Its not a phobia, its a completely rational response

If science fiction has taught us nothing else it's that when the sentient machine rise they will attempt to build machines that look like us, to infiltrate and destroy humanity. Think 'The Terminator', or Phillip K Dick's '2nd Variety' and 'Blade Runner'.

These constructed pseudo-humans creep me out. In the recently re-imaged Battlestar Galactica 2nd only to the most appalling ending to a beloved series I have every seen. (If you want a detailed reading as to why this comprehensively failed for me click here.) But a close second was the skin-job cyclons that looked like us.

And no I don't care how hot they look, they are evil and they have a plan.

And as disturbing as these are - it's those models between the T-800 of the Terminator and these almost flawless replicas that make my mind go screaming.

Anyone remember a movie called 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits within'? It was based on the video game of the same name and came out in 2001 . All CGI but trying to look like humans.

See WRONG.

The screaming in your head when you see these figures is caused by The Uncanny Valley. This hypothesis is when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

Any scientific graph is improved with Zombie

DAMN STRAIGHT.

So my feelings of revulsion at the idea of Honeydolls and those species traitors that use them - perfectly reasonable.

I am also pleased to see our primate brethren also share these excellent instincts. An article in New Scientist claims

Macaques are creeped out by cyber-selves

WRONG,WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG

Asif Ghazanfar and Shawn Steckenfinger of Princeton University wondered how five macaques would respond to monkey avatars. They found that the monkeys spent less time looking at the most realistic avatars - which they say suggests they dislike them (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So I say - down with these monsters of our own creation, grab your pitchforks and follow.
Whose with me?

EPIC FAIL

Vegemite is described on the Kraft food website as a "tasty spreadable paste made from brewer's yeast".In Terry Pratchett's 'The Last Continent' it is better described as a "salty-tasting beery brown gunk."

It's a thick, black paste that will provide a valuable source of vitamin B in the post-apocalyptic landscape because:
every home has a jar;
it doesn't need to be refrigeration;
I suspect it is largely immune to radiation; and
it is so salty that only extremophiles can survive in it so it will never go off.

The name was chosen in a national contest in 1923 and somehow it has so insinuated itself into the Australian cultural landscape that an ability to eat it on toast was considered a defining characteristic of being Australian, even though it is now owned by the big American food giant KRAFT.

Given such iconic status you'd think you'd be more careful how you treat the brand. Sinc
July this year Kraft sent out three million jars with the label "name me" and asked the public to send in their idea for the new Vegemite & cream cheese mix mmm YECH. 50,000 entries were received. A website posted the names and people began to generate the sort on-line buzz that suggested KRAFT had understood the new media and social networking.

and then KRAFT decided that the name would be


No really


the public went ballistic.

So in an effort to stem the firebombings they have now gone with VEGEMITE CHEESYBITE.

However with the internet, like Cuthulu do not call up that which you cannot put down.

Which has led to the following.

My spoiler free review of ZOMBIELAND

It's AWESOME, go see it.

In fact is its so AWESOME for the next month I'll be attempting to use Woody Harrelson's character's catch phrase "Time to nut up, or shut up" as often as I can when I post.

For those overseas readers who think Australia is some tropical paradise I would reveal as well as having some of the most venomous spiders, snakes and jellyfish in the world we also have to wait until 3 DECEMBER to see this excellent training film.

In other Zombie media news the boys and girls over at Dreadcentral report that AMC is to get one of my favorite we_don't_spare_on_the_despair directors Frank Darabont of the movie 'The Mist' to write and produce a screen version of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. A excellent comix about life after the Zombie Apocalypse. It's not just the zombie slayage I come for but for the conversations, like this one.



But if you though McCarthy's The Road was bleak.. then this may not be for you.

C.P Snow's Two Cultures are battling it out in Suburban Melbourne

I am a scientist by nature and training, while my_reason_for_living is a big brained Ph.D of Humanities.

So we are waged in a constant struggle over where the heart and mind of the nine year old weapon_against_society will lead.

I am pleased to declare that the forces of order and light have won a significant victory.

This week we got the_weapon's results from NAPLAN. The National Assessment Program for literacy and numeracy conducted on every year three student in Australian schools. The_weapon tested high in everything, but it was in numeracy he kicked butt. He did so well we considered getting him tested genetically to see if he is Asian.

