Look at this picture. Which one is the robot? Guess. This National Geographic article has the answer. Are you creeped out by lifelike robots? I'm mostly creeped out by the possibiities that a generation of nerds are going to be buying and abusing robots in their beds. Yuck. Oh, but the article also says this robot girl will 'block slaps". Maybe it will defend itself against even more unwanted advances? I hope with judo. This lifelike robot is part of a Japanese prototype robot expo. On that page there is one robot listed only as "Humanoid probe robot". I wonder what exactly that robot is but I'm not too eager to see a photo. Update: Here is a video of the robot (.asx - Windows Media Player required).

This is a good intro article on the current vogue in front projectors for movie watching. I was introduced to this by my brother who has had three generations of projectors. Then living with my roomie Kelvin we've gone through two projectors. My girlfriend Sarah was so impressed by it that she made me help her buy one earlier this month. The NYT article talks about the current popular sub-$2000 models and also screen options. The writer discusses the pros and cons of a projector as well (pros: cheaper and less intrusive than wall-sized TVs cons: requires light controlled room). This BenQ 7200 is the projector Sarah ended up buying.

The biggest surprise is that Kevin Spacey can sing and dance quite well in the role of 50s-60s music idol Bobby Darin. Also surprising is that he has a bit of verve and ambition in his direction. In the title role and behind the camera, Spacey puts a lot of pizzazz in this interesting but ultimately unwieldy biopic. With a musical and dance number every ten minutes, the action doesn't stop for much. However, Bobby Darin's story is told in a helter skelter fashion and an annoying gimmick involving a film-within-a-film format breaks the narrative more than once.

The real Bobby Darin is best known for post-bebop pop singles such as "Splish Splash" and "Dreamlover". But his most recognizable song was a riff on the Sinatra-styling (who Darin wanted to emulate): "Mack the Knife". Spacey's version of his life tries to integrate two major conflicts into Darin's personal life: his marriage to screen idol Sandra Dee and a startling revelation about his family background that is revealed later in the film. This is intertwined with the story of the rise and fall of Darin's career as he tried to straddle three different musical styles (teen pop - nightclub standards - folk).

"Beyond the Sea" disappeared in theatres when it was released late last year in time for Awards season. It's easy to see it now for its flaws. A disjointed narrative attempting to tie together a life and career wasn't made easier by a weird fantasy gimmick in which Bobby Darin relearns what is important about his life by trying to make a film about it. Occasionally, the actor playing his child-hood self pops in reminding him that time's up and he has to die. Okay, that is not entirely fair but it was jarring.

Beyond the flaws, however, "Beyond the Sea" is pretty fun on the surface level. Spacey is genuinely charming and is a presence on the stage and off. Darin's romance with Sandra Dee (played by Kate Bosworth) is photographed in brilliant primary colours. Impromptu dance numbers sprout on every corner. It's during these numbers that "Beyond the Sea" is charming, light entertainment. Just don't expect much more.

A couple in their sailboat tangled with a group of pirates off the Yemeni coast on the way to visit the ancient city of Petra. Although not armed, they managed to flee the pirates who were armed with AK47s when they abruptly turned their iron-hulled boat around and rammed their pursuers' wooden boat. Another sailor in a boat accompanying them used his shotgun to keep other pirates back before they escaped. I've always fantasized about tangling with pirates who usually are nothing but fishermen who hope to make some extra money by robbing refugees of their gold. If I was a multimillionaire I would probably equip my sailboat with a pretty big gun, maybe something like this deck-mounted 20mm cannon.
At the moment I am still finishing off a web contract, about to start another one, I am at the end of a distance computing course, I am learning how to script a module in Neverwinter Nights, I am plotting out a new screenplay which I hope to write during my vacation at the end of the month and I am selling the town house I used to own in Burnaby. At the very end of the month I am shooting a concert for my friends Fidgital during the Jazz Fest.

A San Francisco Chronicle article answers back to a recent spate of news reports (Macleans: "The Star Trek connection", LA Times: "A desperate hunt for a pedophile") suggesting a correlation between being a Star Trek fan and also being a pedophile. In "Is that a phaser in your pocket" Neva Chovin writes that the suggestion probably has more to do with the fact that anti- pedophile police are trolling for their suspects online and that most people who are online are nerds and most nerds have at some time been Star Trek fans. Read it here >>

In case anyone was wondering, the Liberal Loren Mayencourt won the final recount in my riding by seventeen votes. Now that's a hell of a mandate!

