Our recent move has given me an opportunity to once again consider the manner of decoration in my office. I’m really liking the Zombie Attack vinyl decal pictured above, available via the Lil Decal Shoppe, but I think I’d be more enthusiastic if each zombie was its own decal.
On the other hand, LTL Prints’ massive Mars Attacks wall vinyls, although expensive, look beautiful.
I understand the want, and need, to move away from testing weaponry on things that are actually alive, but, in some cases, what alternative do we have?
Enter robotics firm Midwest Research Institute (with a little assistance from our favourite terror-machine creators, Boston Dynamics).
From Polijam.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 18 (UPI) — A humanoid robotic mannequin for testing equipment against chemical warfare agents is being developed by Missouri’s Midwest Research Institute.
Great, some sort of robo-mannequin is a much better solution that gassing rabbits – right? At first this sounded, to me, like an advanced version of the crash test dummy, Buster, from Mythbusters.
“The IPEMS features a chemical-agent test facility — exposure chamber and supporting structures — and a free-standing, self-balancing robot that simulates human physiology,” said MRI Senior Vice President and Director of Research Operations Thomas M. Sack. “Once complete, the mannequin, dressed in IPE, can be tested using a variety of environmental conditions and simulated warfighter activities in the presence of chemical agent. – more
Something about the statement “free-standing, self-balancing robot that simulates human physiology” has me feeling a little weird about this experiment. How far do we need to go to replicate human physiology and reaction in case of chemical attack?
Will this mannequin’s nose run and eyes water when sarin gas hits its simulated face?
Will it provide verbal feedback as to its current situation? Will it ask you to “please stop”?
Would you be willing to push the “initiate test” button on something that could?
As a follow-up to my earlier post about the Ninja Turtles vs Kim Jong-il, I present the following state-produced musical interlude.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7G_ZgbBzJ4]
Note: when making my propaganda video, I demand the following ridiculous claims.
Speaking of music, I’ve just discovered this, and my mind is mildly blown:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhGZdSkX6IM]
RetroJim and I got into a minor tangent the other day regarding the lack of modern “The True Tale of —” songs. The last one Jim could recall was The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, which sounded about right to me as it came at the tail end of the ’60s folk revival.
That got me thinking about rap, however, as it strikes me as the only current venue that is supposedly telling true tales of the downtrodden – so, obviously, rap is the new folk music.
That’s when I encountered this CNN article:
“Mok Nah No Sah”
That’s a Korean acronym for “people who put up their lives to sing.” And that’s a new underground rap group in South Korea that’s blasting North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong-Il.
The group’s lyrics include cursing and abusive language against the North Korean leader and his youngest son, who’s been tapped to take over the reins of leadership from his reclusive father.
(Apparently acronym means something different in Korean.)
These folks are literally risking their lives to take up a worthy political cause in the form of art, and that takes gumption. Sure, they’re in South, and not North, Korea, but Kim Jong-il has always been happy to reach out across international lines as he pleases.
A reminder from the wikipedia:
In 1978, on Kim’s orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry.
The group have taken precautions though, and not in the usual “tucking a pistol in their pants” method that we might see here in North America.
“We haven’t received any threats, but it’s true that we’re scared,” the rap group’s leader, who goes by the pseudonym Michelangelo, told Yonhap. “If our faces are known, I think North Korea could attack us.”
This is where, for me at least, the questions began.
Michelangelo?
For now, all members of the group have taken on names from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, but their message remains serious.
Ruh-roh, I’ve seen how this rapping & ninja turtle game ends, and it doesn’t involve anyone having a continuing career.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx7dt0Wscpc]
(Image from crushable.com)
Criss Angel is one of those personal annoyances* I forget about until some ridiculous bit of info surfaces in the media. This time, however, he hasn’t been revealed as a edit-happy sham – no, he’s got a new product to push.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF4ZfQYuzd4]
Film editing suite, to cover up lack of of skill, not included.
If you ignore his grating stage persona, or that he attempts to re-brand even these simple tricks as MINDFREAKS, you’re left with the fact that this is almost EXACTLY the present my parents bought my brother for Christmas when he as 9 or 10.
You can try to adult it up all you like, but I don’t think making a ping-pong ball disappear from the interior of a cup has ever helped him open a conversation with an intriguing female. (I could be wrong.)
