On Monday, Nov. 12, University of Dallas students accompanied by Biology Professors Dr. Deanna Soper, Dr. Drew Steneson and Psychology Professor Dr. Scott Churchill visited the Perot Museum to receive a guided tour from Director of the Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey Dr. Becca Peixotto, a paleoanthropologist that brought rare hominid fossils to Dallas.

The unique opportunity allowed the UD group to see fossils that will most likely only be exhibited in Dallas until they return to South Africa, where they were discovered. The fossil skeletons Homo naledi Neo and Austalopithecus sediba Karabo were discovered in cave systems in 2013 and 2008, respectively.

According to Peixotto, Neo lived around 300,00 years ago, while Karabo lived 1.97 million years ago, and they are the remains of our fossilized relatives.

We used to think of human evolution in terms of a ladder or there is that terrible t-shirt that shows a chimpanzee and then all of a sudden you have Homer Simpson on a computer, said Peixotto. Thats not how we understand human evolution anymore.

Peixotto explained that the popular representation of human evolution, the March of Progress, was not entirely accepted by the scientific community. Instead, Peixotto suggested that human evolution occurred in a braided stream where species interbred.

The UD group followed Peixotto through the exhibit where they learned that the work of a paleontologist can challenge our thought of what it means to be human.

We can tell from the taphonomy, so whats happened to the bones since the animal died, and from lots of geologic clues, that [the fossils] werent washed in with a flood, they werent drug in by carnivores, they didnt all fall in at the same time from a hole in the ceiling, said Peixotto. Our hypothesis is that Homo naledi was deliberately depositing the dead in this cave system We see evidence of behavior that suggests that Homo naledi was able to recognize self and other, and when other wasnt anymore.

Peixotto said that purposeful burial rituals were one of the aspects considered to be unique human activities, such as tool usage and language, both of which have been observed in other species.

Sophomore physics major David Foust found the experience to be enjoyable and enlightening to the human experience.

Knowing that they had burial rituals was fascinating to me, said Foust. I presumed that they had conscious experience, which seems to have been confirmed [through the evidence]. I was awestruck that they used the caves to bury their dead.

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Students view rare fossils at the Perot Museum - University of Dallas University News

When he was 17, Yair Dor-Ziderman experienced the trauma of death in a particularly jarring way. In 1994, his childhood friend Arik Frankenthal, then a private in the Israeli military, was abducted and killed by Hamas. All Dor-Ziderman remembers now is feeling numb, he said in a recent interview with Calcalist. As everyone else around him collapsed, he started questioning himself. Why wasnt he crying like everyone? During the funeral, he forced himself to shed tears.

It is even more clear today because Dor-Ziderman, now a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University, spent the last few years studying the way people deal with death. On Friday, a new research paper he co-authored will be published in the scientific journal NeuroImage, discussing a study he and his fellow researchers conducted that revealed the mechanism the human brain employs to shield people from accepting their own mortality.

The key concept is mortality salience, the moment awareness of death occurs and the brains defensive mechanism springs into action, he explained. The study shows that the brain has an unconscious but very basic belief that death is something that happens to others, not to me, he said. And that belief is activated whenever we come into contact with something that could remind us of death. We repress its relation to us and project it onto others, and that protects us. The study made me understand not just how the brain constantly interprets reality to construct a story, but how fundamental the mortality denial mechanism is to our consciousness and brain.

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Looking Death in the Eye: Why Your Brain Is Convinced You'll Live Forever - CTech

Defy marks the evolution of Las Vegas hard rockers Otherwise from a true blue rock quartet to a multidimensional act. Defy, Otherwises fifth full-length album, is a bold, electronically-complemented offering that explores the full spectrum of rock music. Known for their socially conscious lyrics, resounding riffs and escalating choruses, Otherwise deviates away from their personal norm on Defy, sampling digitization as a supplement to their traditional hard rock sound. However, where the introduction of digitization has operated as a parasite on the integrity of lesser bands music, vocalist Adrian Patricks exemplary rhythm helps Otherwise seamlessly incorporate it into their sound.

Bad Trip, the first track off Defy, begins with a steady, calculated rhythm that will leave listeners subconsciously bobbing their heads before evolving into a crescending chorus that introduces the tone for the rest of the album. The second and third tracks, Money and Crossfire, follow the same pattern, staggering Brian Medeiross lonesome drums against lead guitarist Ryan Patricks powerful riffs. Keen listeners will notice electronic elements used sparingly in each number.

Defy gravitates toward radio friendliness starting with Lifted and Picking At Bones, the albums fourth and fifth tracks. Adrian excels here, displaying his ability to blur the line between genres while maintaining the integrity of the bands hard rock identity.

Aint Done Yet sees Otherwise return to their roots. Ryan, who this author believes to be one of the most underrated guitarists of the modern rock scene, exhibits his full musical prowess, offering intoxicating chord progressions that listeners can sink their teeth into. Ryans ability to define a song without monopolizing the sound is primarily what differentiates Otherwise from their failed counterparts.

With Dont Even, Otherwise adopts an aggressive, socially aware stance that touches on everything from the political indoctrination to racial divisions (Im not allowed to sing, I have to scream cause Im not white). However, Dont Even isnt your typical socially conscious song that is built solely on a lyrical foundation. The riffs from Ryan and bassist Tony The Beast Carboney perfectly complement Adrians ironic singsong chorus, allowing each member to collectively express their unique set of values and personality through their musical contributions.

Finally, the album hits on all cylinders with Fame and Miss Fortune and Good Fight. The band fully explores its hard rock beginnings with Good Fight, an inspirational anthem of dedication, desire and perseverance. Medeiross marching drums combine with Adrians impassioned vocals to take listeners on the journey of Otherwise, a band that has never masked its family-first approach to fame and entertainment.

