One of the curious things about Jaws is that for all the technical difficulties that plagued the original high-budget Hollywood blockbuster, the film's inspired slews of brilliant backyard D.I.Y. lo-fi remakes and tributes.
Here's a new one: The Bronx's video for the "Knifeman," which features the band, sub-aquatic rock action, and a vicious toy shark.
Cannibals! (And Philosophers!)
The first chapter of An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is available as a free download from Princeton Press. But, be warned, you've got to wade through this sort of jargon.
This history of cannibalism can be reconstructed as three successive stages, part historical and part conceptual. In the first, the cannibal is viewed as a creature from the perspective of natural law. In the second, the cannibal becomes the diabolical retort in which the flux of particles confounds the calculations of theologians and metaphysicians. The third stage is that at which we seem to have arrived today, when the cannibal is a creature of circumstances and education. Natural law, materialism, and anthropological relativism are the three major contexts that impose a division in the history of the cannibal’s passage through thought and which are, in their turn, clarified by his presence.
Nevertheless, the present work is not one that is primarily historical. First of all because it is in no way a history of cannibalistic practices. Of course, the instances of verifiable anthropology have sometimes left their traces in the ideal productions of the philosophers. However, whether cannibals existed or not is a fact of marginal importance. My cannibal is in the first place a scholarly creature, a personage who animates theoretical texts, and only to a lesser extent, if at all, is he a subject for the anthropology of the aberrant.
Robots!
A Swedish newspaper is reporting that "a Swedish company has been fined 25,000 kronor ($3,000) after a malfunctioning robot attacked and almost killed one of its workers at a factory north of Stockholm."
The article summarizes the whole attack:
Public prosecutor Leif Johansson mulled pressing charges against the firm but eventually opted to settle for a fine.
"I've never heard of a robot attacking somebody like this," he told news agency TT.
The incident took place in June 2007 at a factory in Bålsta, north of Stockholm, when the industrial worker was trying to carry out maintenance on a defective machine generally used to lift heavy rocks. Thinking he had cut off the power supply, the man approached the robot with no sense of trepidation.
But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim's head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries.
"The man was very lucky. He broke four ribs and came close to losing his life," said Leif Johansson.
The matter was subject to an investigation by both the Swedish Work Environment Authority (Arbetsmiljöverket) and the police.
Bones!
Christine Quigley, mistress of the macabre, has an excellent post featuring shots of this unbelievable, skeleton-filled tomb in Peru.
Notice that each skeleton is topped with two skulls.
1 comment:
Robots.. I almost took a job with a warehouse automation company. Think cranes and robots that scan stuff coming in from a delivery, and stack it in the warehouse somewhere. Then retrieve things from the shelves to go out in a different delivery..
They have lost a few warehouse workers that went inside when the cranes were in operation.. There's no where to hide (due to maximizing shelf space) in an aisle when the crane comes down.. Funnily enough, it is a Swiss company..
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