Yes, it’s true, Volkswagen has finally realized exactly what its target market wants: dogs barking the Imperial Theme from the Star Wars movies. In a piece of viral marketing so brilliant it’s annoying — even above and beyond how annoying it is to hear dogs barking familiar classics — two beloved companies (Volkswagen and Lucasfilm) have proven themselves to be consummate media whores, shamelessly offering consumers a “double” for the price of nothing. Only, as you probably know, when real whores offer a double, they usually take precautions against viruses, especially if it’s a freebie. Here, I’m left infected with a viral earworm that is as incurable as it is adorable.

Of course, anything involving animals online, no matter how cute, inspires accusations of animal cruelty. It generates some bizarrely incoherent comments:

One illustrative comment:

would you please tell me why it is cruel to make a dog bark?

Its response:

Because my dad always makes puppy go loud. I mean loudest before he cooks them…. do you have problemo???

Wow, people rock! In case you’re one of those (apparently many) people worried that these pooches have been hooked up to some insidious device that makes them bark on command with a certain pitch, uhhhh…no. The footage is created by clever audio looping, not animal experimentation…just like the world’s most annoying Christmas recording, of dogs barking “Jingle Bells.”

There’s also the obligatory “responses” — from people who videotaped their dogs’ responses to the Imperial Theme video. It’s almost as if Volkswagen and Lucasfilm knew that consumers would take over their work for them.

Well played, Herr Vader. Well played.

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The three 5ft-high (1.5m) robots involved in the prison trial have been developed by the Asian Forum for Corrections, a South Korean group of researchers who specialise in criminality and prison policies.

It said the robots move on four wheels and are equipped with cameras and other sensors that allow them to detect risky behaviour such as violence and suicide.

Prof Lee Baik-Chu, of Kyonggi University, who led the design process, said the robots would alert human guards if they discovered a problem.

“As we’re almost done with creating its key operating system, we are now working on refining its details to make it look more friendly to inmates,” the professor told the Yonhap news agency.

[Link.]

Because that’s what you want…a “friendly” robotic prison guard with a huge baton and a can of pepper spray. The trial, which will cost half a million pounds Sterling, is just part of a nearly half-billion dollar investment that South Korea’s Ministry of Knowledge Economy has spent on robotic research from 2002-2010.

Relatively few people realize that robotic and artificial intelligence technology is already heavily deployed in the military sector. Those clever American drones deployed with Hellfire missiles are controlled by humans with joysticks, yes…but there’s a certain amount of onboard intelligence, because otherwise the communications lag time would make the drones un-flyable. Getting back to Korea, the BBC story cites “Samsung Techwin’s sale of a robotic surveillance system to Algeria and shipments of the humanoid Hubo robot to six universities in the US.” And while we’re talking about prison wardens and robot hunter-killers, let’s get creepy:

The South Korean defence company DoDAAM is also developing robotic gun turrets for export which can be programmed to open fire automatically.

Within the country English-speaking robotic teaching assistants are already being deployed in some schools to help children to practise their pronunciation.

The Joongang Daily newspaper reported in August that a company called Showbo had begun mass producing a robot that bowed to shop customers and told them about promotions on offer.

Other firms say they hope to start selling robots to help care for the elderly before the end of the decade, and personal assistant robots further down the line.

The government is also building a Robot Land theme park in the north-west city of Incheon to help highlight the country’s success. Planners say they hope 2.8 million people will visit each year.

[Link.]

Guess what? The 22nd Century called. It wants you to send jobs. I’m all for having as much robotic fun as possible, but in the context of mass unemployment, it’s hard for me to get excited about robo-development. And if these robo-boogie-ing wiseacres are going to be operating gun turrets and monitoring my nation’s borders? Sorry, kids. I think I just had a John Connor moment.

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In case you’ve never seen an octopus walking on land, this video will remedy that fact.

The octopus show above at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, California, is trying — as one of the commenters cleverly puts it — to get to “Octopi Wall Street.” Doh!!

Along the way, it inexplicably drops off a crab, whether by accident or as a gift to its new human friends, I’m not quite sure.

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Ars Technica has a piece about this Wednesday’s planned nationwide panic. The fear is that the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System will have people thinking it’s a real emergency — and since it’ll happen just a day after the close approach by asteroid 2005 YU55, a bit of a panic wouldn’t surprise me.

