Academy Luncheon Monday, Oscar Contest Finalists - Oscar Buzz Roundup

AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sends so many press releases - at times as many as six within a given week when the Academy Awards are not in full swing - that it spawned this experiment in Oscar-related blogging and Internet reach.

This is the Oscar Buzz Roundup.

Oscar Nominees to Be Honored at Academy Luncheon Monday

Monday features a luncheon that's certainly one this blogger should be at. At 12 noon, 14 of the 20 nominees in the acting categories will join 120 Academy Awards nominees for the annual Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

All five Best Director nominees will be there: Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino.

Expected to attend from the Best Actor and Best Actress categories are: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Renner, Sandra Bullock, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe and Meryl Streep. For the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Categories, Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, Woody Harrelson and Christoph Waltz have been invited to the luncheon.

Three Finalists Named in Academy/mtvU Oscar Correspondent Contest

AMPAS smartly partnered with MTV-U to produce a contest such that teams of college journalists would be flown to Los Angeles to compete for a spot on The Red Carpet. The winning teams and (their videos) are:

Chapman University, Orange, CA – Rachel Berry (anchor) and Christian Hartnett (videographer)
..and a corny but entertaining video that scored a 52 percent thumbs up rating:



Emerson College, Boston, MA – Terry Stackhouse (anchor) and Zach Cusson (videographer) - and an informative video that earned a 51 percent rating:



Florida A&M University, Tallahassee – Brandon McCaskill (anchor) and Kiarra Hart (videographer) and this special-effects-laden video:



You can still vote for these teams through March 2nd, here: Oscars.MTVU.com

The Grand Prize winning team will be announced Saturday, March 6th at a special Academy Awards press conference. The winning team will receive their spot on The Red Carpet and backstage press room passes. The runner-ups will be placed in the bleacher seats above The Red Carpet on Oscar day.

To see all of the videos that were submitted, click here: Oscars / MTV-U. Congratulations to the winning teams!

Actress Elizabeth Banks will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday, February 20

The Oscar Scientific and Technical Awards, presented in this space, will be the focus of this Saturday's "Oscar special night" at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, hosted by the lovely Elizabeth Banks (pictured).

Ms. Banks will present 15 awards to 45 individual recipients during the night's event. And you can catch Elizabeth Banks in Paul Haggis' film The Next Three Days.

Stay tuned for more Oscar news.

Happy Valentine's Day! Dating Doc shares his secrets

UPDATE: The makeer of the video below reports:

1) There are no Actors in the film
2) All events that took place are part of a Documentary Film in San
Francisco by Independent Filmmakers part of the organization at
(www.scarycow.com)
3) The services provided are real and are catered for San Francisco Bay
Area Singles (www.newdatinglife.com)

Today is Valentine's Day, one of the best days of the year. It is so because the very idea of Valentine's Day is associated with giving.

But today, with so many men and women trying to seek perfection in relationships (or the perfect person) when such a thing does not exist, many spend time worrying about who they didn't get a Valentine's Day greeting from, rather than enjoying who gave them one.   The result is a lot of depressed sprits for all the wrong reasons.

And some men, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, have forgotten how to approach and talk to a woman, if they ever knew how to. So they wallow in despair, silently cursing couples or expressing anger with men who aren't afraid of, and really like, women.

 That's where San Francisco-based "Dating Doc's Secrets to Attraction" comes in.

In the video below, Dating Doc helps this poor San Franciscan male out who just can't figure out what to say to a woman he's interested in:



OK. Now, I'll let you in on the joke. There's no Dating Doc (as far as I know). The video was sent to me by the YouTube channel NewDatingLife which houses the video work of Charles Gellman. All of the people in the video were actors. Even the website NewDatingLife.com is a fake service.

(Not sure what that says about our culture, but I'll think about it.)

But even with that, the video does capture a problem in the Bay Area: the lost art of verbal communication between people, regardless of the reason.

In a culture where people dump each other via text message, openly talking about anything is out of practice. The implications of this are the collapse of how a community of people relate, which keeps that group together.

The result is that no one really knows the other person at a level where trust can be established. It may also lead to the idea that people don't have to help each other, which means that a crime could be committed against one person, and the people in what should be that community do nothing about it.

You say we've already got that kind of situation?

To end it, we have to return to the art of talking. So on Valentine's Day practice striking up a conversation with just any one, for any reason.  Test yourself.  You're giving the gift of real community on a day when community and communication take center stage.

