The depths of ventriloquism

Automatonophobes of the world, unite! You are not alone. Coulrophobia gets all the press these days, but let's face it: clowns aren't half as scary as ventriloquists' dummies. It's due to the old uncanny valley: the more something that isn't human approaches humanness, the weirder it gets. And what approaches humanness without actually getting there as well as a good old-fashioned dummy, especially one that's been through the mill of time and would be weird looking even if it weren't a dummy?

io9 starts the ball rolling with their Vintage ventriloquism portraits were incredibly unnerving, but then there's the link back to Flickr with more gems than the average person can bear: the one with the woman and the soldier will be keeping me up nights, I'll tell you that.

A little research into ventriloquism uncovers what you would expect, that it goes back to the ancient Greeks and had all sorts of ups and downs and connections with witches and whatnot up until the birth of popular culture, where it found its metier on the stage, and ventriloquists learned to drink water and throw their voices at the same time (except for Albert Brooks, whose dummy used to drink water while Brooks himself talked, but that's postmodernism for you). The greatest popularizer of modern ventriloquism was Edgar Bergen, who gained his popularity on the radio. Which is a poser. Think about it. A ventriloquist. On the radio. No wonder his lips moved so much when he finally made it to television.

Ventriloquism isn't seen much anymore, but automatonophobes can get their fix at places like Walt Disney World, where the automatons are animated and in many cases are even more uncanny. My vote for the one to avoid?



When the Mouse starts talking, I'm out of there.
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Getting the book invented properly

Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide fame, recorded this little piece in 1983. The Literary Platform made a competition out of it, just in time for Towel Day last week. Entrants were asked to make an animation to accompany the audio (which they could play around with). I've posted the winner here, and it's pretty cute. What's nice is that they've posted all the other entries as well, so you get to see a sort of visual theme and variation on the piece. Everyone's got a unique approach. What would you do?


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A portable Rube Goldberg machine

[Via Web Urbanist]
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Coke bottle vs. chainsaw, etc.

We live in a world where people spend amazing amounts of time watching dumb videos when they should be doing something—anything—else. This is one of those videos:



The warning at the end not to attempt any of this, period, is probably worth repeating, but only if you're a total lunatic. The bottle of wine in the microwave had me ducking away from my computer screen.

This is from a Danish TV show, courtesy of the ever reliable io9.com, whom we can thank for making us watch this when we should have been doing something—anything—else.
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