The Null Device

This page has some interesting-looking tutorials on how to use Photoshop (or the GIMP, for the penguinheads) to transform your family and friends and/or random celebrities/supermodels into hideous, decaying ghouls.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ howto diy horror photoshopping zombies [no comments]

Paul Torrens, of Arizona State University, has developed a computer model of crowd behaviour in cities, complete with graphics. The possibilities, as is pointed out here, are endless:

Such as the following: 1) simulate how a crowd flees from a burning car toward a single evacuation point; 2) test out how a pathogen might be transmitted through a mobile pedestrian over a short period of time; 3) see how the existing urban grid facilitate or does not facilitate mass evacuation prior to a hurricane landfall or in the event of dirty bomb detonation; 4) design a mall which can compel customers to shop to the point of bankruptcy, to walk obliviously for miles and miles and miles, endlessly to the point of physical exhaustion and even death; 5) identify, if possible, the tell-tale signs of a peaceful crowd about to metamorphosize into a hellish mob; 6) determine how various urban typologies, such as plazas, parks, major arterial streets and banlieues, can be reconfigured in situ into a neutralizing force when crowds do become riotous; and 7) conversely, figure out how one could, through spatial manipulation, inflame a crowd, even a very small one, to set in motion a series of events that culminates into a full scale Revolution or just your average everyday Southeast Asian coup d'état -- regime change through landscape architecture.

Or you quadruple the population of Chicago. How about 200 million? And into its historic Emerald Necklace system of parks, you drop an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, a pedophile, an Ebola patient, an illegal migrant worker, a swarm of zombies, and Paris Hilton. Then grab a cold one, sit back and watch the landscape descend into chaos. It'll be better than any megablockbuster movie you'll see this summer.

(via schneier, mind hacks) ¶ computer science modelling society panic terrorism zombies riots urban planning geography gibson's law psychogeography chicago london san francisco [no comments]

After a recount in the Victorian state election, the DLP has lost one of its two seats to Labor, who, in turn, have lost one of theirs to the Greens. So now the upper house looks like:

• ALP: 19
• Liberal Party: 15
• Greens: 3
• National Party: 2
• DLP: 1

Meanwhile, political scientists are blaming the election of this bunch of fusty relics (who are rather unlikely to speak for the fabled Silent Majority Of Suburban Battlers) on the above-the-line preferential voting system used to elect candidates. In short, this system works by allowing voters a choice: vote below the line, enumerating your candidates of choice in order from most to least preferred (and there's usually a good 40 or 50 there), or tick the box of one party above the line and automatically vote according to whatever preferences the party has chosen in its various deals. The political enthusiasts who keep up to date with the details of the preference deals are, for the most part, the same tiny minority of voters who can be bothered to vote below the line; meanwhile, the vast majority of voters tick one box and hope for a result with the flavour of their particular party.

IMHO, there is a solution: make above-the-line voting preferential, allowing voters to rank their parties of choice in order, removing control over the exact distribution of the preferences of above-the-line voters from party dealmakers.

¶ politics australia victoria rightwingers zombies religiots culture war [2 comments]

The Democratic Labor Party was a fiercely right-wing Catholic party that split off from the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s because they were seen as too Communistic, and disappeared in all but name after the USSR collapsed. Now, it's back, having won two seats in the Victorian upper house and potentially having the balance of power, assuming that the other parties line up on opposite sites. How does an undead party manage to grab two seats out of nowhere? Largely through preference deals with other parties, who all put them ahead of the dangerously un-Australian, pro-paedoterrorist Greens (thus bringing back another Cold War concept, that of a policy of containment).

Anyway, it's not quite as bad as it could have been; the ALP has 19 votes, the Tories have 15, with the Nationals (i.e., the God and Country party), the DLP and the Greens having two each. Victorian politics may soon start looking more like Italy or Israel, with no one party having a clear mandate and a lot of horse-trading going on behind the scenes. Though whether Labour would rather deal with the Greens or throw a few legislated-morality carrots to the DLP is uncertain.

