Video Games and the Uncanny Valley

Episode Four in Daniel Floyd's series of video "lectures," made in association with Edge. Co-written with James Portnow, cofounder of Divide By Zero Games. Loosely modeled after Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's Zero Punctuation reviews. (...)

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.

The term was coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori as Bukimi no Tani Genshō (不気味の谷現象) in 1970, and has been linked to Ernst Jentsch's concept of "the uncanny" identified in a 1906 essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny". Jentsch's conception is famously elaborated upon by Sigmund Freud in a 1919 essay titled "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche"). A similar problem exists in realistic 3D computer animation, such as with the films Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Polar Express, and Beowulf.

Johnnie Walker - The Man Who Walked Around The World

Johnnie Walker is a brand of Scotch Whisky owned by Diageo and produced in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. It is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky in the world, sold in almost every country with yearly sales of over 130 million bottles. (...)

In 2009 the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty created a new short film, starring Robert Carlyle and called The Man Who Walked Around the World, which outlined the history of the Johnnie Walker brand.

160 Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian American bodybuilder, actor, model, businessman, and politician, who is currently serving as the 38th Governor of California. (...)

Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon, noted for his lead role in such films as Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator. He was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" and the "Styrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnold Strong" and "Arnie" during his acting career, and more recently the "Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator"). (...)

Celebrating the finest actor of our generation with 160 of his greatest movie quotes! First featured on Pajiba.com. Lines taken from 25 of Arnies finest films:

Batman & Robin, Collateral Damage, Commando, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, End of Days, Eraser, Jingle All the Way, Junior, Kindergarten Cop, Last Action Hero, Predator, Pumping Iron, Raw Deal, Red Heat, Red Sonja, The Running Man, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Total Recall, True Lies, Twins, The 6th Day and Around the World in 80 Days.

Symphony of Science - 'Our Place in the Cosmos'

"Our Place in the Cosmos", the third video from the Symphony of Science, was crafted using samples from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Richard Dawkins' Genius of Charles Darwin series, Dawkins' TED Talk, Stephen Hawking's Universe series, Michio Kaku's interview on Physics and aliens, plus added visuals from Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi, History Channel's Universe series, and IMAX Cosmic Voyage. The themes present in this song are intended to explore our understanding of our origins within the universe, and to challenge the commonplace notion that humans have a superior or privleged position, both on our home planet and in the universe itself.

The Symphony of Science is a music project created by Washington-based electronic musician John Boswell. The project seeks to "spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes." Boswell uses pitch corrected audio and video samples from television programs featuring popular scientists and educators. The audio and video clips are mixed into digital mashups and scored with Boswell's original compositions. Two of Boswell's music videos, "A Glorious Dawn" and "We are All Connected", feature appearances from Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Stephen Hawking. The audio and video is sampled from popular science television shows including Cosmos, The Universe, The Eyes of Nye, The Elegant Universe, and Stephen Hawking's Universe.

Nike Football Write The Future - Full length version

Write The Future is an advert for Nike football. The full version is over three minutes in length and features football players Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Wayne Rooney, Franck Ribéry, Ronaldinho, and Cristiano Ronaldo as its main players. All of the players play in a scenario during a World Cup match and after significant events occur, the players usually see a significant ripple effect outside the world of football. It airs during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It can be considered a sequel to a previous advert entitled "Take It To The Next Level", which aired in 2008, and features similar people. It features the song "Hocus Pocus," by Progressive rock band Focus.

RedHat Linux commercial

Red Hat, Inc. is a company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide.

Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat provides operating-system platforms along with middleware, applications, and management products, as well as support, training, and consulting services.

The Philosophy of Liberty

The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible is a libertarian book written by Ken Schoolland, a libertarian and professor of economics. Although it is read by many adults, it is aimed at the young audience, hoping to show young people Schoolland's concerns about statist society in ways they can easily understand.

The preface of the book, "The Philosophy of Liberty", has been turned into a very popular short film, distributed on the internet in many formats, including flash animation, video, slideshow or text, in around forty languages.

Black & White Introduction [High Quality]

Black & White is a computer game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and Feral Interactive. It is a god game released in 2001, which included elements of artificial life, strategy, and fighting games.

The player acts as a god and takes control over villages across several islands. Black & White features a unique gameplay element, a creature that the player can raise and teach. The game was highly anticipated and overall well received. (...)

This is the introduction video of Black & White. A video game released on March 25, 2001. It was developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and Feral Interactive.

Eddie Izzard - Dentists (Sexie)

Edward John "Eddie" Izzard is a British stand-up comedian, actor and voice-over artist. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime. He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python." (...)

Sexie is the name of the 2003 tour by Eddie Izzard. The tour covered Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

Topics covered on this tour include transvestitism, aeroplanes, superheroes, Greek mythology, the planet Mars, the emergency services, sharks, human evolution, dentists, firemen, horses, and the "Baguetti Western" Blueberry in which he starred as a German cowboy. As an encore, Eddie does his most recent "bad impression", Christopher Walken.

Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception

Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble. (...)

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television (now ABC Family) series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2004, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column.

Say Say Say - Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

"Say Say Say" is a pop song that was written and performed by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. The track was produced by George Martin for McCartney's fifth solo album, Pipes of Peace (1983). The song was recorded during production of McCartney's 1982 Tug of War album, about a year before the release of "The Girl Is Mine"—the pair's first duet from Jackson's record-breaking album, Thriller (1982). After its release in October 1983, "Say Say Say" became Jackson's seventh top-ten hit inside a year. It was a number one hit in the United States, Norway, and Sweden, reached number two in the United Kingdom, and peaked within the top ten in Australia, Austria, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, the song was promoted with a music video directed by Bob Giraldi. The video, filmed in Santa Ynez Valley, California, featured cameo appearances by Linda McCartney and La Toya Jackson. The short film centers around two con artists called "Mac and Jack" (played by McCartney and Jackson), and is credited for the introduction of dialogue and storyline to music videos.

Intel "Lunch Room" 2010 Super Bowl XLIV Commercial Ad

Intel's 2010 Super Bowl XLIV spot starring Jeffrey the Robot (...)

Intel Corporation is a technology company, and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers. Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation (though a common misconception is that "Intel" is from the word intelligence) and is based in Santa Clara, California, USA. Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, Intel's "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium processor household names.

Thomas Sowell on the Housing Boom and Bust

Thomas Sowell discusses how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of the economics and politics of the housing boom and bust.(...)

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social critic, political commentator and author. He often writes as an advocate of laissez-faire economics. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. In 2003, he was awarded the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement.

Don't Make Me Get My Main

The MP3 for this song is on Cranius' newly-released album, "Big Blue Dress". Legs and Cranius submitted this movie to the Blizzcon 2009 movie contest, and they took first place. (...)

"Don't Make Me Get My Main" is a story about a guy who is being camped in Stranglethorn Vale while leveling an alt. He tries to convince his attacker that messing with him is a bad idea because he's a skilled PvPer. Eventually he has to logout and get his main character to come to the defense of his alt.

Human Sacrifice - That Mitchell and Webb Look

That Mitchell and Webb Look is a British television sketch show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Shown on BBC Two since 2006, its first two series were directed by David Kerr, who also directed Mitchell and Webb's previous television sketch show The Mitchell and Webb Situation, whereas series 3 and 4 are directed by Ben Gosling Fuller. (...)

In another clip from the final episode of the third series of Mitchell & Webb Look, we get to see God and Arbaham discuss a new idea which turns out to be Human Sacrifice. This clip was taking from S03E06 which aired on 16th July 2009.