Why are we even discussing gay marriage any more? Just yesterday this issue started being thrown around accompanied by intense debate, and suddenly our current president, Obama, vehemently takes one side all of a sudden when four years ago after he was elected he was silent.

Isn’t it funny that every so often a certain emotional issue will pop up in the news that creates such a flurry of heated debate? Have you noticed? First there’s something in the news about the role of government in one’s personal life, as in things like “jobs” “healthcare” “human rights” and so on: things that appeal to your basic sense of security as an individual. Without a job you can’t sustain yourself, and you might get sick and then have no way to pay for treatment, and you might even not be considered a human with basic rights to be treated as such when you need help! Oh no!

Now, did you wake up yesterday thinking, “Today I will focus the majority of my thoughts on MARRIAGE,” or did you read or hear something that provoked a strong emotional reaction in you that prompted you to say something about it?

Well?

I’m going to guess you did not wake up thinking about MARRIAGE until you heard someone else mentioning it and then fervently taking a stand on it. Now it seems you can’t look anywhere in social media land without people taking sides on it, passionately.

Am I right?

So, what’s going on, here?

Here’s something that’s going to show you what’s a major factor in this US election year.

Sit down first.

Here you go.

[Emailed to Lego on 5/2/2012 since they have a charlimit on their comment form]

Hey guys,

I’m a woman who has been a Lego fan since I was a little girl. I loved cars, and I loved hotel rooms, and I made the coolest spaceships and space stations from the random Lego sets my parents bought me. My style was “Airstream meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, plus Holiday Inn” (because, c’mon, every space cruiser needs a pool!). It was super fun building vehicles for imaginary adventures. Luckily, I still create stuff as an adult even though they aren’t space Winnebagos.

I gotta say though… I have yet to see one girl represented in your “Cool Creations” shout-out spread where you feature works by kids.

Granted, I may have overlooked some issues, but this kind of layout is typical.

And yet, your advertisements for your Legolands have a pretty fair split between the sexes.

What gives? It’s 2012 already, and we should be beyond this gender-skewed thing.

I’m guessing it’s one of two things. Either you’ve got a photo editor who favors boys’ creations, or you’re just not getting enough girls to submit the stuff they’ve made. If it’s the latter… that’s kind of disturbing, and I’m perplexed why you haven’t addressed it.

I love what your company represents–creativity, architecture, engineering, “building worlds” all that. But as I flipped through my last issue, I did notice it’s emphasis on superheros and cartoon drama. While that’s necessarily not a bad thing, you’ve created the heros as males, and since the viewer is supposed to identify with the protagonist, you might be turning off girls who “can’t see themselves” in that situation.

Don’t you think girls should be welcomed into fields of engineering and creating? It might be a bigger question that you as a company can simply answer and solve, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on these issues.

Thanks for your time,
Liz McLean Knight

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizmcleanknight
http://www.lizrevision.com
http://www.quantazelle.com

Demos came about as a sort of “visual graffiti” that preceded video games that had been cracked (had their DRM removed) by a team or person who wanted to visually show off their artistic side as well as their technical prowess. In the early days, computing capabilities and space were severely limited and that required a certain finesse to create something amazing using very limited means. That meant that the music and animations created in this format required creativity as well as algorithmic magic, and physical parties sprung up way before the internet as a way to share files and knowledge and to compete and inspire each other. Demoscene: The Art of the Algorithm is a well-crafted documentary that narrates the history of the demoscene and demoparties, and captures the essence of the modern-day scene.

LINKS
Nectarine is a demoscene portal that’s still updated with demos
Pixeljoint Pixel Art Resources
Keygenmuysic.net Download .mod files ripped from demos or keygens / cracks. Requires a .mod player like one of the apps on Modplug.com
Keygen Music Jukebox Listen to demoscene / keygen music without need for a .mod player
Trackers are the original old school way to compose music on computers, using hexadecimal to assign effects and notes. Impulse Tracker was the one I used on DOS, but there are modern day equivalents like Sunvox and Psycle.

Well, apparently luring frat boys into the world of programming is the new hot thing. Great.

I read this article by a journalist at South by Southwest where she walked out of a talk by a guy who was trying to excuse the frat-boy culture he adheres to with a few off handed comments that completely alienated a segment of the audience, and then I decided to poke around some more on the subject. Apparently this is a thing. Wow. Really?

Gross.

Yes, it’s a fact that math and science fields employ far less women than men, but to play up this fact and appeal to the base nature of men in order to sweep them into your new startup? That’s pretty pathetic.

From Adda Birnir, a female programmer in NYC:

“Brogrammers might lack tact, but they’re definitely marketing development in a way that appeals to a new subset of men,” she wrote. By recasting geekdom as an extension of the frat house, she believes, brogrammers are encouraging guys who might have headed to Wall Street to consider Silicon Valley. But if inclusion is the goal, she says, substituting “geek” with “bro” is equally problematic. “Because if there’s anything more alienating to women than a room full of geeks, it’s probably a room full of fratty guys.”

Here’s some reading for you:

“The Rise of the Brogrammer: Can Silicon Valley Solve Its Sexism Problem?”
Twitter’s @Brogrammer
Quora question “How does a programmer become a brogrammer?”
“”Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem”