Aaron Sorkin, the wunderkind Hollywood scriptwriter who was responsible for the first four seasons of the TV smash hit The West Wing (and a slate of successful feature films, including A Few Good Men and Malice) has been commissioned to write a script about how Facebook was invented.   As  Alice Fishburn dryly notes, Facebook is now  "a phenomenon even bigger than the White House."

_{Aaron Sorkin - as seen on his Facebook page}

However it seems that  familiarity with the subject was not a requirement for Sorkin getting the job. The Hollywood luminary  got his researcher to get up a Facebook page so that Sorkin can "find out what Facebook is."  His researcher had to do this for him because, as Sorkin admits/boasts,  his Grandmother - who has been dead for 33 years  - knows more about the Internet than he does . . .  

On his page he appeals for help from Facebook users:

I honestly don’t know how this works, which is why I’m here. If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them as best I can. If anyone has any comments I’m glad to listen. And if anyone has any Facebook stories I think they might be helpful

Can this be for real?  Or is it just a publicity scam that uses Facebook and Facebook users to market a film about Facebook? I’m looking at the page now and it has already generated 38 topics and has 262 questions posted for Aaron to answer.  Hey, I thought he was asking the questions?

Although there are some doubts about the authenticity of these images -  Android is apparently set to launch on an HTC handset -  this is an interesting glimpse of what we can expect from Google’s Open Source mobile OS.  The photos are from Armandp’s photostream on Flickr.  (Thanks to Glenn for the heads up.)

Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.[1] It allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes Google-developed Java libraries,[2] but does not support programs developed in native code.[citation needed]
The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.[3] Google has pledged to make most of the Android platform available under the Apache free-software and open-source license, once it is released in 2008 .[4]  -  Wikipedia

_{Android homepage - Uncustomized}

_{Android showing Google Maps with a view of Joburg.}

According to an article on The Times Online, a new precedent is emerging for photo-realism in animation. Interestingly, “she is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as ‘uncanny valley’.” The creators of ‘Emily’, Image Metrics, also produced the animation for GTA (I’m assuming 4, since it’s not mentioned in this article).

Check out the video of ‘Emily’ here, and decide for yourself as to whether or not you find her slightly disturbing and ‘uncanny’…

This is a headline too good to miss.  The Guardian reports that:

A giant inflatable dog turd created by the American artist Paul McCarthy was blown from its moorings at a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before landing in the grounds of a children’s home.

The exhibit, entitled Complex Shit, is the size of a house. It has a safety system that is supposed to deflate it in bad weather, but it did not work on this occasion.

Knowing something of the artist’s "excremental vision" of humanity, I can only imagine that he was amused by the behaviour of his turd installation.

_{A work by Paul McCarthy at the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum fur Gegenwart - Berlin.
From the "In Memoriam Jason Rhoades" exhibition which looked at the subject of trash
in art from the 1960s to the present.
(Photo by Christo Doherty)}