Dial-Up: A Retrospective

     The dial-up sound, still one of the most recognizable sounds, was a true product of the 90's. As much as we embraced dial-up internet, we loathed it as well. The commercial web was in it's infancy, and we all wanted to be on it. The easiest and cheapest method was dial-up. Dial-up made AOL king. And it made you miss important phone calls. While dial-up was famous for it's distinct sound, it was infamous for it's speed. Why was dial-up so slow, and why did we tolerate it? If it was so slow and so clunky, how did it turn AOL into one of the biggest success stories of the new millennium?

     First, it needs to be understood how dial-up worked. Dial-up utilized your telephone line. Anyone who had dial-up had a modem. A modem connected your telephone line with your computer, and allowed the analog signals from the telephone line to be transformed into digital signals, which your computer could read. When trying to initiate dial-up, your modem would "talk" to a remote modem until they could get on the same page. The famous dial-up sound was this process in action. Once the modems were in sync, your modem would mute itself, allowing for data to now be sent through.

     Dial-up brought to life the former giant known as AOL. AOL began offering online access in 1993, and then boomed along with the world wide web. In 2001, AOL and Time Warner merged. That merger didn't last long and is now considered one of the worst big business mistakes of all time. The "always on" broadband emerged, and AOL and Warner were stubborn, never taking full advantage. Other than their email and dial-up service, AOL never took full advantage of what they had. AOL still exists and millions still use its email, including me, but it is now owned by Verizon and operates as a digital media company.

     That's AOL's story, but what about dial-up? How did the end begin? Well, dial-up internet had two major drawbacks. First, download speeds were limited to 56 kilobytes per second. This speed is called "bandwidth." Typical Wi-Fi today averages around 24 mega-bytes per second. One megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. Downloading Pokemon Go onto your computer with dial-up would take 6 hours and 47 minutes. With today's Wi-Fi, Pokemon Go would take about a minute. A typical song on Itunes today would take a few seconds, if not instantaneously. With dial-up, you'd be sitting around for about 20 minutes. What about the new Batman vs Superman movie? With standard Wi-Fi, a little over 30 minutes. With yesterday's dial-up? Over 11 DAYS. Yes, days with a D. Even the non HD-version of the movie would take over 4 days and 21 hours.
    The second main issue of dial-up was the need to hog the phone line. When people were connected, incoming and outgoing calls could not be made. Whenever you wanted to order a pizza, needed to check on Nana, or wanted to call the local movie theater to get showtimes (remember that?), you had to stop what you were doing and log off. If you were expecting an important call, you had to sit and wait before you could log on and connect to the web. Special modems and secondary phone lines were available, but who had time for that?

    In fairness to dial-up, downloading 150 minute HD movies is not what it was made for. Back in the late 90's and early 00's, the heyday of dial-up, the web was still in web 1.0. Web pages weren't sophisticated; they were static. Web pages didn't offer all the pictures and graphics, videos and animations that they do today. The original website for Space Jam is actually still online; look how sophisticated it is/was! This was Yahoo in 2000. This is Yahoo in 2016. Downloading movies online wasn't a thing (even DVD's hadn't yet passed the popularity of VHS tapes yet), Napster was in and out of business, and the Itunes Store wasn't open for business until 2003. There was no social media or streaming or online gaming. The web was limited and it fitted the limited dial-up perfectly.

     Other issues with dial-up was that it wasn't "always on", meaning every time you wanted to connect, you literally had to connect. That was done by dialing the ISP (that's the funky alien sound you would hear), which could take minutes. Plus you had to sit and listen to that sound. Connections were also known to drop out, and your connection would be lost if your telephone cord was accidentally disconnected. 

     Dial-up lost ground to broadband in the mid-2000's and was left in the dust. As we transitioned into web 2.0 and 3.0, dial-up wasn't able to handle the load. Believe it or not, dial-up does still exist. In 2015, over 2 million people still payed for AOL's dial-up, and it is still offered by other companies such as NetZero. Dial-up may never fully go away, but it's never coming back either. As obsolete as dial-up is, it was truly apart of 90's lore, and we'll never forget the memories it brought us, allowing us to connect to the infant web.