Fame and Miss Fortune chronicles the pressures of operating under a microscope in the age of social media (checkin every seven minutes, hoping that you might get noticed). The song explores the way we conceptualize artificial popularity, judging others based on their ability to generate an internet following. From a musical standpoint, Fame and Miss Fortune benefits from an energetic chorus and rhymatic verses, making it the complete package. In both Fame and Miss Fortune and Good Fight, Otherwises unadulterated energy permeates throughout each song, counteracting a sobering message while stimulating the senses of the listener.

Overall, Defy is a fantastic addition to an Otherwise catalog defined by steadiness and consistency. At the end of the day, the digital additions were a bold endeavor that seem slightly unnecessary, though thats more a testament to Otherwises musical prowess than an indictment on the actual sound. If youd like to listen to a hard rock band that takes pride in their craft and has steadily improved since their debut offering, give Defy a listen.

Otherwise performing live at Route 20 Outhouse | Photo by Matthew Rago

Otherwise performing live at Route 20 Outhouse | Photo by Matthew Rago

Otherwise performing live at Route 20 Outhouse | Photo by Matthew Rago

Otherwise performing live at Route 20 Outhouse | Photo by Matthew Rago

Otherwise performing live at Route 20 Outhouse | Photo by Matthew Rago

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Otherwise, 'Defy' album review - The Independent

Pop songstress Ralph released her EP Flashbacks and Fantasies on Wednesday (Nov. 13).

The six-song compilationis the Canadian singer-songwriter's second EP, and first collection of tracks to be unveiledsince her debut albumGood Girldropped last fall.

A classically trained vocalist known for her disco-pop bops, Ralph -- real name Raffaella Weyman --createdFlashbacks & Fantastiesout of a desire toexperiment with her sound and showcase her evolution as an artist.

She released the EP independently, allowingherself to letgo of thepressure she had previously felt to create a pop radio hit, she says.

"When you go into the studio with a really intense preconceived goal, it can almost produce things that feel less organic or true to yourself," she explains. "Ithink that this EP isrepresentative of the fact thatI don't have these constraints of people being like, 'This is what we want from you.'I have the freedom to go into the studio, and I could write a flop, and people could be like, 'What the f--k is she doing?'Or it could be cool."

With experience in musical theater, jazz, folkand hip-hop, Ralph was able to blurgenre lineson Flashbacks & Fantasies,sublty sneaking in each of her different inspirations without feeling the needto createone cohesive goal or sound.

"I listened to a lot of Miley Cyrus' last EP," she reveals."I thought it was really cool. I liked that that she hada bunch of different sounding songs."

After spending the summer touring with fellow Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen, Ralph is ushering in an era of carving her own path. She's already working on new music -- most recently writing a track inspired by Noah Cyrus' "f--ckyounoah" --and she begins her first North American headlining tour next year, playing shows in states she'snever even visited.

Ahead of the release of Flashbacks & Fantasies-- as Ralph debates on what to wearfor her release party -- Billboard chatted with the singer about the inspiration behind her songs, touring with Jepsen, and loving Lizzo.

What was the creative process behind this EP?

"No Muss No Fuss" is the oldest song on there. My songs are mostly autobiographical, but this was inspired by a conversation that I heard two girls having in a cafe near thestudio I was at in Montreal. They were talking about when you really like someoneand then it falls apart, and you feel pretty hurt, but you get over it. Butby the time you get over it, the person is reinterested in you and keeps popping up around you. It's this sassy, cheeky song that's like Mariah Carey's "Obsessed" meetsAriana Grande's "thank u, next." Why are you so obsessed with me?But I wish you well.

The other Ariana song I equated to my EP was "Thinking Bout You."I was post-breakup, doing laps around this park with the wind in my hair and listening to that song, and thinking it was thisbeautiful, powerful, sad, cinematic pop song. When I was writing "Looking For You," I realized I had never really done a cinematic pop song before, so I was like, "This is what we need to do."

I wrote "Gravity" in Toronto. I had listened to a lot ofmusic podcasts where they feature different artists and theyunpack one song. I've been reallyenjoying that because I think it makes me more of a critical thinker when it comes to songwriting.I was thinking about that and I was listening to "One Kiss" by Dua Lipa. At thattime I felt like everyone was listening to "One Kiss," and I was like, "What makes 'One Kiss' a universally great song?" My brother said that it was the fact that the content isn't overly complicated, so I was like, "Here's a cool challenge. Write a song that isn't overly complicated." I went into the studio with this game plan to write a song where theBPM was going to be 118 or higher, which is a challenge for me because I haven't really written anything that's super fast. I wanted toexplore new depths within my dance-y Ralphworld.

With "Headphone Season," I had just finished organizing and performing at a pro-choice benefit concert here in Toronto. I spent a lot of time around fired up women, thinking about what it means to be a female-identifying person in this climate right now. The song is something we can all relate to in the sense that we've had strangers on the street, on the subwaymake a comment about howwe could improve our appearance that would benefit them or make them feel more comfortable. It's like, "In what world would I do something for you because you asked me to strange person?"The headphone line is so apt because even today I was on public transportation and I put my headphones in. I didn't even listen to music. I just put my headphones in because I feel more safe when I look less approachable. I'm hoping that there are a couple of lines that really resonate with people, if not the whole song.

Did you make a conscious decision torelease an EP instead of waiting to release another album?

