Holiday robot choreography

SLYT:

Robotic sheep-shearing

No longer the realm of fiction (a la Wallace and Gromit's A Close Shave), there is now a frightening mechanized sheep-shearing robot/torture device. You can see a full, and unsettling, video of the process after the jump.

Gmail autopilot

As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.

I don't actually read and respond to all my messages, though I do maintain inbox zero, mostly by either replying right away or failing fast. I welcome Google Autopilot! -- an automatic system that can read and reply to my emails and gchats, leaving me free to bumble about in a non-electronic existence. This feature was created by CADIE, Google's new post-singularity intelligence.

From the FAQ:

What happens if a sender and recipient both have Autopilot on?

Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest.

BSG finale: wrap-up

I am disappointed that they didn't explain Thrace. Like, maybe the writers came up with half an hour of flashbacks to explain her. And then they thought, "Oh no! This finale is three hours long and we only have two hours of airtime! Let's cut this, we don't need it." So Thrace magically vanishes.

The fact that angels are real -- witness the 6 and Balthar angels, visible to Balthar and 6; also witness Thrace, apparently an angel and visible to everyone -- makes a strong case for the fact that the writers are in favor of monotheism, despite the pervasive polytheism throughout BSG.

Overall, I am satisfied. BSG was really excellent for the first ~2 years, and the last 4-5 episodes. The middle part was bad in the way that Lost is bad: lots of unexplained and badly-written stuff. How can the cylons be intelligent enough to engineer artificial biological life, but stupid enough to think that a virus can be transmitted via radio waves and the uploading/reincarnation process? I liked the internal consistency of the show, and of course I like robots. And Diplomacy-like tension, backstabbing, etc. The premise was excellent, and the execution was very good.

I would recommend this to others. Goodnight, sweet internet, goodnight.

BSG finale: commercial break 10

Many weird flashbacks. Were these really necessary to tie up the loose ends? Sure, Balthar's dad was a farmer, but... ok. Fine. Very poetic. Nicely overdubbed music.

Of course Hera is mitochondrial Eve. All of this has happened before.

I am glad that Aibo conducting an orchestra got to be the last robot word. Also that weirdly anthropomorphic female robot.

BSG finale: commercial break 9

Thrace is still unexplained. Where did she go?

After five years of dying, at last Laura is dead. Well, no one can say they didn't see it coming.

BSG finale: commercial break 8

The old man did get to fly the last viper off of Galactica. How satisfying.

So back when Kara was aimlessly jumping following her "gut" and painting all over her bunk, she could've been only minutes away from jumping straight to real Earth. Too bad they didn't trust her enough then. But somehow they did now, after much more crazy behavior.

The first thing they're going to teach the natives to make? R. thinks, booze. So that in thousands of years, we can all be alcoholics.

BSG finale: commercial break 7

"How is that possible? Human beings naturally evolved on a planet billions of light years away. The odds against that are astronomical." Yes they are. Listen to that gut feeling. This is not entirely satisfactory writing.

"Our brains have always outraced our hearts. Our science charges ahead. Our souls lag behind." Too rhetorical. I can't believe that. (Plus, it sounds like some theories I've heard of jetlag: waiting for your soul to catch up.)

Setting the centurions free? BAD IDEA. Sometime in my 30s our planet will be overrun with centurion descendants!

Why fly the ships into the sun? Now if the other group of cylons comes back, they have to defend themselves with sticks! Just leave them in orbit! For crying out loud! I guess it's ok because they're ending the program; otherwise, that would be the first episode of the next season.

BSG finale: commercial break 6

Data flow in the water? Sounds like electrocution. Before, 8 had to manually insert a cable into her arm to do data transfer! And of course the chief is angry about his wife's murder which was previously cast as a suicide. Of course. Why didn't they try to defuse that before mind-melding! A dramatic way to find out.

The chief gets the short end of every romantic stick. Sucks to be him. Cuckholded, betrayed by robots and humans alike. I feel bad for him. He honestly tries to do good.

Where are humans going to end up? Answer: present-day Earth. They already went to the UN earlier this week!

BSG finale: commercial break 5

Can the cylons control when they stop projecting? It seems like always being in the operahouse would be bad in the middle of a battle. Like, you can't see the bullets, because they aren't in the operahouse... but they can still kill you.

Also, man, it is dangerous to be a toddler in the middle of a gunfight.

