Here's a nifty video demo of a spatial operating system, AKA that hand-wavey computer Tom Cruise was using in Minority Report.
This gesture-based interface is made by a company called Oblong, founded by the same guy who consulted with Minority Report's producers for far-off computers. Looks fun.
Some folks argue this is a lazy way to interact with a computer. Well, I think it looks a lot more physically involved than a god damn mouse. So to hell with those folks.
Is it just me, or are things more screwy than usual this week?
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GOOGLE CONVICTED IN ITALY
I've mentioned quite a few times that governments the world over are starting a systematic rebellion against Google. Well, score one for the bad guys (or are they the good guys...?), because Italy convicted a Google Executive of violating privacy laws. Lots of folks are riled up by this, claim it is an outright threat to the freedom and sanctity of the internet and free speech, that it is like killing the mailman for bringing you a bad letter. Blah blah blah.
The context of the court case is quite silly actually. A couple Italian kids uploaded a video to YouTube that was rather embarrassing to a fellow student. The video was reported by the school, and the video was removed two hours later. Ahh, reminds me of high school...
Anyways, bottom line, Italy is claiming Google is legally responsible for all the idiots on YouTube. If that is the case, then Nuremberg-esque trials aren't too far behind....
It is now clear that former Vice President Dick Cheney defies all laws of medicine. Having suffered his fifth heart attack and walked away, I think he has evolved beyond the need for a human heart. Perhaps he survives off broken dreams and the tears of school-children.
I have another theory that he is really a robot of an alien or deviant race, like the Terminator or a Decepticon, and has planted itself within our world to rise to power and enslave us all. But that is so obviously ridiculous, because he already was Vice President and... um... oh no... he's already done it, hasn't he...? But we're not even aware, are we....?
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KILLER WHALE KILLS SEAWORLD TRAINER
One of SeaWorld's trained orca whales played a bizarre role in the death of a SeaWorld trainer. And the shifty thing is that the alleged whale, Tilly, has a sordid past: In 1999 a naked dude was found dead on Tilly's back. And then there was this odd incident in Canada where Tilly and a few other hooligan orcas beat the crap out of another trainer.
Whether or not you support or oppose the captivity of these humongous mammals for entertainment purposes, everyone has to admit: all this press will probably swing in the favor of the upcoming Free Willy 4: Tilly's Revenge.
I can't stop thinking about Sharktopus. This sucka's in my dreams, man (which is odd, because the above design is also by Matt Leach).
Roger Corman, championed director of the straight-to-SciFi-Channel B-movies, is directing this movie. If there's nothing better than SciFi--ahem, sorry, SyFy--Channel movies, it's science fiction B-movies.
Honestly, why can't all science fiction movies be made as B-movies? I would enjoy them so much more.
Also keep your eye out for Dinoshark. Which looks almost as cool as Sharktopus. But ultimately tentacles always prevail.
I don't exactly know why I like poorly made science fiction/horror movies so much. But they feel very closely related to drunk stories. Think about it: both are told with so much gusto and inflated emotions that ultimately fail because the integrity of the surroundings are lackluster. Just as the authenticity falls short in a drunk story because, well, you were drunk, B-movies fall short because, well, you can see right through those silly special effects and set design.
But I love me some drunk stories, because I find that failure hilarious. Which I suppose is about the same reason why I love B-movies.
I did a prior post on Found Art Photography from Google Maps' Street View a while back, so this seems only too appropriate to show (thanks to Drax for the tip!):
You are seeing correctly. That is a photo of two men dressed in scuba gear chasing after a Google Maps Survey Car in Norway. See it for yourself: enter "Rugdeveien 39, 5097 Bergen, Norway" into Google Maps and go into Street View.
Why are they in scuba gear?
Why are they chasing the Survey Car?
Did they plan this?
These questions might never be answered, but I think it has become quite clear now that Google Maps, otherwise known as the Google Maps Reality Matrix, is not without enemies.
Think about recent events: the launch of Google Android, Google Buzz, Google Books, Google Wave, Google Nexus, and the upcoming Google Toilet-Cam have all received across-the-board negative slandering in the press. In addition, governments of the world are uniting against Google because it stands in ideological opposition to the sovereignty of Free Market Economies. But they realize, of course, that Google is the internet. Google is all information and media. By what possible means can governments undermine the communication and social networks of the masses?
Simple: scuba-insurgents.
Google won't see it coming. Think about it.
Actually, don't. Don't think about it. Just put your scuba suit on.
With the announcement of the iPad and the accompanying iBooks store (which seems pretty analogous to the iTunes store), larger publishers are threatening to ditch Amazon Kindle's $9.99 e-book model. After all, iBooks is looking to sell e-books closer to $14.99 (as well as offering publishers a bigger cut of the sales).
But, this has me wondering one thing: Why the hell do e-books cost so much?
An e-reader itself costs $200-$400, and the cheapest iPad will be $500. And then each book will cost between $9.99 and $14.99, which is about the same price as an e-book printed out in an actual book. It is therefore, much more expensive to read e-books than real books.
So according to the current price models, why would I want to buy an e-reader???? EVER????
The publishers and retailers of e-books appear to be using a similar model as iTunes. First you buy an mp3 player, then you buy each song for $0.99 each or $9.99 for an entire album. Since CD retailers are nearly extinct, I think this model is working.
