Halloween With Ben & Hank. And Bert. And Ernie. And A Sheep

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on October 18, 2008 by admin in Holidays

More horrifying than a $700 Billion Bailout

For many, one of the most horrifying things this Halloween will be simply knowing that Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke are the guys in charge of managing what may be the greatest financial crisis in America’s history. Embrace the horror with these creepy (and expensive) Ben and Hank masks. Okay, so maybe your 401K’s taken a beating and you don’t feel like dropping eighty bucks for a one-time gag. Using little more than ping pong balls, transform yourself into a surreal Homer Simpson, or a somewhat satanic version of Sesame Street’s Bert & Ernie. Still on a reasonable budget, especially if you’re on the OB/GYN team at the local hospital, is this inventive birth in progress costume. You’ll probably want to have a high comfort-level with your costume partner though. Speaking of comfort levels, I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time sitting down if you’re wearing this whoopee cushion getup. And lastly, I can’t help thinking that you’d have to be quite a sheep lover (in more ways than one) to come up with this one.

Tea Leoni Divorcing David Duchovny?

[ 4 Comments ]Posted on October 17, 2008 by admin in Popular Media

Bree Sharp’s “David Duchovny, Why Don’t You Love Me” Plays Moodily In Background

Sadly, the question everyone’s asking is not “will he relapse?” but “OMFG, for Billy Bob Thornton?”

More Uncanny Valley: Bobblehead Einstein Robot

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 16, 2008 by admin in Technology

Relatively peculiar

One of the newest residents of the Uncanny Valley is the almost-macabre Einstein-headed robot in the video, left. There’s a strange set of ironies going on here: the uncanny realism of the face (it’s made of “Frubber”) ; the eerie motion of the robot body; the weird bobbling of the head…all combined with the idea that one of the greatest minds of the 20th century is reduced to a mumbling marionette pitching a product. The Albert HUBO, as it is called, is a product of the Korea-based Humanoid Robot Research Center, a research group that seems to be playing a little bit of catch-up with Honda’s Asimo. The welcome video on the HuboLab site is unintentionally hilarious; an Einsten-headed robot speaks with a carefully suppressed, but obvious Korean accent.

Election 2008: Cramming The Vote

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 16, 2008 by admin in Politics

The exam’s November 4, 2008. Are you ready?

With only a few weeks left before the elections, I have to admit that one of the last things on my mind is, frankly, the elections. This isn’t a college exam, people. Last-minute cramming might help, but you should know your material by now. If you still find yourself getting in heated debates about hockey moms as VP’s versus terrorists as Presidents, maybe it’s time to take a break and do some reading or something. Try to remember: people with actual power love the fact that intellectuals and academics spend so much time talking about politics that they generally never do anything. Two books have fueled my pointless political dialog recently: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, by Thomas Frank does a nice job of outlining how the conservative movement did its part in corrupting Washington. In spite of being an established drooling rabid liberal, he does a fantastic job in this book of doing what PJ O’Rourke has always done on the other side (well, Frank’s not nearly as funny): pointing out the absurdity of it all while making a buck on the tragedy. An excellent read that manages to maintain a fairly observational tone while letting conservatives’ actions skewer themselves. For a sort of longer-term perspective, I’m just finishing up The Affluent Society, the influential 1958 book by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Aside from helping impart some perspective on how the parties and cultural landscape have shifted over the years (while remaining disturbingly the same, in many ways), Galbraith is also generally credited with bringing us the term “conventional wisdom”. The book is also fun to read in the way that 19th-century English novels are fun to read, using the kind of language wherein a phrase like “she’s kinda plain lookin’” becomes “she is not what one would call entirely unattractive”. If anyone has any suggested reading on the conservative side (sparing me the Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh pamphleteering) feel free to share…

Beware The Russian Flirt Bots

[ 4 Comments ]Posted on October 16, 2008 by admin in Technology

The high cost of flunking the Turing Test

As I’ve mentioned before, seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven warped my mind in several ways. One effect was that I refused to learn how to use a PC until 1999, when it was rapidly becoming evident that they weren’t becoming more conversational any time soon. Although researchers are trying hard to create convincing artificial intelligence, the best they’ve accomplished recently is 25% on the Turing Test . And I’m assuming, after exchanging a few words with Elbot, the AI in question, that the test subjects were a bit dim-witted. Which makes it especially amusing that there’s a Russian Flirtbot that’s extracting personal information from chatroom users by establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes. Sadly, knowing what I know about men, it probably is some pretty easily-generated dialog, like: “Ooh baby, you’re making me so hot! What’s that username and password again?” As an example of how stupid you’d have to be to give your information to a chatbot, try talking to Alice, with whom I had the following exchange:

ME: Hi Alice. ALICE: Hello there. ME: Are you a Russian flirt bot? ALICE: Am I a Russian flirt bot? Yes.
ME: How would you go about securing my usernames and passwords? Read the rest of this entry »

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