Or, they should.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Dr. Amy Bishop of Alabama-Huntsville killed to protect intellectual property

This news in the case of Dr. Amy Bishop-Anderson of Alabama-Huntsville, who murdered three of her colleagues in that school's biology department.



It was revealed to this blogger by a source who claims that Amy Bishop was his faculty advisor, that Dr. Amy Bishop Anderson killed to protect what she considered to be her intellectual property after Bishop lost tenure and was not going to be retained by the University.

"You called it when you said you thought this happened over her invention," and referring to this bloggers first post on this matter,"When her tenure was denied, that invention became the intellectual property of the university."

The invetion Dr. Amy Bishop believed was hers and that she had rights to something Bishop created, and what was reported in this space, is a portable cell-incubator called "InQ" which won the couple an award in a state competition and won $25,000 of seed money in a business competition, money they could use to start a company around the invention.

Dr. Bishop was also working on something she called The Neuristor, also reported in this space as using neurons as we use integrated circuits in a living computer. Bishop wrote:

Neuroengineering

My laboratory's goal will be to continue in our effort to develop a neural computer, the Neuristorâ„¢, using living neurons. This computer will exploit all of the advantages of neurons. Specifically, neurons rich with the nitric oxide NO dependent learning receptor, N Methyl D Aspartate receptor NMDAR, will be utilized. These have previously been studied in the context of induced adaptive resistance to NO IAR. For the Neuristorâ„¢ we will take advantage of the IAR phenomena since it has been demonstrated that IAR neurons express more learning and memory receptors NMDAR as well as increased neurite outgrowth. The neurons that we are currently using are mammalian motor neurons. We are exploring the possibility of using neurons derived from adult stem cells, and from bony fishes provided by Bruce Stallsmith Ph.D. This laboratory has created a portable cell culture incubator, the Cell Driveâ„¢ that is an ideal support structure for the Neuristor".

Still, there are many unanswered questions in this case. Dr. Bishop could have sued the University for damages or filed a criminal theft complain. But why murder in cold blood. That question remains unanswered.

Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death fault of track design

Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death during a training run was the fault of the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre, not the athlete.

That is the opinion of this blogger as of this writing, not anyone else. It runs counter to the official view of Olympic officials, who fault the athlete and not the track. This bloggers' view comes from a back understanding of how a vessel moves along a surface at a certain speed.

The basic problem is the track, which has been adjusted since the accident, was such that it had the luger coming from a curved, banked part of the track to a right-angled, straight-away portion. If one takes the curve high, it literally tosses the luger into the wall that is the straight-away part of the course coming out of the turn.

While many have criticized NBC for showing the video of the crash, the public should see it, given the design issues the track presented. What's curious is how, in the 21st Century, the course designers could have overlooked such an obvious flaw?

And update as this blog post is being written: Deadspin reports that the Whistler Sliding Centre track's design was questioned by many athletes and observers. Three riders were hospitalized in 2008 duing the World Cup. Deadspin quotes American lugar Tony Benshoof as telling NBC that someone "was going to kill themselves" on the track.

Having higher track walls isn't the answer at all. The whole track needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It's simply too dangerous to be used.

We Are The World 2010 - Miley Cyrus kills it

25 years ago Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones joined forces to make a song benefit for Africa called "We Are The World" which got together top music artists from Bob Dylan to The King of Pop for what's turned out to be a classic song.



In 2010 Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones, and members of The Jackson Family joined with a more contemporary set of artists, from LL Cool J to Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, and Barbara Streisand. But of all of the singers, the one who's got everyone talking is Miley Cyrus.

The teen pop sensation from the TV Show Hanna Montana sang her heart out and in a way some did not expect. Not this blogger.

Miley Cyrus can sing. Some, particularly on Twitter, express the idea in a way that they're surprised that this 17-year old white girl has a soulful voice. All of it has degenerated into a #WeLoveMileyCyrus v. #WeHateMileyCyrus tweet battle. But even with all of the sex-based marketing, if Miley Cyrus couldn't sing she would not have top selling albums or singles.

Moreover, Miley Cyrus is showing an interest in helping those less fortunate than she and teaming up with artists like Timbalind who are just outside her normal song genre.

Give Miley Cyrus a break and a real chance.

Oakland Raiders Stadium study: competitive bid and minority involvement missing?

The Oakland Tribune article on the possibility of a shared football stadium between the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers is certainly exciting news, but lost in the hope that the Raiders get a new stadium - 49ers or not - is any attention to the process behind getting to that point.

