After two years, the Dickbot is still at large...Sydney Morning Herald | Robot goes missingThat pretty much makes him indistinguishable from every author I've ever met.
Philip K Dick is missing.
Not the American science fiction writer whose novels spawned hit films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall -- he died more than 20 years ago -- but a state-of-the-art robot named after the author.
The quirky android, was lost in early January [2006] while en route to California by commercial airliner.
...The irony of the situation -- a missing replica of the very author who championed "replicant" freedom -- is not lost on Phil's creators.
...Along with an eerie likeness to the author, the robot features award-winning artificial intelligence that mimics the writer's mannerisms and lifelike skin material to affect realistic expressions.
Top-of-the-line voice software loaded with data from Dick's vast body of writing allows the robot to carry on natural-sounding conversations, although it does come off as a bit doddering at times.
Biometric-identification software and advanced machine vision allows the robot to recognise people -- even in a crowd -- read their expressions and body language and talk to them sounding a lot like a normal, albeit slightly senile, author who likes to quote his own books when he gets confused.
Hamilton Spectator | Brain cleaner: New stroke treatment can vacuum away deadly blood clotsBefore you ask, no, this wouldn't have helped me. I often speak of what happened to me as a "stroke", but strictly speaking it wasn't. A stroke is an arterial block: What I had was a leak, a brain hemorrhage accompanied by swelling.
It's a tiny vacuum cleaner for the brain: A new treatment for stroke victims promises to suction out clogged arteries in hopes of stopping the brain attack before it does permanent harm.
Called Penumbra, the newly approved device is the latest in a series of inside-the-artery attempts to boost recovery from stroke.
...Specialists thread a tiny tube inside a blood vessel at the groin and push it up the body and into the brain until it reaches the clog. Just like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks up the clot bit by bit to restore blood flow.
Still, I have experienced the up-from-the-groin thing, as it is also the route to the artery that was partly blocked when I had my heart attack. When they speak of cardio-catheterization, that's the procedure they mean.
If it sounds weird, well, it beats going straight in through the chest. It means a recovery period measured in days, not months.
Furthermore...
For the second week in a row, I'm reposting something that Mark Evanier found. Well, what can I say, the man has good sources and good taste.
I could tell you where this video came from, but if you've ever heard Professor Irwin Corey speak, you know that it could not possibly matter less what his topic is. What delights me most about this clip is that (1) the Professor is still very much with us, and (3) at age 93 he still looks and sounds pretty much as he always has. Like Walter Brennan, Charles Lane and Irene Ryan before him, he seems to have discovered the secret of eternal decrepitude.
But enough about him. Watch the man himself.
Although:
It must be said: If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
For the second week in a row, I'm reposting something that Mark Evanier found. Well, what can I say, the man has good sources and good taste.
I could tell you where this video came from, but if you've ever heard Professor Irwin Corey speak, you know that it could not possibly matter less what his topic is. What delights me most about this clip is that (1) the Professor is still very much with us, and (3) at age 93 he still looks and sounds pretty much as he always has. Like Walter Brennan, Charles Lane and Irene Ryan before him, he seems to have discovered the secret of eternal decrepitude.
But enough about him. Watch the man himself.
Although:
It must be said: If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
South Bend Tribune | Boys left with bleeding tongues after sticking them to flagpoleActually, what young Gavin said was, "I bethibeb po pry ip becauthe I phoughp aww of phe PV thhowth were wieth, bup purnth oup I wath waag."
Two fourth-grade boys mimicking a scene from the movie "A Christmas Story" wound up with their tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole in bitter cold weather on Friday morning.
Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander were serving on flag duty at Jackson Elementary School, with the job of raising and lowering the school's flags, when they decided to see if their tongues really would stick to the cold metal.
"I decided to try it because I thought all of the TV shows were lies, but turns out I was wrong," said Gavin, who celebrated his 10th birthday Friday.
Other kids were apprehended sitting too close to the television and crossing their eyes to make their faces "freeze like that".
The boys say they'll try things they've seen on "Jackass" and "Survivor" when they get out of detention.
Say hello to Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym in happier times. Just another couple in love that couldn't leave well enough alone.
Gadling | Ryanair Flight Attendants like you've never seen them beforeThe official site says it's a sellout. A later Gadling entry reports that the Women's Institution of Spain calls the calendar "sexist". See also the Daily Mail.
