My Japanese ranging from non-existent to the merely serviceable when faced with the ordering of raw fish, I’ll defer my summation of this to PinkTentacle:

According to this NTV news report, the life-sized humanoid robot was developed as a realistic training aid for medical workers.  In addition to sporting a suit of human-like skin, the robot sweats, convulses, moans, cries tears, and exhibits symptoms not unlike a real human patient infected with the H1N1 virus.  If the robot does not receive the proper treatment, the symptoms gradually worsen until it stops breathing.

Reuters video is carrying the English version of the story.  To watch its unembeddable footage, click here.

 
(via Pink Tentacle)

 
Etsy seller lovedtodeath:

This is a OOAK piece of anthropomorphic taxidermy art. It is made with genuine taxidermy squirrel parts that have been professionally preserved. She is in a custom made wooden box with beautifully gold and red flocked Victorian decorated walls. She is clutching her golden heart (genuine preserved squirrel heart in 24K gold gilding), “Her Hearts Best Treasure”. Her dress is trimmed in fur and she is wearing a ruby heart pendant on a gold chain necklace. Atop her head is her rhinestone crown. On the wall hangs a framed painting of her beloved family. The floor is rich black velvet and the ceiling is painted gold with black Victorian accents.

 
Squirrel Queen Victoria can be yours for $495.00.

 
“Let law enforcement determine if it’s a threat…and let the experts decide.”  Earlier this week, I made note of the security cameras popping up all over Kabul.  Today, though, brings news that suggests the surveillance impulse is just as alive and well here in Los Angeles.  The below clip is from iWATCH, the LAPD’s:

community awareness program created to educate the public about behaviors and activities that may have a connection to terrorism.  This program is a community program to help your neighborhood stay safe from terrorist activities.  It is a partnership between your community and the Los Angeles Police Department.  We can and must work together to prevent terrorist attacks.

A noble aim, true, but must the campaign come off sounding—and looking—so creepy?  I’m not sure what’s more desperately transparent here: the pandering to youth culture with that lowercase “i,” or the PSA’s carefully calibrated casting?

I mean, do people not watch these things and realize that each and every one of these “LA voices” is an actor who, to land the gig, underwent a rigorous audition process?  A process that, at some point, probably hinged on how “threatening” their own ethnicity might be perceived?  And not to read too much into one PSA, but isn’t it odd that the more gratuitous close-ups belong most frequently to those of the white guys?

 
I know the LED false eyelash craze is sorta old news. However, I’ve never seen the video of the eyelashes in action.

LED Eyelash is a clever product that speaks to many Asian women?

 

 

 

 
Korean artist and photographer Gwon Osang builds his lightweight sculptures by taking hundreds of photographs of his subjects. Gwon Osang discusses his sculptures:

I began with photographs to make lightweight sculpture. I first made a chisel for wood and then stone. Following that I finished a work titled An Obsessive Report on Power (p. ), which consisted of an arm to symbolize material and the power to control it. I had created these because they were elements that I felt I lacked. Though I linked sculpture to photography, I think I was more interested in photography at the time.

In fact, it was people in photography who first responded to my work and at the time photography was more influential. I took full advantage of photography’s merits, not least of which was the ease of changing the object’s size. And I was fascinated by the commonality between film negatives and the plaster mold. This has helped me make the human body in all its different and often distorted forms.

Gwon Osang
 
(via accidental mysteries)

Executive Koala is a Japanese movie from 2006 which stars a typical salaryman… typical in every way except that he is actually a giant koala. After a girlfriend is murdered, he descends into a world of psychosis marked by increasingly violent fantasies where his koala-rage is given full expression, and in which his only hope are a giant frog and a giant rabbit.

It’s well twisted. See trailer below:

 
Trailer for Swedish “battle of the bands” zaniness from 1967. Looks like a wacky low budget hybrid of A Hard Day’s Night and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
 

 
Timothy Francis Leary was born on this day in 1920. Leary lived one of the most out-sized lives in all of human history and his story is the story of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant psychologist, philosopher, author and of course, the man who turned on the world with LSD.
 
