Uncanny Valley crossed?

Is it Bladerunner time? I don't know. You tell me. I think that it has not been crossed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiX5d3rC6o

I mean, not bad! ...but my buddy Yanyan pointed out immediately that Emily doesn't blink enough. It's totally true.

The stats are in: 18 Million Rickrolled

Okay so this story is nowhere near new, but NPR's All Things Considered Rickrolled me this morning, and I thought about the possibility of some mischievous intern giggling with glee over the massive SurveyUSA earlier this year "determined" that 18 million Americans have, in fact, been Rickrolled.

SurveyUSA estimates that at least 18 million Americans have now been “Rickrolled,” according to this latest national poll of 959 adults, conducted 04/08/08.

Notice, however, the shocking percentage of people who were "Not Sure"! Undoubtedly, SurveyUSA's totals are not representing the true extent of this blight upon our nation. Surely, nefarious programming directors like the ones at NPR are increasing this total. The survey itself notes that their figure may be an underestimation if Mr. Astley's visage continues to plague modern society in more public forums:

Rickrolling has recently made significant inroads to the mainstream, possibly culminating with yesterday’s performance of the song during the 8th inning of the New York Mets home opener Tuesday afternoon.

Some may remember the incident to which this refers. Internet pranksters took advantage of an online vote for an 8th inning singalong at the Mets game vs. my Phightin's.

Invisibility-related: paranoia "accidentally" located in the brain?!

HAHAHA! Linked from the article on invisibility techonology: "Creepy Experiment Exposes Paranoia and Sense of Alien Control." Seems to me that isolating and inhibiting brain function that feeds paranoia could really make that cloaking tech a lot more palatable to the general populace!

The young woman went to doctors to have them probe her brain, to root out where her seizures came from. But unexpectedly, their investigations and the procedure they performed led her to experience the creepy illusion of a person standing behind her, where nobody was actually present.

The patient described the illusory person as young and of indeterminate sex, a "shadow" who did not speak or move. "He is behind me, almost at my body, but I do not feel it," she reported.

Well, it's all over: cloaks that make peope invisible

Berkeley researchers are on their way to developing a material that bends light in such a way as to "cloak" (in scientific and Star Trek terms) objects. Of course, by "objects" we can only assume they mean "people who spy on and/or kill people." Now, that's a knee jerk reaction, of course. Upon deeper reflection one might consider the possible advantages from other utilizations of this technology...like unmanned weaponry. From livescience:

The metamaterial, as it is called, produces what's known as negative refraction of visible light. That means light is made to travel in the opposite direction from how it normally should bend when passing through a material. A common example is how a pencil will appear to bend upward when half-submerged in a glass of water. In the new work, researchers make the light appear to bend the other way.

Apparently the light would travel along the black lines in the following, thoroughly confusing diagram. Anyone who knows physics and can explain this using hilarious metaphors is encouraged to contact me directly:

I think it's pretty crucial to note that Marvel comics was way ahead of the curve on this one. This was long ago established as the science behind Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman)'s superpowers. quoth the Marvel Universe

Sue can render herself wholly or partially invisible at will. She can also render other people or objects invisible, affecting up to forty thousand cubic feet of volume. She achieves these feats by mentally bending all wavelengths of light in the vicinity around herself or the target in question, and she somehow does this without causing any visible distortion effects; she also somehow directs enough undistorted light to her eyes to retain her full range of vision while invisible.

On a semiserious note: this does encourage my pet theory of the ability of fantastic art to inspire real world creativity. I'll admit that Asimov's psychohistory has whetted my appetite for statistical predictions of cultural and political soothsaying. Certain types of agent-based modeling might be seen as a step towards that. And who introduced me to psychohistory? Who else? Reed Richards:

triple threat saturday breakdown extravaganza

ITEM! Chris Onstad in the New Yorker:

• interview
• sandwich duel pt.1-4

I think it's funny how the New Yorker picked the MOST NewYorkerish strip from Onstad's oeuvre. Proof positive that they not only can't create comedy, but they can't understand it either. ANNNNYWAY the interview is hilarious (because Onstad probably just wrote the questions and the answers, as he's done before).

