Everything isn't Under Control

Thursday, May 26, 2005

New Scientist article on homebots. It mentions the Toshiba's ApriAlpha which I think has roomba breakthrough potential.

There is growing interest in the potential of home robots that can care for the aged and young children. Toshiba shares this interest, and is promoting development of human-centric technologies that will realize a "life support partner" able to work naturally and effectively with people in the home and outside, in public places. Such coexistence and interaction requires robots with sophisticated capabilities. Truly effective robots have to be able to recognize multiple individual voices and multiple instructions from different directions at almost the same time. And if they are to be real partners, able to accompany people wherever they go, they have to be able to recognize and follow specific individuals. Toshiba's new robots draw on the company's advanced image and voice recognition technologies to showcase these capabilities.
The robot that can distinguish and recognize voices from any direction, "ApriAlpha _v3," also known as Apri sharp ear, integrates six microphones into its body to assure omnidirectional voice capture. Toshiba's proprietary voice signal processing technology allows the robot to recognize the direction of multiple speakers and what they have said. For example, a robot integrating this technology can respond to a person offering greetings and then go on to respond to a question from another person.

@ 10:55 PM CST [Link]

Amazing reconstruction of 20-year old Neaderthal woman. Sans-skin here, finished product here.

Financed mostly by local authorities, the centre has been built at the site of a dig where in 1979 archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of a 20-year-old Neanderthal woman they dubbed "Pierrette."
Her remains shook up contemporary knowledge of Neanderthals, teasing out the notion that this enigmatic hominid species may have been smarter and socially more organized than anyone thought.
Conceived as a veritable time-machine, the centre will allow visitors to follow the life of Pierrette and her clan, said Allan Smith, a New Zealander who organized the special effects.
"We'll be showing a scientific account of the life of Pierrette and her clan which at the same time is a personal account," he said.

See also: Wikipedia entry on Neaderthals. Worth skimming.

@ 10:30 PM CST [Link]

Winamp does Internet TV. I must not be paying too much attention to a program I've been using for years, but the winamp people created the nsv streaming tv format about a year ago and winamp has a built in channel browser. Lots of goodies, but the servers can't seem to handle the current demand as I'm getting lots of "full" messages. Still, a handy way to centralize internet tv the same way shoutcast.com centralized internet radio. Of course, the legal questions still loom large, but for original content that shouldn't be an issue.

winamp-tv (34k image)

See also: Site that hosted Sith DVD shut down by feds. Tangentially related.

@ 10:02 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Venture Bros cartoon has been renewed! Good news, I was afraid this show was too clever for TV, and frankly it panders to gen-x and older crowd to the point younger viewers simply won't get half the gags. Creator Jackson Publick broke his silence recently:

I have just returned home from the Adult Swim "Upfronts" (and the ensuing bar crawls and requisite, hangover-preventing pizza parlor visit) and so it is official...The Venture Bros. has been picked up for another season of 13 episodes! Having been forced to sit on this information for a week or two, it's nice to tell you all finally.

Orpheus1_SM (9k image)
There is a television behind the el greco. Sadly the remote has vanished from the material sphere, so it's stuck on Animal Planet

See also: TVtome page.

@ 11:28 PM CST [Link]

Pshopped romance novel covers. I think this one may be my favorite, although the spaceship tower is a close second.

spaceship (127k image)
8 more payments, baby, and I own that spaceship tower! *swoon*

See also: Unlikey PSAs. I can't decide if this one refers to the infamous FrankenVader scene or just all of the Anakin/Padme scenes. I'm leaning on the former as it got a lot more laughs.

@ 10:51 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

New Mr Wiggles. Some other funny items today: New PBF too. I got a kick out of this onion piece, only because I've been tempted to try. Homestar Runner tries an intro.

@ 10:59 PM CST [Link]

Interesting dkos diary on why political blogs fail to change minds. Its the groupthink, stupid.

If we simply write off Santorum as an unhinged religio-hypocrite with a thinly veiled fascist agenda, we'll keep having trouble selling our message to the rest of the country - not because we're wrong, but because they're just not starting with the same knowledge and assumptions. "Mainstream America" doesn't know who Rick Santorum is, doesn't know what his views are, doesn't know what his rhetorical and legislative history is, and won't see his support for a law or policy as inherently suspect.
This leads into the other "problem" with blog echo chambers. Sites like Kos and Eschaton are not supposed to be news. They have an avowed ideological slant, and their choice of posts and commentary are usually designed to inform and promote progressive policies. This is fine, but one of the obvious side effects is that the Psych 101 "confirmation bias" starts churning into overdrive. We are barraged with news and opinions that reinforce our existing notions. We start not seeing information and opinions that contradict what we already believe, or we do see it but discount it.

See also: Moyers vs. Limbaugh. Tangentially related.

@ 10:52 PM CST [Link]

Cute gallery of magazines from the 22nd century. These are unbelievably clever.

22nd-century-magazine (44k image)
I'd like to thank Robo-Jesus, Intel, and the National Center for Supercompting Applications for this oscar!

See also: CGI competition with "Master and Servant" theme. Lots of good work here. Lots of stinkers too.

@ 12:42 AM CST [Link]

The white-boy fro is alive and well. And nothing spells "sane, innocent man railroaded by the system" like that hair-do.

@ 12:31 AM CST [Link]

Talking points memo on the nuclear/fillibuster showdown. I think Joshua is right, this was nothing but a draw from two sides unwilling to pull the trigger, but showed a crack in the GOP lock-step. Its almost like the old cold war, except in our own Senate! I heared Olympia Snow was doing "In Soviet Russia" jokes before the compromise. Seriously, why would the GOP keep any promises when it comes time to replace dying Chief justice Rhenquist? I'm sure they have their Scalia/Thomas clone ready to go.

@ 12:28 AM CST [Link]

Amazing video of a Japanese contortionist. Unfortunately, its a low-quality windows media embed. This is supposedly from an annual Japanese talent show.

See also: List of movies with acrobats or contortionists. I really, really would not like the meet the guy who sat around piecing that list together.

@ 12:17 AM CST [Link]

Monday, May 23, 2005

My adblocker is part of a CS assignment at Western Oregon University. Soon, all this fame will go straight to my head. Now that I think about it, I could use some kind of posse.

@ 06:35 PM CST [Link]

Whats the opposite of progeria? This little girl. A bit hard to swallow, but if there are genetic disorders that can accelerate aging, why not have one that stops it at a certain point?

Brooke Greenberg has celebrated 12 birthdays according to the calendar and her family photo albums. In terms of growing up, however, she has yet to reach her first.
To the mystification of the medical world, Brooke is frozen in time, a real-life, female Peter Pan. She weighs 13lb and measures 27 inches, and looks and acts as if she were a six-month-old baby, not a girl about to become a teenager.

I wonder how many companies have bought the rights to her DNA.