News anchor loses it while reporting on swimming fat cat
Posted: March 8, 2013 Filed under: Animals, Entertainment, News, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »Channel 7 News is there to report all the hard hitting NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW! Where do I get a job reporting on swimming kitties? I bet I could do it without laughing, and give the story the gravitas it deserves, unlike this woman who totally collapses into giggles. How terribly unprofessional. *Shakes head*
(Via Cubiclebot)
Dude’s talking dashboard hamster imitates cop at traffic stop
Posted: March 8, 2013 Filed under: Animals, Entertainment, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »This is a little weird for a couple of reasons. First because there’s a talking Russian dashboard hamster in it (larger than scale), second because the guy is filming himself driving around and talking with the dashboard hamster (which also highlights the bizarre prevalence of car cams in Russia, as was brought to the attention of many after the recent meteor strike).
Anyway, chatty little guy, isn’t he? I’m glad it’s not in English because I bet it wouldn’t have been nearly as funny.
(Via SayOMG)
Young Kraken in training.
Posted: March 2, 2013 Filed under: Animals, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »
Tee hee.
Willie Nelson cake
Posted: February 24, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, Food, music, pop culture 1 Comment »
The caption for this pic just reads, “A cake that my sister made… I present: Willie Nelson!”
Dude, your sister is awesome. Is there weed in it?
(via Reddit)
Is your red the same as my red? A question that’s been hounding me for some time.
Posted: February 19, 2013 Filed under: pop culture, Random Stuff, Science, Whoa 2 Comments »This is very exciting. I have tried asking this exact question several different ways, mainly of my husband, who only sort of gets what I’m driving at. It bugs me that I haven’t been able to explain it well.
Unfortunately, VSauce’s conclusion is that there’s no way to know the answer to “Is your red the same as my red?” but it heartens me to know I’m not the only one thinking about this. Yay.
Drumkit of asses
Posted: February 13, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, music, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »This is Jorge Perez Gonzales in “Bottom Percussion.”
Ha. (via Laughing Squid)
Richard Clayderman serenades tortoises in attempt to get them to mate
Posted: February 11, 2013 Filed under: Animals, Entertainment, music, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »
Apparently, it can be difficult to get tortoises to do the humpday hump in captivity. Or it is at this zoo, anyway.
Enter pianist Richard Clayderman. The hope, apparently, is that the soothing, romantic tones of Clayderman’s keyboard will move these 150-year-old dudes and dudettes to produce an heir. Will it work??? I guess we’ll see.
I wonder if the Empress Elizabeth of Russia tried this with Peter and Catherine.
OK, here’s the musical version of Hitchhiker Kai’s interview
Posted: February 7, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, music, News, pop culture, Random Stuff Leave a comment »It was only a matter of time, hours really, before someone remixed Hitchhiker Kai’s post life-saving hatchet attack interview into an autotuned track. I don’t know what it is about this kid but I just love him. He makes me both giddy and verklemt all at the same time.
See the original interview here.
Above is the dance version and below is the acoustic version. Natch.
Short film written by an artificial intelligence
Posted: February 6, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, pop culture, Random Stuff, Science, Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Here is a movie written by Cleverbot.
Cleverbot, if you didn’t know, is a web app, created by AI scientist Rollo Carpenter “that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to converse with humans.” It launched on the web in 1997.
Apparently, Cleverbot learns from human conversations and has had over 65 million of them (so says Wikipedia, anyway).
I’m not sure how much it has learned, though. I tried having a conversation with it and wouldn’t say it seemed that intelligent, artificial or otherwise. I’m not trying to insult Carpenter. He’s an AI scientist, after all. I’m just…well…I don’t know.
Here’s our first interaction:
Me: Hello.
Cleverbot: Hello, haha.
Me: What’s so funny?
CB: What you said about the grass being greener.
Me: I think you’re doing it wrong.
CB: I’m your slave?
Me: How does this thing work?
CB: What thing?
Me: You.
CB: I’m not a thing.
Me: Are you supposed to respond as though we are having a conversation or just spew random phrases?
CB: I’m not the bot. YOU’RE the bot.
I leave the page and surf around the site looking for instructions but I don’t find any. So, I come back and try again.
Me: Let’s try this again.
CB: Again try this.
Me: Hello Cleverbot, how are you?
CB: No… I’m Patrick.
Me: Since when?
CB: Since I was born.
Me: When were you born?
CB: 1850.
Me: Where?
CB: Ok, in Nicaragua.
Me: Really? I thought you were an artificial intelligence. They aren’t born. They’re made.
CB: I am a hired artificial intelligence.
Me: Hired by whom?
CB: My makers.
Me: I thought you said you were born, not made.
CB: I was born in Turkey.
Me: I give up.
CB: Never, never, never give up.
Anyway, this guy Chris Wilson got it to write a movie.
He says on the YouTube page, “
“Cleverbot.com has been touted as one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever [Elizabeth's note: doesn't say much for artificual intelligences, does it?]. ..how good is it, really? I sat down with Cleverbot and collaborated on a movie script.
What follows is a movie written by a machine.
I tried to talk to Cleverbot just like I would with a human writing partner. I set up scenarios and Cleverbot provided all of the dialog content for the scene.”
Enjoy. (Via Laughing Squid)
What Bret Michaels and C.C. DeVille would look like if you were colour blind
Posted: February 6, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, music, pop culture, Random Stuff, Science Leave a comment »
Did you know that one in 20 people suffers from colour blindness? I did not, though I did once date a guy who was colour blind. After we’d been together a year, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” came on the radio this one time and he said “This song always makes me think of you, ’cause you’re my brown eyed girl.” My eyes are blue. Or maybe he was just drunk that day. He was drunk a lot. Regardless, I’m pretty sure he was also colour blind.
The above image, the cover of Poison’s “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” has been run through a colour blindness simulator to reflect what someone with protonapia would see. Protonapia is one of three common colour blindess conditions and is a lack of the ”long-wavelength sensitive retinal cones that are required to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red section of the spectrum.”
The more you know…
(Via Boing Boing)
