The season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead left me more frustrated than ever (read our recap). My issues with the show have reached a point where I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching Season 4 but I’m still interested to hear why certain decisions were made. If you’re interested as well, hit the jump to hear what creator Robert Kirkman had to say about that particular character death, what the person who plays that character had to say, and how ratings were better than ever.

“I’m so glad my childhood is being honored with a Goosebumps movie,” said no one ever.

OK, OK, so that might have been a bit bitter of me. Unreasonably so, because in the great R.L. Stine canon I was never even really into Goosebumps. I was more a Fear Street kind of girl. But, though it may be difficult for me to remember at times, Sony Pictures’ Goosebumps movie is not for people who grew up with Goosebumps. It’s for the kids of today. And can we really begrudge the kids of today their own version of evil ventriloquist dummies and monster blood-eating hamsters?

I can, but that’s only because I don’t like kids. Moving on… Meet Rob Letterman, your new Goosebumps director.

“When we started Google 15 years ago,” Brin says, “my vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn’t have to search query at all.” But for now, we get information by disconnecting from other people, looking down into our smartphone. Brin asks: “Is this the way you’re meant to interact with other people?” Is the future of connection just people walking around hunched up, looking down, rubbing a featureless piece of glass? In an intimate moment, he says, “It’s kind of emasculating. Is this what you’re meant to do with your body?” – Taken from the TED Blog post quoting Google’s Sergey Brin on why Google Glass is totes better than a smartphone.

Either that word does not mean what Brin thinks it means or he has a really bizarre outlook on technology. Dear Brin, if you truly believe your masculinity is threatened by swiping a cell phone screen, we have a few GIFs we think you should see. 

The quotes from Chris Perna, art director of the Gears of War series, that have been floating around today actually say something a little more complicated than can be reasonably slimmed down to a single headline. A slightly longer summary? Perna says some puzzling things about gender presentation in character design, acknowledges that he’s proud of the playable female characters of the Gears of War franchise and that he knows that a lot of women fans of the series find those characters to be empowering, and then turns right around and shores up the self-fullfilling prophecy that games with female lead characters don’t sell.

Movies with female leads might make a ton of money at the box office, and they might be a big enough deal that their posters and commercials are plastered everywhere, and they might star people whom everyone is talking about, but dammit, that doesn’t mean you should review them in a newspaper! At least that’s the view of the editor who tried to ban movie critic Michael Calleri from reviewing movies with female leads.

Why are their fewer females in physics than biology? Turns out the answer changes depending on whether you ask men or women. A team led by sociologist Elaine Ecklund polled 3,455 scientists on why they think the gender gap in physics is so much larger than in biology, and while women were more likely to cite discrimination, men’s explanation tended more toward “women just suck at math.”

Sigh.

I’m not sure if this is more disheartening or hilarious. Maine State Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz has found herself under attack because of a deep, dark secret that, her opponents contend, will negatively impact her ability to represent her constituents.

So does she have a history of accepting bribes?

Have her credentials been falsified?

Does she have ties to the mafia?

No. Worse. She plays World of Warcraft.

This year it was the pale complexion and red lips of Snow White, but next year’s It-Girl princess will undoubtedly be Sleeping Beauty. We’ve already seen glimpses of Angelina Jolie as the titular role in Maleficent; now there’s talk around Hollywood that producer Neal Moritz (21 Jump Street) is taking on a comedic take on the classic fairytale. So what makes it so hilarious? Well, this version paints our fair slumbering beauty as a crazed stalker. *Sigh*

After winning a massive write-in campaign, Stephen Colbert has found himself on Maxim‘s “Definitive List of the World’s Most Beautiful Women,” the Hot 100. You might be asking yourself why Colbert, who is part of the male species, and, therefore, not a woman, is being listed on such a list. Well, you have to ask yourself something else: When you look at Stephen Colbert, is his gender all you see? Is your mind that closed?

Yesterday the 16th Annual Webby Award Winners, i.e., for the year of 2011, were announced, with more than one hundred categories like Activism, Games, Humor, Science, Weird, and Law. Most Webby awards are not given to individuals, but rather to things like websites, blogs, ad campaigns, videos, and internet capable mobile apps from all around the internet. However, the Webbys give out Special Achievement Awards each year to specific people who they feel did particularly interesting things with or on the internet, typically with more standard Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony-like categories like Best Artist, Lifetime Achievement, Breakout of the Year, and Person of the Year, depending on who the Webbys see fit to honor and what they did. Last year, honorees included Dan Savage, for the It Gets Better Campaign, Martin Cooper for making the first mobile phone, and even the supercomputer Watson. This year, they include an award for Webby Actresses of the Year, jointly given to Juliette Lewis and Graydon Sheppard (co-creator of Shit Girls Say) for their work in Shit Girls Say. Graydon Sheppard, to clarify, is a man.

Lets talk about why this is problematic.