I’m a little bullsh*t about virtual reality.  Seriously.  I mean, come on, it’s been like 20 years.  Where is my VR mansion?  My virtual trip in an X-Wing?  Why aren’t I sleeping with virtual people that are way out of my virtual league?

Yeah, I’m bullsh*t about VR.

Technology moves too slowly; Who’d have thought the most exciting development in the last five years would basically be a stylish pocket protector that makes phone calls and tells you which Britney Spears song you’re listening to on the radio.

PS, I don’t know what it says about modern-day songwriting that you need a decoder device to figure out the name of the song you’re listening.

Anyway, that’s why I got so excited when I found out the next BIG step in virtual reality is happening right here in Bingo.

And it’s not the giant hamster ball it looks like.

It’s a helluvalot more.

The VirtuSphere, or as I prefer to think of it, your next birthday gift to me, is a Virtual Reality interface that can allow you to immerse yourself in just about any environment you can think of.

It’s a bit like Star Trek’s Holodeck.  Only significantly less likely to malfunction, develop an artificial intelligence, and try and kill you.

What makes VirtuSphere DIFFERENT from the VR tech you’ve already seen is that you can actually walk in the thing.  Like, put one foot in front of the other.  You know, like people in big cities used to do before they had Segways.

OK, that may not SEEM like that big a deal, but when Nintendo Wii’s single-biggest selling point has become that it’ll make your kids be a little less fat and lazy, a VR environment that requires honest-to-God locomotion seems like a good idea.

And it IS exercise.  Or at least, it can be if you try hard enough.  Jim DiMascio, Virtusphere’s COO, demonstrated that with a little practice, you can run your ass off in the thing.  After 2 or 3 minutes, he had to stop, a bit breathless, and grab a glass of water.

The applications are pretty much limitless.  Jim and his partners see a military use; Units could be trained in a virtual Afghanistan so they have a sense of what it’s like to move around a real Middle Eastern city before they head overseas.  Army doctors could use a virtual re-enactment of psychologically scaring events to treat Post Traumatic Stress.  The VirtuSphere folks are teaming up with third-party software developers to make all that happen.  It’s pretty fantastic that the effort is being led right here in Binghamton.

Plus, I got to use it to play a Russian video game that involved blowing up killer pumpkins from outer space.  Or they might have been mutant radioactive pumpkins from a nuclear waste site.  Or they might have been killer mutant radioactive pumpkins from a nuclear waste site in outer space.

I’m not entirely certain.  But pumpkins were involved.

And there’s something that’s just more exciting about being able to use your entire body to move around in a game.  For the first few moments, I stood in place blasting pumpkins.  But after a little while, I started running after them.  And the game was somehow immediately more… fun.  Can’t explain why; it just was.
 
That’s not to say moving inside VirtuSphere isn’t a bit disconcerting in the beginning—like the first time you pick up a 37-button PlayStation controller.  There’s an adjustment period.  Just to practice, Jim asked me to walk in the sphere without the headset.  It’s pretty weird to be walking and not actually moving anyplace.  It got better when I put the head gear on.  As I took steps inside the sphere, it rotated around me, moving me through the virtual world in my headset.  Very cool.

Stopping took some getting used to as well.  When I stop in real life, the ground tends to stop at pretty much the same time.  But the momentum of the sphere creates a delay when you stop moving in VirtuSphere—the ball continues for a second on its own.  You learn to slow down first.

So after getting my first little taste of Binghamton-born Virtual Reality, I wanted to know when the masses would get a shot.  Jim DiMascio and I sat down for a serious chat about exploding radioactive pumpkins…

We’ve been promised cool virtual reality tech for soooooooooooo long; why isn’t it really here yet and when will we all have it in our houses?

