The Age of Discovery

On a Seattle startups mailing list, someone started a discussion about what to look for in a co-founder. Amidst items like "launched at least one product for a previous company," there was:

* Does not set off 'creep' detector in female co-workers.
* Interacts with female co-workers in a social setting in a non-asshole way.

A few people then asked why the original poster was assuming his co-founder would be male, and why not just say that the co-founder should not be a creep/asshole with all coworkers, regardless of gender.

Um...really? First, because most co-founders are male. Nothing about the original post gave me the feeling that the author would mind having a female co-founder, just that most (everyone?) applying is male. That's not exactly surprising in the software industry. Second, because tech culture has a problem specifically with women, not with all genders. Silicon Valley has the Uber CEO making jokes about "Boober" and inspiring articles like "Uber’s boys club is what’s wrong with Silicon Valley", there's sexual harassment at Github, etc. In Seattle, we have Microsoft's CEO saying women's secret power is to not ask for raises, and Amazon's culture inspiring articles like "Broverwhelmed: Gender Disparity in Seattle". And then we have Gamergate happening all over the Internet.

So yeah, it's unfortunate, but I think in 2014 we need to say specifically, "Not a creep/asshole with women."

Fall has arrived and with it the new TV season. The Man and I have picked up some new shows (and dropped one already):

• "Constantine" -- Loving Matt Ryan in it; he seems perfect. I like how episode 2 introduced an artist, so we have an excuse to look at drawings of Constantine. Not loving how they have him and the artist stand super-close to each other, I guess for some false suspense about "Will they kiss?" (It's a bit like the emotional looks Abbie and Ichabod give each other on "Sleepy Hollow".)


• "Scorpion" -- We dropped it after 3 episodes. Though the first episode was fun, the second one got on my last nerve (in addition to being a computer genius, Walter was also able to read gene sequences at a glance and know what they code for -- AAAGGGGH), and the third was just too little butter spread over too much bread.


• "Forever" -- This mash-up of (1) "Elementary"/"Sherlock" (British guy who is incredibly perceptive) with (2) "Castle" (female cop with fashion-model looks is paired with a non-cop male partner) and (3) "Sleepy Hollow" (British man out of time tries to navigate modern society) seems likely to be cancelled. Which is a shame only because Ioan Gruffudd's charisma carries the show so well.


• "Madam Secretary" -- I'm liking Téa Leoni in this role, better than Geena Davis or Sigourney Weaver (in previous iterations of floating the trial balloon). It's actually not just a trial-balloon show; I'm pretty sure it's also lifestyle porn for women who wish they could have a powerful career and a spouse with Jim Caviezel-type looks who is completely supportive and unthreatened by it (but manly, hence we have him doing a joint lock on a belligerent drunk in one episode and storming into a church full of righteous outrage in another). Plus beautiful house and kids, of course.

Also, we saw "John Wick" recently, and it was great fun. I felt like that movie should send notes to "Taken" on how a revenge flick should be done. Fun action scenes, great sets, non-crazy cinematography. My only nitpick would be that as I am now old and have never had great vision, I would prefer bright lighting. But I get that dark is probably de rigeur when you have a character known as Baba Yaga.

Perhaps this link from The Daily Show is relevant:

2nd Amendment Manners Do's and Don'ts, featuring a white man and a black man in hoodies

Also brilliant on the subject of inequality:

Campus Safety Do's and Don'ts (jump to 2:12 in the video)

(the Luc Besson film starring Scarlett Johansson) but my friend amnesiack described it so perfectly over on Google+:

Watching Lucy is like playing a one shot rules light RPG in the three hour slot at a convention. At first you're really taking your time, establishing scenes, characters, and details and making sure that the established fiction is really respected and built on deliberately. Then you realize you've only got thirty minutes left in the slot, and suddenly you're just rushing to get to the end, ignoring details, and not worrying too much about how things mesh together. Then you've only got five minutes left to play out the climax, and +Gray Pawn is over here describing a giant gun battle while +Jackson Tegu is describing a montage of scenes from history back to the dawn of time, and you're just trying to figure out what happens with the organic supercomputer you established in the previous scene. Then it's all over, and it doesn't really make sense, but the first half was so cool, and now you're really more concerned about where to get food before the next slot starts anyway.