     PS, does anybody remember Netscape? It was on all the computers in elementary school, but we never used it. Well, shout out to Netscape.

More Ice Please

     There's something about ice. From glaciers to ice cubes, it's so fascinating, even though it is nothing but solid water. It feels different, it looks different, and it...tastes different? I don't know about you, but when I leave Zaxby's (see #10), I always munch on the ice and it feels like an extra side item. I'm not alone. People love ice. It cools our drinks, keeps us busy chewing, and allows for skating and endless rap metaphors. Some people will go to the drive-thru and ask for a free cup of ice instead of a free cup of water, but why? They're the same thing: H2O, just in different states. So other than cooling our drinks and preserving our fish in the YETI, why are we so fascinated with ice, and why does it seem to have its own taste? And what does our fascination even mean?

     Well considering ice is just frozen water, it doesn't really have a taste actually. Yet ice is solid and gives us something to crew on, like we chew on food, which could be a reason why we feel it has a taste of its own. Our brain can subtly trick us like that. Ever freeze Kool-Aid or Hi-C or orange juice, etc in ice treys when you were kid (or adult)? It's good isn't it? Almost better than the liquid thing. But in reality, there is no taste difference. Chewing instead of drinking gives us a different sensation. If you could drink(?) water as a gas, you'd experience the same thing. It'd technically taste like water, but you'd feel it tastes a little different because it's in a gas form and not liquid, which you're used to (could you imagine gas-milk?).

     It is possible to be addicted to ice and there is an actual medical term for it: "pagophagia." Just like other addictions, it can get serious. Some people will get up in the middle of the night and sculpt out their freezers to satisfy their ice fix. Pagophagia is actually a form of "pica", or an addiction to something that has no nutritional value. Ever seen those people (probably on TLC) that eat coins, glass, glue, sand, soap, hair, grass, and even mattresses? That's pica. You're aware you really shouldn't be eating it (especially glass...) and you're old enough to know better, but you just can't stop.

     Research has found that people that have pagophagia may actually be anemic. If you are anemic, you have a red blood cell deficiency. Many people with anemia have to take iron pills because their bodies lacks the essential quantity of iron. So why does that matter? What does it have to do with ice? Well while researchers still aren't completely sure, they believe that people with anemia chomp on ice non-stop because of pica. More on that below. Another theory is that chomping on ice relieves inflammation in the mouth. Many people that take iron pills regularly stop getting the urge to crush ice, but when they don't, the urge comes back. It's the bodies own notification system to take your pills I guess.

     New studies as well suggest that people with anemia gain mental boosts from ice. People with anemia are often fatigued because of the low red blood cell counts. Remember, red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body, and the less oxygen you get, the more tired you feel. Well ice may give people that kick that they need. According to The Guardian, a study came from the University of Pennsylvania, where they had healthy and anemic subjects complete a standardized ADHD test while being given either a cup of water or a cup of ice. The anemic subjects who sipped on the H2O performed far worse than the anemic subjects who had ice. Those subjects actually performed just as well as the healthy, non-anemic people. For healthy subjects, having water or ice didn't really make a difference in their test results. The study was published in Medical Hypothesis.

     One possible reason for the results? The anemic water-given subjects couldn't focus because they craved ice and they knew it was sitting right there in the room. I didn't read the whole study, but that could have possibly played a role. Another reason is below.

     So what does this mean for non-anemic folk? Well not much really. As stated earlier, you just enjoy ice and love the feeling of the crunch rather than the sip. You also don't eat or crave it enough for it to qualify as pica. Pica still needs a lot of research, but one thing is certain to correlate with it: iron-deficiency. Pregnant women are actually more easily susceptible to pica because the fetus takes a lot of the mother's iron, and eating these abnormal things may be an unconscious way of trying to get that iron back. While that makes sense with dirt, researchers still don't understand why ice is so craved when there is no iron in ice. According to The Guardian, one theory from researchers is that since ice is cold, large consumption of it makes blood vessels constrict and redirects that blood to vital organs such as the brain. Dolphins experience it as well when they dive into colder water.

