Day: November 19, 2009

Thanks to Megan Seling at Seattle's rocking alternative weekly, The Stranger, for bringing this to my attention. No matter how tired you might be from hearing Arcade Fire's debut Album Funeral in every coffee and hipster resale shop, buck up and listen to it again performed by a the Seattle Rock Orchestra:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUtuxk2OJF8

Megan notes:

I wish the video could do it justice—to have been there in person, sitting just a row or two away from the mess of instruments, getting the perfect mix, and hearing every subtle shift of dynamics in each song... it was amazing.

The Seattle Rock Orchestra is going to do this again in February, when they celebrate the work of David Bowie.

If you dig this then be sure to 'fan' the SRG on their Facebook page: Seattle Rock Orchestra.

Source: The Seattle Rock Orchestra Does the Arcade Fire | Line Out | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper.

I learned recently there's no standard accepted definition for the term 'robot'. Is it anything automated to repeat the same function, must it be autonomous, can it be self-powered, must it change location or be self-guided? Does it require sentience to be a robot, or is that a cyborg? If we made it (versus it regenerating or procreating itself) does that mean it's a robot?

If theres a continuum between 'us' and 'them' where on that line is the Donut Maker Robot II, and how far away from Toasters and Cylons would it be?

• Man Spoke Only Klingon to His Son for Three Years [Star Trek]

  d'Armond Speers isn't really a huge Star Trek fan. The reason he spoke only in Klingon during his son's first three years of life was to learn about the language acquisition process. Yeah, sure. What a petaQ.

  Yes, I think That Speers is such a horrid person that I had to learn how to say so in Klingon from our intern Don. It just baffles me that Speers actually sounds genuinely proud of his personal pseudo-academic project:

  I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language. He was definitely starting to learn it."

  It's great that he wanted to see how languages are picked up, but did he not think that there's potential that he hindered his son's social development by keeping focus away from a real language? I'm all for teaching foreign languages early on, but lets make it ones that are spoken on this planet, please. [Citypages viaGeekologie]

  Photo by Star Wars Blog, probably not d'Armond Speers.

  
  

  

  

Digest powered by RSS Digest