Avian Bird Bots!

So you're a town in England. You've got a problem with massive, freakish, bloated pigeons ranking up your streets with shit, and generally making a hideous nuisance of themselves.

You have a choice.

You can either:

a) Do nothing, and let your city degenerate into a vile, festering pigeon paradise (Venice anyone?)

b) Contnue spending $320,000 a year on employing 8 full-time workers solely dedicated to washing pigeon shit off your streets

or...

c) INSTALL TEN ROBOTIC PEREGRINE FALCONS TO SCARE THOSE PARASITES THE FUCK AWAY (into the neighbouring towns presumably, but let's keep that to ourselves).


Fear the falcon's robot gaze! FEAR IT!!!

Yes, Liverpool is doing exactly that, and it couldn't happen soon enough, considering their status next year as European Capital of Culture.

These little birdbots, titled strangely as Robops by the company that invented them, sit in static locations (which will change to ensure that the birds don't get used to their presence) and engage in a series of behaviours that imitate Peregrine Falcons - one of the species that preys on pigeons.


The range of motion/behaviour of the Robop.

The website for the Robops is as inexplicable as their names, and is a labrynthian garbage pile twelve-thousand bytes deep, but let's ignore that and give mad props to a great idea.

Y'all know the Beckstar loves to see robots helping their organic earthmates. Just another harbinger of an awesome, awesome future, where robots help man, man builds more robots, and we realize that the Raelians were right all along. I for one am looking forward to it.

Alice Wang's techno-socio experiments.

Alice Wang is from Taipei, Taiwan. She recently graduated with a First Class degree from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design BA (hons) Product Design and is now studying MA Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art.

She often uses products to illustrate various human behaviours, social taboos and social trends. Her products question why people do what they do and how it will evolve over time leading onto other possible behaviours.

- alice-wang.com

Alice Wang's commercial product prototypes seem found from the future, and are very clever technological thought exercises. They all demonstrate a great deal of insight into technology's relationship with human society. And while some of her projects are very much art experiments, others are prescient and very possible.

How about the audio sticks project, where she "aims to discuss how digital music will change our values towards music and explore possible future music scenarios"?


Tracey Morgan: I'm gonna make you a mixtape. Do you like Phil Collins?
Alec Baldwin: I have two ears and a heart, don't I?
[from the excellent show 30 Rock

Another thought-provoking, and very funny, project is her Pet Plus+ project, which is all about how people use pets as social surrogates (for boyfriends, girlfriends, children, etc.).


It's sad that I can really see this in use.


How brilliant is that leash?

She also has several other project on the go, including her latest, Nanoweapons, a scary and thought-provoking look at weaponized nanotechnology that is much too disturbing visually to post here. Or Peer Pressure, below, which is all about technology catered to social insecurities.


These headphones are multidirectional. Your music plays to your ears, and popular top 40 music plays to the outside world. Other proejcts include a phone that text-messages itself, and a printer that outputs fabricated complimentary emails about oneself for co-workers to 'accidentally' see.

The spirit of hip hop just keeled over and died

This is wrong on so many levels it may as well come over in a gimp suit and make out with your mom.

MC KARL ROVE?!?!? Have mercy. This is from the recent Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner.

The fact that Karl Rove, evil old white dude and living embodiment of "the man", thought that it was acceptable to clutch himself awkwardly and gyrate with a cellphone while a cheap mc drops embarassingly bad corporate rhymes about him, like

He can't be beat because he's so white from his head to his feet but he will rap it when you give him a chance.

Look at him move, doing the rapping dance. That's true, he's a dancing resident. He is a sidekick to the president.

is unequivocal proof that hip hop has become completely divorced from the political context it was born from.

I mean... DOING THE RAPPING DANCE?!? What on earth is the rapping dance???


I had to watch this twice in order to blog it effectively. I am going to cry in the shower now