Here's something to add to your Christmas wish list: The flight attendants of infamous low-cost European airline Ryanair have shed their usual blue uniforms in favour of something skimpier in a new promotional item for the airline -- they're posing in teeny tiny bikinis for a new calendar, which will be sold on Ryanair flights for £5.
...The proceeds from the sales of The Girls of Ryanair Calendar 2008 will be going to a good cause -- Angel Quest is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping special needs kids.
The Consumerist | Best Takes In-Store Display Cashing In On Heath Ledger's Death Very SeriouslyThe user comments are the most entertaining part of this story. If you've never worked in retail (as it's obvious many of these people have not), this display raises an issue you should think about.
Hours after actor Heath Ledger's death, a Best Buy store already had a table set up with his DVDs on sale, urging customers to "remember a great actor through his great performances."
This particular tempest has two components:
Is it appropriate for the retailer to create a display collecting an actor's work when he dies?
Well, yes, of course. No one would have denied the suitability of such a display for, say, Michael Caine, or Sean Connery, or Clint Eastwood, on such faraway day as any of them meets his maker. Public figures die all the time. I would expect retailers to be ready for it.
Does this display in particular look cheap, tacky and thrown-together?
Boy, does it ever. I would hate to think that Best Buy's marketing layout is so rigidly planned that there's no flexibility in it to replace an end-cap (one of those displays at the end of the aisle) with something of indisputably timely interest should events dictate it. The store should have a stack of blank printer compatible signage, and a computer with the chain's chosen display fonts installed.
What am I saying? All that would require thought. I've shopped at Best Buy. I've talked to the people who work there. This fan-club bake-sale-esque table is probably the best they can do.
Help the Aged | Hollywood-bound choir reveals all for CharityMore information, and a few more pictures, can be found in news reports from BBC, The Daily Mail and Monsters and Critics (Her Majesty reportedly tried to order one!), and too many more to count.
The Froncysyllte Welsh Male Voice Choir has produced a calendar featuring artistic shots of themselves unclothed, to be sold in aid of Help the Aged.
The choir hit the headlines last year when their debut album, Voices of the Valley, became both the best-selling classical album of 2006 and the fastest-selling classical album ever.
The Fron Male Voice Choir Calendar is priced at £6.95 (RRP) and all proceeds will go to Help the Aged. We regret that copies of the calendar have now sold out.
But I don't believe I've seen anyone contrive to protect their modesty behind a golf ball before. That, I must say, is new.
Crawley Observer | Men strip naked for calender - pictureSee also the Evening Leader and the official site.
A SAUCY calendar has raised nearly £1,000 in just over a week for the hospital that's treated a terminally ill Furnace Green lad since birth.
Family and friends of Harry Shrubb put together the Cheeky Chappy's Charity Calendar to help other children with the same heart condition as the two-and-a-half year old.
And the calendar, which shows some of Crawley's finest male talent in their birthday suits, has already sold more than 400 copies since its launch on November 10.
It may say something about the dedication inspired in generations of sweet-toothed Americans that, although Sunshine / Keebler / Kellogg stopped making Hydrox cookies in 2003, its loyal fans are only just now beginning to notice that they can't find one anywhere.
Old W. K. Kellogg must be spinning to know that "his" health-food company now owns Keebler.
WSJ | The Hydrox Cookie Is Dead, and Fans Won't Get Over ItI'm thinking that if they really were as enormous as that photograph makes them look, they might still be around.
Robert Fliegel was craving a Hydrox. The 52-year-old computer consultant says he always liked the way the chocolate sandwich cookie, which he found crisper than Oreos, "stood up to the milk" when dunked.
But Mr. Fliegel, who used to be able to devour an entire package of the crème-filled biscuits in a sitting, couldn't find them in any stores near his East Stroudsburg, Pa., home.
Only when he went online a few months ago to try to order some did he learn the truth: Hydrox is dead.
In 2003, without warning or announcement, Kellogg Co. killed off the cookie -- by then rechristened Droxies -- after failing to gain ground against the dominant Oreo, one of the country's best-selling snack foods.
Old W. K. Kellogg must be spinning to know that "his" health-food company now owns Keebler.
NORA Hardwick, a 102-year-old pensioner, poses topless and becomes one of the oldest women ever to appear in a nude calendar.The former-councillor, from Lincolnshire, became Miss November to raise cash for her local football team, Ancaster Athletic.
