Mar 29, 2008
It appears that some bits of western culture is definitely reaching Afghanistan. On March 13 mainstream media reported that a woman from the conservative Pashtun belt, that’s the Afghan version of the U.S “bible belt”, is one of the top three contenders in the country’s version of “American Idol.” I wonder if members of the Canadian Army based in Afghanistan to protect big oil companies interests watched it.
Bridget Johnson says, “Isn’t the point that 11 million Afghans — a third of the country’s population and 90 percent of the TV-watching population — eagerly tune into Star each week, that 300,000 votes were text-messaged in for the recently aired finals, and that music is filling homes and hearts again despite clerical objections?
Being an American Idol junkie, I considered myself the perfect journalist to delve further into Afghan Star. So I watched all of the episodes put on YouTube by Tolo TV, the network that has raised so much of that clerical ire. The audition tapes were the best: As Idol begins each season by showing the good — and the very, very bad — performers from audition cities, Star also had audition shows from Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, and more; more than 2,000 hopefuls tried out for a chance to win $5,000 U.S. and a record deal. The audition shows opened with catchy music and fast-paced shots of the host city and its people — with production values equal to that of American TV, and some of the landscapes resembling Barstow.” [PAJAMA MEDIA]
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Mar 25, 2008
If you had a chance to be with the perfect romantic partner, you’d probably take it, right? So what if you could build that ideal partner from scratch? Gizmodo posted an interview with Zoltan, who after a serie of bad relationships with real flesh and blood women, created 3 robot girlfriends.
This story sounds like a B movie sci fi flick on space channel. But it seems to be true. The impulse to want to create the perfect partner has been with us since the ancient times. Zoltan seems to like this type of relationship better than with a real flesh and blood human female. It reminds me some book I heard about in a CBC radio show. The title is Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships .
Here is a snippet from Gizmodo’s post:
“Sniffing around the web a few months ago, I came across Zoltan’s webpage, a science-heavy, how-to site in all things robosexual. As well as basic instructions on how to make a robot girlfriend from components, there are pictures of Zoltan’s three bots, Alice, Kiri and Hal. Hal is just a male ‘bot that Zoltan built to encourage girls who might be interested in a robot boyfriend. Kiri is, in her owner’s words, “basically a sex slave.” And then there’s Alice, aspects of whose life with her creator/husband he has documented, from kissing to conversation—to, of course, sex.”[Gizmodo]
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