¶ australia politics zombies [3 comments]

Britain's professional recording artists are so angry about their copyrights expiring after 50 years that some even rose from the dead to sign a recording-industry petition for copyright term extension:

If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ copyfight copyright zombies undead astroturf recording racket skulduggery villainy [no comments]

Intense competition in the global fishing industry has produced some ruthless efficiencies, such as the Chinese zombie ships. Disintegrating, abandoned pirate vessels off the coast of West Africa are being repurposed into clandestine fishing vessels; patched up just enough to remain more or less afloat, the ships never see a port, with crews, supplies and catches being transferred at sea. The economic desperation of those who work on them means that workers often remain onboard for years, and don't kick up a fuss over things such as safety standards, translating into further efficiencies. This is what streamlining looks like in the grim meathook present:

Here's the thing - these ships seldom, or ever, visit a port. They're re-supplied, refuelled, re-crewed and transhipped (unloaded) at sea. The owners and crews don't seem to do any basic maintenance, apart from keeping the engine and winches running. There's no glass in the portholes, and the masts are a mess of useless wiring. These floating deathtraps don't carry any proper safety gear - on one boat, I saw the half-barrel case of an inflatable liferaft being used to store a net.

Back on the Esperanza, we try to put together what we'd witnessed. When asked what it was like 'out there', we answer 'grim'. I wondered how the fishing company could convince these men to spend time living on such dangerous ships, half around the world from their loved ones. Do their families know where they were? These trawlers might be engaged in illegal fishing activities, stealing fish from the countries of West Africa, but it seems that the fishermen themselves are just pawns of some brutal corporate policy, where human life is cheap, and profits take priority.

(via jwz) ¶ hypercapitalism zombies grim meathook present china [no comments]

A fascinating, if macabre, article hypothesising on the subjects of reanimating the dead and creating various kinds of zombies and golems:

On the other hand, while many higher brain functions are irretrievably damaged after just minutes of cardiac arrest, most of the actual tissue remains "metabolically active and responsive" for at least 24 hours after death, and the hard wiring between neurons probably doesn't change until actual decay sets in. This raises an interesting and somewhat chilling question: What's the subjective experience inside a "dead" brain that continues showing low-level electrical activity for hours or days afterward? This is more than idle daydreaming (or idle nightmaring), because there are also neural pacemakers—intended mainly to treat epilepsy—that introduce small electrical shocks into the brain. A dozen of those would get some interesting currents flowing through the dearly departed neural tissue, and if you networked them with a bit of computing power, and connected them to electrodes on the arm and leg muscles, you might even get something that could "think" and "feel" enough to drag itself along the ground.

(via Found) ¶ zombies undead [1 comment]

Advice on how to prepare for the coming H5N1 flu pandemic. In short: get out of any major city, stockpile at least 3 months' worth of supplies (food, masks, fuel), and assume that civilisation as we know it will collapse. Also good in the event of a zombie holocaust.

(via WorldChanging) ¶ bird flu h5n1 survivalism apocalypse zombies [5 comments]

This is clever: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining reedited into a trailer for a romantic comedy, à la Nora Ephron.

Update: here is a New York Times story about the trailer, which was produced for a competition, and got its editor the attention of people in the industry. And other entrants in the competition include: Titanic as a horror movie and West Side Story as a zombie flick.

(via bOING bOING, lj:jwz) ¶ mashups stanley kubrick the shining awesome zombies west side story titanic horror [2 comments]

Anti-television activists organise a flashmob dressed as zombies descend on the filming of American Idol, protesting the stultifying qualities of the idiot box. Unknown to them, the show's producers had read the ad on Craigslist and decided to appropriate the zombie stunt into their show.

And that is how the zombies ended up squatting down on the concrete of the Erwin Center's second level, signing release forms to allow their images to be broadcast by Fox TV. "Zombies, I need you back here!" Lynn shouted. "All you zombies, I need to get a group shot!" The undead complied, waving their bloodied limbs about for the TV cameras.

The zombies - all except for Plan II senior Mike Ferstenfeld - signed release forms to appear on Fox TV. "We've turned into prostitutes for 'American Idol,'" Ferstenfeld said.

Muntean reports that "American Idol" has asked Chilcote to return in zombie makeup for an audition on the show, but that she will probably decline.

(via xrrf) ¶ zombies coopted pwned flashmobs culture [no comments]

I just got around to watching Shaun of the Dead, the latest zombie flick to have come out of Britain in the last few years. It was entertaining enough, in a lighthearted way; a cross between a smugly feel-good britcom (it is, after all, from Working Title, who are responsible for most of the British films with mass appeal over the past decade or so) and an early Peter Jackson splatter film; blood, guts, middle-class relationship-issue angst and huge dollops quintessential Englishness. As one would expect from Working Title, it's a stylish package, with meticulous attention to detail (even the cheapness of the zombie effects was undoubtedly art-directed to the last detail, footnoted with references to John Romero and the like), and packed with elements to appeal to as many segments of the audience as possible. It's set in a reasonably leafy, suburban part of North London, considerably more middle-class and pleasant than the high-rises of 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle's edgier brit-zombie flick), and doubly more so than the Ken Loach-esque kitchen-sink grimness of Dead Creatures (the best of the recent wave of British zombie films, in my opinion), and also is a much lighter affair (don't expect meditations on the dark side of human nature or the plight of those who fall between the cracks; this is essentially a feelgood flick; having said that, the film's take on the lasting influences of the zombie phenomenon, with the undead being pressed into service-industry jobs and TV game shows, were amusing, and possibly worthy of expansion).

