however, has only planned female love interests for the character. Executive producer Daniel Cerone told Entertainment Weekly at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Sunday that the character's sexuality was not integral to the character, stating, "In those comic books, John Constantine aged in real time. Within this tome of three decades [of comics] there might have been one or two issues where he’s seen getting out of bed with a man. So [maybe] 20 years from now? But there are no immediate plans.”
While it is true that the majority of Constantine's conquests have been female, many fans feel that this is straight-washing, or changing a LGBTQ character into a straight one. Voicing their concerns on social media over the past few days, comic fans have argued that bisexual men are an underrepresented group in the media and changing the sexuality of a queer character is erasure. Fans have flooded Tumblr and Twitter with the hashtag #BiBlazer, calling for people to contact NBC on their social media pages and request that Constantine be written as bisexual.
The character's sexuality hasn't been a big plot point in his latest solo series, "Constantine." But there are at least two instances from Constantine's decades-long history that seem hard to ignore. The first is in "Hellblazer" issue #51, in which Constantine thinks to himself (in this panel), "Girlfriends, the odd boyfriend... they all have a nasty habit of walking out on me." The other is a sexual relationship between Constantine and wizard S.W. Manor that occurs during the "Hellblazer: Highwater" arc (though Constantine was conning the wizard at the time). The 2005 film "Constantine," starring Keanu Reeves, does not explicitly state the character's sexuality.
With a character who appears in multiple comics over several decades, it's hard to pin down consistent character traits and details. But do the few notable examples make the character bisexual? Is his sexuality fluid or is he perhaps even pansexual? Fans may differ on what it means in terms of his characterization, but NBC has seemingly already decided their interpretation.
In the "Hellblazer" comic books, John Constantine is shown as having both male and female lovers, though his sexuality is never explicitly labeled. NBC's version, however, has only planned female love interests for the character. Executive producer Daniel Cerone told Entertainment Weekly at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Sunday that the character's sexuality was not integral to the character, stating, "In those comic books, John Constantine aged in real time. Within this tome of three decades [of comics] there might have been one or two issues where he’s seen getting out of bed with a man. So [maybe] 20 years from now? But there are no immediate plans.”
While it is true that the majority of Constantine's conquests have been female, many fans feel that this is straight-washing, or changing a LGBTQ character into a straight one. Voicing their concerns on social media over the past few days, comic fans have argued that bisexual men are an underrepresented group in the media and changing the sexuality of a queer character is erasure. Fans have flooded Tumblr and Twitter with the hashtag #BiBlazer, calling for people to contact NBC on their social media pages and request that Constantine be written as bisexual.
The character's sexuality hasn't been a big plot point in his latest solo series, "Constantine." But there are at least two instances from Constantine's decades-long history that seem hard to ignore. The first is in "Hellblazer" issue #51, in which Constantine thinks to himself (in this panel), "Girlfriends, the odd boyfriend... they all have a nasty habit of walking out on me." The other is a sexual relationship between Constantine and wizard S.W. Manor that occurs during the "Hellblazer: Highwater" arc (though Constantine was conning the wizard at the time). The 2005 film "Constantine," starring Keanu Reeves, does not explicitly state the character's sexuality.
With a character who appears in multiple comics over several decades, it's hard to pin down consistent character traits and details. But do the few notable examples make the character bisexual? Is his sexuality fluid or is he perhaps even pansexual? Fans may differ on what it means in terms of his characterization, but NBC has seemingly already decided their interpretation.
An Interview With Directors of Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians
FIRST OF TWO INTERVIEWS
See also: Interview with the Last Peyote Guardians: Marakame JosĂ© Luis "Katira" RamĂrez and son
When Argentine filmmaker Hernán VĂlchez made his way up into the remote Wixarika community of San AndrĂ©s Cohamiata Tateikie high in the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico, he knew he would be entering another world. What he didn't know was how deeply it would change his own life.
The movie tells the story of the Wixarika or Huichol people, one of the most intact precolonial people remaining in the Americas, and their battle to save the sacred site upon which their cosmovision depends from Canadian gold and silver mining operations. It's a story emblematic of a horrifically destructive industry at work all over the world, and at the same time unique to this time and place and culture, and it's a story that's very much alive.
Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians, a beautiful and profound new film just released on demand at http://ift.tt/1kR2QyC, breaks new ground on many fronts. First there was the making of the film, which revolves around the pilgrimage of a single family, that of the marakame or shaman JosĂ© Luis RamĂrez, or Katira by his Wixarika name, to the sacred desert of Wirikuta and to the Cerro Quemado, the Birthplace of the Sun. Other films have been made exploring the colorful and deeply spiritual traditions of the Wixarika people, but none that has covered with this level of depth and professionalism the spiritual traditions of this people and the existential threat that culture now faces.