In a piece titled Feds try to prevent War of the Worlds-style panic over national emergency alert, it gets me scratching my head over how this stuff is actually supposed to work in a world where certain people, say, me, get all our information via internet, not through any kind of broadcast or cable.

This Wednesday, November 9, at 2 pm eastern standard time, every TV broadcaster, cable channel, radio station, and satellite radio program from Puerto Rico to Missouri to American Samoa will be interrupted for 30 seconds by the federal government. Don’t panic—there’s no nuclear strike. But if there were a nuclear strike, this is how the feds would spread the word.

It’s the first-ever nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS), which hopes to provide key information immediately to all Americans in the event of a truly national emergency. This national system will look and sound much like the current (and local) emergency warnings often seen on TV or heard on radio, but the scope is larger and it can be put under the direct control of the President. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Weather Service (NWS) will all coordinate the test, but it’s FEMA that actually transmits the alert code.

…But not to worry! Though such warning messages might look terrifyingly real, they will eventually feature an audio message explaining that this is just a test. The government is still concerned that hearing-impaired users, in particular, might mistake the test for a real alert. The FCC has produced a series of brief ads to notify people about the test, and cable operators have taken to warning people about it on their monthly cable bills (which everyone reads, right?).

[Link.]

I guess the idea is that if it were a real emergency, somebody somewhere would be watching TV and would post about it on Facebook, huh? Hope it’s someone I know…

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Photo from Ogopogomonster.com

Ogopogo or Naitaka (from the Salish language for “lake demon”) is a lake monster reported in British Colombia’s Okanagan lake since the time of the First Nations. Reported most commonly as something like a sea serpent, it doesn’t have the characteristic “plesiosaur” style body reported in Nessie sightings. Ogopogo has been investigated by the likes of Karl Shuker, who wrote The Beasts That Hide from Man, who suggested that most Ogopogo sightings may be misidentification of creatures like otters and inanimate items like logs. The best film of Ogopogo was shot in 1968 by a guy named Art Folden, becoming the infamous “Folden Film.”

The Vancouver Sun (via MSNBC) reports that visitor Richard Huls says he’s captured video of Ogopogo, which you can view right here. I warn you, though…it’s pretty disappointing. It’s not even really a wake of any kind…it looks to me like a current or something. How it made the news, I haven’t the foggiest idea.

Other Ogopogo videos on YouTube, like this one, are more of the same — something under the water, maybe, but who knows what? Nothing to see here.

From MSNBC’s story:

A man visiting British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan last week claims to have captured video of Ogopogo, Canada’s version of the Loch Ness Monster.

According to a report in the Vancouver Sun, “An Okanagan man has video he says proves the Ogopogo may be more than just a figment of our imagination. Richard Huls says he always believed in the possibility of the monster rumored to be living in Okanagan Lake. Last Thursday, while visiting a West Kelowna winery, Huls shot video that he believes proves something does indeed live in the water. ‘It was not going with the waves,’ Huls said. ‘It was not a wave obviously, just a darker color. The size and the fact that they were not parallel with the waves made me think it had to be something else.”

Ogopogo, some believe, has its roots in native Canadian Indian legends that told of a beast called N’ha-a-itk that would demand a live sacrifice from travelers for safe passage across Lake Okanagan. Hundreds of years ago, whenever Indians would venture into the lake, they brought chickens or other small animals to kill and drop into the water to assure a protected journey. It’s clear, however, that these stories were not referring to a literal lake monster but instead to a legendary water spirit, and are not historical evidence for Ogopogo.

…So what exactly did Huls record? The video quality is poor, and the camera is shaky, so it’s hard to tell what the object is, or even if it’s moving. But a closer look at the 30-second video reveals that, instead of one long object, there are actually two shorter ones, and they seem to be floating next to each other at slightly different angles. There are no humps, nor head, nor form; only two long, darkish, more or less straight forms that appear to be a few dozen feet long. Perhaps not coincidentally, Lake Okanagan has tens of thousands of logs harvested by the timber industry floating just under the lake’s surface.

[Link.]

I gotta hand it to MSNBC, they’ve got cojones. Calling Ogopogo “Canada’s Loch Ness Monster” is a dangerous enterprise. You might piss off the Lake Ontario super-snake.

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In a WhiteHouse.gov post entitled Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet, Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy provides the official White House response to two citizen petitions concerning the government’s knowledge of alien visitations. The first, signed by 5,387 citizens, insists that the U.S. government “Immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communication with extraterrestrial beings“:

This Petition calls for the President to disclose to the American people the long withheld knowledge of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings and call for open Congressional hearings to allow the people to become aware of this subject through those whose voices have been silenced by unconstitutional secrecy oaths.

