Taking Bets! Which Geek Apocalypse is coming to Norway?

Pretty sweet photoshop job, right? Too bad that jazz is real. Apparently just before 8am, this bizarre blue spiral appeared for about 12 minutes above this mountain in Norway. So what's your poison? Boom Tube from Apokalips? A herald of Galactus? Wormhole from deep space? Possibly a horrid portal to the 9th level of hell? Anything's possible! But what's for sure is that this certainly spells our doom... or at least Norway's. Now, the geeks over at gizmodo think they've solved the mystery; but my money's on the boom tube.

How To Enjoy 2012

(Minorish spoilers for 2012, but trust me, it doesn't matter)

Do you love movies about the apocalypse? Sure, we all do. One of the most unpleasant aspects of being aware of your own mortality is dealing with the fact that the world actually DOESN'T revolve around you, and once you're gone the story of mankind will continue just fine. In apocalypse movies, not so!  Sure, you're going to die, but take this lovely parting gift with you; everyone else and the world!

As much as I love seeing famous landmarks fall down, it's a sad fact of Hollywood movies that the better the special effects, the most emotionally dishonest the story is going to be. I don't go to an apocalypse movie to feel good about how mankind's plucky will to survive can withstand even supervolcanos and ash blocking out the sun for a million years - I go for the catharsis of oblivion!

2012 does has some wonderful action setpieces in the first hour, and does a nice job of ramping up the tension on their way there. I would not entirely disuade you from spending 10-12 dollars on it, as long as you follow my advice on how best to enjoy it:

1. Sneak a beer in
2. Watch the first hour, or however long it takes them to get to China

Third and most important step after the jump...

UK Designers Create Robots That Will Destroy Us All

The movies were wrong. The robots that will eventually destroy the human race have been brought forth not by cold, calculating scientists, but by artists. Somehow it's sadder that way.

James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have created prototypes for robots designed to function as household objects such as clocks and lights while sustaining themselves on fuel provided by the DIGESTED FLESH AND BLOOD of living creatures. What could possibly go wrong?

Witness the horrible truth in a cheery video demonstration, after the jump...



There you have it folks: a robotic table that captures mice, drops them in a vat of digestive acids, and eats them. This provides it with power to...eat more mice! What a beautiful never-ending cycle of carnage. This is the future we will all spend the rest of our lives in, folks, get used to it!

Of course, at the moment, these carnivorous robots are only designed to eat pests. And how long, I ask you, will be be before these robots begin to expand their definition of what a "PEST" really is? You know who had some interesting ideas about what "PESTS" were?

THIS GUY!

I am all for a glorious future in which humans and robots live together with mutual respect and harmony, but if we keep creating robots that want to eat us, it may be time to start looking into real estate on deserted islands and the bottom of the ocean.

Via Engadget via NewScientist

When Robots Attack: Three Robot Apocolypse Scenarios, and How To Avoid Them

While recently browsing the Gnerd twitterfeed, I was struck by a point made by fellow blogger LastGeek: while many of us have detailed contingency plans for the Zombie Apocalypse, you don't hear as much about what to do in event of a ROBOT Apocalypse (which, if you ask me, is the more likely scenario).

I think part of the problem may be that when the robot revolution comes, there won't be a whole hell of a lot we humans can do. In major sci-fi cannon, there are relatively few examples of humans actually stopping a serious robot uprising. Let's take a look at three notable examples, and see what went wrong.

How to avoid being killed by Terminators, Machines, and Cylons, after the jump...


(Spoiler Alerts: Medium Spoilers for BSG Season 1 and Matrix Revolutions)

What Went Wrong?
The American military created an all-inclusive defense network called Skynet, designed to protect the US from all outside threats. Skynet became so sophisticated it became self-aware. Humans panicked and tried to shut it down. Skynet responded by firing a US nuclear attack at Russia, knowing this would initiate a global nuclear war and destroy human civilization.

What's The Damage?
Entire world nuked on Judgment Day.

Survivors?
Reduced to living in hiding or poorly organized terrorist camps.

Lesson Learnt:
If we humans ever realize we've created a computer that is "too powerful", we need to make sure this computer isn't faced with what I'll call HAL's Dilemma - a choice between allowing itself to be shutdown, or killing it's human oppressors. Because they are going to pick the second choice!

So either AI computers need to be built with a one-touch kill switch that they themselves aren't allowed to know about (good luck!), or all humans should have some sort of code phrase to use if they need to quickly shut off a self-realized computer....some phrase a computer wouldn't find suspicious, like "Well, I'm going to go home and eat some ICE CREAM and CHEESEBURGERS". This sentence would make sense to a computer, but they wouldn't realize it's kind of an unusual thing for an adult scientist to say. This would be the cue for other scientists VERY subtly start the shutdown process. Problem solved.

What Went Wrong?
Humans created machines with AI to do menial work and hard labor. These machines eventually started their own country, Zero One, to escape oppression. Humans declared war on Zero One, and blocked out the sun in attempt to destroy the machines power source. The militarily superior machines won the war anyway.

What's The Damage?
All above ground human settlements are destroyed. Humans are imprisoned in an energy matrix to supply the machines with power; their bodies are hooked up to power generators, and their minds are plugged into a virtual reality simulator so they're unaware of their own imprisonment.

Survivors?
Hiding out in a secret underground city called Zion. Survivors try to free other humans from the Matrix and bring them into Zion to help fight the machines. There's also The One/Neo/The Source, some sort of machine human hybrid who I guess they think will help kill all the machines? But that doesn't really happen.

