So, what's IBM done for you lately?

Pictures.
Tiny, tiny pictures.

Like, pictures of individual molecules.









[Image by Science/AAAS]

From Technology Review

Science toddles on...

There aren't enough experiments that involve comparing human young with other animals.

Discovery News: Dogs Read Gestures Like Toddlers

Best line comes at the end: "[The researcher] does warn against simply thinking of dogs as furry versions of a two-year-old, given that no toddler could ever herd a flock of sheep as well as a dog."

You hear that, human toddlers? Just sit your diaper-clad asses down, you ain't even in the running on this one.

¿Los Ingleses? No los conocen...

Some of you may be old enough to remember Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in all of Mexico. And some of you may remember when he was pulled from TV rotation for, uh, well, I'm not entirely clear about that part. I think it was because he was viewed as being a negative stereotype. Possibly it was for speaking in less than perfect English (as compared to... Elmer Fudd? Sylvester? Daffy Duck? Pepe Le Pew?). Or maybe it was for wearing a simplified and stereotypical costume. One argument claims that even though Speedy's raison d'être was to outrun, outwit and outclass the hapless gringos that stood between him and his goals, he was overshadowed by the stereotyped behavior of most of the other mice. Of course, there may have been a whiff of the Frito Bandito controversy hanging around that made Ted Turner's various underlings try to err on the side of safety when they first shelved most of Mr. Gonzales' cartoons.

All of which is to say that in the US, there have been some struggles over what kind of cultural images are acceptable and what aren't. Just in case you hadn't heard, the English-speaking world is not unified enough for these sorts of things to apply everywhere. Example 1: the Asda brand tortilla packaging in the UK. Sorry first about the scan quality, and sorry second about having had wholewheat tortillas in my kitchen. I'm in a foreign land here, and sometimes you just have to make do with what fate throws your way. Now, in case you didn't get a good look at the logo, why don't you check out a close-up.

Seriously. Leaving aside the questionable coloring on the hands (Gloves? Shadows?), what the hell is up with the rest of that? I guess he's supposed to be ecstatic over the quality of the tortillas (which, apart from being wholewheat and too small weren't terrible, or terribly different from those spongy-bleached "wraps" that somehow make people feel better about eating a chicken salad sandwich). But do people here believe Mexicans are that excitable? And bandoliers? Quick check here: who can you think of that wears a bandolier? The list is weirder than I first thought.

Thinking about it, though, maybe there's just too much remove from Mexico for the average British person to get why this might be problematic. I mean, Spain isn't that far away, and the only Spanish character in the British media I can think of is from a show that's 30 years old. There's just no opportunity for most folks here to make any connections between these images and real people. Mexicans? Why not ask about Hui or Sumerians or Yukaghirs, they've got about as much to do with most people's daily experiences here.

Which may be why so few people here seem to find these things odd.


The three images above are from The Dieline, a website about food packaging design and their report on the 2008 Pacakging Design Award winners.

You think you're happy?

You ain't got nothing on Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Seriously. So take your rinky-dink happiness back to the minor leagues, along with your so-called professional attitude and your 61 mile an hour fastball.

Loser.

You know what I haven't done in a while?

I haven't checked out CNN dot com for a while. Let's see what they think is newsworthy today...


..God damn it. Marion "crack pipe"Barry arrested for stalking?

How the hell did a man caught on videotape smoking crack first get re-elected to mayor, and then elected again to city council? Why the crap didn't the people of Washington D.C. just slap his dumb ass with a sock full of pennies and tell him to get the hell out of town? There used to be a popular and appropriate civic response to this sort of thing.


Boy, I really would like to watch O Brother again.

Ditigal car in the real world?

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not up to date with all the video game news anymore. Which made this footage a bit of a surprise to me. A car designed for the video game Gran Turismo 5 has been constructed in the real world.

Hmm. Video game car made into a real machine.

So where are my dream rides?

Government of the people? Like, ALL of them?

One of the things that's supposed to be great about the internet is that it enables anyone to make their voice heard. And, theoretically, this means that the lowliest plebe can cut out the
middlemen of representative democracy and take their case directly to the people in charge.
Unfortunately, there is nothing obliging any government to listen to any petition gathered on-line, no matter how eloquently the voice of "the people" is expressed.

Easier to mock, however, is the presence of paranoid schizophrenics, bleeding-heart dimwits, well-meaning wags, head-in-the-sand retrograde separatists, committed contrarians, and general dumb-ass bigots. For each reasonable proposal, there's a call for something stupid, making it that much easier to dismiss the whole unwashed mass of them.

Surely you're joking.

A website devoted to right-wing and conservative views on science fiction? Yep. Just in case you needed politically motivated commentary on Spider-Man meeting Obama, why the outrage over a Barbie doll dressed as a superhero is misplaced, or the lazy-liberal thinking implicit in a trailer for an animated sci-fi movie.

A video documentary about the branch of Germany's far-right, racially xenophobic political movement that idolizes Adolf Hitler and is also proudly homosexual? Honestly, 8 minutes into the first section, and I can already say I've seen a gay Nazi marketing manager and a traditional Oi-skinhead talking about how someone who had to jerk off when they saw his NPD membership card.

Escapees from the Android's Dungeon listening to Bill O'Reilly and skinheads getting down with man-love before going to a racial-intolerance rally? Mankind's family tree bears some goddamn weird fruit.

And don't call me Shirley.

Hu-mans are not special: exhibit 81.81

Some birds can make and use tools, others can learn to recognize and attack specific humans. Whales can steal, robots can hunt and eat prey, and new research has shown that apes can laugh. And they don't just make ha-ha sounds, but make them in the same contexts and for the same reasons as people.

All of which makes me think, but two idea keep coming back to me:
1. Humans are not as special as they like to think they are,

and

2. The rest of the world is a lot more special than humans give it credit for.

Claymation? Zombies? French maid outfit?

Thank you, POETV.


Ta-DA! (And totally not for kids.)