[Link.]

The second petition, signed by 12,078 people, asks that the government “Formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race-Disclosure” (yes, it’s got a “disclosure” just tacked on there at the end):

We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.

Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence. Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.

[Link.]

Together, they got a response this past week:

Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet
By Phil Larson

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.

However, that doesn’t mean the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth. Here are a few examples:
SETI—the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence—was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI’s main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.
Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in Earth orbit that’s main goal is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the “Goldilocks” zone of a distant solar system—not too hot and not too cold—and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.

The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover’s onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.

A last point: Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.

Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved.

But that’s all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.

[Link.]

If that doesn’t satisfy you, you’re almost guaranteed not to be alone.

After all, if this cover-up’s been going on ever since the 1952 Washington Flap — or since Mulder’s Dad screwed over some sailor from an alien-infested submarine — then you can rest assured that a couple of online petitions aren’t going to convince the Illuminati to unlock the vaults of knowledge and open the doors of perception. But they might make aliens Facebook famous!

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Dressed in a Sasquatch suit, Leslie Hensley lurks about on the branches of a sprawling tree in the middle of Golden Gate Park. Suddenly without warning, she darts behind a group of joggers on the Stow Lake trail. One runner bursts in laughter just before the life-size, furry creature vanishes behind another tree. “I like playing with people – not in a sadistic way, but genuinely I have a desire to engage with people in a very playful manner,” said Hensley, who runs a participatory art project in the Inner Richmond called Frankenart Mart. She designed the space as a place for people to make art without rules or judgment. Every three months, she creates a new theme and invites the community to participate. “I kind of think of this whole thing as a collaboration,” she said. The current theme, “Outside In,” inspired her to make the Bigfoot suit. It was initially intended for visitors to try on for themselves, but it mostly hung lifeless in the front of the Frankenart Mart storefront. So she decided to push the concept. “I think Bigfoot is kind of a wish for magic in a lot of ways. A wish for the unknown,” she said. “We’ve conquered this world so much that there is not a lot left that’s magical.”

[Link.]

There’s also a slideshow here.

You may recall that earlier this year, a guy named Jonathan Doyle engaged in similar Bigfoot-suit hijinx in a New Hampshire’s Mount Monadnock State Park, filming himself surprising hikers. He got shut down when park officials demanded he pay for a $100 permit and get $2 million of insurance before he could videotape his second sequence. Last I heard, he was suing the State of New Hampshire with the assistance of the ACLU.

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Leave it to the snarky kids over at Some Ecards to lay a beatdown on Google Plus and Netflix for Halloween. Yes, they have more.

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That is to say, Baum specializes in foreclosures.

Last fall, as the financial crises deepened and more and more families were ejected from their homes by the likes of Baum, the firm threw a Halloween bash in which employees dressed up as homeless people, complete with shopping carts and signs advertising their “excuses” as to why they shouldn’t be foreclosed on.

Hilarious, huh? I know, I laughed so hard I think I urinated all over myself, or maybe that was just the guy who lives in the alley near my apartment building, trying to take a whiz in public without getting targeted by police snipers! Well, never you worry, I (allegedly) suspect that the Baum firm had its share of white-trash debutantes, honkeys in blackface and geisha girls as well as their LOLZY renditions of pathetic families with small children forced to camp on the sidewalk because of Baum’s allegedly predatory foreclosure practices.

I just hope between slugging back non-biodegradable plastic cups of single-malt Scotch and munching on $40 plates of orange-and-black cookies, puff-pastry hors d’oeuvres and (allegedly) fridge-scented canapes, the firm’s employees had a chance to congratulate each other for not being homeless! I mean, they say that most families in America are just one paycheck away from homelesness, but you know what I think? I think any family that lets itself get foreclosed on by an (allegedly) fast-talking law firm that (allegedly) doesn’t give a shit about morals or ethics is sort of like a protester in Bahrain: fucked, sure, but thank God it’s not us!! I love my job, don’t you?!?!?

Well, since the we-own-houses, we-have-jobs, we’re-oh-so-special club is even smaller this year than last, nobody seems to have a sense of humor anymore.

It seems like America might be, you know, newly sensitive to the plight of the homeless, some of whom got that way through the tireless social activism of the Steven J. Baum Law Firm.

