The force awakens, indeed.

Source: Disney’s $4 Billion Steal — 500ish Words — Medium

I’m so conflicted about the new movies. The geeky part of me wants them to be awesome. MORE STAR WARS, YAY! Broke-ass crashed Star Destroyers looking epic! Young Han being a dashing rogue! Martyred Bothans escaping with Death Star plans! Not to mention light saber lipstick! New theme lands at Disney!

But a tiny part of me resents this. It resents Star Wars suddenly belonging to everybody rather than just those of who know the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field. (3,720 to 1, of course.) It resents Chewbacca posing for pictures with Mickey Mouse. It resents the tawdry commercialisation of it all.

Which is completely stupid. Star Wars is just as nakedly commercial as it ever was.

I think it’s just that the prequels burnt me so badly. I really, really wanted them to be good. I remember being in college, watching the video livestream of those crazy people who were waiting in line for weeks outside Mann’s Chinese Theater, and getting super excited when THEY READ MY CHAT ROOM COMMENT OUT LOUD. (We didn’t have Twitter back then. It was 1999. Hell, I’m amazed we even had streaming video.) I camped out myself in South Bend overnight during Senior Week to get tickets, playing Star Wars Trivial Pursuit with strangers and getting interviewed on the local news. And then for the premiere, my Mom even helped me make a costume…

I stand by Krisdala. That was an awesome costume.

And the movie sucked. It sucked SO BADLY. I was shattered. I want to believe, but I’m not sure I can.

Help me, J. J. Abrams. You’re my only hope.

I’ve just bookmarked two kinda weird chicken recipes to try out:

• Jamie Oliver’s Chicken in Milk – Yeah, what? You roast a chicken in milk?! And apparently it’s the best thing ever.
• 5-Ingredient Fried Chicken Sandwiches – Kenji you magnificent bastard. Marinating chicken thighs in pickle brine is GENIUS.

General Assembly are running a special event called the “Out of the Garage” Pitch Fest Party on September 1st. It’s to commemorate the 20th anniversary of realestate.com.au‘s launch, and they’re going to be giving away five $1000 prizes to the best startup pitches on the night! And yours truly will be there as one of the judges. If you’ve got an idea and could use an extra grand, you should sign up to pitch. 🙂

Watch the Mesmerizing Process of Automated Cake Decoration | Mental Floss – I find this utterly soothing and calming to watch. Bookmarking for the next time I’m stressed out!

When I was an undergrad at Notre Dame back in the late 90’s, I was lucky enough to have been selected for the Honors Program. It was pretty selective (I think about 40 students per year?) and one of the perks was that we got to take a few special, smaller classes. One of the ones that I loved was Calculus. This particular course was aimed at Arts majors (yes, really!) and the professor was actually writing the textbook for it. We worked from big spiral bound proofs we bought at the local copyshop. I remember a lot of Classical story problems, and all of us working together to try to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun using only Archimedes’ methods, things like that. I discovered today that not only did Professor Hahn publish the book – Learning Basic Calculus: From Archimedes to Newton to Its Role in Science – but he thanked my class for our help in testing it out. How neat is that?

Last night Arizona Cardinals coach Jen Welter became the first woman to coach an NFL game and Sarah Thomas became the first woman to act as an on-the-field official. Welter and Thomas shake hands prior to last night’s preseason game between the Cardinals and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Source: Two Women Shake Hands

That’s so cool! I had no idea.