“Recent advances in robotics have been applied to automation in industrial manufacturing with the primary purpose of optimizing practical systems in terms of such objective measures as accuracy, speed, and cost. However, the resulting robots are mostly kept away from human beings because people can be injured during their everyday functioning.
Unlike industrial robots, “Mental Commitment Robots” are developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as “cuteness” and comfort.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 18, 2006 in Star Wars
“Released in 1982, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam was created in Turkey caught in the midst of massive political upheaval. As a result, American-made films were not easily acquired and were often remade with a Turkish cast and setting. The musical soundtrack is entirely lifted from Western film hits of the time, primarily using Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are also scenes incorporating the music of Moonraker, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes and Disney’s The Black Hole.”
“HubbleSite is the home of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the renowned orbiting telescope whose discoveries have forever altered our knowledge of the universe.”
“Frank Miller, who wrote and co-directed Sin City based on his graphic novels of the same name, told SCI FI Wire that he plans to co-direct the upcoming sequel, Sin City 2, with Robert Rodriguez, despite rumors to the contrary. “Yes and yes,” he said in an interview following a preview screening of footage of 300, another upcoming film based on his work.
“We have all kinds of technical things we want to do, but there’s a major story called A Dame to Kill for [which was, fittingly, the second Sin City story and is a prequel of sorts to The Hard Goodbye] that we’re going to adapt,” Miller said. “That’ll include a new femme fatale and other characters.” Rodriguez has reportedly spoken with Angelina Jolie about playing Ava, ex-lover of Clive Owen’s Dwight.”
“Possibly one of the main reasons for Analog’s continued survival and success is a consistent editorial policy over a long period of time. From 1938 to 1971, it was edited by John W Campbell jr., certainly the most famous and influential and, I think, the longest serving of all SF editors. His towering influence shaped not only Astounding (as it was until 1960) but the careers of many leading authors and, through them, the whole field of science fiction. What is less well known is that, since 1978, Analog has again had a single editor, Stanley Schmidt, who is probably therefore the second longest serving SF editor. It is impressive that a magazine that has survived for more than 75 years has, for 60 of them, been directed by just two men. (Gardner Dozois, by the way, has edited Asimov’s for nearly two decades, so Dell certainly seem to believe in backing their editors).”
“Ainori is a reality program where seven young men and women travel the world riding a pink bus. The program is reminiscent of a travelogue; as of October 2006, the show has followed the bus across 71 countries as participants explore both famous tourist attractions and more off-the-beaten-path places.
The show’s twist is that the participants are each young, single people whose goal is to find love with another participant and return to Japan as a couple. When a participant has decided they like someone else, they ask the driver for a ticket back to Japan. They then declare their love to the object of their affection, and ask that the two return to Japan together. After a night’s consideration, the person who received the love declaration can either answer with a kiss, after which both participants leave the bus for Japan. Otherwise, the jilted participant is left to return to Japan alone. ”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 15, 2006 in Science
This article isn’t all doom and gloom as the headline might suggest, in fact what’s neat is that it has several suggestions to solve the radiation issue:
“Space elevators are touted as a novel and cheap way to get cargo, and possibly people, into space one day. So far, they have barely left the drawing board, but ultimately robots could climb a cable stretching 100,000 kilometres from Earth’s surface into space.
But there is a hitch: humans might not survive thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. These are two concentric rings of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic fields. “They would die on the way through the radiation belts if they were unshielded,” says Anders Jorgensen, author of a new study on the subject and a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US.”
“The initial goal was to try and do three big stories in one DVD. So I wrote three scripts, featuring Sheridan, Lochley, Galen and Garibaldi. (I wanted to focus on the human characters initially so we’d have more time for prosthetics R&D for the next one.) The stories, as noted previously, were huge…all over the map, from Minbar, to Earth, Mars, the future, the distant past, as well as B5 itself obviously. We’re also going to be trying some new production technologies, again trying to stay ahead of the tech curve, the way B5 has always stayed ahead on these things.
And over the last few days, as we began to bring on crew and lay out the production, looking at just how complicated these mini-movies were going to be, the idea of making three of these monsters began to become a bit much for us to pull off on out first time out the gate, especially since I’m still kind of new as a director. So we decided to postpone one of the three to the next DVD, and lengthen the other two to make up the difference. GIven that the Garibaldi story was the most complicated visually and technically, also the most difficult from a CGi perspective, that’s the one that got pushed until, potentially, next time.”
“Fanboys is a comedy about friends, fans and delusions of grandeur. Fanboys takes place in the fall of 1998, a time when everything was pure and Star Wars ruled the world once again. We follow four life-long best friends who travel cross-country in an attempt to break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Their mission is to see Star Wars Episode I early when they discover one of the young men in their group is diagnosed with terminal cancer and will not live long enough to see the film in theaters the following May. This film expresses what it means to care about something so truly that you would do anything for it… what it means to be a fan. This is a film for the fans, made by the fans. ”
“Frank Miller, the famous graphic novelist turned director will be moving from his own work by taking Will Eisner’s classic “The Spirit” and adapting it for the big screen. “We’re working on the script right now,” commented Miller at the LA premiere of ‘300.’ “We’ve got a good strong story to work with, and we’re hoping to be in production either spring [2007] or [this] fall .”
Miller promises fans of the series that, “it’ll be very faithful to the books.” Miller also indicated in the interview with IGN that he has one actor (who he wouldn’t name) in mind for the role of the hero.”
From Malaysia diva-in-training Karen Kong has created a sappy yet wonderful Hello Kitty tribute song:
From the video description:
“This is the story about a girl falls in love online and naively ran away from home, bringing with her nothing but her precious Hello Kitty doll – only to find out the cruelty of the world when she’s all alone celebrating her birthday, finally … after travelling to many different places, she finally whispers to her doll ‘hello kitty, please help me, i was wrong and i miss my parents, i wanna go home now ‘.”