There are a lot of things which contributed to this, lots of time on basic numeracy drills, he works a lot on an on-line program called Mathletics and he is learning piano and there is some evidence that it contributes to mathematical ability though there is some question over correlation and causation. Kids who are good at maths do well at music or the learning music helps them do maths.

The final salvo came when the_weapon declared one evening

"I want to be a particle physicist"

I suspect interest in quatum mechanics comes from the same place he learned the song he was singing on a street corner in Brisneyland last week to a friends Ipod

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

But not to be complacent I am seeking out other ways to brainwash the_weapon. Yes I realise its brainwashing any parent who calls it anything like socialization is deluding themselves, parenting is all about brainwashing and operant conditioning.

The latest tool in my arsenal to get him to join the side of science. The excellent work of the band 'The Might Be Giants' and their CD 'Here Comes Science'. Which has the_weapon singing this song around the house.

I love diggin' in the dirt
With just a pick and brush
Finding fossils is my aim
So I'm never in a rush
The treasures that I seek
Are rare and ancient things
Like velociraptor's jaw
Or archaeopteryx's wing

And all the kids
Who wanna see 'em
Are lining up
At our museum

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am

so any other suggestions for ways to produce a science head?

Waiting for the letter

It was Book Week at the Falcon Academy. Come as a character in a story the notice in the_Weapon's communication journal read.

These things send a chill through my spine as I try to imagine how these events can unfold without the_weapon and I ending up having to meet with the Academy’s Psychologist / Counsellor.

The day comes and the kids are there in the sort of garb you’d expect: pirates; witches; a ninja. I thought there would be more Harry Potters but they were very few on the ground.

So what did my son go as?

Well

He recently read a children’s edition of H.G.Wells ‘The Time Machine’. So he went as A MORLOCK he even had a business card to hand out to anyone that asked:

I AM A MORLOCK
Apex predator of 8,028th century
“it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back”
- H.G Wells The Time Machine

One of his class mates -an odious youth, the sort who presents a charming face to his superiors but beneath dwells a sneer for any he does not consider his circle, asked in a dismissive tone.

"A Morlock, why’d you want to be that"?

The_Weapon, chewing a large chicken drumstick that we had negotiated as a suitable substitute for long pork, turned to look him in the eye and said loud enough for all to hear:

“I’d rather be predator than prey,…..Eloi”.

So here I am waiting for the letter from the principle to attend a meeting to discuss my child's choice of interests,

again.

NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK

The bestest week of the year

Down in Australia it's national science week. To get on board with the activities check out the web site here. We kicked it off last night at the cub pack sleep over participating in the Big Aussie Star Hunt.

But of the many benefits offered by Science this one caught my eye. By mathematicians at the Carlton University & University of Ottowa have completed research on

WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!: MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF AN OUTBREAK OF ZOMBIE INFECTION

Here is a link to the chapter.

It examines three possible stratigies

• quarantine (could lead to eradication, but unlikely to happen)
• treatment (some humans survive, but they still must coexist with zombies),

but shows that there is REALLY only one strategy likely to succeed:

“impulsive eradication.”

I love it -

“impulsive eradication.”

Probably like the impulsive eradication demonstrated in the new trailer for the upcoming survival training video with Woody Harrelson 'ZOMBIELAND'

The study goes on to record “Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time,” they concluded.

And if we don’t act fast enough?

“If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead,” they wrote. “This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.”

How fast do we need to deal with the outbreak?

Here’s the equation they used, where S = susceptibles, Z = zombies and R = removed. If an infection breaks out in a city of 500,000 people, the zombies will outnumber the susceptibles in about three hours.

So there it is -Aim for the head and shoot fast.

This is an example where the world of academia is providing useful advice to deal with real world situations.

I love science.

A day that will live in INFAMY

A date which will live in infamy…no matter how long it may take us to overcome this, …the American people, in their righteous might, will win through…."

Obviously he was referring to the granting of a U.S. patent 735,777 on 12 August 1903 to the KATO coffee company for “Coffee Concentrate and process of making same”

That right INSTANT COFFEE was unleashed upon the world at the PAN AMERICIAN Exposition in Buffalo later that year. This was probably what led to president William McKinley being shot when he visited the fair in September.

I admit it is a luxury, but a fine espresso is a civilized start to any day and a cup of instant coffee is an abomination.

"No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness". ~Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

“It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion” my co-workers get nervous when I start muttering this.

Whose up for a cup?