All of the operahouse visions are coming true! This is so cool. Also, everyone, human and cylon and halvsies alike, can project into the operahouse. So maybe they are all cylons, as R. expects. The parallelism of the visions with reality is awesome. Very satisfyingly literary.

"Everyone in this room has experienced things they can't explain or fathom." Yes. The product of terrible writers. 13-year-old girls strike again! Bwa ha ha. Actually, this speech by Balthar in the CIC is a good justification for all his various roles and speechifying for the past five years.

This truce seems exactly like the last truce, where they got resurrection and human bodies in return for the cylons not eradicating humanity. But... this has all happened before. This will all happen again!

BSG finale: commercial break 3

"I suppose the more important question is, 'what am I doing here? what was I thinking?'" Maybe you should have thought of that before you signed up for a suicide mission, Balthar!

The cylon theme for hybrid-to-Sam connection. Mmmmm.

Oooh! Cool tactic! Jump from inside the ship to the other side of the colony. Neat-o. I do not think that Galactica is going to make it back from this... these space-tactics remind me of the first time I read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. Three-dimensional strategy is so complicated. I feel like my long life of playing board games hasn't prepared me adequately for when I jump into the future and have to help protect the human race from invading aliens. (Or robots we create ourselves.)

It is as I foretold: they are using Galactica as a ram. Nice. you'd think that they could have moved those poor guys who got skewered, but I guess not.

Boomer is crazy. Let's hope she stays reasonably sane and can keep Hera alive.

BSG finale: commercial break 2

Sam's getting plugged into Galactica's dreydus, etc. To interface with the other hybrids. And slow down their defensive response. This is the way that the cylons first attacked the colonies! Nice parallelism.

Why does scrolling red text have to be projected on the walls above Sam's tank? He can't see it. What's the point? (Also, cool rotating bed-in-a-tub. It's like a robot hamster wheel.)

Why is Balthar staying? R. suggests, "Maybe vanquishing the cylons, and the very survival of the human race, will depend on having sex with as many cylons as possible. Then he can be useful."

So far everything is in-line with my prophesy.

BSG finale: what I expect

There are a number of questions that require resolution in the next two hours. And some gaping plot holes that will take everything the newly-revived writers have to fix.

How were there two Thraces? (R. thinks that the twist ending will be that everyone is a cylon.)

What's with the cylon homeworld? It never came up before. Where did it come from? Why was it never mentioned? Why can't we all go live there?

Where do the humans go? They have to go somewhere, after all.

Hera had better serve as an important plot point for something more than her stem cells. (Relatedly: why can't we just cure cancer now? Why is it still even an issue? And on the subject of scientific questions that Balthar has already solved, why did they abandon the fully functional and accurate cylon test from season one?)

Sam is going to... wake up? It's pretty obvious that, since he's already wired into Galactica and all the plot points are set up, he is going to jump Galactica to the cylon fleet (or homeworld). And then I think that the "grand goodbye" the admiral has planned is that he's going to drive Galactica into the other fleet and crash it into their ships. This was foreseen in some recent episode, in shots of Hera playing with the tiny strategic ships they have in the CIC, and... driving Galactica into the other fleet and crashing it into their ships. This might be how Hera is important. She can see the future. Or something.

Boomer has to be explained? ... or it could just be left that she's a crazy flip-flopper.

More to come at commercial breaks. (Note: they're having the actors reflect on BSG as a life-changing experience. Best comment: everyone else is talking about love, friendships, and work experiences... Sam says, "It's great to be on BSG. Because chicks dig cylons.")

Geek alphabet

Having visited E. last weekend, I know that we will both be quite busy for the rest of the semester. But we might have some readers out there, and there are always RSS subscribers happily surprised by our eccentric posts. So, for the next n days, we'll be featuring a letter from the Geek Alphabet (don't click it! then these posts will be superfluous!), possibly with some commentary from fontes or efontes.
Via MetaFilter.

Office robots do "Fight Club"

Not. But didn't the title hook you?J. once told me that some kids at her high school tried to start a fight club, in imitation of the movie. This was conveyed in a tone of incredulity. Come to think of it, who would recreationally try to get beaten up? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And this is coming from a devoted rugby player. But at least rugby has points, and teams, and rules. (Well, fight club does have rules; the first one is, you don't talk about... oh. You are a moron.)

Valuable, important members of a team!

My office has no windows. I empathize with Bob.