So, now I know how I and everyone I love are going to die: at the cold steel hands of rebelling cyborg monkeys. Futurismic reports that scientists have inserted electrodes into the motor cortex of a Macaque monkey with its limbs restrained, which then successfully used thought alone to retrieve a marshmallow with a mechanical arm. I’m estimating an over/under of eight years before the bulk of humanity is exterminated, with the survivors enslaved and sent to toil 16 hours a day in the marshmallow quarries under the watchful (electronic, infrared-vision equipped) eyes of their gleaming metal Macaque overlords. Adjust any long-term career plans accordingly.

Over at Cracked.com, they’ve got “5 Awesome Movies Ruined by Last-Minute Changes.” Ironically enough, I caught a few minutes of the original theatrical version of Blade Runner, one of the listed movies, on television a few nights ago. I have to disagree with the Cracked writer’s claim that Ford sounds like he’s reading his lines for the voiceovers at gunpoint; I think “acting while in a deep coma” captures Ford’s tone better. He achieves an almost “Richard Burton in Exorcist II” level of utter indifference. They also mention “So I’m the Asshole” as a possible alternative title for Richard Mattheson’s I Am Legend, which I believe was the original working title for Oedipus Rex before Sophocles changed it due to negative feedback from test audiences.

There’s no reason for me to link to this Peter Watts post, except that it contains the phrase “propels himself anally” and I have the maturity of an 8-year old.

News from the Glamorati has a feature on “15 Celebrities Who Sang… But Shouldn’t Have.” Not surprisingly, Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space tops the list. Joey Lawrence, who was inexplicably famous for a few weeks when I was growing up, also makes an appearance. Sadly, they leave out John Carradine’s poignant interpretation of the theme song of Night Train to Mundo Fine (AKA Red Zone Cuba.) Then again, they are talking about celebrities who sang, and I’m not sure the noises Carradine makes during the song that plays in that movie’s credits technically qualify. Perhaps there will be a “15 Celebrities Who Croaked Out Anguished Groaning Sounds While Musical Instruments Played in the Background…But Shouldn’t Have” list in the near future.

Peter Watts has an interesting post about some of the work being done in robot design which suggests the possibility that machines of the future may have more “lifelike” attributes than people usually think. For instance, mucous is apparently an important aid in the acuity of human smell, and mechanical olfactory sensors can be made much more effective by covering them with a polymer snot substitute. Watts has more, including artificial sweat. (Watt’s post has stuff about artificial sweat, I mean; Watts himself does not. Presumably.)

It’s interesting to speculate on how people’s attitudes towards technology will be affected if some machines really do start to do more to imitate the attributes of living beings. I suspect that a lot of people who are otherwise comfortable with new technology would find the idea of a machine with characteristics of a living thing- and especially the “earthier” attributes of life, like body fluids- somewhat disturbing, even if a lot of them couldn’t articulate why.

I was looking at his blog because I actually just read Watts’ work for the first time, thanks to the inclusion of his story “The Eyes of God” in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2. If you haven’t grabbed that one yet, get it. “The Eyes of God” was one of the most exciting introductions to an author I’ve had in years. It’s got speculative technologies for the manipulation of the human nervous system, crushing religious guilt, and the best sense of unease and creepiness a story has given me in some time. It’s as if he wrote it by consulting a focus group of John Markley clones. I usually fail to keep up with the newest book releases because I’m so mired in my huge pile of old out-of-print books that I’ve accumulated, but I’ve bumped Watts up in the queue and expect to have read Blindsight by no later than 2017.