     Don't be afraid of ice now. It's okay to chomp on it naked. PSA. when I say "naked", I mean eating ice without a drink. Don't literally sit there and eat cups of ice naked. That's weird. Anyway, if you haven't had pica all this time, you're not going to magically get it after reading this (though you could still get it someday). So while craving ice while having low iron may not make sense, it's a good thing we do.
     Ice. It doesn't have to make this kind of impact, to make an impact.

Be sure to like here!

*citations: New York Times, The Guardian, Our Health, GA Followers, Web MD. *photo credit: The Whole Earth Blog, Eventful, Grayline.

I Swear, That Hurt

 

 

 I was sitting in class the other day and as the professor was lecturing, it sounded like two girls were arguing outside about cupcakes or something. The professor tried to lecture on, but he could tell the class was annoyed. He went outside, then came back in and told us that they weren't actually arguing, but just rehearsing for a play (I'm guessing about baking). At that moment, the entire class, including me, went "ohhhhhhh." I then thought to myself, why? Why did we all say "oh?" Why didn't some of us say "wow" or "eeee" or "Yahtzee!" or "hot dog?" And then I wondered how come we say "ouch" when we're in pain? There may be a science to it.

     First off, pain actually comes from your brain, not the hot stove. When you touch the hot stove, the nerves on your hand are alerted and an electrical signal is shot up to your brain. Your brain senses that you are in some kind of danger and sends back down a signal of pain to make you pull away. As much as we hate pain, we couldn't live without it. If you couldn't feel pain, you'd keep your hand on the stove, and I'm sorry but there's really no way to turn that into a positive. Thanks to your brain's quick action, you'd snatch your hand away and likely yell "ouch!" or "ow!" along with "$#&%." Why do we do this? Well it could actually be because of distraction.

     Yelling "ouch" over and over or swearing after you experience pain can actually distract you from it. Mythbusters tried it, and it turned out not to be a myth at all. While plunging their hands in ice cold water, the group would shout out random words on the first test and swear words on the second test. Results showed that the group on average was able to withstand the icy water 30 pecent longer while swearing. PSA. don't turn into a walking explicit label after you stub your toe: your mom won't appreciate it. Do what I do: stop, drop, roll, and sob. You don't have to be on fire to do it. That's a myth.

     The same experiment was also done at the University of Singapore. 56 participants kept their hands in icy water while either saying "ow" repeatedly, listening to a recording of someone saying it, or not hearing anything at all. With the tests, subjects who said "ow" repeatedly were able to last 7 seconds longer than without saying or hearing "ow" and listening to someone else say it. The hypothesis of the researchers was that when people use their vocals after pain, it disrupts the pain receptors, distracting you and helping you cope. But I still haven't answered my own question: why do we say "ow" and "ouch?"

     Well, there is no real proven reason actually. The main theory, and possibly the obvious reason is that it is just a habit that we've all picked up hearing everyone else say it. Another possible theory is that we say it because our mouths naturally make an O shape, but again that's not proven, and is also less likely as many non-English speakers don't say "ow", but rather "aie!", "aui!", "av!", etc.

     While there seems to be science that shows using your vocals may help you tolerate pain a little better, you already know that won't eliminate the pain completely. So if you're planning on belly-flopping off the rock quarry into the lake later, don't count on "ouch" being there to save you afterwards.

*citations: Huffington Post, Discovery. photo credits Jokideo.

Rainless in Seattle

     Russell Wilson doesn't need an umbrella as much as you think. Seattle is known for many things: the Space Needle, Grey's Anatomy, Mount Rainier, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, the Seahawks, and...rain. Most people who don't live in Seattle think that Seattlelites are miserable because they never get any sun. Well, they're pointing fingers at the wrong city. It actually rains in Seattle less than you think.

     According to Current Results, the average precipitation for Seattle is 37.7 inches per year. St Louis on the other hand receives 41 inches, Boston sees 43.8, Atlanta sees 49.7, Houston 49.8, New York City sees an average of 49.9, Miami sees 61.9, and New Orleans with 62.7. Portland, Seattle's sibling down south, actually sees 43.5. 

