Kung Fu Monkey: Lions Led by Donkeys: best Memorial Day post I’ve read in a while. Feel free to use as a litmus test as to whether someone really supports the troops.
Via Making Light: Absolute Write is gone: Go read and go help.
Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name– but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as “the uncanny valley”.
Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human “look” . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.
This chasm– the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis– represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness.
(Via Heidi MacDonald.)
Mark Klieman has an excellent question on the Enron verdicts:
Can Democrats in Congress to figure out a way to force a vote on demanding all the records relating to Lay’s participation in Cheney’s Energy Task Force?
I’d bet good money they can, or somebody else could.