Tuesday Morning: Speed of Love

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This video fascinates me. I’ve watched it a number of times since Nerdist shared it last month; it’s the 24-minute long set by Freddie Mercury and Queen at the 1985 Live Aid concert held in Wembley Stadium.

Nerdist noted the audience’s response reflects the speed of sound — the visible ripple of fans’ hands speeds across the crowd in response to the sound as it leaves the stage area and travels across the venue. The gif they shared was taken about 16:37 into this set, just as the band begins We Will Rock You.

I think there was more at work here because earlier snaps of the audience reaction during Radio Gaga (roughly 4:25 onward) don’t show the same marked wave across the crowd. But several points in the set Mercury interacts with the audience, coaxing them to sing and shout along with him.

And then at 16:35 when he begins We Will Rock You, the crowd is completely in sync with him. They adore him and are utterly engaged. The wave is not just sound but their feeling for Mercury and his performance.

Can you imagine a politician who could induce such a response?

Cybersecurity
Adobe Flash must die, and Google’s slowly exterminating it in Chrome (Ars Technica) — By year’s end, Flash will be disabled by default in Google’s Chrome browser. It will only play when manually enabled. All part of the slow migration to HTML5 away from risky Flash.

Antivirus app halts heart surgery (Ars Technica-UK) — Holy crap. Why does medical equipment need antivirus software to begin with, let alone how does an A/V app launch and run during surgery?

Artificial Intelligence
Dude, that female TA you hit on? An AI bot (Sydney Melbourne Herald) — Wow. Future’s already here and you can’t tell you’ve been dissed by both your prof and the chick-bot-TA.

A series of tubes
Remote healthcare not ready for prime time (ScienceDaily) — Study using fake patients to test direct-to-consumer teledermatology remote health care systems found security problems with IDs, poor-to-bad assignment of clinicians, many errors made in major diagnoses, insufficient warning to pregnant patients when meds prescribed, just for starters. Think of this as Healthcare Internet of Things Fail.

Super. Fast. Wireless. Internet. Coming. To. YOU! Really? (MIT Technology Review) — Ugh, so breathless with excitement they are about this startup called Starry. I was, too, initially, but we’ve been told this crap for more than a decade. Since this requires the cooperation of Verizon, AT&T, Facebook, and Google to standardize on this platform AND reception relies on line-of-sight, I’m not holding my breath.

The Business
New business for Amazon to tackle: its own private label groceries (Techcrunch) — Amazon doesn’t want to leave a penny on the table. If customers are too price sensitive to click their Dash button for a big name brand consumer good, they’ll offer their own instead. Prime accounts only, though; first goods will be heavy on baby needs, which makes sense given parents are often a captive audience.

Norway’s sovereign (oil) wealth fund to sue Volkswagen (AP) — Fossil fuel-created fund owns 1.64% stake in Volkswagen. It’s suing to protect its assets exposed by VW’s emissions controls cheat. Imagine me laughing at oil suing a car company for the manner in which it promulgated oil consumption.

Norway’s Statoil to launch first floating wind farm (Bloomberg) — This company is well ahead of Shell when it comes to diversifying energy production.

Flint Water Crisis
Michigan’s top law enforcement agent unaware of Michigan State Police “quiet investigation” (WZZM) — Still scratching my head over this one. Why did the governor ask MSP to conduct an administrative — not criminal — investigation, omitting the state attorney general? And who’s conducting a genuine criminal investigation, including the governor’s role?

Gender Equity
Toy maker(s) insisted Iron Man 3 movie must have male, not female villain (The Mary Sue) — In other words, Marvel’s big sweeping superhero movies are really just very long trailers to sell boys’ toys. Girls and women need not apply. I have no idea how they can make a decision based on any realistic data given the dearth of female villains on screen and in toys. Is this just some lame argument for inequity in front and behind the camera?

Running behind, probably read too much today and swamped my processing circuits. Hope mid-week becomes a little more focused — catch you tomorrow!

 

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12 replies
  1. P J Evans says:

    Toy maker(s) insisted Iron Man 3 movie must have male, not female villain

    This happened with the latest Star Wars movie, too – almost all the figures were male.
    (Apparently the media-entertainment companies don’t see any females in the audience except as girlfriends who were brought by their guys.)

  2. Rayne says:

    P J Evans (1:16) — There was a furor about the missing Rey figure in the Star Wars:The Force Awakens version of Monopoly board released *BEFORE* the movie. Game’s maker backpedaled and offered a Rey figure after the fact, lots of finger pointing about missing Rey being merely an oversight or gross error. Sadly, all this happened too late to correct the Marvel/Disney decision about Iron Man 3. The one commonality is Disney, which had better catch a cluestick soon about its siloing girls and women into princesses. Animated movie Frozen should have convinced them before SWTFA their beliefs about girls/women as consumers are wrong.