The film crew, accompanied by numerous members of the RamĂrez family, has also pioneered a new approach to distribution in an era of self-publishing and artistic independence. Rather than premiering the film at a prestigious film festival and then concentrating their efforts on audiences and festivals in major cities, the crew premiered the film in a way that most resembles the ancient Wixarika pilgrimage, but in reverse. The first two showings were in the pilgrimage destination, the threatened sacred site itself, the remote mountain range and desert valley of Wirikuta. The next stop was a two-day caravan up into the even more remote Wixarika territories. Only then did they take their tour to overflow crowds in Mexico's two largest cities, Guadalajara and Mexico City.
Now, due to the urgency of the message, they are trying to raise the money to go on tour with the movie: first, beginning in August, in South America, followed by Europe in September and October, and the U.S. and Canada in November.
Film director Hernán VĂlchez introduces the film at its world premiere in Real de Catorce, in Wirikuta, the contested ceremonial territory of the Huichol people. (Credit: JosĂ© AndrĂ©s SolĂłrzano)
I caught up with the film's director, Hernán VĂlchez, and producer, Paola Stefani, and Katira and his son Clemente at the producer's home in Mexico City recently as they recovered from the eight-day marathon. Here is the interview.
Hernán: We've just recovered from the Five Colors of Corn and Five Functions movie release tour, and the RamĂrez family is here with us. The world premiere of Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians was very well received and really exceeded our expectations. We're feeling very grateful to the Mexican people but especially those who attended and also supported us. It's been three and a half years since I began this work, almost as a mandate from the Elder's Council of San AndrĂ©s Cohamiata. They asked me to do a film to tell the story of their struggle to save their most sacred site, and this is the result.
Tracy: Speaking of the movie release tour, let's talk about that first. What stood out the most for you as you traveled with this film, what surprised you, in terms of the way it was received? In particular, the different reactions of the very different audiences you were able to reach?
Paola: For us it was very important to take the film in the first place to Real de Catorce and to the populations of the desert, and likewise to the Huichol territories in the mountains. Our first interest is to take the film to the people who are affected by this conflict by the mine in Wirikuta, and so the first would be those who live in the desert, and of course to the Wixaritari.
As Hernán already said, the first response was to have in attendance more than 500 people, in Real de Catorce as in Estación Catorce and in the Huichol territories. In Guadalajara, we could never have imagined that 800 people would show up and that more than half would be left outside. So obviously Wirikuta is a subject that interests many people. In Mexico City, where there was a last-minute change of venue and then it rained, about 2,500 people turned out - and what was very moving also is that the majority were young people.
In the case of the Guadalajara function, there was an enormous diversity in the kinds of people who came. I think the public response - it was a very quick tour, no? In eight days we did five events and traveled more than 2,700 kilometers. So we didn't have the opportunity to stay for a long time in each place after the function but immediately after finishing the film what we most received were words of profound thanks; in EstaciĂłn Catorce we were talking to kids between 16 and 18 years old, and they were saying, 'We've always seen the Wixaritari with their pilgrimages and we've never really understood what it was about; now we understand.'"
In Real de Catorce we had the chance to speak with ejidatarios (collective landowners, mostly small farmers) from the mountains as well as the valley, and they were grateful to be able to have access to serious information, and also something that kept coming up in the comments was the importance of making it very clear that the Wixárika people have no intention of depriving anyone of their land or their ability to make a living. One of the comments too was that it was really touching for many inhabitants of Wirikuta that the Wixárika people were there, looking in their eyes concerning the effects of the mining on their territory and how it would affect the water.
In Mexico City the film ended with a light sprinkling of rain (considered as a benediction among the Wixárika people and their supporters) and applause and shouts of Viva Wirikuta, very moving as well. I think if it hadn't rained as it did, I think we could have ended up with 5,000 people. It's not the film, it's the subject; I think the people are really sensitized to the subject of Wirikuta.
Read the full interview at Intercontinental Cry.
The film can be viewed online for $3.99 at huicholesfilm.com.
Anyone who is interested in organizing a film screening or supporting the effort may contact the director at hernanton@gmail.com.
Drake Impersonated Manny Pacquiao, And We Can't 'Let It Go'
Manny Pacquiao can't be a pro boxer for the rest of his life, so ESPYs host Drake gave us a glimpse of what Pac-Man will do when he decides to "Let It Go."
During Wednesday night's ESPY Awards, Drizzy sang that famous "Frozen" song while doing his best Pacquiao impression, and it was amazing. It's a good thing sour notes never bothered us anyway, because this video is full of them.
Nevertheless, it goes without saying that we'd watch this clip "Forever."
During Wednesday night's ESPY Awards, Drizzy sang that famous "Frozen" song while doing his best Pacquiao impression, and it was amazing. It's a good thing sour notes never bothered us anyway, because this video is full of them.
Nevertheless, it goes without saying that we'd watch this clip "Forever."
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