Tag Archives: Stanley Kubrick

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Not Human

Humanoids to Replace
Body Parts, Not Maids

Mankind’s ancient dream of creating automatons that can stand in for us, when our bodies no longer function properly, gets closer to reality every day. For instance, thanks to Research developed at Brown University, two-stroke victims, long unable to move or speak, managed to control a robotic arm solely with their minds.
The good news couldn’t come anytime sooner: around the same time, a Tokyo-based robotics team had announced the creation of a highly interactive, and disturbingly human-like, pair of buttocks, that responds to touch and stimuli. To be honest, the robotic butt got us thinking where on earth was this kind of research going.
In a way, it all comes full circle, you see. Humanoids capable of simulating emotions and be responsive to sound, sight, and touch, are ever more likely to become part of our daily life, especially if it’s up to Japanese engineers. They’re on track to develop beings whose extreme similitude to us may actually frighten us. Perhaps we’re not too far from the Blade Runner-class of nightmarish dystopias we once believed we were – what, no flying cars yet?
At the same time, albeit running in a parallel track, research on artificial intelligence and nanotechnology is also well advanced. The natural convergence of these two fields does suggest that reality is tracking closely the visions that Sci-Fi authors had conceived long ago.
To be sure, what’s been studied at Brown diverge fundamentally from research on androids, even though they both follow the same principle: to emulate the human ability to combine thought-processing with physical acts. At one point, their cyber-organically engineered eyes are bound to flick a sudden flash and wake them up to self-awareness.

GOOD ROBOT, BAD ROBOT
But whereas at Brown, the practical applications are already evident, the objectives of research into the development of humanoid robots lack clarity, for except in the case of slave labor, is hard to imagine why would anyone need a robot around the house.
Thousands of stroke victims, on the other hand, specially Locked-In Syndrome sufferers, when the body is unresponsive while the brain is still fully functional, could benefit from implants that would allow them to control objects with their minds.
Then again, scientific exploration should not be conditioned to predetermined goals. Much of the technology we benefit from in our daily routines was not necessarily developed, at least not initially, to accomplish the function it eventually wound up serving.
Thus this post being brief and fun since we’re talking about machines that someday, rather than doing our housework for us (more)

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Read Also:
* Man Made
* Tomorrow Never Knows
* Second Variety

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Tomorrow Never Knows

The World As We Know it
& Those Not Meant to Be

‘The future ain’t what it used to be.’ When Yogi Berra uttered his now often repeated axiom years ago, he was uncannily signaling the age of under-achievement and malaise that followed the great promises of the Atomic Era. Sadly, for a generation geared up to dream big, there would be no flying cars floating around anytime soon.
Nevertheless, many ventured into the risky business of divining what’s coming, some with insight, some spectacularly off, and others with a bit of both. Fortunately Berra, whose outstanding performance at his day job has eclipsed his talent to turn a simple interjection into a treatise of wit and charm, never did anything of the sort.
Back in 1900, when John Elfreth Watkins Jr. imagined ‘rays of invisible light’ allowing us to peek inside the body without having to cut it open, he was making an educated assumption. After all, science had just developed tools that did uncover a miniature world, previously invisible to the naked eye.
In comparison, George Hoyle‘s prediction, made some 70 years later, that everybody would be wearing jumpsuits by 2010, was almost embarrassingly wrong. But in all fairness, he did get lots of things right. And so did Bill Gates in 1995, when he envisioned people carrying computers in their pockets a mere 20 years ahead.

I IMAGINE, THEREFORE, I’M NOT BORED
What these no doubt visionaries were doing, though, was engaging in futurology, a rather guessing game, when one’s chances of catching lucky breaks are as likely as piling on a bunch of misses. Not without some irony, science fiction writers by far have always been the group with the better accuracy record than anybody else.
But even though Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and so many others got so much stuff right, many of which being already part of our daily lives, they’ve spoiled us all rot. That’s where our startlingly misguided resentment (more)
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Read Also:
* The Illustrated Man
* The Long Good Friday
* Not Human
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Polly & Meow

Kubrick’s Psychic Pet
& a Farewell to a Cat

Extra Sensory Perception, the supposedly ability of some people to be aware of things without the use of the their five senses, was one of the main themes of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 screen adaptation of Stephen King novel The Shinning. The director acknowledged as much when he spoke with French film critic Michel Ciment. And mentioned his own cat, Polly, to exemplify how he perceived the issue.
There’s nothing ESP about the death of 2-year-old Meow, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, cat who made headlines around the world because of his weight, a whooping 39 pounds. Despite efforts to trim it down by an animal shelter in Santa Fe, to where he was brought over after his human companion could no longer care for him, he passed away due to respiratory failure.
The yellow and white tabby managed to make a lasting impression after only one TV appearance, who knows why, unlike millions of fat animals and people we see everyday. He was not even the fattest either, a dubious honor bestowed to an Australian feline who died years ago. That was the last time the Guinness Book of Records accepted entries in this category.
A wise decision indeed, if at least to prevent unethical owners from deliberately overfeeding their pets. We’re not so sure about our own decision, of even making a post out of this non-event. But since people seem to have taken a liking of Meow, which is reflected in the outpouring of grief and support directed at the shelter where he lived his last days, we said, let’s go for it.
Even if we have to scratch the surface of, heaven forbid, the paranormal.
But if you are among those who consider The Shinning the best movie made out of King’s work, a sentiment not shared by the novel’s own author, then you too may be having a feeling of Deja Vu right now Continue reading →

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Checking In

Need a Hotel? Good
Luck Booking These

As vacation season in the north hemisphere approaches, many among the lucky are planning what to do and where to go. Some consider a trip to the Caribbean, while others may finally get to visit Uncle Bob who, since he’s moved to Alaska, no one has ever heard from. Gosh, he hasn’t even met the kids yet.
However you plan your time off, though, there are a few famous hangouts you’ll probably never get to sleep at: the Chelsea Hotel, in New York, and the Stanley Hotel, in Colorado, both celebrated in film and song, the Netherlands’ Divorce Hotel, and the fantasy-themed Balade de Gnomes, in Belgium.
The Chelsea Hotel, which is now operated by a chain and has lost much of its gritty appeal, was the home, temporary and permanent, of some of the most influential artists of the 20th century. You probably know the Stanley by its fictional name, the Overlook Hotel, made famous by Stephen King’s novel, and Stanley Kubrick’s movie, The Shinning.
If you think that none of these are appropriate to take the kids, the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Jim Halfens is even less so. Advertised Continue reading →

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Monolith, Isle & Star

Wood on Ice, Birth of an
Island & A New Sun Coming

Religion and scientific inquiry were bred out of our compulsion to explain the world. Whereas science challenges dogma and welcomes questioning, faith thrives when reason fails. Fortunately, neither is relevant at this moment. Or necessary when you’re having a laugh.
So when an Australian reporter came upon a piece of wood laying on top of an Antarctic iceberg, miles from nowhere, someone suggested it was a take on the black monolith Stanley Kubrick used in his “2001 – A Space Odissey” to illustrate mankind’s progress.
A coffin. A door to a magical world. Debris from a shipwreck. Or a rudimentary penguin surfboard were some of the theories Continue reading →

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Strange Love

Help! My Left Hand
Is Trying to Choke Me

If you think that the man who mistook his wife for a hat was out of his mind, you’ve got something else coming for you. Since 1908, scientists have recorded cases of people with one of their hands acting as if it has a mind of its own.
Take a 67-year-old man whose identity shall remain unknown, who was reported having a very special left hand that would do Continue reading →