Wearable tech news: SciFi is Now

Last week, WXYZ reported on Wearable tech trend at Consumer Electronics Show.

Wearables continue to be a big trend in the technology industry.

Technology you can throw on your wrist, foot, ear, head to track x, y or z--you name it and it appears to be cooking at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

This report reminded me that I had six months of news about wearable tech in my archives.  Follow over the jump to read and watch it.

Vampires, zombies, and Day of the Dead

I opened and closed A bad week for private space with a scheduling note.

At the end of Set back your clocks, including the ones for insulin pumps, I told my readers to "stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment entry."  It's still coming, probably at 7 PM EST.*
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*Midnight Greenwich Time is now 7 PM, not 8 PM, so that's when the stats for the next day begin.

The time has arrived.

I begin with two videos for Halloween from Georgia Tech that I originally included in last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (A bad week for private space) on Daily Kos.  First, Sinking his teeth into Dracula: Georgia Tech's resident horror film scholar.

John Edgar Browning is a Marion L. Brittain Postodctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, and teaches classes on the horror genre of literature and film. One of his particular areas of expertise is vampires, specializing in the Dracula figure in popular culture. Brittain Fellows like Browning tailor their courses to their own research interests while meeting state and university objectives and outcomes.

He's not the first scholar I've written about who studies vampires.  In Sustainability news from campuses on the campaign trail for the week before Memorial Day, I included a press release from the University of Wisconsin about the scholarship of Tomislav Longinovic, who explored the vampire as a metaphor for malignant nationalism.  I wonder if Browning is aware of Longinovic's work.  If not, I have three words for him: Bela Lugosi's Dead.*

Next, Georgia Tech Humans vs. Zombies game Fall 2014.

Students, faculty, and staff take part in Humans vs. Zombies, or HvZ, a weeklong game of tag with short missions and strategy mixed in.

“Being a human is fun because it really tests your ability,” says computer science major, Rachel Clark. “Every day you survive feels like a pretty neat accomplishment.” The zombie life, Clark said, is also fun, but less stressful. “It’s also more common for zombies to casually hunt in groups, which makes a great chance to meet new people.”

If it's Sunday when "The Walking Dead" is being shown, there will be zombies.

Follow over the jump for my reaction to material about The Day of the Dead from the University of Kansas.

Zombies, gangsters, and sideshows

I'm finally making good on one of the topics I promised last week, but copped out on when I posted World Series Music--Lorde's 'Royals' vs. They Might be Giants' 'San Francisco'--entertainment leftovers from the past month's Overnight News Digests.*

Before I serve the leftovers from campuses on the campaign trail, I present this appetizer from Cracked, which explains 4 Ways Terrible Zombie Movies Foretell the End of Society so I don't have to.

#4. Zombie Movies Explained the Horrors of Our Society ... Until They Stopped

[Z]ombie stories get me every time...[b]ecause they're a story where our monster plays like a societal problem. Zombies are an insistent and dramatically useful malevolent force you can plan against...[I]f you're facing a corrupted mob of fellow PTA members operating in ways that can be scientifically studied like a sociological phenomenon? Time to grab some guns and potable water, and find out if your personal politics are compatible with the real world.

I can't defend any non-pilot episode of The Walking Dead, but damned if their third season poster tagline doesn't sum up what makes zombie movies worthwhile. Fight the dead, fear the living, and find out what makes society work and what's killing it in the process. George A. Romero formatted the whole genre that way: an implacable zombie epidemic pushes the surviving members of society to face their racism or consumerism or municipal governing corruption, and they either survive by fixing it or die instructively.
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#3. We're All Convinced Society Is Screwed
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[W]hat's worse than our disagreements (and what's magnifying them) is that we're sure our only problem-fixing apparatus is broken. If Congress doesn't work, and capitalism is robbing us blind, maybe Western, free-ish market democracy doesn't work. But if we re-elect that democracy's leaders every chance we get, and we don't have any better social arrangements in mind, and our favorite new levers of change like Occupy-ing and the Internet and hashtivism don't accomplish anything ... well, shit. Are we really out of ideas?
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#2. If We Invented a Way to Save the World, We'd Work It Into the Next Great Zombie Movie
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Zombie fiction can work the same way. It's basically science fiction already, just instead of (or in addition to) future technology changing our lives, it has got future biocatastrophe turning us into Earth/space's rough-and-tumble badasses. And biocatastrophe is the perfect sandbox for SF-prototyping new social models.
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#1. What's Left of Zombie Movies Casts Us as the Zombies
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These days, every one of us is changing the world! As long as a sluggish horde of other people are in lockstep with us...[I]f anything, our undead mob is good at entertaining itself. And maybe it'll start to demand better entertainment from the artists making today's zombie epics.

I couldn't have said this better myself.  Thank you, Cracked, for showing how humor is good at telling the truth, especially these days, when the comedians are sometimes the only ones who dare to do so.

Follow over the jump for entertainment news from campuses on the campaign trail, including more on zombies.