I keep reading this story over and over again. Yesterday, a New Brunswick man was picked up on suspicion of decapitating his neighbour and stabbing to death his neighbour's common-law wife but not until after he successfully crossed over the U.S.-Canadian border despite having in his possession a bloody chainsaw, a home-made sword, hatchet and brass knuckles. Also, check out his photo. Who would let him out of custody looking like that? A U.S. customs spokesman said: "Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up." Okay, we can expect a certain amount of incompetence from public officials but also, who would give him a ride to the border carrying that stuff (after fleeing Minto, NB, he allegedly hitchhiked to the border. And who knew that Minto had a country music hall of fame? I have a certain amount of sympathy for customs officials. I myself got back into Canada once without having valid ID and wearing a T-shirt promoting a certain Central American guerilla organization many years ago. An agent took me aside and after questioning me about my background decided I was just a harmless leftist-learning university student (which I was). Perhaps if I had thought about it, I might have at least carried my driver's license with me. More here >>

An Israeli inventor has designed a device that allows humans to extract oxygen from water by using a centrifuge to lower the presure on water allowing the oxygen to escape as a gas. More here >>

This is a hilarious article about a Yale economist who, over the course of several months, has introduced the concept of money to a handful of capuchin monkeys. As a result, these monkeys now know how to deal with price shocks and wealth shocks. They can only spend money on different foods but to a capuchin that's well worth it. In some experiments the researcher determined that his capuchins behaves in ways "statistically indistinguishable from most stock-market investors.'' (NY Times free membership required) Read it here >>

"Kanal" (1957)

Andrzej Wajda 's war movie about the desperate escape by a group of Polish resistance fighters through the sewers under Warsaw won the special jury prize at Cannes (sharing it with The Seventh Seal) for its unrelenting tone. That is an interesting pairing. Both films feature a small cast of characters on a journey that we know is a doomed one. Each has a stalwart leader in charge of a group of people whose individual journeys will end in nothing. It's how each ends their journey that is important. Kanal is more specific to its point in history whereas The Seventh Seal seems (to me at least) to be more mythical and universal.

For Polish audiences, Kanal tells one small story in the national tragedy which was the fall of Warsaw to the Nazi war machine before WWII became a world war. Warsaw stood for three weeks against the bombers and tanks with citizens fighting alongside the shattered regular army, fighting with small arms against the mechanized might of the Nazis.

In Kanal, a small group of fighters is ordered to withdraw from its embattled positions in the outskirts in order to make it back to "the Centre" (which I assume is the center of Warsaw). The fighters, men, women and a young boy among them, are willing to fight to the last but they submit to the orders. However, the only way back to the Centre is through a network of sewers and only one among them actually knows the sure way. No sooner have they descended into the sewer than they inevitably become separated and lost.

The final two-thirds of the movie follows the separate futile wanderings of each member of the squad as they take wrong turns, flounder through the shit and poisoned air in the tunnels, fight each other and gradually lose their humanity. As I watched the film I began to see comparisons with more recent horror and science fiction thriller films where desperate humanity seek to escape their doom and an unseen enemy. For example Cube, Aliens and Logan's Run. You could squint and imagine leathery aliens ambushing the Polish soldiers instead of Nazi stormtroopers. In the end, these parallels with contemporary film appealed to me the most.

When Kanal was first released, Polish authorities immediately banned it. It was too bleak. Suffice to say that the way each fighter meets their end is as important as their end itself. The theme to me seems to be that it was better that they died fighting together as a family rather than scrambling in a sewer, reduced to dying like rats for the promise of living.

I saw an older print of Kanal at the Pacific Cinematheque but Criterion has just released the trilogy of Andrzej Wajda's war films (Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, A Generation) on DVD.

A bit late I know but this is a great article written by Bob Woodward himself about how he came to know Mark Felt, the man we now know as Deep Throat and how they interacted throughout those momentous days when the Watergate affair dominated the news. Even if you don't care about Watergate, there is stuff in here that is excellent background material for a spy story ("How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat' ") . More here >>

I just finished a good book on the myth and reality of spycraft written by a former deputy director of the CIA, Frederick P. Hitz. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage is a short volume that is adapted from a series of university lectures given by Hitz in which he describes classic spy fiction (from Graham Greene to James Bond) and then describes how actual espionage is carried out. In his real-life examples he covers many of the most notorious Cold War incidents that are well-known in the espionage community including the Aldrich Ames affair to U.S. spies working inside the Iron Curtain. Each chapter covers a different aspect of fictional espionage (Counter-intelligence, assassination, spies and sex).

He doesn't entirely debunk any of the fictional aspects of spying. However, the reality of spying is shown to rely a lot upon human character. For example, most of the spies who had turned traitor on their own country had some fundamental character weakness or grudge that caused them to offer to pass secrets to their country's enemies. Robert P. Hanssen, for example, felt he had been passed over for promotion unfairly. Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky , a GRU Colonel, felt similarly that he was being kept down in the ranks of Soviet intelligence because of his father's White Russian roots.

If there is one weakness in Hitz' book it is when he applies his analysis to the events of September 11th. In one quick passage he claims that traditional spycraft cannot be applied to defeating terrorism, arguing that al Qaeda had complete operational discipline and thus could not be penetrated or its agents turned. In saying that he seems to fall into the easy dismissal of the threat of al Qaeda that many in the current American administration has, believing that the only way to foil further attacks is to strike against their sponsors conventionally. However, The 9/11 Report itself concluded that there were many points at which the hijacker's operation had already been detected and its membership often argued and showed cracks. Here is another review by the CIA themselves of the book >>

After dozens of controversial incidents including one in which a six year old was subdued with the electric stun gun, schools around the U.S. are not restricting the use of them by police officers responding to unruliness. The President of Taser International has said that Tasers have been medically proven to be safe for use on children. More here >>