Aibo the robot dog now has a feline companion. Japan's Omron Corp., maker of Aibo, has added NeCoRo, a robotic cat, to their lineup. According to Omron officials, it can't walk, but "it does what is most important: purring contentedly when stroked, and otherwise giving cuddly emotional feedback to its owner with feline sounds and movements." There will be 5000 of the felines in the initial production run, which will cost 185,000 yen (about US$1530) and will only be available in Japan.

Click here for the story from Reuters/Yahoo!.

Greetings from the Faculty and Staff of Further Confusion University
(aka FC2002)!
We have some announcements and updates for you.

BBC Online reports on plans to create wilderness refuges for the Britain's red squirrel, whose numbers are threatened by deforestation and encroachment by the non-native grey squirrel. The article includes a couple of great photos of red squirrels.

There's still time for mail-in registration at Midwest Furfest.

"The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917", by Jonathan Clements & Helen McCarthy contains encyclopedia-type entries on almost all anime movies, TV series, and video titles. This includes all anime with talking animals, alien cat-girls, s-f with bioengineered intelligent animals, and funny animals.

Just what the world needs: a theatrical animated musical feature with funny animals about the sinking of the Titanic, in which everybody is rescued and lives happily ever after. I can hardly believe this is legitimate, but if it is a hoax somebody put a lot of work into it. Here is the summary at Jerry Beck's CARTOON RESEARCH website, which has a link to more details:

Defenders of Wildlife writes:

"October 14 - 20 marks National Wolf Awareness Week. This week is an important vehicle for dispelling misconceptions and educating the public about the role predators play in maintaining biological diversity.

From the Associated Press:
HELENA, Mont., Oct. 13 — A black bear cub that firefighters plucked from a charred tree last year was given a 50-50 chance of survival when his burned paws healed and he was released into the wild in February.




On Friday, officials of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks confirmed that a hunter had legally killed the bear.

As is our custom, Further Confusion's chairman will be stepping down after Further Confusion 2002. This custom keeps fresh ideas and fresh approaches coming into Further Confusion, gives more folks the opportunity to give their input and dedication toward its improvement, and lets people grow into more demanding roles.


That means we will need a new chairman. Toward that end, we are posting our annual invitation for bids to be submitted to AAE if you want to chair FC2003.

Thanks to the unscrupulous people at the Education Center, Inc. of Greensboro, NC, Mailbox Books is forced to change their name to "Rabbit Valley Books". According to Sean Rabbitt, although MB could win the case against them, it would be far too expensive a battle to fight.

Sean goes into full detail here.

At some point last night, we were hacked. The hackers appear to have done little other than deface the index file. We're up and running again. Sorry for the downtime.

This isn't to say there will be no more movies, HOWEVER, I have 3 different friends in the feature animation department who have all confirmed that after the two features currently in production are finished, there will be no more classic hand drawn animation. It will instead all be computer generated stuff like BUGS LIFE or TOY STORY.

Personally, I think this is because some "suit" saw the commerical success of SHREK and decided that it succeeded because it was computer animated and not because it was actually GOOD.

The last two conventionally animated movies sound dull as well - so if you were looking for Disney to ever do another 'Lion King" - it ain't gonna happen.

I'll try ad get more details this weekend - but I consider this information to be fairly reliable.

Yahoo News has published an Associated Press report that Bjossa, a 25-year-old female orca, died Monday at San Deigo SeaWorld. Bjossa had formerly lived at the Vancouver Aquarium, and was transported to SeaWorld in April. A spokesman for the aquarium said that Bjossa had suffered from a lung infection for at least a year before she arrived at SeaWorld.

BBC Online has three stories related to endangered species:

The Javan rhinoceros, one of the world's most endangered species, is showing signs of recovery.

Loggerhead turtles can detect variations in the earth's magnetic field and navigate thereby.

Researchers use underwater acoustical equipment to track and count whales and dolphins.

A Merced, CA man discovered his 200-pound Burmese python had escaped from its cage, and his pit bull puppy was missing. He soon found them both, in a matter of speaking.

See this story at Yahoo! for more info.