And that really just sums it up.

I took the kids to the park a couple weekends ago.  K. spent a lot of time lying down; when I asked her if she was okay, she said, "I'm being Emily, and this is where she died." (She watched Corpse Bride recently.)

K., showing me a little yellow flower the other day: "I'm going to let it close and be dead. Because I like my little zombie flower!"

I was rewatching "Frozen" again last night, like you do when you have small kids, and I started thinking about Kristoff. On the one hand, it's a bit of a bummer that Anna needs the help of a guy, unlike Merida, who doesn't even think about asking her three suitors for help -- she ends up being helped by her little brothers, but only towards the end of the movie.

On the positive side, Kristoff is a lot more three-dimensional than most heroes in Disney animated movies, and he differs in other ways as well. He's basically the anti-Prince Charming. Not only is he not a prince, his status in society is pretty low. Of the non-princes in Disney animation, John Smith is an explorer from a rich and powerful country, and Mulan's guy, Li Shang, is an army captain and a general's son. Aladdin becomes a prince via the genie. (Although Kristoff is a step up in society from Flynn Rider, the wanted criminal.) And he's prickly, not charming: he gets thrown out of a shop and follows it up by having an argument with Anna while they're being chased by wolves.

He might be the only Disney hero with a great sense of humor: "But people smell better than reindeers / Sven, don't you think I'm right? / That's once again true, for all except you." And although all the Disney heroes are brave, Kristoff also worries about everyone else first. Even at the end when he's frantically riding to save Anna ("like a valiant, pungent reindeer king!" as Olaf says) and he and Sven the reindeer take a spill on the breaking ice, he has to make sure Sven's okay before he takes off running.

And there's the "unmanly blondness": except for John Smith in "Pocahontas," I think Kristoff's the only blond "prince." (Here's a picture of the Disney prince lineup that's recent enough to include Flynn Rider.)

Having posted before about how awesome "Elementary" is and how the writers have excelled at writing strong female characters, I feel like I should really say something about series 3 of "Sherlock". Because this is where the writers, Moffat and Gatiss, learn how to do it too. The first episode of series 3 was weak for all the reasons glvalentine described in her writeup for the A.V. Club. The one thing I did like about "The Empty Hearse" (ep 1) is that when Mary Morstan, John Watson's fiancee, meets Sherlock, she does not have the reaction of Mary in the Downey Jr. movies. She *likes* him. And she sees Sherlock as being good for Watson, aside from the pretending to be dead part. I am so tired of the wife-as-wet-blanket dynamic.

So anyway, episode 1, not so great. But then in episode 2, "The Sign of Three," we get some great payoff. The Man and I were flinching through most of it and actually started covering our eyes during a particularly embarrassing moment, but by the end, Sherlock finally makes up for the crap he put Watson through. And we get a great throw-away line from Mary: "Sherlock, I'm not John. I can tell when you're lying." And she continues to support Sherlock and Watson's relationship.

I want to avoid saying much about episode 3, "His Last Vow," so I don't spoil it for those who haven't seen it. But wow, is Mary a powerful character. I like to imagine that the British writer, Moffat and Gatiss, have been hearing about the other Sherlock series, and thinking about how they can one-up the Yanks. "His Last Vow" was my favorite episode of the BBC show so far. Well done, Moffat and Gatiss.

...a scene with a short, stocky, hirsute person who has fallen in love with someone of a different race who is tall, slender, pale, and non-hairy, and when his fellow short and stocky friends ask him, "What do you see in her?" he answers "I know she is SO UGLY, but she's such a nice person that it overcomes her obvious physical failings."

A friend suggested I write a technical book, and that seems like a fun project now that my big SharePoint wiki project is done. So, fellow geeks, is there anything where you've thought to yourself recently "I really wish there were a book on _____"?

It appears that some folks agree with me about Elementary being now the superior show:

• Genevieve Valentine (glvalentine)'s "Elementary Demonstrates the Right Way to Update a Classic Hero" (warning: spoilers)


• Mathilda Gregory's "Why Elementary is far more than a Sherlock Holmes pastiche" in the Guardian (Gregory also authored "Why Doctor Who needs more female writers", which examines the larger issue of a lack of female TV writers in general