Virtual Reality simulation is here and Virtusphere is a locomotion interface that allows users to become an avatar and play INSIDE a video game. One of the renown professors of Virtual Reality, Dr. Thomas Furness of the University of Washington was quoted, “Virtusphere comes closer than most to the Holodeck of Star Trek fame”. We are currently marketing Virtusphere to the entertainment market which include major theme parks, Las Vegas hotels & resorts, malls and other related entertainment centers globally.  Virtusphere can also provide combat simulation training for the US Army and Marines infantry soldiers, we would never send a pilot into combat without simulation training and we now have the first locomotion simulator for the soldiers on the ground. It will be a few more years but it our goal to eventually make Virtusphere affordable for home use.
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"Freakishly knowledgeable" may not be the most flattering way to describe Larry Kassan’s relationship with the Twilight Zone, but I think even he’d agree: if the shoe fits…

Sure, sure, I could rattle off a long list of Larry’s professional credits and involvements in things like the Lake Placid Winter Olympics and an ABC TV special—but I’m naturally drawn to the most eccentric elements of a person, the better to draw a caricature, and an obsessive interest in a Binghamton-based science fiction universe takes the cake in Larry’s case—putting aside his claim that he may have the largest theater Playbill collection West of the Hudson.

(PS, Larry, I’m in the market for an original production Sweeney Todd playbill, as I have an unholy and freakish obsession with Angela Lansbury. Don’t judge.)

Larry can tell you what motivated Binghamton native Rod Serling to write the Twilight Zone: censorship of one of his scripts.  But even more than that, he can tell you the particular elements of that Rod Serling script that had been altered, how they originally played out, and how the TV sponsors demand that they be changed.

Star Trek fans got beat up in junior high for that kind of precision.  Don’t ask how I know that; it’s a tender spot.

But Larry’s love of the Zone has done a lot for Binghamton; he’s director of the Rod Serling Video Festival—a competition which brings entries and attention from all over the state—and now he’s instrumental in planning the TZ’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

Honestly, there’s all sorts of different events to attend, including a TZ expert speaking engagement, a TZ bus tour, and the unveiling of a Rod Serling sculpture, but the one I’m most interested in—the one I think is the coolest—is this:

A live, televised reenactment of two Twilight episodes using local actors on WSKG. (10/3/09 @ 8 PM)

I mean, really, who does live TV anymore?  Yes, yes, there’s (the incredibly half-assed) Saturday Night Live, but it’s not clear whether anyone bothers to watch that show when there’s not a major election going on.

And THIS ONE is right here in Binghamton.

SO. COOL.  (I’m not being sarcastic. I know it’s hard to tell.)

Both episodes were “inspired by Binghamton locales” and will feature “professional, community and student actors”.  Looking for a place to enjoy the broadcast with other, uh… “Zonies”?  Um, “Twilighties”?  “T-Zoners”?  Whatever.  A special geek haven has been set up over at the Binghamton City Stage to enjoy the screening in a pseudo-social setting.

Larry Kassan ripped himself away from dusting his Playbill collection in order to answer a few of my questions…

OK, so you’re doing two episodes.  What are they about?
WSKG will broadcast two episodes live on Saturday evening October 3. MIRROR IMAGE is about a woman who sees herself in a bus station near Binghamton. WALKING DISTANCE is a biographical piece about a man, stressed by life, who finds himself travel back in time to his hometown where he meets himself as a young boy.
 
Now these scripts were supposedly inspired by Binghamton.  How so?
MIRROR IMAGE has many local Binghamton references and WALKING DISTANCE recreates Binghamton’s Recreation Park. Rod grew up just a few blocks away on Bennett Avenue.
 
Will the episodes be in black and white?
WSKG plans to broadcast the show in Black and White.
 
How are the actors prepping for the live telecast?
They are currently in rehearsal. Many have read about TZ and watched the actual episodes
 
So there are pros, community, and student actors.  Could you give us an example of each so we know who we’re looking at in the cast?
Hedi Weeks is a professional stage actor who has performed extensively in NYC and Toronto, Ava Crump is often seen at the Cidermill Playhouse, other cast members have connections to may community theatre around Greater Binghamton and two of the young actors are students at the Rod Serling School of the Arts. Austin Tanner, who plays the young Rod Serling was in last year’s production of OLIVER at the BHS Helen Foley Theatre.
 
I know you’ve had some contact with the Serling family; are they involved in this celebration at all?
The Serling family is most supportive of the celebration and plan to be at all of the events. 
 