    Two other anti-women stories broke within the week — like the firing of four female cast members on ABC’s Castle series. Pissed off so many viewers they ended up canceling the last season.

    And then CBS’ Nancy Drew pilot won’t take off because it was “too female”. What. The. Almighty. Fuck? This is the network which ran female-led Murder She Wrote for 12 years/263 episodes and Touched By An Angel for 9 years/211 episodes. Is “too female” really code for “CBS can’t run a series led by a non-WASP woman”?

    Fastest growing audience segment for broadcast TV and streaming video is Hispanic females. Absolutely failing fiduciary responsibility to shareholders by ignoring growth opportunity with such blatant bias against women/WOC.

  3. P J Evans says:

    A couple of links to add to the day:
    http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Kaiser-to-end-its-global-warming-emissions-by-2025-7515870.php

    Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday unveiled an aggressive environmental plan that, by 2025, will slash the hospital system’s water use, recycle or compost all of its non-hazardous waste and eliminate or offset its greenhouse gas emissions.

    Kaiser, based in Oakland, also will buy its food from local sources or farms that follow sustainable practices, most notably avoiding the overuse of antibiotics.

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Startup-wants-to-put-self-driving-big-rigs-on-US-7521418.php (Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Apparently ‘trains’ are too complicated for them to understand.)

  4. bloopie2 says:

    “Girls and women need not apply. I have no idea how they can make a decision based on any realistic data given the dearth of female villains on screen and in toys.” Hmm. So, we’ll just start making lots of female villain toys on which young boys can practice spewing hate and violence? Good long term results there?

  6. Rayne says:

    bloopie2 (3:23) — Really? You’re going to advocate discriminating against girls’ desire for toys because boys might spend money on female dolls they’ll desecrate? How many Barbies do you see getting chopped up by boys for that reason? Are you going to advocate yanking Barbies off the market because boys might damage them, too?

    Jeebus. Girls and women don’t need discrimination justified as protection. They do need to be treated fairly in the marketplace, and the entire marketplace needs to see that 51% of the population has an equal and vitally important right to representation.

    • bloopie2 says:

      Sorry, I wasn’t advocating, just raising the issue. Your response is excellent and informative to me, thank you, as I’m personally not knowledgeable as to the current toy market; my children are older. But, are there statistics on “How many Barbies do you see getting chopped up by boys for that reason?” Do boys see Barbie as someone to be desecrated, as much as they would see a superhuman villain? I have no idea. I’ll go away now.

  7. bloopie2 says:

    The concert you link to is special, for sure. Wikipedia says: “Their performance at 1985’s Live Aid is ranked among the greatest in rock history by various music publications, with a 2005 industry poll ranking it the best.” Random thoughts thereon. 1. Audience shots showed mostly white people? 2. No female band members; most bands at the concert all male? 3. The speed of sound is about 1,100 feet per second; it would likely take one half second to one second to traverse the entire stadium; it’s fascinating to follow the wave. 4. Concert was 36 years ago. Yikes; how are your reader demographics? 5. “Can you imagine a politician who could induce such a response?” I sure hope not; scarier even than Trump. Thanks for the link.

    • laura says:

      In my recollection of great rock concerts since the early 70’s, both Queen tours of the early 80’s still rank as the best for sheer showmanship and musical artistry. Freddie Mercury was a nonesuch. He ruled the stage and the crowd.
      Queen recently toured in the annual Summer Sonic (Japan) with Adam Lambert on vocals.
      Brian May still occasionally plays a guitar his dad built out of a bicycle rack when May was a boy. May is a member of the Royal Society.

  8. bloopie2 says:

    Gotta love this from Melania Trump: “Says She’s the One Who Sets Her Husband ‘In the Right Direction:’ ‘I’m Not Only a Beauty, I’m Smart’. Yep. You married such a great guy. Three children with Ivana, played around on her and divorced her, married Marla, one child with her, played around on her and divorced her, married Melania. Hey Melania, what makes you think you’re different? You think he won’t throw you under the bus if he loses the Presidential bid? Oh, and how do the kids like the fact that Dad kicked their mothers out of their lives—is that a good thing? If so, what does that say about his choice of brides?

  9. bloopie2 says:

    So, this quote from the study that says that teledermatology sucks: “A significant limitation to this study is that the authors were unable to assess whether clinicians seeing these patients in traditional in-person encounters would have performed any better.” Yeah. Apparently there was no control group. So, it’s the study that sucks, then, right?

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