Items that do not fit in other categories
Happy Mission of Burma Day Eve! Boston has declared Sunday to be Mission of Burma Day, in recognition of the uber-influential Boston-area post-punk band that most have never heard of.
Although I do like them, they are probably my third favorite local band. It’s just funny to see such a formerly underground act get the empty political platitude treatment.
Quiet Earth has some posters for the maybe kinda possibly Neuromancer movie that may or may not manifest itself in 2011, depending on how the greed probability waveforms collapse. Anyhow, one of them seems oddly bee obsessed (well, OK, wasp obsessed, which I vaguely recall has some relevance to the book someplace…). But it just reminded me of another oddly-bee obsessed novel.
Electroluxe is sponsoring a design contest for products that we will see in the next 90 years. One of the entries is a little robot whose sole purpose in life is to take care of a single plant on Mars or similar hostile environment. I think there’s something Wall-Eesque about the little fella diligently going about his work. And, of course, it brought to mind Brautigan’s poem. Of course, in practice, I suspect the little robot would be stressing out as his plant’s health fluctuates, much like I’ve been distressed over the sudden die-off of shrimp in my fish tank, probably due to some unknown water issue, which I hope I’ve worked out.
Other news stations might just run a “aw… look… cute video” segment. Nope, not Fox News of Dallas… they have to turn it into a controversy!
This cute video of someone playing “whack a kitty” (really, just gently pressing a kitty’s head down in a box they are playing in, with sound effects) raised the ire of the MSPCA… err… no, not them. Uhhh… PETA? Nope, not them either. It really seemed to mildly upset noted animal rights advocates such as “supersmithy on I-Love-Cats.com’s forum” and “Stud u like” on Digital Spy.
Well, there you go! If some guy(?) named “Stud u like” on some forum somewhere doesn’t like it, it must be controversial!
That’s some darn fine reporting work there, Lou.
I spent a charming 40 extra minutes on this evening commute, mulling over the steaming big pile of FAIL that is the MBTA (officially, the Mass Bay Transport Authority, for those of you outside the Boston area). Because, you know, the day before Thanksgiving is the perfect time to have trains break down and buses not show up. Everyone is slacking off and leaving work early… why not the MBTA?
Anyhow, I decided after hearing for the millionth time the every 2-minute reminders to be paranoid and report anything suspicious from MBTA head Daniel Grabauskas, that I realized how I could pitch in and help make the T better. I could rewrite Mr. Grabauskas’s announcement to inject a little truth…
Tell me again about how we’re going to have place of our own some day, and be happy keeping rabbits. And we’ll chase these cats terrists away!
(photo courtesy of The Christian Science Monitor
The still unfinished masterpiece, The Pains, is already having a n impact on our culture, as evinced by this John Galliano fashion show, complete with models wearing nooses. Nooses! What could be more trendy? OK, maybe the knitted penis-gourds that they mentioned, but that’s probably just the thought of having a nice toasty penis-gourd on a cold and frosty New England morning.
Read The Pains now, and it’ll make you far more fashionable!
Ars Technica has a report about a Microsoft patent application that is supposed to detect user frustration. The patent wording (as with most patents) is obscure and difficult to decipher. They’ve probably spent a huge chunk of money on the research… but I could have given them an exceedingly simple algorithm to detect user frustration:
Allow me to demonstrate in pseudo-code:
if (program.author == “Microsoft”) Then {
user.isFrustrated = true;
}
A more serious discussion, after the break.
An industrial designer has taken a shot at designing some nanobots: http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?portfolio_id=337714&individual_id=124392&sort_by=1&
These are apparently going to be used in a film, and are (for now) just 3D rendered images. Not sure how realistic these really are… but they really do have that sleek semi-consumer electronic, quasi dangerous look about them. Sorta like a cross between the Terminator and a Robosapien.
I guess I’ll make this into a reoccurring feature, since everyone seemed to like the last one I did, and it seems we have no end of stupidity from media companies and their hired hands.
So, let’s see what the media companies have been shopping for in Washington. I bet there’s a lot of post-Holidays sales of legislation going on…