It was a conscious choice. You see more and more big artists doing single releases, EP releases. I don't think thatan EP reflects anything negative anymore. No one can really focusvery well these days. I find that a 10 to 12 song album is really hard for people to listen to. You end up havingfour to six songs that people really listen to. We were like, "You know what? It costs a lot. It's a lot of time. Let's just do an EP with songs that we feel really strongly about instead of trying to getting caught up in the 'Weneed to make an album to prove ourselves.'" We dont need to prove ourselves.

Were there any artists you had on repeat while creating this EP?

A lot of contemporary pop, top 40, because I wanted to seewhat was charting and why. Maggie Rogers and Lizzoaretwo artists that I admire because they're doing really, really well on Spotify, on the radio, on YouTube, but they're really honest about their sound. It's so unique.I think they have a lot of control in their own image and their own sound, which is inspirational for me. Lizzo's got really beautiful self-loveballads, which was also appealing to me.

You did a premiere with us back in March2018 where you said that you hope to befriend Carly Rae Jepsen one day. A year later you just wrapped up atour with her. What was it like to be able to work with her?

I'm just amazed by her. I would go out and watch the show every night.She always performedwith the same energy and the same joy. She's been on a world tour for a year,and that takes a lot out of you. Her stamina was impressive. The way she still connects with her fans and the way that she creates a really loving family atmosphere with her tourmates and bandmates was also really impressive to me. Every night she was like, "I love your outfit. You guys sounded so great."I always notice when I'm opening for someone and they say onstage"Thank you so much to Ralph. What a great opener." Like you have no obligationto say that, but as an opener, I always really appreciate and notice when a headliner takes a moment to just saythank you. You can just tell she's a true professional, and very grateful and conscientious that everyone around her feels good. That's something that I'd like to carry into my future tours.

Speaking of your future tours, what are you most excited for on your upcoming one?

I've only done shows in San Francisco, LA, and New York, so I'm really excited to meet my fans in different states and to travel and play music in America. Touring is a sign of success, that people want you to be in different places. I'm really thrilled there's enough interest in the states. My struggle now is finding the outfits. My reoccurring theme here is "What am I going to wear?"

RALPH TOUR DATESDec5 -Toronto, ON @ ModClubDec7 -New York, NY @ BerlinFeb 5- Nashville, TN @ The High WattFeb 6- Atlanta, GA @ VinylFeb 8- Washington, DC @ SongbyrdFeb 9- Allston, MA @ Great ScottFeb 11- NewYork, NY @ Mercury LoungeFeb 12-Philadelphia, PA @ Voltage LoungeFeb 15- Cleveland, OH @ Beachtend TavernFeb 16- Chicago, IL @ SchubasFeb 17- Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street EntryFeb 19- Denver, CO @ Globe HallFeb 20- Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby CourFeb 22- Seattle, WA @ Columbia City TheatreFeb 23- Portland, OR @ HoloceneFeb 26- San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du NordFeb 27- Los Angeles, CA @ MoroccanFeb 29- Phoenix, AZ @ Valley BarMar 2- Dallas, TX @ DadaMar 3- Austin, TX @ Stubbs IndoorsMar 4 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music HallMar 10- Victoria, BC @ Lucky BarMar 11-Vancouver, BC @ BiltmoreMar 13- Calgary, AB @ DickensMarch 14- Edmonton, AB @ TempleMarch 16- Winnipeg, MB @ Good Will SC

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Ralph Is Carving Her Own Path With 'Flashbacks & Fantasies' EP - Billboard

pic of Sebastian ManiscalcoPNimg

American comedian Sebastian Maniscalco returns to Montreal Friday and visits Ottawa for the first time on Saturday as part of his You Bother Me tour. In this edited interview, the Chicago-born funnyman was surprisingly serious as he talked about the evolution of his act, the slow growth of fame and how he stays hungry.

Q: Heres an obvious question, given the title of your tour. What bothers you?

A: Hmm, what does bother me? Ive made a career basically describing things that I see on a daily basis. Basically human behaviour types of things. When I get on a plane and someone opens a bag of chips and starts eating, it drives me up the wall. Just the little nuances of life that maybe someone might not pay attention to. Also my act is centred around my upbringing, my family, and the dynamics of the relationship between my father and I, my wife and I, my wifes family and myself. All those scenarios, they dont necessarily bother me but theres an annoyance. So its basically storytelling deep rooted in family and angst.

Q: But politics isnt part of it?

A: No. Ive always been a huge fan of comedians who just talk about day-in, day-out stuff. I think people nowadays are so beat over the head with politics. You post a photo of spaghetti and meatballs and by the end of the comments, theyre talking about immigration policy. How did we get there from a photo of meatballs? I like to keep politics out of it. Ive always said that whatever a politician is doing at any particular time is not as funny as what my dad is doing. So Ill stick with my father.

Q: You move around a lot on stage. How did that physicality evolve?

A: That happened over time. I was a huge fan of John Ritter growing up, who was on Threes Company, and definitely had a great ability to make people laugh through physical movement. I really soaked up a lot of what he did. It took time. Sometimes it just takes a lot of practice to peel the onion of insecurity off while youre up on stage and feel as comfortable as you would around your mother or father. It took me a while to get there but once I started feeling comfortable, and feeling that I had the ability to make people laugh with body movement, I implemented it into the storytelling.

Q: What made you want to do comedy in the first place?

A: Ive always been a huge fan of stand-up comedy, and when they went around the class in second grade, asking kids what they wanted to be, I said stand-up comedian. Which was a little bit off the planet for a kid that young. Every other kid wanted to be a teacher or firefighter or policeman, but I really fell in love with standup at a young age through Johnny Carson, and subsequently watching George Carlin and Eddie Murphy and Jerry Seinfeld and Don Rickles. I was fascinated with how they remember it and how theyre telling it like it was the first time theyre telling it. Thats the trick, to keep the same type of passion the first time you tell the story, all the way through the hundredth time you tell the same story.

