Person Pinball, A Stop-Motion Pinball Game Using Pedestrians

Person Pinball - 2011 Animation Block Party 'Outro' video, posted by Mark Frauenfelder on boingboing, Aug 2, 2011. Video link via laughing squid. This short stop-motion animation by Aaron Hughes was the outro video for the 8th Annual Animation Block Party in New York City. Thanks and a hat tip to Robert Remez for sharing this with us.

Wall Art

A small selection of my photographs is on display, for the month of August, at Cafe George by Paula, 300 George Street, New Haven, during normal business hours (M-F, until 3 PM). This group of photos is part of the "Wall Art" book project that is still in development and focuses on photographs of painted buildings. The photo shown here is a detail of a piece called Demolition and Sport by Peter Busa (1914-1985). The piece was painted on the exterior of the old Minnesota Varnishes building on the east side of downtown Minneapolis in 1974 and updated in 1982. This is one of the first monumental outdoor murals in the state of Minnesota. The buildings on this location are currently part of the Valspar Coporation, the sixth largest painting and coatings company in the world. The photo was taken by Philip Rubin on October 19, 2005.

Facial Recognition System Causes Problems for Mass. Drivers

Facial recognition systems are starting to appear everywhere. All of the tech giants are staking out turf, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (click on each for a different recent news item). ieee spectrum has a recent (July 25, 2011) story by Robert Charette, called "Here's Looking at You, and You, and You ..." about some of the problems resulting from one of the first examples of use of such systems on a large scale. The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is one of approximately 35 states using automated anti-terrorism facial recognition systems. One of the big problems is the false positives, and the individual's "burden" to clear his or her name when mistakes are made. Read the story to learn more.

High-stakes forensic linguistics

The wonderful Language Log blog has had some excellent recent discussion of the use of forensic linguistic to determine authorship, stylistics, etc. The original entry, "High-stakes forensic linguistics," July 25, 2011, by Mark Liberman, framed the discussion around the legal battle over ownership of Facebook (also discussed by Ben Zimmer, NY Times Sunday Review, July 23, 2011, "Decoding Your E-Mail Personality"). As Mark pointed out, it was nice to see comments on the Language Log story by Ron Butters, Larry Solan, and Carole Chaski. A follow-up entry on July 27, 2011, "Authors vs. Speakers: A Tale of Two Subfields," provides some historical context related to forensic speaker identification.

Why brains get creeped out by androids

And speaking of the brain, WIRED SCIENCE has a small story by Mark Brown that reports on a study thats attempt to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to help understand the "uncanny valley" effect. This is a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori related to reports that as androids become more human in appearance there is a purported drop in "likeability" on the part of human observers. The study, led by Ayse Pinar Saygin of the University of California, San Diego, was an attempt to explore the underlying brain bases of this phenomenon. Check out the WIRED SCIENCE article to learn more. As usual, results like these appear to be much too preliminary to be more than speculation or amusement for the tech media and those that follow them, such as the IS Group blog and me.

Kurzweil still doesn't understand the brain

PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, writing in his blog Pharyngula (Aug. 21, 2010) criticizes Ray Kurzweil and other futurists for their speculations on our ability to understand how the brain works. Kurzweil had responded to an earlier blog entry by Myers (Aug. 17, 2010) called "Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain." (Thanks to RSC for reminding of this debate, which is related to other IS Group blog entries on the singularity, neuroscience and related matters.)

The Space Shuttle: the end of an era

After 30 years, the US Space Shuttle program has ended. Here are some articles on the program:

• CBS News: Never forget the miracle and promise of space
• Neil deGrasse Tyson reflects on the space shuttle program, 1981-2011
• The end of an era: what the space shuttle means to Engadget
• NASA STST-135 Launch and Landing
• LA Times video: Final landing of NASA's space shuttle program

Image above: With space shuttle Atlantis in the background, the STS-135 astronauts are welcomed home from the final space shuttle mission. They are, from left, Mission Specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus, Pilot Doug Hurley and Commander Chris Ferguson. Image credit: NASA.