In this case, on Friday February 19th the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority is considering a proposal from CSL International, an event planning and stadium development consulting firm to write a feasibility study of a stadium for the Oakland Raiders.

Great, but where's the competitive bid for the consultant? And what about minority involvement in the study's development? Now that the Oakland Raiders have finally succeeded in getting the City of Oakland to see that it needs a new stadium, it's important to make sure the Oakland Coliseum Authority doesn't screw it up.

Where public monies are used, sole-source consultant contracts are frowned on and have been for decades. The reasons are simple: such contracts are looked at as political gifts or favors to a friend unless there's solid evidence that that company, and only that firm, can do the job required.

In the case of a feasibility study for a stadium for the Oakland Raiders that may include the San Francisco 49ers, there's no evidence or source that can confirm that the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority conducted a competitive bid process, out of which CSL International emerged.

The contract is reportedly for $125,000, not below $5,000, which is the California legal level at which a contract must be below if it is "sole-sourced" or without a competitive bid process. And as Oakland is a charter city, this process goes against the City of Oakland's own process and it's "hire Oakland first" mandate for the use of Oakland's public funds for contracts.

As one who's done feasibility study work, this blogger can assert that what the Oakland Coliseum is looking for does not take a rocket scientist to do. (And this blogger has no interest in being considered for any City of Oakland contract.)

These questions must be answered by the Coliseum Authority:

1) which firms out there in Oakland and in the San Francisco Bay Area can do this work?

2) Where they contacted in writing by the Coliseum Authority's Executive Director?

3) What was their written response?

4) Why was CSL International selected out of the competitive bid process?

5) Does CSL International have people of color on its staff?

If all of these questions can be answered, then CSL International was selected fairly. But if not and it appears that CSL International was chosen out of an informal and process controlled by the current Coliseum executive director, their proposal should be rejected. The Coliseum executive director should be made to start the process over, the right way.

The Oakland Raiders deserve a new stadium. But there's no hurry; the process toward a new facility should be done in an inclusive, not secretive, way.

Dr. Amy Bishop of Alabama-Huntsville well regarded by students

Dr. Amy Bishop, who has been charged with murder and could receive the death penalty in the wake of the shooting of Gopi K. Podila, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, all professors in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus. According to the Huffington Post, Amy Bishop could be heard saying "It didn't happen. There's no way .... they are still alive." No students were harmed in the shooting.

If this is a case of Amy Bishop allegedly "going off" - and as there's a man who's a "person-of-interest" so this matter is far from clear - she didn't do so to her students. And from online grades Amy Bishop received, the professor was well regarded by her students.

At the "Rate My Professor" page for Amy Bishop, students gave her an overall grade of 3.6, with her only low grade a 2.3 for "Average Easiness". Bishop received a 3.7 for Average Helpfulness.

Students comments painted a picture of a teacher who cared about her subjects, and of students who seemed to care about her. They also show a person who's bright, gives lectures that go off on "tangents", and who at least one student described as "hot":

am in her lab and her class. She is smart, talks about more stuff than just the book. She lets me sit in her office and study. She always dresses nice. She should stop trying to straighten her hair and go natural!

Bishop uses the online stuff, the internet, powerpoint, from the book and some stuff not from the book. If you show up to class and listen to what she tells you what is important and what is not as important you will get an A. Her animations from that anatomy program always crash the laptop(last year). This year her she bought her own laptop.

Study wha she tells u to study. If you have previous exams, u are more likely to get an A. Make sure u have good friends in that class, b/c they might have more resources to share with ya. Dont sweat it and go for it.

Dr.Bishop is so cool!

She is very nice, but her class is boring. Human A&P all we do is highlight the book. She reads straight from the book. I can do that at home. There is tons of material and she doesn't really narrow down what's going to be on the test. However, the class wasn't too hard though. There's just a lot of studying.

This prof is absolutely the bomb! Knows her stuff cold, and quick witted too. Never met anyone who knows more random knowledge. Sci-fi to quantum mechanics with a little art history thrown in the mix. Who knew? Definitely take one of her courses!

Dr. Bishop says she has to teach us about so much so we are ready for nursing classes. It is so much material! But she is nice, helpful and makes it interesting. I like her study day she has before the test.I heard she is from Harvard.I hope she remembers that she is not at Harvard.

Dr. Bishop is a great teacher! She talks about the stuff in the book but then she talks about extra stuff like diseases. This makes the class fun. She's super smart and thinks everyone else is too so sometimes she goes too fast.