Q: So how do you do it?

A: Its just revisiting the experience that I lived. You just automatically remember the story and start telling it to a new group of people. Its not that hard to remember the beats of a story because I lived it. Its not like I go in my office and write for four hours and come up with a story. Its all based in reality.

Q: Youve done some movies lately. How do you like that type of work?

A: Its a great departure from what Im doing on stage. Typically these movies Ive been doing are dramatic roles and I like to explore the drama part of entertainment through acting, just because Im kind of a serious guy, to be honest with you, and to do some of these movies has been refreshing for me and a challenge.

Q: Is that a direction youd like to explore a bit more?

A: Not full time. I just landed a little role in a movie called Spinning Gold, which is actually shooting up in Canada. Its a movie about Tim Bogart and Casablanca Records in the 1970s where I play Georgio, who was a German-Italian guy whos credited with being the father of disco, and discovering Donna Summer. I have to learn a German accent for that. These little pops in movies really give me a nice diverse resume. Now I can make people laugh but hopefully in the long run I can make em cry.

Q: Youve had some lucky breaks in your career but also a loyal fan base. Whats your secret?

A: My success in standup comedy was all grassroots, going to comedy clubs, making people laugh, hanging out outside the comedy club, shaking hands, taking pictures, selling my DVD, people coming back the next time I came into town, bringing maybe their neighbour or aunt or uncles. It became one of those things where people saw it and wanted to share it with friends and family. Before you knew it, theres people renting a big limo bus and 50 people would get out. It spread through word of mouth, and started to grow exponentially but it took about 10 years. It was a gradual, slow burn, and then came to a boil about four years ago.

Q: To borrow another phrase from you, how does a performer at your level stay hungry?

A: For me, its almost harder to stay where Im at than it was to get there, just because when youre coming up, no one really knows who you are and the expectations are kinda low. Whos this guy? Then all of a sudden youre funny, and now people are wanting to hear new material and that new material has to be as good as, if not better than, the old material. You have to maintain a certain standard of excellence in order for people to want to come back and see you. So I stay hungry just by that challenge alone, to make these people go home with a smile on their face. Theres no shortage of hunger here.

Q: Your comedy is fairly clean. Is that important to you?

A: Yeah. I like to appeal to a lot of different people. I dont like to fragment my audience. Sometimes theres a 12-year-old in the audience and sometimes right next to him is his 90-year-old grandmother. And everybody in between. Its something Im very conscious of. I do use some language but its not language thats gratuitous. Its there for a reason. Its not distracting. The content of the act is very PG-13, and very digestible. If you want to take your family out for a night of entertainment, you dont want to cringe because the entertainers talking about something thats uncomfortable.

Sebastian Maniscalco performs Friday at 8 p.m. at the Bell Centre and in Ottawas Canadian Tire Centre on Saturday at 8 p.m.

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

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Preview: Funnyman Maniscalco on staying hungry and avoiding politics - Montreal Gazette

Russells arc comes after the crash, but is no less momentous. After her brother is involved in a deadly accident, her world is turned upside down. She finds solace in a new relationship with a classmate, Luke, played by Lucas Hedges, who later reveals he is dealing with his own demons. Emily naturally takes on the role of listener, confidante, and emotional support system, for her parents, her brother, and her boyfriend. But shes not just a crutch to be used and discarded by the men in her life. She somehow doesnt let all this darkness stop her from shining, and flourishing, despite the pain. A role like this is career-making, especially for someone whose character steadily becomes the heart and soul of a film. Its a departure from the 25-year-old Canadian actresss previous projects, which include two sci-fi shows (Falling Skies and Lost in Space), smaller parts in indies (Before I Fall and Hot Air), and A horror franchise (Escape Room and the upcoming Escape Room 2).

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Breakout Star Taylor Russells Cosmic Connection To Waves - Refinery29

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Marvel's Star Wars #73, by by Greg Pak and Phil Noto, on sale now.

The final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker prepared fans for C-3PO's death in front of his friends, and made it seem like this time, unlike all the others, would be his final stand. Despite his cautious, pacifist nature, Threepio has shown a worrying tendency to get himself skinned, dismembered, disconnected, shot at and beheaded, but somehow he has always managed to come back from the Chromium Gates with a little help from his friends.

These feats are a fun, non-permanent way of illustrating the themes of death and resurrection for younger audiences, as well as C-3PO's character evolution. Episode I features his "birth" as Anakin Skywalker's first creation. He then goes on to die twice in the prequel trilogy: once in Geonosis, where he's dismembered and stuck to another droid, and once in Episode III, when Bail Organa and Obi-Wan erase his memory of Padm and Anakin. None of these "deaths" are a direct consequence of his actions, but rather a harsh punishment from outside forces: he has no agency.

RELATED: C-3PO's Rise of Skywalker Story Pays Off A Long-Running Star Wars Joke

In the second trilogy, C-3PO dies once in Cloud City, when the Imperial troops dismember him. Fortunatey, Chewbacca manages to put him back together. In The Return of the Jedi, he doesn't as much die as ascend as the prophet of the Ewoks, a role that he relishes because it allows him to help his friends and civilize sentient species. These two occurrences are not entirely voluntary, but at least they derive from Threepio's decisions to either explore Cloud City (curiosity killed the cat) or to apply his programming to a practical situation.

Going by The Rise of Skywalker's trailer, C-3PO's final death might be a very conscious decision on his par. And given that self-preservation is an essential part of his programming -- one that he has been trying to share with all droidhood -- it's not an inconsequential one. This points to two things: First, the reward for this sacrifice must be objectively gigantic; Second, this death might not be reversible, because that's the price C-3PO has consciously chosen to pay.