     So why does Seattle always get rained on when they're dryer than ciudads such as New York City and Miami? Well it doesn't help that Seattle is cloudy for over 200 days a year. While clouds don't equal rain, in our minds when we see grey overcast everywhere, we can't help but think it's been raining or is going to rain. With that said, Seattle has sunny days only 43 percent of the year. Portland sees 48 percent, New Orleans 53 percent, Saint Louis 57 percent, New York City sees 58 percent, Atlanta 60 percent, and Miami 70 percent.

     So why does it rain so much more in Miami, yet Miami gets so much more Sun? Well, Miami is in a tropical climate. A lot of the rain that Miami sees comes in the form of thunderstorms and heavy showers, which can, and usually do, dissipate a lot quicker. We've seen it rain all day long, but when was the last time you saw ever a 2-hour thunderstorm? While it can rain all day in a city like Seattle, Miami is more likely to wake up with Sun, have an afternoon thunderstorm, then go into the South Beach evening with clear sky.

     The reason Seattle sees so much grey weather is because of its location. Being wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, plus the jet stream and Puget Sound, and being closer to the colder Canadian air gives Seattle a marine climate. Moisture and clouds that race towards Seattle from the Pacific and Puget rain over the city, but struggle to make their way over the tall Cascades. Hot air is able to hold moisture better than cold, but as those clouds rise to get over the Cascades, they expand. As the air gets colder, the molecules slow, the cloud becomes heavier, and it cools. The cooler and denser the cloud, the harder it is to hold moisture and get out of Seattle's way. The jet stream passing by also helps mild conditions. 

     This also means it doesn't get blazing hot in Seattle. The average Summer temperature in Seattle? 73 degrees (22.7 C)...IT'S SO HOT. Seattle has only seen 2 days ever over 100 degrees (37.7 C), according to Current Results. Phoenix sees an average of 80...a year. Hmm, it's pretty fitting that Phoenix is named after a bird that's on fire.

     Seattle could be Goldilocks of American cities because the climate, just like the porridge, is just right (if you haven't been spoiled with LA or Miami). It doesn't get too hot, nor does it get too cold. According to The Weather Channel, the average January and February high is 47 degrees. That's manageable I guess. It could be worse. March then quickly rises to 55 (12.7 C).  Seattle also sees an average of 7 thunderstorms per year, versus New York's 25 and Miami's 80. Seattle's weather is clearly less bipolar than other major US cities.

     So if you want to visit Seattle, but haven't because you don't own a rain jacket, don't worry, you might not need it.

*photos from North Point Recovery, Back Country Coalition, Wallpaper Cave, Topozone. *citations: Weather Whys, Weather Channel, Current Results, Nerd Wallet, USA Today, Wikipedia.

No Chocolate For Trixie

   

     If you own a dog, you probably give them Beggin' Strips, Purina Dog Chow, Iams, Pedigree, or whatever was on your plate that you didn't want. All these are fine choices, but one thing you likely don't give your dog is chocolate. If you haven't been giving your dog chocolate then good, keep up the good work. If you have, please slap yourself. It has always been believed that chocolate is toxic to dogs and any piece of the sweet stuff could mean early retirement for your dog. While it is true that chocolate is toxic, don't think he or she is a goner if you catch them with the stray M&M you dropped on the floor. Still, you must keep the candy bowl far, far away.

     Chocolate is toxic to dogs mainly thanks to a chemical called "theobromine." Theobromine is actually toxic to humans too, and cats, but you'd have to eat pounds of chocolate for it to have an effect on you. PSA. don't eat pounds of chocolate. Dogs on the other hand have a different metabolism, and theobromine is metabolized a lot slower, which can allow for the toxins to be absorbed a lot easier. Too much theobromine can cause heart attacks, seizures, tremors, dehydration, diarrhea, internal bleeding, and worse. You as a human wouldn't want any of these things, and I'm most certain your dog wouldn't either. While cats are in as much danger, they're less likely to consume chocolate because most cats have no sweet tooth. Plus, they're cats.

     While chocolate should be avoided altogether, the age and size of your dog and the type of chocolate both play a role. Chocolate, or any food, will affect a chihuahua faster than it will affect a golden retriever, and a corgi before it affects a greyhound. White chocolate has some of the lowest levels of theobromine, while cocoa has some of the highest. Dark and fine chocolate should be of the highest concern. 