Was Leary a great man? He was too complicated to be called a great man, but he was a great revolutionary. Nixon called him the “most dangerous man in America” and Leary most certainly lived up to that description. It’s been said of historical figures, especially controversial ones, that it takes 100 years after their deaths before history can properly judge them. If you divorce Leary the man (a charming Irish con man, basically) from the vast cultural changes he and other hippie leaders ushered in and all of the doors they broke down for future generations to live freer, more fulfilled lives, you’ll get a better perspective on how important of a character he was. He is a pivotal figure of the greatest era of social change in history, a spiritual revolutionary in the most profound sense.
 

 
Bonus clips:
 
Timothy Leary meets Cheech and Chong and Pee-wee Herman!
 
Timothy Leary in Folsom Prison

 
The tech blogs have been abuzz for the last few days about Google’s new music service, which apparently will be powered by LaLa. The service is due to be officially announced on Oct. 18th at an event in Hollywood. So far the media has been mostly uncritical although it’s difficult to see why.

LaLa? Really? How underwhelming.

With Spotify, the peer-to-peer streaming service currently available in Spain, the UK, France, Sweden, Norway and Finland, and reportedly launching in the U.S. before the end of the year, the likely question in the minds of many tech watchers is “Why didn’t Google just buy Spotify?” Spotify is the gold standard of music apps. Picture iTunes—the user interface is very, very similar—except that it’s free and streaming, you need only listen to a 15- to 30-second commercial once every half-hour. There is also a pay variant of the service with no commercial interruptions and improved sound quality, although the free version will certainly suffice for most listeners.

Spotify, in a word, is awesome. Many Spotify users are reportedly even giving up illegal music downloads as a result of using the service. I set up a Spotify account via a UK proxy server earlier this year and was quite impressed at the streaming audio quality, ease of use and the absolutely massive song library. When their server finally detected I was outside of their operating countries after two blissful weeks and cut me off cold turkey, I wanted to cry. Does it have everything? Well, Spotify does lack the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but for the most part it’s pretty hard to stump, as even the most obscure performers are usually pretty well represented in its library.

LaLa on the other hand, has simply not become all that popular with the public and the catalog isn’t that deep. Just because a LaLa result comes up in a Google search hardly seems like a recipe for success. Like Rhapsody, Pandora and Last.fm and the other streaming services, LaLa never really caught on with consumers in a big way. Sure the Google deal (Facebook, iLike and MySpace are reportedly along for the ride in some capacity too) won’t hurt the company, but it’s difficult to fathom why Google didn’t look into partnering the superior service, especially if the company will be competing against Spotify in the U.S. market within a matter of months anyway and with Microsoft set to launch what has been whispered of as their “Spotify killer” as well.

Among the mostly neutral chatter, snarky UK tech blog The Register had this to say:

Hyped overnight as a Google ‘Music Service’, what we see instead is set to be the most underwhelming launch in a long history of label-backed music flops. It’s barely a ‘service’ - merely a sorry widget that yokes a DRM-crippled version of LaLa’s already unpopular streaming offering with unsold Adwords inventory.

Instead of a text ad, a search for a music related keyword will show a widget. This allows you to listen to the song, according to Business Week - but only once. After that you pay to hear the stream at 10c a play. (You can also buy the song.)

Don’t all rush at once.

Cross posting this at Brand X

Image from Techcrunch

 
DutchByDesign presents the 144-thread-count Home Duvet Cover King:

The Home Duvet lets you sleep under a cardboard box so a homeless person doesn’t have to!  This high quality duvet cover features a photographic print of a cardboard box. This produces an extremely sharp image that stays flexible because the ink is printed directly in the cotton. The image will stay crisp after frequent washing.  The duvet cover is produced in Pakistan and child labour is not used.

Indignation levels starting to rise?  Consider this: 30% of the gross profits go to Centrepoint, the UK charity for homeless young people.  The Duvet Cover King is currently on back-order, but, later this month, DBD plans to release a second print that looks like pavement.

(via Shelterpop, via HuffPo)