I don't think this will work out the same way for books, though. Why? Because PEOPLE LIKE BOOKS, whereas, NO ONE EVER LIKED CDS. The only device that stores music that people have ever liked is vinyl records and fucking iPods. By contrast, everybody loves building their own personal library shelves.
I've been watching this e-book pricing story unfold and wondering, how can they be so thick? Why are they trying to keep the price of media the same, regardless of the format it's delivered in? Why are they practically engaging in price-fixing like goddamn mobsters instead of acting like the capitalists they claim to be and competing for consumers?
I think this is damage control, a desperate stopgap to keep the business of print the same. I think this is a larger strategy between the Big Boys of Print to get take back their leverage. Which once again makes them sound a lot like a group of mobsters.
There's something magical about February 2nd and Groundhog's Day.
No there isn't. It's a silly folk-holiday cooked up by apparent sufferers of Seasonal Affect Disorder. I don't know how the groundhog got dragged into it, but last year Alaska gave the groundhog the boot and replaced it with a marmot. That's right, last year Sarah Palin made Feb 2nd Marmot Day. Wow.
Anyways. While Groundhog Day isn't so much magical as it is silly, there is something magical about Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, the single only notable story concerning this holiday which glorifies a prognosticating rodent. In fact, not just magical, but profound, heartening, deconstructive, humane, hilarious, and poignant, among many other adjectives. I dare say, it is one of the greatest stories ever told.
Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey is often considered the greatest character of fiction because he experiences every aspect of the human condition. Throughout his 17-year journey home he loses everything. He goes from a king and champion of the Greeks, to an old and lowly beggar disguised amongst his own. He is picked upon by every force imaginable, from gods, to witches, to sirens, to his crewmen, to his own son. He hits Rock Bottom, and then heroically climbs his way back to the top. And he learns his lesson in the process: he is but a man.
In Groundhog Day Bill Murray, as Phil Connors, takes a similar journey. All in one single day. His life becomes February 2nd, Groundhog Day in Punxutawnney, Pennslyvania. The world exists in infinite loop around him while only he is conscious of this abrupt shift in reality. No matter what he does he always wakes up at 6am on February 2nd. And while he experiences perhaps a countless lifetime of February 2nd's he exposes every facet of humanity because he too loses everything he once was in one single infinite day and transforms himself to become but a man.
I was 8-years-old when I first saw this movie. Disguisedly simple enough for a child to understand, I enjoyed it. What kid doesn't like Bill Murray? And I remember asking my dad why the day repeated over and over again, and he told me, "Because he had to get that one day right."*
Every year when I inevitably see Groundhog Day on Feb 2nd I think about that. And in more recent years as I've gotten older I've thought, "Man, my dad is lame."
Yet, there is a merit of truth to that thought, because whether or not he gets that day right, he lives it an uncountable number of ways. Perhaps, Bill Murray only finally wakes up on February 3rd because he has exhausted every possible imaginable and unimaginable way to live February 2nd. Perhaps, like Odysseus, he journeys his humanity entire.
We see him go from prideful but restless, to egotistical, to megalomanic, to chauvinistic, to con man, to obsessive stalker, to hopelessly depressed, to enraged, to crazed fanatic, to suicidal, to an utterly defeated and desperate and lonely shell of a human being listing at Rock Bottom. And then, because he has no where else to go, he climbs up. And on the day when he is the Every-Man every man wants to be, when he has run out of every trick and swindle, when he's seen perhaps every single outcome that can come from a single day, when he is simply but a man: He wakes up the next day.
Humanity is obsessed with transformation. That's what The Odyssey is about, that's what Groundhog Day is about, that's what some of the most championed stories are about: transformation.
Because in the gloomy winters of our discontented day-to-day lives we often feel trapped on all sides, devoid of purpose, utterly demoralized, and doomed. It happens. To quote a few hilarious and poignant exchanges from the film:
BILL MURRAY: What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
DRUNK: ... About sums it up for me.
And:
BILL MURRAY: There's no way that this winter is ever going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out. He's got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.
And:
BILL MURRAY: What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today!
But despite these common experiences of modern existence we want to become something else. We want to transform into beings self-actualized, rising above, defining a new chapter in humanity, desperately yearning to be something we're not.
Which is why we love superhero origin stories, why we love Kafka, why we love it when the goddamn seasons change. And that's what Groundhog Day, the actually holiday, signifies! It's this stupid pointless holiday that puts a fucking rodent on pedestal all because we go loopy in the long stretch of winter and desperately need/want spring to burst open in blooming greens and yellows and purples upon us, to remind us that things change, that we change.
That's why when the illustrious Bill Murray wills himself in to and out of Rock Bottom over an infinitude of February 2nds, and then finally wakes up on February 3rd to exclaim, "Today is tomorrow!" it is possible to believe in the transformative ability of humanity. That despite who we are, what we are, and the forces that surround us, we can become something more.
But then I remember I've been fooled by Bill Murray before. For example, up until I was six I thought it was absolutely necessary to wear my Ghostbuster's proton pack everywhere I went. Not anymore though. I don't believe in no ghosts.
Still, a great story.
*I later found out my dad got that line from the trailer, as displayed above. And to think for years I thought he was insightful.