RELATED: Star Wars 'Build My Droid' Contest Could Bring Your Creation to Life

To give us a taste of what this means, Marvel presents a similarly bleak situation in Marvel's Star Wars: Destination Hoth #74, by Greg Pak and Phil Noto, set between episodes IV and V. In this issue, Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and C-3PO managed to lure part of the Imperial fleet (and Darth Vader!) to allegedly lifeless K43. They plan to blow up the planet and take out the fleet with it. However, on arrival, C-3PO discovers that the planet is inhabited by the Karkoans, rock-people with electromagnetic powers that feel close to him -- because he's made of ore.

C-3PO is horrified by their pending demise and tries to warn them about the bombs ticking away at the planet's core; he doesn't want to kill these many sentient beings because, for him, it would be a pyrrhic victory. However, the Krakoans know how to disconnect the bombs by sending electromagnetic pulses through the planet. The issue is that these EMs will kill any machine close to the surface, including X-Wings, lightsabers... and C-3PO himself.

But C-3PO barely hesitates, explaining to Chewie that he's only happy to be of service and asking his Krakoan friend to just "do it." So they do. And C-3PO falls into Chewbacca's arms, much like he did in The Empire Strikes Back.

RELATED: Star Wars' C-3PO Details Harsh Weather Faced by Daisy Ridley While Filming

In addition, back in 2016, Marvel already presented fans with the incredibly artistic Star Wars: C-3PO miniseries, where they explain C-3PO's red arm. In it, Omri, a protocol droid who has suffered incomplete memory wipes, is tortured by the idea that droids' makers don't care about them, and because of this, they will never be conscious of their role in the grand scheme of things despite their intelligence.

In a key moment that will tie in with The Rise of Skywalker, C-3PO confesses that he remembers flashes of terrible and beautiful things, but that he still trusts his masters to do what is right. Despite his misgivings, Omri sacrifices himself in the pouring acid rain to save C-3PO and help him succeed in his mission. As a tribute to his courage, C-3PO takes Omri's arm to replace the one that melted in the rain, making a vow always to remember the droids that lost their lives as his friends.

RELATED: "Star Wars Special: C-3PO" Solves The Mystery Of Threepio's Red Arm

So what does this mean for The Rise of Skywalker? From a mythological perspective, C-3PO's sacrifice sets him up as a martyr and a savior, a position that rings not only of Christian tradition but also ancient Greek, Celtic and Nordic tales. But from a character evolution perspective, this means that C-3PO has transcended droidhood and is following in the steps of his Maker's family, Anakin and Luke, who just like him lost an arm in a personally painful mission, and just like him, chose to sacrifice themselves to save what they loved.

Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker stars Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyongo, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, with Ian McDiarmid and Billy Dee Williams. The film arrives on Dec. 20.

NEXT: Never Mind Anakin & Rey, C-3PO Is Star Wars' 'Chosen One'

DC's Biggest A-Hole Is a White Lantern - and It's a Fate Worse Than Death

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Star Wars: C-3PO Died a Long Time Before The Rise of Skywalker - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Julie Choi, Vice President and General Manager of Products and Research Marketing for Intels ... [+] Artificial Intelligence Products Group

When you ask a person to name a career in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the first thing that comes to mind is a data scientist. However, the AI field offers a wide diversity of career opportunities, including marketing. Recently I had the chance to interview Intels Julie Choi about working in AI. Choi is the Vice President and General Manager of Products and Research Marketing for Intels Artificial Intelligence Products Group. Choi has a rich history of marketing to developers and technical users. This domain expertise has allowed her to seamlessly transition into the AI field.

Choi stated that the AI field is ripe with opportunity because every company, whether a consumer of technology or a creator of technology, is on an AI transformation path. As an industry analyst following the AI space, I echo this sentiment. Almost every technology company has a strategy for how AI will improve its products. In fact, many technology vendor marketing pitches claim AI is what delivers product differentiation. However, to Choi's point, every organization seeks to understand how AI will impact their company's bottom line. Smart apps are a great example of this. Choi discussed the evolution of app development where we started with the web, then moved to mobile and AIat its simplest, isjust the latest interest area for app development. I hadn't considered this, but it makes sense given software vendors want to create applications that are contextual, adaptive, learning and predictive. I call these applications right-time experiences because they deliver the right information to the right person at the precise moment of need.

According to Choi, one area that has changed since she started is thatAI isn't considered such a new thing as compared to when she started in the field almost 5 years ago. She shared a personal anecdote of how her child is studying machine learning in grade school. She's been a judge for the school's AI hackathon that included robotics, machine learning, and programming. AI may not be mainstream, but it's time for everyone to evaluate how AI will impact their careers going forward.

What does it take to be a successful marketer in the AI space?

To work in the field, Choi says you need to be curious, interested in problem-solving andopen to taking multiple paths towards solutions.AI is a rapidly evolving field. Choi noted that one of the challenges individuals face working in AI is balancing the art of practicing the craft versus keeping up with the latest research. Choi said she'd love to spend half of her time pouring over the latest research documents inarXiv.org,but it's simply not possible.arXiv is an open archive of scholarly articles in AI, math, physics, quantitative biology, etc.Yet, given AI's strong tie to research, you have to make time to understand the nuances of the space and what's coming next. Choi stated that as a storyteller of the domain, you must help buyers understand what's real, what's hype and where the field is going.