     There are some people who give their dogs chocolate on purpose because they feel it has no effect. While Trixie may still be able to prance around the front yard after half a Hershey, I still wouldn't recommend it, at all...You might as well give your toddler Jose Cuervo and your grandma Draino. PSA. don't do that. Please.

     If your dog does happen to stumble upon chocolate, the medical emergency procedure works the same way as it would for a human. Try to induce vomiting, give them water, and go to the vet ASAP. Don't sit and wait for your dog to start howling to decide to grab the keys. Symptoms can take over 6 hours to appear. While small amounts of chocolate can amount to nothing more than a stomach ache, that shouldn't be an assumption. If you have the slightest feeling that your dog swallowed your candy, just make them throw up already, don't wait. Activated charcoal is also good to have around. That industrial stuff binds to the theobromine and help keep it out of the bloodstream.

     Other foods that you need to keep out of your dog's mouth include grapes, onions, cheese, apple cores, alcohol, mushrooms, raw eggs (your dog is not Rocky), and avocados, all mostly for the same reasons: chemicals that are fine for us, but not for them. It's basic chemistry people.

     Next time it's your cheat day and you're enjoying a nice slice (or two, or three) of double chocolate layer cake, and Trixie is sitting on your lap giving you a puppy dog face, you and Trixie both have to tough it out. Do not give your dog that cake. Give her this.

*photos courtesy of Tumblr, Canine Club LA. Citations: Web MD, Hillspet, Pet Parents, Today I Found Out, Food Beast.

Challenging The Challenger

     

     This week marked the 30th anniversary of the tragic Challenger space shuttle disaster. On January 28, 1986, 73 seconds after liftoff, the Challenger shuttle disintegrated 9 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 7 crew members: Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, and Francis Scobee. The Challenger disaster is one of those infamous events where most anyone who was alive can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard and saw that it all went wrong.

     The Challenger disaster was not the last time Americans raced to space, but it was the last time NASA ever let a civilian tag along.

     As amazing as they were, most people didn't watch space shuttle launches, but this launch was particularly special and buzz worthy because it was going to be the first time ever that NASA was going to launch a "civilian" into space. Christa McAuliffe was a teacher from New Hampshire who won NASA's "Teacher in Space Project" contest, beating out over 11,000 teachers nationwide. While millions were watching live as it was history in the making, many of them children at school, most people learned of the event through tape-delays and news alerts (it was 11:39 am on a Tuesday, and there was no Twitter, obviously). When Challenger's journey was cut short 73 seconds after the T-minus, time stopped. No one knew what to think or do.

