Paper Jewels

I’m probably joining a very big bandwagon here, but I don’t care - they need to find a way to let Vermontasaurus live.

You’ve probably heard about it, but if not, here’s the short form: Brian Boland, a gentleman in Vermont, decided to turn a bunch of trash, scrap lumber, discarded broken ladders, and you name it, into a… well, a dinosaur-ish creature. This was apparently a spontaneous idea, and a fun one, and the stuff was just trash and junk, and he (and a bunch of volunteers) made - Ta Da - Vermontasaurus:

Vermontasaurus, The Only One Of His Kind

And they - the guvmint, the revooners, the permit people, the Official Nameless Ones, are probably going to make him tear it down. It’s probably a fire hazard, or somebody might stab themselves on a rusty nail, or maybe kids will god forbid play on it.

Yes, kids should probably stay off it. And I guess they have to think about the fire thing - although the ‘raw materials’ trash was allowed to collect, and nobody hollered about it. But either way, dammit, this is Art, or at least Fresh Air, this was spontaneous or so we’re told, and it’s fun. At a time when we could use a little of that - well we always need fun, truly - but right now? with all the bad news out there? Come on.

Let the Vermontasaurus live.

Woo hoo! I don’t know details yet but it doesn’t matter - we’ve rescued Captain Phillips!
Check out Drudge Report or Yahoo News.

Back to our regular programming shortly

I would say “I’ve seen it all now” but I’m totally not going down that road. Still, this one made me laugh. I was bumbling around this morning, looking at this and that, first cup of coffee, have to Get Moving in a Minute, and stumbled on this:
Star Trek: perfumes. Really.

And they have one named “Red Shirt”. They have named a perfume after all the poor suckers who died! I mean, it’s funny and all, but… please explain the marketing strategy to me. Why would some committee somewhere think that is a winning strategy?

I got a chuckle out of this whole thing, mostly, but… Red Shirts? Maybe I’m just missing the point?

I just saw a revised mention of the article I talked about earlier. Now it says that the university (in Amsterdam I think? I’m hurrying so not sure right now) - anyway, the people who developed the “intelligent programs” have a robot working with their programs.

They named the robot Adam. And they have already made a second robot. Named Eve.

Insert Twilight Zone music here.

Wow. Just saw an article from Reuters that says some scientists are developing “robots (computers anyway) that can think”.

Of course that’s an oversimplification designed to get headlines, but it does say that programs have been developed that can reason and create hypotheses, determine and then check results. It’s on a baby scale so far but still… wow.

Talk about a double-edged sword. The article talks about how these programs could “take over much of the routine work in research laboratories”. This would be terrific for efficiency (and probably cost-savings). It could also lead to, well, all those computers-take-over-the-world-scenarios that SF has loved for years.

“Terminator”, anyone?

I was so tickled to learn that the Obamas (or somebody on their team, I guess) have decided that it’s a good idea to do some organic gardening at their new house This is the kind of thing that’s only a symbol, I suppose, but it’s a pretty terrific symbol.

Together with a bunch of school kids (I know, I know, what a photo op) Mrs. Obama’s going to start an organic garden at the White House. Read more about it here and here.

And somebody’s got a sense of humor about it (photo mock-up courtesy of Eat The View).