August 19th, 2009 : Maybe recent epidemics such as swine flu have raised public concern… or maybe too many people are playing Left 4 Dead while commemorating Michael Jackson with excessive rounds of his Thriller video. Whatever the case may be, according to a handful of researchers, surviving a zombie apocalypse has become worthy of academic study and findings are looking pretty grim for humanity. A team of Canadian mathematicians from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University point out,
If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.
Their paper speculates that a city could be overrun in three or four days. I guess it’s time I took this seriously and picked up a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide or just get ready to admit defeat and sign up for an account at ZombieHarmony (because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely).
While I do appreciate zombie movies as much as anyone else, attempting to perform a serious study that uses a zombie model based on modern pop culture representations out of Dawn of the Dead seems as misguided as performing a vampire study based on findings from Twilight (gosh, what would you do if an Edward Cullen-esque vampire sparkled at you?!). On the other hand, actually getting paid to watch movies and play video games so you can write When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak Of Zombie Infection might not be such a bad gig after all and certaintly has a lot of blogs buzzing about it.
Now I had always known that Baloo and Little John were nearly the same character in Disney films The Jungle Book and Robin Hood respectively, but who knew that Disney recycled so many of their animation sequences and to such an extent? I watched these films many times without ever noticing but seeing the clips one after another is really wild! As one blogger commented, “Disney made one movie, and they’ve been tracing it ever since.” This may not be entirely shocking since other cartoons have done the same more blatantly, but I’d assumed that the major motion pictures were offering something new each time. No need if we don’t even pick up on it though.
Also related to Disney’s films, I’m fascinated by the experimental electronic tune called “Alice” which is composed almost entirely using sounds from the Alice in Wonderland movie. It’s a tad repetitious yet pleasant at the same time and has gained an impressive online following. Maybe this is thanks to the recent popularity of electronic music and our appreciation for reworked songs and videos. It seems like everything old becomes new again, especially with the internet’s vast treasure trove of resources.
The mp3 of this song is available at Pogo’s Last.fm Page.
Kacie Kinzer, student of the Tisch School of the Arts in NYC has been conducting an experiment using simplistic (and incredibly cute) robots called Tweenbots to determine how people will react to an inanimate object in need of assistance. Each Tweenbot is let loose, in a park for instance, with a destination written on a flag affixed to each bot. Since they only move forward and often run into obstacles, reaching this destination would be impossible without the kindness of strangers guiding them away from holes, fences, and other hazards in their pathway.
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination.
Quite the contrary occurred though, as many strangers took pity on the smiling little bots and redirected them. I would say that personally, I’d probably do so out of curiosity, but I also know all too well how attached I get to especially adorable stuffed toys so maybe empathy would play a part, no matter how ridiculous that may seem. 
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