Choi says "Customer obsession is a core value. It's about the user. Mytechnicalaudience iscomposed ofAI infrastructure engineers, application developers and data scientists.To be successful as a marketer to these people who are generally skeptical about marketing, you need to build a relationshipwith two-way dialogue. You must listen (and respond) to the good and the bad. This dialogue is what feeds the marketing engine."

AI developers and data scientists want to understand how and why tools were designed in a certain way. These groups also want to hear the vision of how AI software and hardware will evolve. Choi said her billboard phrase would be "Insane level of customer obsession".

Given that AI is a rapidly developing field and we're trying to encourage more people to select the field, I asked Ms. Choi what role evangelizing played in her work. She said the most effective way to attract people to the field is to offer tutorials and opportunities for training. Choi and the Intel team are wrapping up a 17-city Intel Artificial Intelligence Developer Conference (AIDC) tour which provided smaller gatherings for education, insight and networking. According to Choi, nothing takes the place of real-world experience with the technologies. I couldn't agree more. She also wants to share that education and enthusiasm withinevery Intel employee so they can become AI evangelists.

Choi represents a new generation of marketers that focus on how to make information about in-depth technical topics accessible to both technologists and the average enterprise buyer.

Moving forward, Choi says she's focusedondriving AI relevance andunderstanding throughout her company and the world. As we look several years down the road, Choi says we also need to focus on "helping people build AI in a successful, fast and responsible way. Human goodness matters. We have to be transparent in our design and use of AI. Intent matters.As marketers and communicators, we have to be selective in what words we use and conscious of how AI will interpret these words. A marketer's product is the message. AI will amplify the message.Bethoughtful about the content. Slow down and think aboutyouraudience and the messagethey need.This will help minimize the risk of being misconstrued.

Marketing in the age of AI is mostly about word economy, selection and intentionality." She called this "marketing with aconscience." I'll pick up on this idea in my next "Women in AI" post, where I focus on AI ethics and responsibility.

Read the original post:
Women In AI: Julie Choi Focuses On Customer Obsession In Research and Technology - Forbes

The Aggarwals are hardly alone in their ambition. As palates get globalised and millennial diners the world over open up to newer cuisines and experiences, Indian chefs, restaurateurs and entrepreneurs are on a mission to correct stereotypes associated with our cuisines. After decades of being perceived as lowbrow, cheap, spicy curry, food from the country is being reinvented in what can be seen as the third wave of Indian gastronomy internationally: Plating up flavours that are regional and more self-confidentthe kind of food Indians in India eat and recognise as their own.

This third wave is different from earlier versions of Indian restaurant food that pandered to Western stereotypes and tastes: At curry houses, set up in the early 20th century by untrained cooks, and then in the 1990s, by professional chefs who sought to Frenchify Indian food in expensive restaurants with dishes tailored to appeal to a Western palate.

Similarly, a slew of chefs and restaurateurs born and brought up in India are serving food they recognise as their own without attempts to customise it to foreign palates or expectations. In the US this is recognisable in restaurants both on the East and West coasts. In New York, when Indian Accent opened in 2016 at the Le Parker Meridien Hotel, it broke many stereotypes. It didnt look the way Indian restaurants were expected to look, as Pete Wells The New York Times legendary food critic noted, and it didnt serve food that seemed conventional or even authentic to an American audience. Instead, this was the smart, clever, yet rooted in regional traditions kind of food that Manish Mehrotra, Indian Accents corporate chef, had already built a reputation for in New Delhi.

We, in India, were already cheering for Indian Accents doda barfi tart, duck kulchas, meetha achar pork spare ribs and kathal tacos before they made their way to the Big Apple, unleashing its trademark gastronomy in a very different kind of restaurantmore expensive and stylish than regular Indian. It was quite difficult sometimes people just didnt understand how to eat the courses, the staff had to explain even things like, we dont just mix everything, dahi with dal and so on, recalls Mehrotra.

It was beyond our wildest imagination that goat brains at Adda would be one of the biggest attractions, and people would travel across the country just to try it. Even five years ago that would not have been possible, Pandya says, talking about how Indian food and perceptions about it are rapidly evolving in the US. The restaurant group says it is following a philosophy of demystifying Indian food for Americans, in contrast to earlier restaurants that would try to Americanise their offerings to get footfalls. Spice levels have been kept intact and there are conversations around culturally unique ingredients.

Chef Sujan Sarkar, who worked at Olive Delhi, is another leader of this movement of mainstreaming Indian food. Sarkar helms a bunch of restaurants in the US, including the very successful Baar Baar in New York and Rooh in San Francisco, Chicago and Columbus, a restaurant that serves inventive food combining local ingredients with strong regional Indian underpinnings, a la salmon and Bay shrimp paturi.

One of the biggest breakthroughs that restaurants such as these, and other trendy ones such as Dosa in San Francisco, have managed to achieve is the idea of upscale gourmet Indian food, for which diners may be ready to pay more. A few restaurants such as Srijith Gopinathans Michelin-starred Campton Place at the Taj in San Francisco (serving predominantly South Indian flavours with Californian ingredients) had been able to establish themselves as fine dine, but in general Indian food has remained associated with cheap takeaways.

*****

Unlike the US, the cycle of evolution in London, the most sophisticated market for Indian food internationally, given the historical connect, has reached another phase: From the cheap curry-house stereotype to expensive high-quality diners, to more casual restaurants serving regional, high-quality food that will undoubtedly facilitate mainstreaming.

Though curry houses have been on the wane for a few years now (suffering from high rents among a host of other issues), the idea of more authentic Indian food has been difficult to establish in popular imagination: This despite the fact that restaurants such as those of Camellia and Namita Panjabi (Amaya, Chutney Mary and Veeraswamy) have been serving classical Indian dishes in upscale, luxury restaurants for more than 15 years.