Pub regular Nora - who covered her chest with a strategically-placed scarf - downed a small glass of whiskey before getting her kit off for the photograph.
She told us: "I'd never done anything like it before - and I doubt I will again.
"I just thought 'go for it' and I'm so glad I did!"
Story from the Sun Online, as found in the Courier Mail, Grantham Journal and The Footie (World Soccer News). And countless other places since she appeared with Jay Leno...
I get mail...
Over at the adult forum One Click Chicks (http:// www. oneclickchicks .com) there is a fair amount of interest in naked charity calendar pics....
Recently the question came up as to whether or not it is legal to scan old, out of date calendars, and whether anyone on the net is doing so. My reply was there was probably a limited number of these calendars sold in the first place, and also a limited market for such scans on the net. As for the legality - I don't know.
Can you shed any light on this? So many of these pics are unavailable, or only available in low resolution. Do you happen to know if old calendars can be scanned and if anyone is doing so?
Thanks again - I have linked to your website.
Hi. Great to hear from you.
I don't know of anyone scanning old charity calendars: I wish I did. I'd be delighted to see such a resource myself, for the same reason I started the site and blog. The images I use, I get from the same place I get most of my information: online newspaper stories.
If one simply has the desire to look at naked models, there is certainly no shortage of sources on the internet. These pictures are clearly different, special. What the models in these charity calendars have in common is an attitude that comes through in almost every photograph: Self-awareness, courage, commitment to their cause, self-depreciating humor, and a bit of a tweak to the nose to people too stuffy to appreciate the gesture.
It's what I find appealing about these images, regardless of where the models rate on any scale of conventional beauty. Whether hourglass or pear, young or old, man or woman, they're all unfailingly, irresistably charming.
Different groups produce calendars for different reasons, so I'd be reluctant to make any generalized guesses about what the response to a request for permission to scan would be.
Some, I'm sure--most, I tend to think--would be delighted for the attention, especially if the scans were distributed along with the appropriate information for donating to the cause the calendars were intended to benefit.
Some would flatly refuse. Some of the "models" were only reluctantly talked into participating, with assurances like "we're only printing a few hundred of them" and "only a few local people will see them" and "most of them will sit in a drawer unused". The idea of having these images available on the Web would scare the stuffing out of them.
And some continue to make calendars, and might insist on protecting their copyrights. Long Tom Grange, Vail Undraped, and Breast of Canada are among a dozen or so organizations who've marketed calendars in multiple years.
And just because the calendars are expired doesn't mean the group isn't still selling them. Salt Springs, near Seattle, continued to sell their calendar for several years until they finally sold out.
The copyright issues alone strike me as utterly nightmarish. Who owns the photo, the model, the photographer, or the publisher? Or some combination of the three? And just because it's last year's calendar doesn't mean it's public domain.
The internet being the kind of place it is, of course, if someone were to begin such an image collection, there is precious little anyone could do about it. Very few of these groups have the wherewithal to mount any kind of legal protest, even if they knew where to direct it. And if the collection isn't itself making money, I can't see that it would be doing anyone any harm.
But, as you say, the small numbers in which most of these calendars were printed would make finding and acquiring them very difficult. The main reason I started my site is that I couldn't afford to buy the calendars.
All of this is, of course, just my untrained non-legal opinion. I hope you find it useful.
Over at the adult forum One Click Chicks (http:// www. oneclickchicks .com) there is a fair amount of interest in naked charity calendar pics....
Recently the question came up as to whether or not it is legal to scan old, out of date calendars, and whether anyone on the net is doing so. My reply was there was probably a limited number of these calendars sold in the first place, and also a limited market for such scans on the net. As for the legality - I don't know.
Can you shed any light on this? So many of these pics are unavailable, or only available in low resolution. Do you happen to know if old calendars can be scanned and if anyone is doing so?
Thanks again - I have linked to your website.
Hi. Great to hear from you.
I don't know of anyone scanning old charity calendars: I wish I did. I'd be delighted to see such a resource myself, for the same reason I started the site and blog. The images I use, I get from the same place I get most of my information: online newspaper stories.
If one simply has the desire to look at naked models, there is certainly no shortage of sources on the internet. These pictures are clearly different, special. What the models in these charity calendars have in common is an attitude that comes through in almost every photograph: Self-awareness, courage, commitment to their cause, self-depreciating humor, and a bit of a tweak to the nose to people too stuffy to appreciate the gesture.