     After the mission suffered multiple launch delays, an impatience brewed. The launched was finally scheduled for the morning of January 28th, but forecasters were calling for unusually cold weather conditions that morning. Some engineers at Thiokol, a contractor for NASA, expressed concerns about the integrity of the O-rings at that temperature. O-rings were used to create seals in the solid rocket boosters. After tense debate, it was ultimately decided the launch would finally go on. If the main O-ring failed, the second one would pick up the slack, which was the prognosis. Members of NASA and Thiokol were torn. Regrettably, Bob Ebeling, an engineer at Thiokol, told his wife that Challenger would blow up the next day. It happened. To this day, he still blames himself (though he shouldn't, he tried his hardest to get the launch stopped). Roger Boisjoly was the most vocal, but there was no luck.
     The morning of launch, temperatures were between 28 to 29 degrees (-2 to -1.6 C), well below ideal. The previous coldest launch ever had been 53 degrees (11.6 C). Either way, the launch went on as planned. It is important to remember that space shuttles themselves cannot launch into the sky. The two tall white rockets you always saw were "solid rocket boosters", which provided the thrust to push the shuttle up into space. The large orange tank that the shuttle piggybacked on held liquid hydrogen and oxygen (fuel), which was fed into the SRB's, which in turn allowed thrust.
     At T-minus 6.6 seconds, the shuttle engines were ignited, and the SRB's were ignited at T-minus 0. Less than a second later came this eerie sign which shows a puff of smoke coming from the solid rocket booster, where the O-ring was. It was not seen initially, but even if it was, once the SRB's were ignited, they could not be switched off like other engines, other than blowing them up manually for the safety of people on the ground in case a rocket goes rogue. Because of stress, hot gases began to leak out. Thanks to the cold weather, the O-rings that were supposed to create a seal could not do so. It is believed that if it wasn't for aluminum oxide temporarily sealing the leak, Challenger would've been doomed before it cleared the launch pad.
     58 seconds after launch, a plume of smoke became visible on a tracking camera, but not to the naked eye, anyone on Challenger, at Mission Control, or anyone watching live on CNN. Wind shear eliminated the temporary Al2O3 seal, causing pressure in the SRB to drop. 64 seconds after liftoff, a leak then began in the orange external tank, meaning something had ruptured it. At 73 seconds, the liquid hydrogen tank was forced into the liquid oxygen tank (both inside the big orange one), and the right SRB ruptured the intertank. The external tank began to disintegrate and milliseconds later, aerodynamic forces and a fireball ripped it all apart. The Challenger technically did not "blow up", but rather disintegrated. The SRB's though did have to be blown up manually afterwards. Momentum carried the crew compartment for another few miles until it gave into gravity and came tumbling back down to Earth. Those who thought the shuttle would fail at launch were initially cheering seeing that they were wrong as the shuttle shot towards the edge of Earth, but they soon realized their celebrations were premature.
     The mood went from cheerful to mournful in minutes. Recovery efforts swiftly began and so did a demand for answers. Ronald Reagan was supposed to give his SOTU that night, but instead devoted the broadcast to Challenger. It is still not understood what exactly happened to the crew immediately after. The originally accepted theory is that the forces caused the crew compartment to detach and depressurize, knocking the crew unconscious within seconds. Today, many see that as a story NASA told as a cover-up to make the country feel better. While no one can say for sure that that theory is wrong, others now believe at least some of the astronauts were awake for much longer, after much analysis and investigation of the wreckage and data. And there are theories today that believe the crew may have unfortunately been alive for the entire descent down until the 200-plus mile per hour and 200-plus g-force collision with the ocean. The remains of the crew and the crew cabin were ultimately found on March 8, 1986 in the Atlantic, 100 feet below the surface, but by then, autopsies were impossible and not every astronaut was able to be identified.

     So why? People still wonder why did NASA decide to launch when optimism wasn't high? First off you have to realize you cannot blame all of NASA. There are certain people to blame, but criticizing the entire organization is too broad. You'd be blaming the astronauts as well in that case. Some people feel the launch went on because the delays were going to throw off time efficiency goals and other crucial satellite launches that NASA had set. Some also feel there was a pride issue: the organization wanted to show that all that brainiac power had no flaws; the shuttle would make it, proving doubters wrong, as there was skepticism of the Shuttle program long before Challenger. There is also some who feel the launch went on because President Reagan was supposed to give his SOTU that night, and NASA and the White House wanted to have the launch ahead of the broadcast so Reagan could boast about it. There had also been O-ring issues in the past, but since those missions performed with no issues, some at NASA wrongly assumed that would work all of the time, instead of some of the time.
     And because of that, NASA received major blow back. From the decision to allow a civilian on board, to the decision to not have any type of emergency ejection for the crew, to the decision to allow the launch after warning, jabs came at the organization back and forth, left and right, Rousey and Mayweather. After the tragedy, the state of the shuttle program was put in limbo. The Rogers Commission was founded to investigate the disaster. The O-rings were indeed found as the cause of the disaster by the Rogers Commission and the US House Committee. Afterwards, NASA underwent a major process. Much technical, redesign, management, and testing work was done to keep tragedies like this from ever happening again. After sustaining criticism from just about everyone for the next 2 years and 8 months, the shuttle program was revived and continued with success until 2003. The Space Shuttle was ultimately retired in 2011, but not because of Columbia.
     The Challenger left a lasting legacy that still makes an impact to this day. Schools, buildings, highways, bridges, and even craters on the moon and mountain ranges on Pluto were named after the astronauts and the shuttle. The 2013 Beyonce song "XO" included a sample of the post-disaster broadcast, causing some controversy of course. Multiple books, TV-movies, and songs are about or make reference to Challenger. The disaster has even become a focus for many case studies ranging from engineering safety to groupthink. Half of the shuttle is still missing, and debris washed ashore in Florida as late as 1996.
     Many obvious lessons have been learned from Challenger, and the disaster changed NASA for the better, but there is still one lesson that seems to not stick in general: if there isn't full optimism, there needs to be action. From Challenger, to Titanic being warned of icebergs, to Louisiana being warned of New Orleans' poor levees, to California being warned of San Francisco's inadequate bridges and overpasses, there is always voices pleading for something to be done. Challenger, and other avoidable tragedies, should serve as a constant reminder that when it comes to large scale, no one cries wolf and it is okay to challenge. The ones that challenge, often end up being right.

