Author Archives: Andrew

Kung Fu Hustle

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[“Kung Fu Hustle” poster art]Violent, but funny.

Go see it—unless you feel squeemish at watching people kick seven shades of shit out of each other for an hour and a half.

It’s a bit like watching a live-action Tom & Jerry, but with fewer frying pans and pianos… and in which some of the characters die messily. Mixed in with the usual kung fu/gangster/Western conventions, filtered through with a trickle of Animé and The Matrix.

Like The Matrix Reloaded, there are huge fights and lots of black suits, white shirts and ties… and some obvious computer animation, but unlike The Matrix Reloaded, the artificiality is somewhat endearing. It’s a cartoon knockabout and it doesn’t really matter that you can tell which bits are CG.

Quite a touching ending, but a bit of an odd moral angle. In the world of Kung Fu Hustle godliness is next to fighting ability and there is honour in ultraviolence. That made me uncomfortable.

Batman Begins

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[“Batman Begins” poster art]Topping. Go see it.

Batman Begins: A film which attempts to answer the age-old question “Just how believably serious is it possible to make old-school, underpants-atop-tights superhero Batman while still keeping him Batman?”

And the answer seems to be “holy expunged clichés, Batman, pretty darn believably serious.”
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Scientists construct artificial brain II

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The last time scientists decided to build an artificial brain, of course, they ended up with big boxes with flashing lights, whirring reels of tape… and enough processing power to count up to about 7.

Not that I’m complaining of course. The ‘electronic brains’ of 1960s turned into the almost-useful computers of today. And how would I waste time at work without computers?

This time, however, the high-foreheaded boffins, in thick glasses and lab coats really, really mean it. Chaps at IBM are actually attempting to build a simulation of a human brain, from the molecular level up:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7470

They say that they will be able to feed it visual stimulus and observe its reaction… which sounds a little callous when one is talking about a simulated human.

I mean, basically they’re talking about creating a live brain in a virtual jar. It’s very cool, but kinda creepy.

Estimated time to project completion: 10 years. Given that the next version of the Sony playstation already has a dedicated ‘volleyball’ processor to simulate the dynamics of women’s breasts, I figure that the video game industry is already working on simulated people, albeit from another direction, and as they’re better funded than IBM; they stand a good chance of beating them to the punch.

Now where did I put the lightning conductor and amniotic fluid?