headline of the day
Italian bus driver fired for driving with elbows while using two phones
so, I am guessing he heard it coming his way?
U.S. Route 90, Marathon, TX 79842
tweet of the day
hamilton’s rules [of robotic] kin selection
Hamilton’s rules of kin selection, a biological explanation of altruism in an evolutionary context, has been shown to apply to robots.
Researchers in Switzerland developed a band of small, rolling robots equipped with sensors and their own “genetic code”—a unique string of 33 1′s and 0′s functioning as individual “neurons” to determine sensor use and behavior—and tasked with foraging for small “food” objects and pushing them to a designated area. Those robots that failed to collect the objects were weeded out of the “gene pool” by the research team, whereas those that were successful could choose whether to collect the food object for themselves or share it with another robot.
“Over hundreds of generations,” the researchers concluded, “we show that Hamilton’s rule always accurately predicts the minimum relatedness necessary for altruism to evolve,” they wrote in a new paper describing the results. The levels of relatedness that the researchers tested included full clones as well as the digital equivalent of siblings, cousins and non-kin.
(via the browser)
X-Muppets
Something about me loves my childhood meeting my teenage nerdery. If only it were real.
Ketterer Continental
Your Fleetwood not cutting it?
This monster motor home features a Mercedes-Benz truck chassis, a massive, luxurious cabin that includes a real kitchen, dining with seating for five, a master bedroom with a king bed plus a shower, toilet and sky light. Actually, the main bedroom features a bath tub, too, so you can soak after a hard day of… whatever it is that the wealthy do when they’re “camping.”
I Think We’re Alone Now
“I Think We’re Alone Now” is a documentary that focuses on two individuals, Jeff and Kelly, who claim to be in love with the 80′s pop singer Tiffany.
Jeff Turner, a 50-year-old man from Santa Cruz, California has attended Tiffany concerts since 1988. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, he never had a girlfriend.
Kelly McCormick is a 35-year-old intersex person from Denver, Colorado, who claims to have been friends with Tiffany as a teenager.
Both Jeff and Kelly have been labeled stalkers by the media and other Tiffany fans.
(thanks, Amanda)
devices used for analyzing epilepsy adapted to control a cursor
In a new study, scientists from Washington University demonstrated that humans can control a cursor on a computer screen using words spoken out loud and in their head, holding huge applications for patients who may have lost their speech through brain injury or disabled patients with limited movement.
By directly connecting the patient’s brain to a computer, the researchers showed that the computer could be controlled with up to 90% accuracy even when no prior training was given.
Patients with a temporary surgical implant have used regions of the brain that control speech to “talk” to a computer for the first time, manipulating a cursor on a computer screen simply by saying or thinking of a particular sound.
This is the article I was talking about earlier.
Quote out of context
Once, at a hardware store, he stared up at the glittery chandeliers and wept, “I don’t want to be a daddy! I want to be a mommy!”
Pointy Boots
Girls can wear pointy boots, too.
Disney applies for ‘Seal Team 6′ trademark
The Walt Disney Co. has applied for a trademark on the name “Seal Team 6,” the name of the unit of specially trained Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan earlier this month.
(Eh, thanks, Allen.)
Smoke the donkey finally gets his green card
I, for one, was wondering what would happen to the poor chap (via):
Smoke arrived last week in New York aboard a cargo flight that originated in Turkey after a combined effort of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and retired Marine Col. John Folsom.
A Grotto. U.S. Route 54, Dalhart, TX 79022
Calvin and Hobbes – 26 years later
The whole strip, down to the most minute details, testifies it’s brilliance.
Destruction Party
As I’ve previously mentioned here and there, I’m making (directing/wrote) a short film. The theme seems simple, but hopefully like all good movies relaying the plot doesn’t sum up the film. Four girls get together for what they think is a dinner party, but is really a destruction party. The girls are encouraged to share secrets or things that make them angry, and when they do they are given breakables to break.
One of my favourite designers, Marke Johnson, talks about splitting life pretty evenly between the “made” and the “found”, so I’m trying to make more. The script still makes me laugh when I read it. It still rings true. Every person who has read it has said nice things about it to the point of embarrassment for me. Hard to say much else about your own work without sounding silly. A lot of people are volunteering their time and energy to help me get this made, and I was hoping to finance most of it myself but there are permits and locations fees and camera rentals and other things that have been carefully budgeted.
Anyway, here’s a link to our Kickstarter if you feel like contributing, but Clusterflock at large has already been hugely supportive in all that I do, so please don’t feel any pressure. I mean that.
If anyone has any questions, about anything really, please let me know.
I fear for future generations
Bridesmaids is really great.
Old news at this point, but here’s my review.
…The real star of the show is the screenplay. Kristen Wiig and fellow screenwriter Annie Mumalo have done what felt impossible for so long: written a smart, funny, charming film about women that doesn’t manage to simultaneously hate women. So much of the genre seems to rely on the audience collectively eye-rolling and jabbing each other in the ribcage while saying gleefully, “Woman, ammiright?” And Bridesmaids ostensibly seems rife with opportunities to do so. But it doesn’t. Where it might seem obvious to slip into farce and self-hatred it skates away cleanly, making it clear that so many of the problems faced by the characters are because they are people, not because they are women.
This here is scarecrow country
Since a few years ago, when I started properly trying to get to know the part of rural Britain where I live, instead of just repeatedly driving from my house to B&Q, Starbucks, Borders and Sainsbury’s and missing all the interesting bits, I’ve taken photographs of around 300 scarecrows – or “mawkins”, as they’re known here in Norfolk. In order to do this, I’ve got off trains before my scheduled stop and made myself late for meetings, almost been run over at least three times, and put my life at risk trespassing on a variety of East Anglian allotments. I’ve snapped scarecrows who look like floating ghosts, scarecrows who look like futuristic horse people from outer space, scarecrows with their own pet scarecrow foxes, chav scarecrows, disco scarecrows, scarecrows with drawn-on gnashing teeth that could haunt your dreams more than any George A Romero film.
So here we are. What should we do?
We should seek the greatest value of our action.
all the moon clips from the mighty boosh
If you plan on watching The Mighty Boosh, you might not to want to watch this clip of every segment many of the segments of The Moon, but he and Tony Harrison are my favorite characters.
Previously on clusterflock.
out of stock internet meme t-shirt logo out of context
The Future, Miranda July
Amanda sent me the link to the trailer for Miranda July’s new film, The Future.
from the comments
Daryl Scroggins quoting Hélène Cixous:
You are born; you live; everyone does it, with an animal force of blindness. Woe unto you if you want the human gaze, if you want to know what’s happening to you.
coming out of sleep
Sleepy-time tambourine.