The cast featured some familiar faces to watchers of recent British TV comedy; one I noticed (from the credit) was Look Around You's Peter Serafinowicz as the barman; Black Books' Dylan Moran also made an entry as an irritatingly smug prig of a housemate.

¶ zombies film shaun of the dead dead creatures 28 days later [1 comment]

This afternoon, I saw the Film Festival screening of Dead Creatures. This is basically a British kitchen-sink social-realist zombie film; in it, zombies are just ordinary people like us, with two exceptions: they have an insatiable craving for human flesh and, over the course of a year or so, their bodies start to decay; their condition is the product of some contagious disease, spread by attacks from other zombies. Other than that, they are fully lucid and aware of their predicament, living for the moment, adjusting to killing to survive, and clutching onto futile hope until the end. The film follows a colony of zombiefied women, as well as a vigilante zombie hunter, and shows all stages of the process: a naïve newly-infected recruit adjusting to the realities of their new life, another late-stage victim, delirious and physically decaying, and between that, others rationalising their predatory habits, agonising about the loss of their futures and lives, and coping with the onset of decay. It borrows heavily from the British kitchen-sink tradition: it's set amidst the social decay of working-class London, and the system is oblivious and uncaring; even the vigilantes who hunt zombies do so for selfish reasons rather than out of idealism.

Dead Creatures was made in 2001, before Danny Boyle's more apocalyptic brit-zombie flick 28 Days Later, and, in some ways, is an excellent horror movie. It uses little in the way of special effects (some very convincing prosthetic makeup, latex models of dismembered limbs and the obligatory cool custom weapon, a zombie-killing bolt gun), but its strength is in capturing the despair and futility of those afflicted; of showing the inevitable end, the countless acts of murder committed in the interim to survive to reach it, and then the journey of one newly afflicted. The reality depicted is grim and affecting; one really empathises with the characters, in a way that goes beyond feeling the usual rollercoaster ride of tension and release, and comes out just about ready to donate to a charity to help ease the zombie plight. One could say that this is a horror film for Guardian readers.

¶ dead creatures zombies film grim meathook present [2 comments]

The Straight Dope answers the essential questions of our time, such as how long would the electricity stay on after the zombies take over:

Now, let's address a scenario where the zombification process is gradual. If the operators and utilities had sufficient advance warning they could take measures to keep the power going for a while. The first thing would be to isolate key portions of the grid, reducing the interties and connections, and then cease power delivery altogether to areas of highest zombie density. After all, it's not like the zombies need light to read or electricity to play Everquest. Whole blocks and zones would be purposely cut off to reduce the potential drains (and to cope with downed lines from zombies climbing poles or driving trucks into transformers). Operators would work to create islands of power plants wherever possible, so if a plant were overrun by zombies and went down it wouldn't drag others down with it. In cooperation with regional reliability coordinators, the plant operators would improve plant reliability by disabling or eliminating non-critical alarm systems that might otherwise shut down a power plant, and ignoring many safety and emissions issues.

¶ zombies apocalypse [3 comments]

Headline of the day: Zombies defeat robot Jesus. Which is actually about film ticket sales. Meanwhile, zombies have also attacked the RIAA. (via jwz)

While we're on the topic, George Romero's classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead has, by some mysterious means, gone out of copyright (funny; I thought only works made before 1924 or sometime did that), and can now be downloaded here. Download sizes range from 4.1G for MPEG2 (which, I presume, is what you'd burn to a DVD) to a svelte 248.8Mb for MPEG4/DivX.

¶ zombies jesus riaa [6 comments]

Did you know that, in India, zombies are unionised? More specifically, there is a growing number of people (currently estimated at 35,000) being fraudulently declared dead by next-of-kin seeking to take their property, many of whom can't afford the bribes to be declared living again. They have now formed their own lobby group, the Association of the Living Dead. (via bOING bOING)

In tangentally related material (well, maybe not): Daniel Dennett on zombies. (ta, Peter)

¶ undead zombies [no comments]

Consciousness researcher Christof Koch claims that we are almost zombies, or rather, that the vast majority of our lives are spent unconsciously, on autopilot: (via bOING bOING)

You drive to work on autopilot, move your eyes, brush your teeth, tie your shoelaces, talk, and all the other myriad chores that constitute daily life. Indeed, he says, Any sufficiently well-rehearsed activity is best performed without conscious, deliberate thought. Reflecting too much about any one action is likely to interfere with its seamless execution.