Being the Twilight Zone encyclopedia you are, can you fill us in on a few lesser known “Bingo/Twilight connections”?
Rod always had strong ties to his hometown of Binghamton. He often added local references to all his scripts… Helen Foley (his drama teacher) was a character in the TZ, The Carousel shows up in many episodes, In the pilot which will be seen at the First Friday event he uses the name Resnick’s which was a famous women’s clothing store in downtown.
 
Some might note that being an inspiration for “The Twilight Zone” might not be the most FLATTERING of connections; what do you say to those people?
TZ was groundbreaking television, Serling was a pioneer in early broadcast TV. His work earned him more Emmy awards (6) than anyone in history of TV. This is something to celebrate and be proud of. I could say more but space does not allow.

Some robots like to morph into a human form and shoot you (like in T2).  Some robots like to take over your spacecraft and shoot you (like in Battlestar Galactica.)  Some robots like to have identical evil twin brothers that shoot you with phasers (Star Trek).  And still some other robots will terminate your life functions while you lie helpless in suspended animation (2001).

If sci-fi has taught us nothing else, it’s that your robot will kill you one day.  (It’s good to see that the US military is putting this lesson to good use in Pakistan; I can’t imagine any way THAT little technology could go awry.)

So that’s why it’s probably appealing that somebody has created a robot too dumb to kill anybody.  It’s called the tweenbot.  Which in some obscure language must translate to “brown paper lunch bag with smiley face drawn on it”.

And that’s exactly what the Tweenbot looks like.  It was a research project for NYU ITP student Kacie Kinzer.  If you’ve never heard of the NYU “ITP” grad program—I hadn’t—it describes itself as the “Center for the Recently Possible”.  You know how the Sharper Image sells a whole bunch of crap that uses fiber optics and lasers to look really cool but not function in any useful way?  The NYU ITP center does kinda the same thing—except it probably costs $40,000 a year instead of 99.99 (which is what everything at the Sharper Image costs, until it goes on clearance at TJ Maxx for 5.99).

Kinzer created the Tweenbot to answer one simple question:  Are New Yorkers really @ssholes?

The answer?  Surprisingly not.

Here’s how it works:  Build a stupid robot that’s too cute for words and is only capable of going forward.  No sensors. No artificial intelligence.  No weapons.  No fun.  Then attach a sign to it that’s drawn by the same girl who drew hearts, flowers, and teddy bears all over your high school yearbook.  The sign should say (in happy bubble letters with appropriately ridiculous flourishes) “HELP ME. I need to get to the Southwest corner of Washington Square Park.”  Then take it to the Northeast corner and let it loose.

42 minutes and 29 pedestrian helpers later, the robot will arrive at its goal.

Kinzer believes that this says something about the Washington Square Park crowd; that it says something about New Yorkers; that it says something about human nature itself.

I think that it says something about the power of cute.

And makes me want to hurl just a little bit.

Look, I wasn’t alive when machines took over manufacturing; but I think that I would have been OK with it.  I’m pretty friggin’ lazy.  When computers learned how to spell for me, I was actually damn glad—even if I do have to click undo every time my cell phone auto-corrects “Binghamton” to “Birmingham”.  I was EVEN OK with it when they invented a robot to replace fashion models; feminists, doctors (and anybody else with a brain) have been saying for years that no human being should force themselves to be that skinny—and apparently some robotics geek in the IT department took them literally.

But robots writing my porn?

A line must be drawn in the sand, people.  I’m telling you: robotic strippers aren’t far behind.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  This all started when I heard about The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.  Anything that trivial and still well-publicized seemed like a worthy feature for BingPop.

But then I learned of this year’s “controversy”.  *GASP* Among nominees such as “Curbside Consultation of the Colon” (appetizing!), “Strip and Knit with Style” (titillating!), and “Baboon Metaphysics” (um, stupid), was a title that was COMPUTER GENERATED.  “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais” was “written by” Prof Philip M Parker.

(PS, Fromage Frais is a French diary product not often found in the US.  And yes, I had to look that up on Wikipedia.  Don’t judge.)

