Colbert: The Irony of Satire

Don't You Know The Joker Laughs At You?

Ohio State's Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville, and Michael Beam asked 322 individuals what they thought of Stephen Colbert:

There was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism.

The Irony of Satire - Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report.

2009 Time 100

Time Magazine's annual supplement of Most Influential People is out.

Among the profiles is Michael Moore's take on Bernie Madoff and General Chuck Yeager (the first pilot to break the sound barrier) on Chesley B. Sullenberger (who landed safely in the Hudson River): "It sure is nice to be able to stand up in front of people and tell them what happened."

It Used To Be Called 'Tripping'

Conflated senses with chemical assistance:


And without:



Audio: BBC, PRI & WBUR's Here & Now, May 1st. Host: Robin Young.

Light Writing

The members of LICHTFAKTOR, an artists' collective in Köln (Cologne, Germany), use light to give expression to their creativity. Since 1997 they've take advantage of a variety of light sources to produce photos and videos in cities by night.

Photo: Atlanta Falcons QB Matt Ryan by Lou J. Vega from ESPN and Christoph Lenz from Glanzkinder.

What's Miss USA Really Like?

Short, blonde, ambitious, diplomatic, hungry...



State Pageant paid for 1st runner-up Miss California's implants.
Former Miss USA & co-executive director Shanna Moakler confirms.



Photo: The Improper dot com

Van Gogh

Video: Vincent Van Gogh Dutch Artist 1853-1890 "Self Portraits"
by Philip Scott Johnson (2007)

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Video: sundroid (2006)
Music: Edvard Grieg - Holberg Suite

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Video: Albert Bethcourt (2007)
Song: Vincent
Artist: Don McLean
Album: American Pie (1971)

Computer Competition

"I'll take 'OMG, We're Screwed' for $600, Alex."

The producers of Jeopardy! and IBM are in discussions to allow an IBM supercomputer known as Watson to compete on the show against human competition. According to The New York Times, if Watson is able to beat the human competition the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.

IBM has had success in the past building super computers that were able to best human competitors. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer was able to defeat chess world champion Garry Kasparov in a match.

The difference between chess where all pieces have a known value and Jeopardy! is that the trivia questions asked in the game show have a wide and greatly varying range of relationships. These relationships are open to interpretation and the interpretations have to be made very quickly.

The IBM researchers who created Watson -- an homage to IBM founder Thomas J. Watson Sr. -- have said that they are not confident yet that their creation could compete well on the show. The New York Times reports that human champions are able to provide correct response 85% of the time to questions asked.

David A. Ferrucci, an AI researcher at IBM said, "The big goal is to get computers to be able to converse in human terms. And we’re not there yet.”

The contest is an effort by the IBM engineers to choose "grand challenges" that will help them make significant technical progress in AI. The rules proposed for the contest will force Watson to emulate all human qualities. Questions posed to Watson will be in text format while players will see text and hear the questions spoken by the show's host.

The computer will offer answers to the question via a synthesized voice and will choose its own follow up categories. IBM says that for the show, the computer would not be connected to the Internet. How Watson will be presented and what gender the computer will be are under consideration. A screen and a projected avatar are one consideration.

Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman said, "We’ve only begun to talk about it. We all agree that it shouldn't look like Robby the Robot."

From: DailyTech & Geekologie blogs

Photo: Morpheus & Robby from Forbidden Planet (1956)