Did you know Angel had a band before he was famous? They were called Angeldust, and their first item was entitled “Musical Conjurings from the World of Illusion”. I kid you not.
*I do give him props for calling out Uri Geller.
Dear Bumpass, Virginia:
I’m very sorry that I giggled immaturely at the name of your town.
Sincerely,
JRD
Sometimes CNN gets confused and requires a little help.
I am here to provide that clarification.
All of these items are from today’s front page.
They forgot the punctuation on this one, but my guess is, based on the recent reunions of both The Backstreet Boys and The New Kids On The Block, and the depressed look on these people’s faces, that Menudo is about to announce a comeback tour for its late-’70s line-up.
I’ve never heard of this scrappy Potter kid, hopefully this gets him some press coverage.
The afterlife is full of people trying to get me to play Mafia Wars? I’ll pass.
All quotes are from Eyal Weizman’s essay Lethal Theory.
The maneuver conducted by units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier General Aviv Kokhavi, as inverse geometry, the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of microtactical actions.
You’re sitting in your living room, terrified by the sound of gunfire that pounds at your walls and seeps through the crack under the door. You’ve gathered your three children into the living room, and hushed them as they hide under a blanket your mother-in-law gave you. The TV is on, but you keep it low, hoping the kids won’t notice the images of the war being conducted around them.
During the battle, soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long “overground-tunnels” carved through a dense and contiguous urban fabric.
The sound of shouting reaches your ears from the apartment next door – you’ve rarely talked to the old lady, she largely keeps to herself, but now you can hear her shrieking and weeping.
The living room wall explodes.
You race to the trio on the couch. Their tears are now also running freely, carving tracks in the dust the blowout has smeared across their faces.
Twelve armed men enter the room through the gap, assault rifles at the ready. With only a perfunctory look, they stomp over the rug you thought was such a great bargain last fall, and head directly into your bedroom.
After a moment another thunderous clap rolls through the apartment, and they make their exit.
Although several thousand soldiers and several hundred Palestinian guerrilla fighters were maneuvering simultaneously in the city, they were so “saturated” within its fabric that very few would have been visible from an aerial perspective at any given moment. Furthermore, soldiers used none of the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, and none of the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors.
There was a time when dogs, humanity’s most widely kept animal, were maintained as something more than a couch-warmer. Our historical association is so old, we’re not even entirely sure why we named them what we did:
Due to the archaic structure of the word, the term dog may ultimately derive from the earliest layer of Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, reflecting the role of the dog as the earliest domesticated animal.
Interestingly, we’ve been chummy with canines so long, we (and by we, I mean humanity in general,) actually domesticated them multiple times, independently.
From the Canadian Museum Of Nature:
Genetic evidence suggests that Native Americans and Europeans domesticated dogs independently, and that North American pre-contact dogs were almost completely replaced by dogs that came over on European ships.
[…]
The earliest probable dog remains found in North America are about 8700 to 14 000 years old. These dogs were medium-sized and likely used in hunting. Dogs of this time-period and region are not very common.
- 10 200 year-old remains were found in Colorado, U.S.A., at the Jones Miller site
- 11 000 to 14 000 year-old remains were found in Wyoming, U.S.A., at the Agate Basin site
- 8700 to 9300 year-old remains were found in Wyoming, U.S.A., at the Horner site.
Which, to my mind, leaves a question as to what these original North American dogs must have looked like. Something akin to Huskies is my best guess, but that’s derived entirely from the idea that they looked like the wolves common to the continent.
While some of the uses the mutts were put to were common between all peoples, it seems to me the North American breeds had some novel roles to play.
Again from the CMN:
- they were draft animals in the plains as well as the high Arctic
- they were bred for wool like sheep and their hair was used to make blankets
- there were hairless dogs that were used as living hot-water bottles to ease achy joints
- they were eaten
- they were important in religion
- they were buried in graveyards like people.
I love the idea that the people of history might have rubbed a chihuahua-analogue on their shoulder while complaining about a hard-day’s hunt.
That last item does concern me, however – the textbooks may say European disease wiped out millions of Native Americans when the tall ships landed, but I know better: I’ve seen/read Pet Sematary.