Now it’s probably true that most great inventions in the world stem from one form of laziness or another—but Parker takes the cake; he wanted to be a best-selling author without actually bothering to write a book.  Instead, he invented a computer algorithm to do the writing for him.  On just about any topic he plugs into the machine.  The algorithm searches the Internet for all available info, organizes it, creates a few pretty charts, and voila: Parker’s now got over 200,000 books listed on Amazon.  Which has got to make him very popular with the ladies.  Who like books.  Sexy librarians?

Anyway, what he’s working on next will definitely make him popular… with somebody; computer-generated romance novels.  Or what I like to call “pornography for sexually repressed women”.

Parker: “I’ve already set it up.  There are only so many body parts.”

Ya know; I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to remember hearing about something similar… a device for piecing together random bits of memory and placing it in a new context… some sort of “internal creative device” if you will…

Oh right, your f&$king imagination.

God, we’re lazy.

PS, one of next year’s potential nominees for the "Oddest Book Title" award is about to be released: "Soft Drink and Fruit Juice Problems Solved" from Woodhead Publishing.  And that little nugget of weird came from the brain of a real live human being.  How quaint.

I knew it the day I turned 22—it was all down hill from there.  After all, who actually looks forward to a birthday after 21.  At 21, you get to drink.  Maybe we need to legalize another substance and allow you to smoke it at 25.

Yes, it’s true.  I knew that the good life ended at 22, but until now, there was no actual irrefutable scientific evidence.  Now, there is.

Researchers at the U of Virginia have decided that people reach their mental peak at 22 and begin to decline at 27.  Face it; if you’re 28, you may already be on the road to senility.  And shouldn’t be allowed to drive.  Or chose the radio station.  Or the President.

They tested 2000 adults from the ages of 18 to 60 with visual puzzles and recollection tests.  I guess they made them solve Rubik’s cubes and take Starbucks orders—I dunno.  Reasoning started to go down the tubes at 27; memory at 37; and everything else collapsed starting at 42.

The sunny news?  Vocabulary continued to increase till age 60.  So as you ramble in your increasing senility, rest assured that you’ll be using big words.  That you have no idea the meaning of.

But apparently they’re much smarter than me.

A new study says doodling helps you concentrate better and remember stuff.  A bunch of researchers got 40 people together to listen to a telephone message.  The message had details about a party—who’d be there, who wouldn’t; presumably, what they’d be smoking.

Then the people were asked what they could remember about the message.  The people that didn’t doodle remembered SOME.  Those that DID doodle remembered a third more.  And the people smoking at the party couldn’t remember much at all.

None of this is any surprise to me.  I’ve been telling my boss for months that text messaging during meetings increases my ability to concentrate.  He wouldn’t bite.  So instead, I “carefully record his well-considered thoughts” on my I-Phone, explaining that the chime he occasionally hears is just the noise that it emits when it detects a particularly insightful nugget of wisdom.

PS: I just read about the study more closely.  It says that the people who were doodling were more likely to write down the party details.  And then were more likely to remember those details.  Doesn’t the study just prove that writing stuff down helps you remember s&*t?  Yeah; thought so.  Scientists are punks.

Scientific health studies, by and large, SUCK; am I right?  Nutra-sweet causes cancer, cell phones cause cancer, microwave popcorn gives you something called “popcorn lung” (which is not as fun as it sounds—look it up).  Science is depressing; better not to know stuff about stuff than to be afraid of everything.  Well I think this study alone makes up for all those crappy ones:

The only reason you’re fat is because you caught a virus!

That’s right! Stop exercising, put down those 38 flavors of Yo-Play and grab yourself a deep-fried chicken leg, because the only problem with YOU is that you caught something as common as the common cold!

Well, sort of. A new study out of Baton Rogue says that virus AD-36 “infects the lungs then whisks around the body” making fat cells multiply (while giving you a soar throat.)  One of the tests showed that a THIRD of obese people had the virus—whereas only 11% of super-skinny-turn-me-sideways-and-I-vanish-into-thin-air people had it.

Thing is, the fat only lasts for like 3 months till your body becomes resistant.

So what am I saying?  Good excuse to laze about the couch and have a 4-day Lost marathon while devouring Chinese take-out?  Probably not.  Good excuse for your ten-pound post-holiday weight gain?  Absolutely.