Dr. Bishop tries to be a good teacher, but it's really pointless to come to class. All you do is highlight the book word for word. She is also very vague about her tests and what you should study; her answer is just study everything (which is the entire book.) She might have graduated from Harvard, but she has very little common sense.

I don't know what you people are talking about! She is not "easy" unless you are her favorite. She gets off on random**** all the time and is sooo completely scatter brained! I was there everyday, studied HARD, and still barely passed. I don't like her and don't recomend her.

Beware of Tangent Square Root!

Awesome teacher. She tends to make a lot of tangents but you learn a lot and she's always willing to help you out.

Mrs Bishop was totally awesome! She made this class fun and entertaining with her great sense of humor. She is always willing to help, and is great at working with students. I highly recommend this teacher!!

brilliant & hot

She makes class fun eventhough it is still hard.I thought because she is from Harvard she would be a snob but she isn't.She does not give multiple choice tests so her tests are hard. By the way Diane teaches BYS310 not Dr. Bishop.

If you didn't understand something in this class, she was willing to take time and give you a hand. She does what a professor is suppose to do: helps you and doesn't make you feel stupid.

She makes it seem like it is going to be hard but it is extremly easy. She is very unorganized, but its easy to get an A

Dr. Bishop is brilliant. Her research is fascinating. She will surely get the Nobel Prize. She is the best teacher I have ever had.

r. Bishop is extremely knowledgable about her field. She is grateful to help, you just have to ask. Her lectures are disorganized, but if you read your book, you'll get an A. I learned alot.

Dr. Bishop is very unclear in her test preparation, grading, and overall teaching style. She is not at all organized and neither are her lab instructors. The tests are fairly easy and you never really have to go to class except on review day.

Since Amy Bishop's not yet entered a plea regarding the murder charge, and the "person of interest" is still outstanding, we can't be absolute in our discussion of what happened. But what's clear to this blogger is there's a weird "Southern" issue with a "Harvard-trained" professor. The Alabama media stuck that tag as if to imply it had something to do with her alleged shooting of the three faculty members.

But the reference may be a clue to another problem: Dr. Bishop may have experienced a kind of anti-intellectual prejudice from the University of Alabama-Huntsville culture that could have just driven Bishop batty. A "You think you're better than us because you're from Harvard" attitude that may very well have blocked her from fair consideration by her peers.

I think there's something there worth investigating. This is not to excuse the action of murder, but an honest, cold, read of the situation with the current available information would lead a reasonable person to think Bishop was being discriminated against in the way I described. What's the point of mentioning that she's "Harvard-trained"?

If this happened at U.C. Berkeley (God forbid), no media outlet would mention that Bishop was "Harvard-trained", yet a ton of Berkeley faculty and instructors are. Something's wrong here.

Stay tuned.

Snow in Atlanta, Georgia cripples cars and travel (video)

(This is an update on an earlier blog post called "Snow in Atlanta".)

The Atlanta, Georgia area is getting a healthy dose of snow, and this blogger, taking care of his mother's home in suburban Atlanta, is in the middle of it. The snow is coming down fast and here's the video of it all:



To think. Exactly one week ago on Friday, I was in balmy South Beach, Miami, Florida for the Super Bowl festivities...



Now I'm here.

The snowy conditions have forced thousands of flight cancellations at Atlanta-Harsfield-Jackson Airport. But flying in the snow is one thing; driving in it something else. For those of us trained by their fathers to drive in midwestern snow, this is not a problem. But then, it's the other Southern drivers that really concern me.

Reportedly, this is supposed to go on all day long, and it has done that and is still snowing albeit at a really slow rate, then we reportedly get a break on Saturday, and it starts up again Sunday.

That trip into Atlanta I planned never happened; I've got snow to shovel.

Stay tuned.

University shooting at Alabama-Huntsville: Dr. Amy Bishop is suspect

A university shooting at Alabama-Huntsville University has neuroscientist Dr. Amy Bishop as the key suspect (the Huntsville Times reports Bishop's Harvard-trained but what relevance that is to the story is a mystery). Bishop's being held, along with her husband, but has not been charged with a crime as of this writing. Three people, all Alabama-Huntsville faculty members, are dead.

Amy Bishop joined the UAH faculty in 2003. With her husband, Jim Anderson, Bishop created a portable cell-incubator called "InQ" which won the couple an award in a state competition and won $25,000 of seed money in a business competition, money they could use to start a company around the invention.

