Every time I try to put away my obsession with the uncanny valley, some new robot or robot-story invades my world and reanimates that fascination all over again. Regular readers of this blog will know that I first became interested in robotocist Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley back in October of 2010, when…
Read MoreRight out of the gate, 2010 looked to be a very promising pop culture year. Back in January, at one of the early American Idol auditions, we were introduced to aspiring contestant General Larry Platt, who regaled the judges with his seemingly-improvised yet totally-infectious original composition “Pants on the Ground.” Before America’s favorite non-plussed judge…
Read MoreYou may not recognize the reference in the title to this post above . It’s a reference to the the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a.k.a., “The Logical-Philosophical Treatise”), the only book ever written by eminently influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Tractatus consists of seven philosophical propositions, the seventh of which reads:Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must…
Read MoreLet me begin by illuminating the obvious: we live in a gossip-obsessed culture. You don’t even have to make all that much of an effort to find yourself more intimately familiar with the very personal details of celebrities, politicians, athletes and other real(ity) pop-culture figures’ lives than you are with those of your own friends…
Read MoreJust recently, I re-watched the 1981 film Arthur (starring Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli and John Gielgud), a film that I would probably place in my top-5 Funniest Films Ever. I was prompted to re-visit the film after hearing that a remake is in the works, starring Russell Brand and Helen Mirren. In the original, Dudley…
Read MoreEveryone knows that there are millions of hilarious YouTube videos out there, probably as many as there are YouTube videos featuring cute kids doing cute things. I don’t usually post either on this blog, because all the good ones “go viral” and get seen by everyone anyway. In fact, I’ve only used up my blog-space…
Read MoreThe much-ballyhooed “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”— brainchild of America’s Ironists-in-Chief Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert— came and went this past Saturday in Washington, DC. Although the crowd-count estimates vary (as they always do), most put the number at somewhere between 200,000 and a quarter-million attendees. (TRANSLATION: For Midwesterners, that’s somewhere between the total…
Read MoreI made a brief mention in my last uncanny valley post about the difference between “real” music, by which I mean music played on actual (i.e. “real,” material or physical) musical instruments by musicians (i.e. human beings with some skill on those instruments, availing themselves of said instruments without superadded technological assistance) on the one…
Read MoreOver the course of the last year or so, I’ve written several posts about the “uncanny valley” on this blog. The theory of the uncanny valley is loosely based on Freud’s account of Das Unheimliche (the “uncanny”), a major trope of psychoanalytic theory and a favorite play-thing of literary, film and cultural theorists who borrow…
Read MoreI’ve tried to refrain from commenting here upon the complete train-wreck that is (“surprise” Senate primary winner from Delaware) Christine O’Donnell, but a self-respecting political blogger can only be reasonably expected to hold out for so long. We’re all aware of the catalog of crazy things that have somehow made their way out of Christine…
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