Given the range and effectiveness of these zombie agents, Koch believes the great mystery is why we are not complete zombies. Or to put it another way: What purpose does consciousness serve? Why does it exist at all?

Consciousness, Koch argues, is a local phenomenon, residing in a specific part of the brain, and serving a specific purpose, and not an emergent property of a complex system, as some have claimed:

In principle, Koch says, there is no reason why consciousness is necessary to life. With enough input sensors and output effectors, it is conceivable that A zombie could pretty much do anything. But since every zombie behavior must be hard-wired, the more situations it must respond to, the more complex its internal mechanism must become. Instead, Evolution has chosen a different path, synthesizing a much more powerful and flexible system that we call consciousness. The main function of this innovation, he and Crick propose, is to enable organisms to deal rapidly with unexpected events and to plan for the future. As Koch likes to say, consciousness puts us online, allowing us to override our instinctual offline programming.

Which lends itself to a possible test for detecting consciousness, and thus differentiating between humans and zombies and other unconscious life:

Since zombie agents operate purely according to preprogrammed rules, a zombie would have no need for short-term memory, and hence Koch believes the absence of this feature would serve as an indication that consciousness was also missing. Consider the following situation: You see an outstretched hand, but instead of shaking it immediately, which instinct would dictate, you are required to close your eyes and wait several seconds before doing so. Koch and Crick suspect that without a short-term memory, a zombie could not do this task, or any other in which an artificial delay was imposed between an input and the associated motor output.

For the moment, he is concentrating not on humans but on biologys most common test subject, the mouse. He and his colleagues are trying to develop a mouse model of consciousness, a rigorous way of determining if and when a mouse is aware. Over the past decade, biologists have learned how to turn individual genes on and off in the developing rodent fetus. With a mouse model of consciousness, Koch could begin to explore what genes are essential for this phenomenon. One question he would like to pursue is whether it is possible to genetically engineer an animal without conscious awareness -- a zombie mouse.

¶ consciousness zombies philosophy [3 comments]

Via ms45's Rocknerd journal, another free MP3 site: Two Zombies Later, a 2CD collection of lounge/exotica MP3s, complete with printable cover artwork.

¶ lounge exotica mp3s zombies comfort stand [no comments]

A comprehensive history of the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, a branch of the US Government in a parallel universe where infestations of undead were a significant problem. It's sort of like an American equivalent of the British TV series Ultraviolet. (via bOING bOING)

¶ vampires zombies undead alternate history fiction [no comments]

Mori's Uncanny Valley is the phenomenon in human perception of human-like entities that accounts for people feeling revulsion when they see zombies in a horror movie. Put simply, the theory postulates that the relationship between similarity to human appearance and movement and emotional response is not a straight line; instead, there is a peak shortly before the appearance becomes completely human -- and then response dives into visceral horror, as the not-quite-human object enters the realm of moving corpses, blasphemous abominations and Things That Should Not Be, looking too human, yet somehow loathsomely unnatural. First postulated in the 1970s, the Uncanny Valley theory is behind advise to make all human-like agents/robots look slightly stylised, just enough to appear distinctly non-human and not trigger the sensations of horror.

Via the story of the guy who mistook his girlfriend for a robot -- or rather made a lifelike animated head modelled on said girlfriend's head, and wired with cameras, motors and software. David Hanson, the roboticist in question, is not an adherent of the Uncanny Valley theory, or believes that he can cross said valley and come out at the other side. (via jwz)

¶ mori's uncanny valley robots zombies horror psychology [2 comments]

A fascinating piece on voodoo zombie drugs. Yes, they really do exist, and can really turn you into a zombie (if they don't kill you, that is).

The particularly heinous and voodoo twist delivered by tetradotoxin is that this apparently dead person is fully conscious. It is difficult to imagine being pronounced dead in a room full of grieving relatives and you are without the slightest ability to communicate. This is not to mention the pure terror of being buried alive without the ability to render understandable objection. If the victim survives burial or some other horrible fate, the return to the living occurs within a few hours to a few days.

(via Found)

¶ zombies neurotoxins tetradotoxin horror voodoo [no comments]

The latest Narcolombian drug craze: Burundanga, a "zombie powder" which induces total obedience and temporary amnesia. (via Rebecca's Pocket)

¶ zombies drugs [no comments]