In 2001, Camellia Panjabi started a casual chain of street food-and-thali focussed restaurants, Masala Zone. There are now seven of these in London, but Panjabi recalls the resistance the idea of the thali faced from Londoners two decades ago. They said you are cheating us of our protein because there was more vegetarian food in the thali. So I had to explain to them the idea of a balanced Indian meal, she recalls.

These are casual restaurants, different from the Michelin-starred restaurants by chefs like Vineet Bhatia and Atul Kochhar. Their rise is obviously important for regional Indian flavours to go mainstream. Todays customers are more knowledgeable and better travelled. They are aware because social media has shrunk the world and just because they are paying lower prices does not mean that they will settle for something they perceive as inauthentic, says Sameer Taneja, chef of Kanishka and Benares.

It is not just the UK and the US where a more authentic (though that is an idea always ready to be challenged) regional expression of Indian food is finding more evolved audiences. In Milan, chef Ritu Dalmias modern Indian restaurant Cittamani and her latest casual diner Spica (where the food is inspired by her travels all over the word, including in India) are drawing surprisingly discerning audiences. There were always people who wanted more authentic Indian food, and there are still those who associate it with tandoori stereotypes. But now, the latter know that we dont serve stereotypes, says Dalmia.

In Kaula Lumpur, Nadodi, a restaurant inspired by Tamil cuisine and all the other cuisines that Tamil food has inspired, is slated to be the next big global Indian restaurant after Gaggan. Some of its partners, including Kartik Kumar, the restaurants brand director, and chef Sricharan Venkatesh trained under Gaggan Anand at his Bangkok restaurant. They focus on global gastronomy themes like zero wastage, local ingredients as well as techniques like fermentation, and serve dishes like lamb chops with South Indian achar and a stunning zero wastage rasam cocktail. However, the dazzling technique and interpretations do not take away from nuanced cooking rooted in tradition. The restaurants name is a reference to our nomadic status; we are away from our homeland but still its influences inform us and our food, says Kumar.

As identity gets plated up, chefs and enthusiasts are beginning to see themselves through a prism distinctly different from how others have seen India, the not-so-wounded civilisation, in the past.

(This story appears in the 22 November, 2019 issue of Forbes India. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)

Excerpt from:
The rise of regional Indian food around the world - Forbes India

What is the promise of capitalism?

That may seem like a strange question, and when I ask it of my MBAs, I suspect they regard it as an exercise in the pedagogical pastime Guess What Teacher Is Thinking. Still I ask it, for I hope it prompts my students to think about the kinds of problems capitalism is equipped to solve as well as those that are beyond its compass.

This is hardly a matter of idle speculation, especially for those who have good reason to believe that they will someday enjoy a disproportionate amount of the systems spoils. Those fortunate individuals sometimes need to be reminded that free markets, however mighty, will not mend their marriage, relieve their cold, or stop their brother-in-law from bragging about his golf game. Indeed, there are plenty of things capitalism cant do, and reflecting on them is a good way of distinguishing what it can doand what it should.

Naturally, what capitalism can and should do are not one and the same. The first is a technical matter best left to economists; the second is more of an ideological affair, the province of moral and political philosophy. The distinction is an important one, but it tends to fade whenever one believes that free markets will solve most any problem: moral, social, and political as well as economic. If capitalism can do anything, so the thinking goes, then it should do everything.

Now, with the kind of intellectual prodding the question above intends, almost no one honestly believes that capitalism can, or should, do everything. Yet up until recently, it passed for conventional wisdom, in the United States and throughout most of the developed world, that capitalism could do most things, that the obvious solution to nearly any pressing problem of social organization was freer trade, fewer regulations, and far less government intervention.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now plain that this was a central lesson many people took from the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism in the early 1990s. Rather than simply disqualify one extreme formulation, the failure of the Soviet system cast doubt on the very idea of a mixed economy, particularly in the US. The challenge was not to figure out the right balance of power between the invisible hand of the marketplace and the visible hand of government, but to enfeeble, if not eliminate altogether, the latter, not only to liberate capitalism but to deprive civil servants of what was assumed to be an ineluctable impulse and sinister raison dtre: central planning.

So commenced an unprecedented era of liberalization and global capitalist expansion. Sure, there were holdouts, but they were either deemed irrelevant and hopelessly backward (Cuba, North Korea) or, in the case of China, obstinate in the face of what they knew to be the inevitable.

That sense of the inevitable was never more than an ideological conviction that the power of free markets, supported by restrained exercises in liberal democracy, would prove so compelling that no problem might ariseeither beyond capitalism or as a consequence of its developmentthat would seriously threaten the systems preeminence. Such a possibility famously compelled the political scientist Francis Fukuyama to proclaim the end of history, a phrase that served as the title for his 1992 book. It elaborated on a thesis Fukuyama had auditioned three years earlier in the pages of Foreign Affairs. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, he wrote in that essay, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

This great divergence in worldviewsbetween a group bewildered that we havent gotten things back on track and another that is too busy figuring out the road ahead to litigate whether the track was ever so reliable in the first placeincreasingly colors our civic discourse.

For Fukuyama, the failure of fascism in World War II, together with the death rattle of Soviet-style communism, left liberal democratic norms the triumphant alternative underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy. Or, as he put the matter somewhat more pithily, We might summarize the content of the universal homogeneous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.

For those nations that arrived at this ideological end state, the most urgent matters of the day would forever appear irretrievably mundane. As he described it:

The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk ones life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.