It's what I find appealing about these images, regardless of where the models rate on any scale of conventional beauty. Whether hourglass or pear, young or old, man or woman, they're all unfailingly, irresistably charming.
Different groups produce calendars for different reasons, so I'd be reluctant to make any generalized guesses about what the response to a request for permission to scan would be.
Some, I'm sure--most, I tend to think--would be delighted for the attention, especially if the scans were distributed along with the appropriate information for donating to the cause the calendars were intended to benefit.
Some would flatly refuse. Some of the "models" were only reluctantly talked into participating, with assurances like "we're only printing a few hundred of them" and "only a few local people will see them" and "most of them will sit in a drawer unused". The idea of having these images available on the Web would scare the stuffing out of them.
And some continue to make calendars, and might insist on protecting their copyrights. Long Tom Grange, Vail Undraped, and Breast of Canada are among a dozen or so organizations who've marketed calendars in multiple years.
And just because the calendars are expired doesn't mean the group isn't still selling them. Salt Springs, near Seattle, continued to sell their calendar for several years until they finally sold out.
The copyright issues alone strike me as utterly nightmarish. Who owns the photo, the model, the photographer, or the publisher? Or some combination of the three? And just because it's last year's calendar doesn't mean it's public domain.
The internet being the kind of place it is, of course, if someone were to begin such an image collection, there is precious little anyone could do about it. Very few of these groups have the wherewithal to mount any kind of legal protest, even if they knew where to direct it. And if the collection isn't itself making money, I can't see that it would be doing anyone any harm.
But, as you say, the small numbers in which most of these calendars were printed would make finding and acquiring them very difficult. The main reason I started my site is that I couldn't afford to buy the calendars.
All of this is, of course, just my untrained non-legal opinion. I hope you find it useful.
The Water Horse begins like a lyrical Scottish fairy tale, which I guess in a sense it is. And with a rating of PG, it's clear that it is intended for children.So I suppose I must forgive it for its biggest flaw: It is relentlessly, numbingly predictable.
From the moment each cardboard character hits the screen, you know where they're going to end up. Oh, look, a couple of young tourists meet an old man in a pub who's going to tell them a story. I wonder who he's going to turn out to be? Oh, look, the boy lives on the shore of a loch, I wonder which loch it could possibly be? Oh, look, he's deathly afraid of the water, whatever could cure him of that, do you think? A pet, perhaps? He's obsessively counting the days until his father's tour of duty ends, do you think maybe Mom already knows that Dad isn't coming home? Mom meets a mysterious handyman, I wonder if they'll fall in love?
The only real surprise is that, in a World War II era story in which Nazis are spoken of almost incessantly, we never actually see one. I half hoped the handyman would turn out to be that cinematic rarity, a good German...but...
You have to really enjoy watching the playful CGI title character (you know who he is, right?), because he may be the best actor in the movie. Okay, that's not really fair. The acting is overall quite good, and everyone seems well cast.
But by the fourth or fifth time someone backs off, sputtering and screaming, from their first sight of Crusoe the sea-sick sea serpent, I would think even the kids would be tired of it.
Presenting the luckiest man on Earth-1, Jimmy Olsen, with his new friend, Forager. I'm not exactly sure what that is protecting Forager's modesty, there. Perhaps it's Wonder Twin Jan (or is it Zayna?) in an unbilled cameo.
Isn't it funny how Terrans wear more clothes than anyone else in the cosmos? Sometimes it seems that every even-numbered alien planet or dimension is peopled by unrealistically hot babes with no nudity taboos. Apparently even Apokolips is no exception. Does it make you wonder what's under Darkseid's armor?
And we haven't seen half of the DCU's 52 universes yet. Hmm. In a world where no one wears anything, do superheroes still wear spandex?
I was caught out with only my cell phone camera. I tried to take pictures of the flurry, but the shutter stays open too long: The snow has time to fall, and in so doing blurs to invisibility.
But I knew if I checked Flickr, someone else would have captured a moment, and sure enough they did.
But I knew if I checked Flickr, someone else would have captured a moment, and sure enough they did.
If it doesn't move, and it should, use WD40.
If it moves and it shouldn't,
use duct (duck) tape.
Originally uploaded by jimfrazier.
Forbes | The Other Greatest Tool EverThere's no denying that Duck Tape Saves the Day.