Amy Bishop

A search for the name "Amy Bishop" revealed a web page that had this text, instead of Bishop's profile:

There has been a shooting on campus. The shooter has been apprehended. The campus is closed tonight. Everyone is encouraged to go home. Classes are cancelled for tonight. Any additional cancellations or changes will be announced as they become available. There is a Command Center set up at Madison Hall Room 109. Counselors are available in University Center Rooms 125, 126 and 127 for anyone who wishes to speak with a counselor.

Dr. Bishop was also working on a cybernetics project called The Neuristor, using neurons as we use integrated circuits in a living computer. Bishop wrote:

Neuroengineering

My laboratory's goal will be to continue in our effort to develop a neural computer, the Neuristor™, using living neurons. This computer will exploit all of the advantages of neurons. Specifically, neurons rich with the nitric oxide NO dependent learning receptor, N Methyl D Aspartate receptor NMDAR, will be utilized. These have previously been studied in the context of induced adaptive resistance to NO IAR. For the Neuristor™ we will take advantage of the IAR phenomena since it has been demonstrated that IAR neurons express more learning and memory receptors NMDAR as well as increased neurite outgrowth. The neurons that we are currently using are mammalian motor neurons. We are exploring the possibility of using neurons derived from adult stem cells, and from bony fishes provided by Bruce Stallsmith Ph.D. This laboratory has created a portable cell culture incubator, the Cell Drive™ that is an ideal support structure for the Neuristor".

Amy Bishop was reportedly denied tenure. What happened after that, a hypothesis, may be that Bishop went off when she perceived the University as trying to take and profit off of an idea she developed, just as they were getting rid of her. At that point, Bishop may have went berserk.

Stay tuned.

Bill Clinton out of hospital and back to work today

Former President Bill Clinton is out of the hospital in New York City and back to the same schedule he maintained before he complained of a "discomfort" in his chest on Thursday.



The 42nd President of the United States walked out of New York Presbyterian Hospital Friday after an overnight stay to have two stents installed to restore healthly blood flow. President Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery for four blocked arteries in 2004.

President Clinton was joined by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton at the hospital.

As I said in this video, Clinton needs to take time from his Bush - Clinton - Haiti work to get some rest:



Stay tuned.

Tim Wise speaks in Oakland: anti-racist activist

Even with the election of President Barack Obama, America is still plagued by racism, according to author Tim Wise. The anti-racist activist was in Oakland last week discussing his most recent book, "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama."

Students packed a Laney College classroom Wednesday, Feb. 3 Tim Wise lecture, part of the campus' Black History Month lecture program.

Wise -- who is white -- said the recent economic downturn, fear over health care reform, the changing demographics of America, and the election of the first African American president in the U.S. has caused great anxiety for white people in America. The rise of the “Tea Party” demonstrations and much of the backlash against the Obama administration is due to a perceived loss of “white privilege.”

"For the first time you actually have to realize that America’s not just about white folks,” Wise said, referring to the luxury of America being seen as a nation for white people. “When all of a sudden that changes, an awful lot of people aren’t ready.”

“All of a sudden you have a white America” no longer “totally convinced that everything’s going to be okay. He added that the economic collapse has caused many white people to feel as if they are “losing” the country and wanting “their” country back. “They’re talking about going back to the day when they were the norm. They could take it for granted that they were the norm.”

During the question and answer period, his advice on confronting subtle or subconscious racism was confrontation, critically. He said some whites may not be conscious of their racism, but by asking questions or critiquing racist remarks and statements, people who are not overtly or intentionally racist, will improve.

“You don’t want to just jump on them, you want them to think,” Wise suggests.

Read the complete article or watch a video recording on TheBlackHour.com.

Snow in Atlanta, Georgia coming down fast

The Atlanta, Georgia area is getting a healthy dose of snow, and this blogger, taking care of his mother's home in suburban Atlanta, is in the middle of it. The snow is coming down fast and a video of it all is coming soon.

The snowy conditions have forced thousands of flight cancellations at Atlanta-Harsfield-Jackson Airport. But flying in the snow is one thing; driving in it something else. For those of us trained by their fathers to drive in midwestern snow, this is not a problem. But then, it's the other Southern drivers that really concern me.

Reportedly, this is supposed to go on all day long, then we get a break on Saturday, and it starts up again Sunday.

That trip into Atlanta's looking all the more risky.

Stay tuned. Video coming.