Month: June 2004
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The Uncanny Valley: Issues in Computer Animation
The film Simone was a comedy about a computer-generated actress, but a live actress was used to play the part of the artificial. There was much speculation on this decision, from budget costs to Screen Actors Guild concerns influencing the decision, but the real answer was obvious. A computer-generated actress would scare the audience away.…
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Futurism: Scientific Prophecy
In the Old Testament’s book of Deuteronomy, God lays out a very simple method for determining if someone is a false prophet: Does what they predict come true? Science predicts that if you smoke, you are more likely to get cancer. Science predicts that the Earth will take 365.25 days to revolve around the sun.…
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The Commute
Spring Route 17 is a winding single lane road that spans the sixty-three miles between my home and work. The great Dismal Swamp lays to one side of it and endless farmland on the other. There’s a sign as you head south into North Carolina. It reads, “Warning: 25 People have died on this road…
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Scientism 2.0
What does all of this add up to? All of these observations of the world around us. All of these hypotheses we draw out of them. The ways we test these hypothesis, through experimentation and disputation. The theories that emerge from the Scientific Process. The Free Market of Ideas. Peer reviews. Egalitarianism. Pluralism. Predicting the…