That’s why Baum sure is lucky that nobody took any incriminating pictures last year, aren’t they? I mean…those pics could really wipe a turd on those crab cakes they’re (allegedly) planning to serve at this year’s party, couldn’t they — if, say, they were distributed by a former employee and published in the New York Times, right? Am I right?

You’re right! Or rather, Joe Nocera is right:

Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.

A second picture shows a coffin with a picture of a woman whose eyes have been cut out. A sign on the coffin reads: “Rest in Peace. Crazy Susie.” The reference is to Susan Chana Lask, a lawyer who had filed a class-action suit against Steven J. Baum — and had posted a YouTube video denouncing the firm’s foreclosure practices. “She was a thorn in their side,” said my source.

A third photograph shows a corner of Baum’s office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed homes. Another shows a sign that reads, “Baum Estates” — needless to say, it’s also full of foreclosed houses. Most of the other pictures show either mock homeless camps or mock foreclosure signs — or both. My source told me that not every Baum department used the party to make fun of the troubled homeowners they made their living suing. But some clearly did. The adjective she’d used when she sent them to me — “appalling” — struck me as exactly right.

These pictures are hardly the first piece of evidence that the Baum firm treats homeowners shabbily — or that it uses dubious legal practices to do so. It is under investigation by the New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. It recently agreed to pay $2 million to resolve an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether the firm had “filed misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts in New York.” (In the press release announcing the settlement, Baum acknowledged only that “it occasionally made inadvertent errors.”)
[Link.]

My fellow Americans, take a moment to shed a tear for the poor, poor hardworking souls of the Steven J. Baum firm in Buffalo, New York. They’ve had a rough year, those (allegedly) hardworking Americans who, between trips to the water cooler and lengthy tangles with McDonald’s-fueled bowel obstructions in the toilet stalls while reading Better Homes and Gardens, ruin other peoples’ lives and then laugh their asses off about it.

These are the hardworking Americans that the likes of Occupy Wall Street (allegedly) want to put out of work.

And the Big Man himself knows his babies did a bad bad thing, according to The Buffalo News:

The head of the firm, Steven J. Baum, said in a statement to The Buffalo News on Saturday that the photos “obviously were in poor taste.”

“On behalf of the firm, I sincerely apologize for what happened last year at our Halloween party,” he said.

Baum said the firm had its Halloween party last week at its various locations, “and we reiterated our company policy as it pertains to wearing appropriate costumes. No one is permitted to wear a costume that could be interpreted as being offensive.”

Baum said this year’s party raised money for the American Red Cross, and he mentioned other fundraising efforts his firm is involved in.

The ex-employee told Nocera that not all Baum departments used the 2010 party to mock homeowners facing foreclosure.

[Link.]

So have some pity on Mr. Baum’s employees…because times are tough! Money is tight! And everywhere, people are cutting back on expenses! That might even include a few law firm employees, right?

So is it too much to hope that some of Baum’s employees might have saved their costumes from last year, and recycled them for this year’s second-verse-same-as-the-first? I mean, they can’t all have been flush enough to afford whole new costumes as suicide bombers and gangsta rappers, right? Is it too much to hope that there was a hobo or two, and maybe a one-legged Iraq vet with flesh-eating bacteria, and a crying tear-gassed Oakland protester, and maybe a bankruptcy victim dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound (hilarious!) at Baum’s party this year?

And that even now, those photos might be winging their way to the likes of Mr. Nocera at the New York Times?

If so, I’d just hate to see those hardworking foreclosure commandos, you know, lose their jobs over it or anything.

Then they might have to recycle those costumes for use in the real world.

And my guess is…it wouldn’t seem very funny.

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That’s when you’ll need I’m Getting Arrested.

Here’s how it works: Before you go to a protest, you program your Android smartphone with the cell phone numbers of your contacts — or, presumably, a Tweet-enabled email address or your Tumbelog. Just before the cuffs go on, you hit the panic button on your I’m Getting Arrested ap:

Alert your lawyer, loved ones, etc … that you are being arrested with a click.

I’m Getting Arrested enables anyone, with one click, to broadcast a custom message to SMS numbers in the event they are arrested.

Very easy to setup and operate. Instructions under help menu.

Inspired by a real Occupy Wall Street incident. Free to the other 99%.

[Link.]

Yes, it’s released with the Occupy Wall Street in mind, but it can go a lot further than that. It currently supports Arabic, Basque, Catalan, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, and the developers say they’re seeking volunteers to translate it into other languages.

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