make a 2.11 deprecation warning go away

committing this on a 2.10 branch because I think it's a code
improvement even on 2.10; it makes the code's intent clearer
make a 2.11 warning about inferred 'Any' go away

committing this on a 2.10 branch because I think it's a code
improvement even on 2.10; it makes the intent clearer
Merge branch 'headless' into scala-2.11