time travel, parallel universes, and other useful illusions
We’re only a week into 2019, and already we’ve seen two pretty amazing events in space exploration: New Horizons’ visit to Ultima Thule, and China’s landing on the far side of the Moon.
You know, it’s all fun and games until you burn your own house down trying to defeat vampires. Or shoot someone because you think they’re Bigfoot. A few days ago, news hit out of Daytona Beach that a Florida man had burned his house down while trying to fend off hallucinatory vampires. According to Local …
Continue reading “When the Paranormal Goes Wrong: Vampires, Bigfoot And Witchcraft Edition”
In 1984, The Terminator promised me a robot apocalypse circa 2029. And yet, we haven’t quite reached our inevitable obliteration via some Skynet-esque artificial intelligence.
“What are your commands?” asks the spherical robot as it floats through space. Inch by little inch, we’re getting closer to the futures dreamt up in science fiction. In this video, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst introduces us to Cimon, a robot created to assist astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
China’s Xinhua News Agency, alongside the Chinese search engine Sogou.com, have revealed what they call the “world’s first artificial intelligence news anchor.” Its appearance, facial expressions, and voice were modeled after the real news anchor Zhang Zhao, using machine learning algorithms that essentially “taught” it to recreate his likeness. The final product, what you see …
Continue reading “Virtual News Anchors Hit Airwaves In China”
Electronic voice phenomena is one of the most haunting aspects of the paranormal. I remember listening to episodes of Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM long ago involving EVPs, and they ran the gamut, from faint voices saying “hello” to violent disembodied clanging noises, and what Bell himself found so terrifying: the sound of people …
Continue reading “A Classic Demonic EVP: “I have the body of a pig.””
There was a time when you may have looked at Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot and thought, hey, I could outrun that. It was a lumbering hunk of metal, after all. Sure, it could open doors and go for quiet walks in the freshly fallen snow, even lift 10-pound boxes. But in a robot apocalypse scenario? …
Continue reading “Boston Dynamics Shows Off “Parkour Atlas” Robot”