Mutant Palm

Noah Shachtman caught this story from Flight Global over at Wired’s Danger Room blog:

German-headquartered SIM Security and Electronic System says it has sold an undisclosed number of its Sky-Eye quadrotor UAVs into China for use by a civilian police organisation. Total sales of the existing system, including the Chinese orders, have exceeded 30 units according to Yves Degroote, Brussels account manager for the firm.

Noah says:

Sales of drones are tightly controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. Companies usually have to get special clearance to market the things — even in friendly countries. I’m no ITAR expert, but I believe sales to countries like China are even more carefully monitored. About a year ago, officials at Yamaha in Japan were busted for shipping nine robo-copters to the Beijing regime.

Does anybody have any idea how you say “quadrotor UAV” in Chinese? Or would these just be called 天眼 after the brand name?

UPDATE: It’s China time in the Danger Room as Sharon Weinberger points to an English People’s Daily article on Chinese scientists success at controlling the flight of pigeons with brain implants. But they don’t have a picture, so I’ll help by adding the Chinese article.

Since China is rather short on pigeons (at least not in cages), obviously these are for overseas operations. The robocoptor won’t be noticed on the streets of Shanghai, but free flying pigeons would probably surprise the hell out of people. Check out the Shangdong Science and Technology University Robot Research Center website for things like the Electrical Powerline Repair Robotic Arms and other stuff that, so far, is nowhere near as cool or gross as a pigeon with a chip in its skull.

Back in 2004, a news surfaced about CCTV producing it’s first ever science fiction TV show, Angel Online (天使在线). Sina.com.cn had a whole page devoted to it, complete with quote from the director and Chinese scifi writers talking about the need for science fiction in encouraging creativity, and how this would be China’s Star Wars, Matrix and Heat Vision and Jack rolled into one. (You can read a synopsis here, in which artificial intelligence “Net Babies” (网婴) become all the rage, only for one becomes all-powerful on the Internet). And then it became impossible to find anymore news about it - and not only because 天使在线 is the name of a popular MMO gaming webpage. Then I noticed that Seed Magazine’s China Science section mentioned it last September, and I figured I’d check Baidu again. Turns out in January Sina reported that Jackie Chan might join the show?!?? I’ll believe it when I see it, since in 2004 principal photography was suppose to start in 2005 and now Sina says it’ll be out in 2008. But in the mean time, it turns out a major fan has been working on a Chinese machinima movie: 原始地带 ZONE OF BARBARISM! You can watch a short confusing clip here, which consists of helicopter animations, the back of a head that could be Chuck Norris, and a gorilla. Perhaps it involves a search for the mysterious 野人 of 神农架? Personally, I love the description:

“Not Completely Purely Imaginative”. This is going to rock.

In the movie Karmic Mahjong, or 血战到底, that is. Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯), film festival darling and director of the recent Still Life (三峡好人) is pictured here being arrested by none other than Wang Xiaoshuai (王小帅), director of Beijing Bicycle (十七岁的单车). You can see the brief cameo scene, with JZK as a hostage-taking mugger and WXS as negotiator at tudou.com about 3 minutes in.

Captions, anyone?

UPDATE: Also of interest, Little Bridge has a post about a Chinese woman who has advertised online that she will carry someone’s baby to term for 500,000 yuan. Curiously enough, there is a character in 血战到底 who regrets carrying and then giving up her son to a mobster… for 500,000 yuan. Life imitates art? Has this girl seen 血战到底?