Who's Onstad? He's someone who has given me daily laughs since aught-2 , when I stayed home from college classes for a day to read all of the back issues of Achewood. I encourage you, dear reader, to do the same. Just make sure it's on a Friday, since no one will be there at the morning classes lest their secret life of sobriety be discovered and even if you have an afternoon class the prof is pretty checked out, and probably day trading instead of "trying to fix the powerpoint animated gifs" (you can tell by whether or not he cusses out the helpful but much maligned paperclip).

ITEM! Beer Can SlapKoozies.

ITEM! Bollywood movies taught me a word: Barmy

after you turned 16
your heart became barmy
you turned 16
and my heart went berserk

barm·y (bärm-i)
adj. barm·i·er, barm·i·est
1. Full of barm; foamy.
2. Eccentric; daft.

So it's a British word ('natch). Viddy the "Barmy Army" who is a bunch of cricket fans.
Their wikipedia says that they discourage hooliganism. So I guess they're the kind of Barmy where you tell everyone you had a "REAL CRAZY TIME" but in fact all you really did was have a Red Bull chugging contest and then felt a little sick because of all the fizz. Not like when I was a kid. We barmed out until the authorities took notice and said things like "It's 11:00 boys, the food court is closed"

Michael Keaton got his start on Mr. Rogers

Nice. This is from the Mr. Rogers wikipedia article. I need this video.

Pittsburgh-area native Michael Keaton received his first major acting break as a "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" character in 1975. Keaton played an acrobat in a troup called The Flying Zookeenies that performed for King Friday's birthday. He was also in charge of running the Trolley.

ever wonder where that giant penny came in the Batcave came from?

hahaha, you can tell i am very close to an important deadline when i'm posting about comics minutiae.

anyway, I'm reading the intro to the 10th anniversary edition of DKR and Miller mentions the penny. it was weird, because almost EVERY depiction of the cave has that huge penny and the tyrannosaurus rex in it.

























but when i thought about it this time, it was like suddenly noticing something that i'd seen a million times in my grandmother's house or something. i suddenly wanted to know, wait a second how DID that get there?

so anyway i always assumed it had something to do with twoface (and i think it does in BTAS, actually), but apparently it is tied to a villain named Penny Plunderer from World's Finest #30. Jesus, this guy is priceless:

"Pennies...and coppers! They did this to me! Pennies...coppers...copper pennies! I hate them all! When I get out, I'll get back at coppers and pennies! I'll fight coppers--with pennies! Every job I pull will involve pennies! My crime symbol will be PENNIES!"
Joe "the Penny Plunderer" Coyne, "The Penny Plunderers"

Obligatory first blog post

A mind is a terrible thing to have. Mine, like most people's, is occupied with lots of stuff it shouldn't be and I've tried many things to ameliorate this condition.

Recently, I've been obsessed with the idea that observations kept to oneself are the genesis of madness. It's clutter, and if it isn't externalized, your mind just runs over and over and over it and it ends up warping your idea of the world. I've had this urge to put everything, right or wrong, out into the world, and keep my head clear.

My unfortunate friends and coworkers (as well as an elite, secret (and traditional?) messageboard*) have thus been bombarded with every fifth observation that I happen to have.

That's not fair. So I'll put it all here, and people can look at it when they feel like it. I'll be able to toss everything out of my mind and no one will have to unwillingly deal with it.

Any experienced bloggers should offer advice. I don't really read them and have never written one. (okay, I had a livejournal freshman year of college for a couple of months).

*nb: some of this stuff will be reposts of stuff from that messageboard, but only the good(?) stuff.

**be sure to notice peaks of blog posts. this signifies that a deadline for realworld work is approaching.