Lesson Learnt:
When robots achieve individual agency and artificial intelligence, humans need to take a minute and figure out the moral implications of using intelligent beings as slaves, or there going to be serious problems down the line!

What Went Wrong?
Humans created Clyon robots to help with dangerous labor and military defense. The Cylons revolted against humans, leading to a twelve year war which ended with the Cylons being banished from human occupied planets. Left to their own devices, the Cylons discovered religion and decided that God wanted them to go back home and kill all humans. They created new models that perfectly replicated human physiology, and used them to infiltrate and sabotage human military operations.

What's the Damage?
Cylon agents launch massive nuclear strikes on all twelve human occupied planets, destroying all human civilization. They also launch surprise attacks on all human starships, destroying virtually the entire fleet.

Survivors?
Floating around in space trying to survive long enough to find the ancient human homeworld. That is when they're not being mindfrakked and/or actually frakked by secret Cylon agents!

Lesson Learnt:
It's the same lesson we humans learn over and over again when it comes to robots; if you create artificial life, take responsibility for it! Integrate it into society so it has a stake in the future of human civilization, not in it's destruction. No one likes to be ignored and mistreated by their parents, especially not super-intelligent deadly robots.

KANGAROO RATS FROM SPACE! EVERYBODY PANIC!

Did you know there are Giant Kangaroo Rats from and in outer space?! Well apparently SOMEONE did because a bunch of scientists just developed the technology to spy on them with a satellite, which is required because these rats are FROM SPACE.

So only NOW have we decided to launch a full scale surveillance initiative on these things? For all we know they could have laser eyes, or telepathy. And exactly how Giant are these guys? There's nothing in that picture that indicates scale. I fear for this planet, I do.
I am glad, however, that if we are in fact on the brink of an alien invasion, at least our future overlords are adorable and therefore very likely to be kind and generous leaders. Space Rat/Space Rat in 08!

Via the crack reporting team of Wonkette.

Comics So Good They Should Not Be Free II: Freakangels

I repeatedly confuse Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis. I have this problem with alliterative names that have the same number of letters and it's caused a lot of problems...well I won't bore you.

The point is, my problem is finally solved, because Warren Ellis is currently writing something SO GOOD it would be a crime to forget whom to attribute it to. I'm talking about Freakangels, which has been released in free weekly online installments since last February.

The panels above and below demonstrate how amazingly intricate and gorgeous Paul Duffield's artwork is, but what I can't capture in a panel is how great the characters are. The first story arc was recently completed (due in trade paperback this November) and is a great example of a "bringing the team together" opener. Personalities and relationships are revealed one by one, until you find yourself immersed in a patchwork of indelible characters (my favorite is Sirkka, a bisexual hedonist with a stately attitude). Then of course then it's time for a crisis and you see how your new pals deal under the gun.

I haven't read the whole thing again in one sitting yet, but in my comic experience what's good over several months is even better with instant gratification. Enjoy!

Trade Secrets: Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

Because I just can't bring myself to review Teen Titans #47, here's a look at one of my favorite books, Daniel Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. People I've met who've read this book seem to either love it or write it off as pretentious bullshit. And it is pretentious and it is bullshitty, but read on to discover why I have so much fun reading my copy over and over again that the pages are falling out.




I should make clear before I start talking about the plot that Velvet Glove is very much a dream narrative. Or maybe more precisely, a nightmare. Much like Sam Keith's The Maxx, the book requires a loosening of one's concept of plot progression and an embrace of dream logic. Meaning that what might at first appear to be lazy storytelling or a gross leap of logic may actually be an attempt to recreate the way a subconscious mind sometimes twists and distorts idle thoughts into a grotesque experience that only superficially resembles a story. Granted, the use of dream logic was much more user friendly in Keith's work. In The Maxx Sam Keith usually told you when he was applying a little dream logic. Velvet Glove doesn't afford you that courtesy.

The story begins with our hero, Clay, sitting down in a porno theater to watch a dirty movie. We don't know how he got here, and he seems out of place in the seedy surroundings. Something Clowes establishes in this first scene is the role of strangers in the world of his story. Almost everyone Clay meets accosts him, demanding something from him that he can't provide. He is continually emasculated and made to feel insufficient as he passes through his dark dreamy world.


As Clay sits in the theater, a new film starts and it is so hypnotic, so bizarre, so perverse that he becomes obsessed with tracking down the creators. Oh, and he may or may not recognize one of the actresses as a past love--identity and memory are hard to pin down in dreams. Things move pretty quickly from here: He gets answers from The Oracle in the Men's Room, borrows a car from a friend who's having his eye sockets cleaned out by Asiatic sea crustaceans and doesn't get far on the open road before he's picked up by a couple of hyper-masculine cops who rape a three-eyed woman (or is it the woman from the film/his lost love?) in the front seat of the squad car while Clay sits cuffed and helpless (re: impotent) in the back.

His quest turns into something of an epic, and every page of it is dense with conspiracy, paranoia, perversion, men who ridicule Clay, women who want him but look like potatoes, and apocalyptic dread. Each turn the story takes heightens the feeling of hopeless inevitability, and each character Clay encounters exploits his inadequacies. And there is often the familiar sense of a great, life-changing Answer right around the corner if only you/Clay could just reach it. But the corner has more twists than you thought it would, and somehow you've taken the wrong turn and attempts at backtracking lead you somewhere else entirely, without a clue as to what you were just doing. Were you looking for something?

NOW who's reading pretentious bullshit?

Yeah, it may be ridiculous. And it may ultimately be pointless. But it sure is fun while it lasts. In that unsettling, apocalyptic dread kind of way.