To contemporary observers, it may seem baffling that anyone ever took the end-of-history thesis seriously. Then again, we have a fair amount of history that was unavailable to Fukuyama when he wrote his book, 30 years of experience that have seen, among other destabilizing events, the inception of an apparently endless war on terror, the 200809 global financial crisis, and the striking resurgence of nationalist sentiment in the most developed countries on earth.

Still, worldviews can be a stubborn thing, forming as they do during the warm impressionability of late adolescence and early adulthood. The consequence, in this case, is a striking divergence between those who came of age in the irenic afterglow Fukuyama memorialized and those who only know the menacing turbulence of the past 18 years. The latter group, which includes more or less anyone under 35, better accepts the challenges of a radically uncertain future because nothing they have experienced in their own lives has given them reason to believe things would ever be any other way. This puts them at odds with the elite members of the two generations preceding them. They assumed that the world had basically solved all of its major problems such that we could get on with the business of living. For these individuals, the past two decades seem like a bracing departure from the future promised them rather than a return to the routine of disruption that has always characterized human life.

This great divergence in worldviewsbetween a group bewildered that we havent gotten things back on track and another that is too busy figuring out the road ahead to litigate whether the track was ever so reliable in the first placeincreasingly colors our civic discourse, which of late has shown itself favorable to substantial interventions to correct the tendencies of capitalism. Naturally, such interventions are especially vexing to those who adhere to a maximalist view of capitalisms promise, for the more problems capitalism is assumed to address, the more any intervention can only be assumed to be counterproductive.

Fairly or not, Adam Smith is often regarded as the intellectual godfather of the maximalist view of capitalisms promise (which, in turn, commends a minimalist approach to politics). As Smith said in The Wealth of Nations of what he famously called the obvious and simple system of natural liberty:

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom of knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of society.

It is important to note that, for Smith, the superpower of this system is merely the ability to efficiently price and, thereby, allocate goods and labor. There were plenty of other concerns beyond its ken that the sovereign or some other political authority would need to address, such as the funding of public education, the amelioration of oppression, and the maintenance of public institutionsall responsibilities Smith details.

Still, even beyond its practical application, the reallocation of such an essential part of community life (economic affairs) from the deliberate orchestration of central authorities to the inadvertent ministry of every marketplace participant has had two lasting consequences, one technical, the other broadly psychological. As a technical matter, that markets proved so powerful in economic affairs suggested that their efficacy might extend to other realms that didnt seem essentially commercial in nature, further relieving government officials of the trouble of attending to them. Psychologically speaking, the more that managing a community didnt require self-conscious endeavors but, instead, the pursuit of blinkered self-interest, the more the ability to intelligently engage in debates about civic life deteriorated. Indeed, if, as the ironic logic of the invisible hand holds with respect to self-interested pursuits, the common good goes on behind our backs, coming about not because of our express intentions but despite them, there was simply no need to spend much time thinking about the obligations of citizenship. On the contrary, they would be best discharged by diligently attending to the needs of bank account and belly.

By a means slightly different from Fukuyamas vision, such assumptions about how exactly a nation functions put individuals beyond ideology. Indeed, the questions that have kept philosophers and politicians alike debating late into the night for ages have all been neatly resolved by an invisible hand. Libert, galit, fraternit may stand aside in favor of economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.

And yet, if the promise of capitalism proves more limited, the debilitating consequences of a postideological disposition for ones critical faculties comes into full view. Like any muscle that has not been flexed, the capacity to assess the necessities of civic life atrophies, and one becomes a citizen in name only. She cannot debate the meaning of that role with any subtlety or historical perspective.

Such limitations are especially perilous for business professionals. Not only are such individuals far more susceptible to a blind faith in the invisible hand, but so much of the angst of the present moment revolves around doubts about capitalism and the questions they raise:

These are just some of the questions business professionals will face in the years to come, to say nothing of those noncommercial questions of custom and culture that Fukuyama mistakenly concluded had been resolved for the developed world once and for all.

Taken together, such matters should be of special concern to members of the business elite for three reasons. First, and most straightforwardly, public-policy decisions that affect how exactly our economic system works will directly shape the scope, practice, and viability of all business endeavors. Secondly, simply by virtue of their chosen vocation, business professionals, and especially graduates of superior MBA programs, are the face of capitalism, and they will not only be looked to for well-developed opinions on these issues; their actions and behavior will serve to advise others on the faith warranted in capitalism.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, unless the pendulum of practicable economics swings in the direction of a different system entirely, considerable disparities of wealth, an essential condition of capitalist advancement, will remain, and those who will continue to occupy the favorable end of this bell curve will be business professionals. They will be rich in a time when the instrumental role of riches will be suspect and the respectability of great wealth doubtful. They will not be able to justify to others, and perhaps even to juries of conscience, that material success is a moral justification unto itself, that simply by doing the best for themselves, they have already done the best they might do for others. Unlike for those who preceded them, this ideological assumption, so tempting and convenient, will no longer be available to them. Great wealth will not be its own justification. It will need to be vindicated by the power it confers.

Such an undertaking calls for a reengagement with debates over the responsibilities of citizenship, one that involves visiting anew questions of liberty, justice, equality, wealth, power, and tradition. It also requires a willingness to use power, in both the private and public spheres, less as a club to clear the way for commercial activity than as an implement of some higher aim, undertaken in a spirit of great responsibility and obligation.

Such an approach is hardly foreign to the business community. Indeed, such aspirations were a common language for the commercial elect in the decades after World War II, and they still fill the charters of public companies, professional associations, and major business schools alike. If, today, they seem the stuff of boilerplate, a few scattered phrases that are little more than an empty nod to etiquette, thats more a reflection of our own civic disengagement than the dead letter of misbegotten ambition.

Excerpt from:
The questions that will shape the future of capitalism - Chicago Booth Review