chanson

I fucking hate this "holiday." It seems as though it was designed to make those of us who aren't in relationships feel awful in proportion to how long we've been alone.

But that doesn't mean he's not onto something.

Scott Adams, The End of Humanity (The Dilbert Blog):

They say that many technologies owe their existence to sex. Porn drove the cost of VCRs down, for example. And porn was the early fuel for the growth of the Internet. I see one more area where this phenomenon is likely to repeat: robots.

Have you heard about the company that’s making realistic life-sized sex dolls? They cost up to $10,000. I haven’t seen one in person (really, I haven’t) but they reportedly weigh as much as a real person and are eerily lifelike.

I've said since the late 1990s — ever since I first learned of them, really — that the first fully ambulatory, fully interactive androids would come from RealDoll or a company creating something similar. And though I had seen Cherry 2000 at the time, it was well before I'd even heard of Chobits. (Note for anyone who cares — very minor spoilers follow.)

Chobits depicts fairly well what a world where might wind up looking like — especially in the book-within-the-book A City With No People. The route it takes is a bit more circuitous than just sex robots, however; the robots in it are personal computers that are more personal assistants that eventually become the centers of their users' lives.

Not like that would ever happen. No way, no how...

People sometimes suggest that I should go to church if I want to meet women. Some people even say I should go despite not being superstitious. But I've sometimes wondered — what should stop me from getting into the superstition racket myself?

So, are there any how-to guides or handbooks I could read that would help me get started, come up with a convincing messianic narrative, grow my initial flock of believers, and so on?

I'm thinking of something like Edward Luttwak's Coup d'Etat (1979, Harvard University Press) but for superstitious movements. Surely somebody who's done it has taken notes and turned them into a how-to guide.

jwz, Groupware Bad:

"How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

I like to think of this as the fundamental theorem of social software.

A contest! Of course! (Girls with Slingshots)

I will only be in my twenties for one more month!