Models use it to create cleavage. Sled-dog drivers use it to prevent frostbite. Athletes use it to support weak joints. Veterinarians use it to repair horses' hooves.
What's this wonder tool? Duct tape.
Every now and again, I do a web search for "Lovecraft news", just to see what comes up. Among the finds this time were these DVD reviews:
H. P. Lovecraft's From Beyond
Regina Leader-Post
Sporting cheap and often laughable special effects, this film presumably expected to horrify people with its alien-like creature bursting through a skull and other "scary" special effects. But even by 1986 standards, the effects are fake-looking, as are the blood and guts that are scattered liberally through the film, and it's considerably less scary than it is funny.
...Entirely forgettable, From Beyond has little to offer other than laughs at its campiness, and a reminder of how low-budget filmmaking by those with higher aspirations looked, back in the day.
H.P. Lovecraft's the Tomb
REEL ADVICE
I resolve to never again knowingly write about anything that Ulli Lommel does.
Lommel's The Tomb defies explanation. He's locked a bunch of people in that all-too-familiar warehouse set of his and let them run around in a vaguely Saw kind of atmosphere as they try to accomplish the ludicrous task of figuring out why they're there in the first place and the much more rational task of trying to get out alive.
I'd like to recommend that you forego these gems and try an audio-drama adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's works. The special effects in your own mind are much better than anything Hollywood can build.
Modesty forbids me from pointing out that one popular source makes its latest live production, The Colour Out of Space, available for free download.
And if that one satisfies, there's a five-part adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth featuring author (and gifted actor) Harlan Ellison, also for free.
For now...
H. P. Lovecraft's From BeyondRegina Leader-Post
Sporting cheap and often laughable special effects, this film presumably expected to horrify people with its alien-like creature bursting through a skull and other "scary" special effects. But even by 1986 standards, the effects are fake-looking, as are the blood and guts that are scattered liberally through the film, and it's considerably less scary than it is funny.
...Entirely forgettable, From Beyond has little to offer other than laughs at its campiness, and a reminder of how low-budget filmmaking by those with higher aspirations looked, back in the day.
H.P. Lovecraft's the Tomb
REEL ADVICE
I resolve to never again knowingly write about anything that Ulli Lommel does.
Lommel's The Tomb defies explanation. He's locked a bunch of people in that all-too-familiar warehouse set of his and let them run around in a vaguely Saw kind of atmosphere as they try to accomplish the ludicrous task of figuring out why they're there in the first place and the much more rational task of trying to get out alive.
I'd like to recommend that you forego these gems and try an audio-drama adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's works. The special effects in your own mind are much better than anything Hollywood can build.
Modesty forbids me from pointing out that one popular source makes its latest live production, The Colour Out of Space, available for free download.
And if that one satisfies, there's a five-part adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth featuring author (and gifted actor) Harlan Ellison, also for free.
For now...
If you're having trouble thinking of anything else that "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" guy did, here's a classic video in which Dean Martin and Vic Damone present a medley of lyrics made famous...well, let's be honest, made only slightly less obscure...by the inimitable Allan Sherman.
Wired | Jan. 10, 1949: A Brand-New Format for the Shirelles, DriftersThe beauty of this technology is this: You could watch it play and see how it worked. Every bit of the science that made sound happen was visible.
1949: The 45-rpm record is introduced by RCA. Can rock 'n' roll be far behind?
Flat disc records began replacing the cylinder for reproducing recorded sound as early as 1887. The original standard, what we know as the 78, had a 10-inch diameter disc with a rotational speed of between 75 and 80 rpm.
The 78 remained the standard for portable recorded sound until the mid-20th century, despite some severe limitations. For one thing, the disc didn't hold much, meaning that longer works, typically classical music, had to be broken in mid-composition (which makes the 78 seem a little like the vinyl forerunner of the four-track tape).
Columbia introduced the 33-rpm disc in 1948, which mostly solved that problem, and its rival, RCA, was right behind with the 45. Despite a diameter of only 7 inches, the 45 could hold as much sound as the 78, and was far more portable and cheaper to produce.
With an iPod, on the other hand, there are no moving parts larger than electrons. The basic parts are still there (data storage, scanning, conversion from physical to electronic form, transportation to vibrating surface, conversion from electronic form to vibrating air) but there's nothing you can see going on. And a common phenomenon of everyday life gets a little more obscure.
It might as well be magic.
