nostromo

Boing Boing directs our attention to the Nigerian graphic design student named Bolaiji Badejo who was cast as H R Giger’s aggressive Alien after being spotted in a public house in London by one of the film’s scouts. Visit Boing Boing for the full interview and more about this accidental actor, including a rather surreal screen test for director Ridley Scott, whose uncelebrated and one-off performance launched a franchise and left an iconic legacy.

33⅓

The brilliance that is Dangerous Minds invites us to indulge what has to be one of the most convoluted and esoteric 9/11 conspiracy theories out there, holding that the a cabal of the masonic orders used the album cover art of Supertramp’s 1979 release of “Breakfast in America” to reveal and prepare society for an engineered event that would take place twenty two years later.
Such “predictive programming” is the mainstay of the puppet-masters who’ll leave devious clues (that are only woefully apparent in hind-sight) to outline their forward-planning. Studying the cover, it becomes painfully obvious how the view from the airplane window with the mysterious reversal of the band’s name is to be a subliminal message—a nine and an eleven, and Libby the Waitress posing as the Statue of Liberty suddenly turns sinister. Check out the link above for more intriguing details and an addled entreaty from the original truth-seekers.

warp pipes

When I got stuck in Saint Louis during a blizzard years and years ago, I remember inquiring at one of the ticket counters where I might arrange a taxi ride into town to do some exploring until the inclement weather let up.
They discouraged me taking a taxi and told me to just take the “Rapid” or “Raptor” (not hearing properly) and pointed me to the terminal. I figured out this was a light rail metro quickly, but was not sure what to expect, perhaps that flying pterodactyl airliner that the Flintstones had. These delightful mass transit maps of American and Canadian cities by Dave Delisle re-imagined as the levels of Super Mario Brothers 2 reminded me of that introduction to Saint Louis (although being just a straight line from the airport and the suburbs into downtown, probably would not be conducive to the same treatment but who knows, perhaps Yoshi could shuttle visitors and commuters down that path).  Check out more maps at the link above, via Neatorama.

linnaean gardens

Though there a lot of bootstrap applications and gadgets that are quite clever ideas and things we would hope worked as advertised, I suspect there’s no small measure of magical-thinking bundled in with some of the magic wands in our quiver.
We’ve forgotten what “as seen on t.v.” or “sold in Europe for years” means nowadays. This one platform, featured on Mental Floss, however, shows promise to deliver: an application that helps budding botanists and landscapers identify a plant by taking a picture of its flowers or leaves. A consortium of French research institutions have put facial recognition algorithms to a more benign and beknighted use and even invites users to improve their results with feedback and further field work. One can find this free app and more information at the top link above.

snakes and ladders

In 1971, a company decided it might be a good idea to release a Monopoly-style board game knock-off called Beat the Border, reports Dangerous Minds. The objective of trafficking in the game was far less fraught with danger and intrigues—and less rewarding, although one’s friendly neighbourhood pusher was careful to put out the disclaimer that it was all in good fun and reinforce the message that drugs are bad and the “dope” peddled was left up to imagination—though handy conversion charts were included. In these times, rather than exploring one’s hidden fantasies of being the head of a Mexican drug cartel—which does not strike me as particularly wholesome family-fun for the 1970s, in the same rather vicious spirit, I detect “Run for the Border” to be a new gladiatorial reality television franchise for the presidential-pretender.

vertical monopoly or bad robot

As with the footage showing the reaction of a robotic dog’s encounter with a biological one, we tend to cheer for the underdog and focus on the abusive human obstacle.
What strikes me, however, with a tinge of anxiety is how the machine adapts to warehouse architecture and shows promise for acquiring a new skill faster than its creators could anticipate. While we look to distribution centres as employment boons for the communities that courted them with tax-breaks and other incentives, I think a lot of workers could quickly be made redundant with tireless, unwhinging sentries patrolling the corridors (or even redesigning them totally in more efficient configurations that we can’t understand) and filling orders. Many jurisdictions are counting on such job-security.  What do you think? No matter what one’s job is, I think the economic effects would creep upwards. Would a warehouse android be potentially as disruptive as having a fleet of driverless trucks for the livelihoods of families or are we being neo-luddites with our trepidation?

baud or random-access memory

Back in August of 1991, two astronauts sent the first email from a shuttle mission, via the AppleLink platform and a prototype “portable” Macintosh—weighing in at seven kilograms and boasting 256 kilobytes of Read-Only Memory. Since that first correspondence, astronauts on later flights and aboard the International Space Station have been equipped with email and internet capabilities—and now wireless networks that connect to the Earth at speeds comparable to high-end domestic telephony. Go to the story from The Atlantic to see an appreciation of this momentous dispatch, plus some bonus footage of a floppy disk being ejected in micro-gravity.