*photo credit from Extreme Tech, Wikipedia, CBS News. *Citations: Extreme Tech, Wikipedia, NPR, Gawker, History, Washington Post, NBC News, Forbes.

Down In The Valley

   

     Have you ever seen anything creepy or felt creeped out? And I'm not talking about when you're at the bar with your friends and some greasy guy keeps leaning over trying to smooth talk you with 90's pick up lines. No, I'm talking about things such as robots, dolls, toys, and animations. They are definitely creepy, and there's an actual term for that: uncanny valley.

     Uncanny valley was identified by Masahiro Mori in 1970. His hypothesis basically stated that as a robot became more human, it became easier for humans to react positively and with emotion, but once the robot became too human looking, we lost that emotional connection and became revolted. It's a literal valley that looks like this. Or this. And this.

     Have you even seen The Polar Express and thought the characters looked super creepy? Of course you have, and you're not alone: it's uncanny valley. See, the characters in Polar Express were animated with motion capture technology instead of traditional "build models in the computer" technology. The results made the characters look more life like. This scares us because we know they aren't real, but yet they look real, making us uncomfortable. Violet from The Incredibles doesn't necessarily look creepy because even though shes humanlike, she's more obvious to be a cartoon. Take a look at Hero Girl from Polar Express though. Yikes. Or Lonely Billy. Double yikes. Or the hobo on top of the train. I'm going to need to order more "yikes" from Amazon. They make you feel uncomfortable because we know they aren't real, but they just look too real. The movie Mars Needs Moms had the same issue. And so did Beowulf and Christmas Carol. Motion capture for animation has pretty much died, and for good reason.

     Movies are not the only ones with this problem though. Video games are starting to encounter this problem with their ultra-realistic graphics. Uncanny valley is a major reason why humanoid robots still haven't made a breakthrough. We're 100 percent fine with having this at home, but who in the world is ready to come home with this sitting on the couch!?!? Or this? Getting internet ads tailored to your location and what types of sites you've been on is already creepy enough.

     Now obviously personal robots have potential to be a huge industry; this is 2016 after all. It's the future. Because of that, many robotics experts want to get rid of the "uncanny valley" term. They say we shouldn't be afraid of personal robots just because they look human. Okay, but why do they need to look human is my question? Why not Sonny from I Robot? While he may give off a slight uncomfort, I would be totally okay with Sonny sitting on the couch when I got home. Uncanny valley isn't something we can just drop and forget. It's unconscious; that's how we're wired. Uncanny valley can get broad. Vsauce offers a great explanation. Masks, moods, and an inability to see and read faces all play into uncanny valley.

     Remember the climax scene in Toy Story where the toys revealed themselves to Sid and pretty much scarred him for life? You have uncanny valley and an unapologetic Pixar to thank (seriously, poor, young Sid could've went insane after that experience). PS. Looking back at it, geez that movie was one 90-minute uncanny valley itself...still one best animated movies ever though.


*Disney's Toy Story, Vsauce, Columbia's I Robot, Buzzfeed, MTB Europe, ECN Mag, Disney's A Christmas Carol, Paramount's Beowulf, Pixar's The Incredibles, Warner Brother's The Polar Express, Mass Effect, The Punchline is Maschismo