The latest round of commercials for the United States Air Force play on the theme "It's Not Science Fiction," portraying Air Force missions and technologies as something out of military science fiction. One even shows off the Space Command, although this one doesn't appear to involve Stargates or preparations against an alien invasion.

Another ad spotlights the Unmanned Aircraft Systems, with a desert mission seeing support from a spy plane.

Another spot imagines the Air Force's combat, search and rescue airmen parachuting onto an alien world.

US Air Force Not Science Fiction [The Inspiration Room]

Here's the new ad:

And here are his previous contributions to the Victoria's Secret advertising ouevre:

About this particular advertisement for Los Alamos Labs (which worked on weapons systems), Prelinger writes:

The blue spot disrupts the conventionally romantic stylization of planetary or solar bodies by contracting the sphere to its minimal form. [Artist Oli] Sihvonen here seems to reference the early 20th century Russian constructivists, with the prolonged vertical angular shape aimed at the planetary circle. It brings to mind El Lissitzsky's constructivist graphic composition Beat Back the Whites with the Red Wedge which pioneered the use of juxtaposed triangle and circle as a graphic strategy to represent political conflict. I find it ironic that the graphic legacy of Communist action should be re-articulated and put into service - whether with or without the artists' sanction - in the service of American Cold War-era weapons and civil space technological programming.

You can see more of these advertisements, along with design-geek analysis, at Berg London. Or you can pre-order a copy of Prelinger's forthcoming (gorgeous) book, Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-62.

If you somehow managed to exist within the American mediascape and miss the ads for Jennifer's Body, count yourself lucky. Nearly all of them featured Megan Fox (and her title-inspiring body) in a sexy pose, as if we were about to watch a teen sex comedy where boys slaver after the unapproachable cheerleader. Tease campaigns about the movie emphasized that there would be a sexy lesbian kiss between Fox and Amanda Seyfried, the film's nerdy, point-of-view character. In short, the ad campaigns were aimed at straight young men, who are the core audience for most movies starring Megan Fox.

But the problem is that Jennifer's Body is not an ejaculatory explosion movie like Transformers 2. It is a horror movie, which means its built-in audience is already predominantly female (stats show that horror movie-goers are often over 60 percent women). Megan Fox is also not the main character; and she's not the boy hero's plucky sidekick (there are no boy heroes in this movie). Instead, she's the toothy, gory, puke-soaked object of repulsion and disgust. In short, she is the monster.

And she's a very specific kind of monster, too. She embodies one of the scariest demons who haunts girls' dreams: The popular, pretty girl who pretends to be your friend while secretly trying to steal your boyfriend, your pride, and your life. Written and directed by women, Jennifer's Body is a film made in a women's genre about women's problems. It's a movie about why women want to stab Megan Fox in the tit with scissors.

Marketing Jennifer's Body like it was another version of The Hangover or American Pie, with sexy ladies and dick jokes, meant it was doomed to fail. Women saw posters that emphasized Megan Fox as slick sex object, and thought: I hate that chick - why would I want to see a movie about her? And men who saw the movie said: What the fuck? I thought this was going to be tits and lesbian kissing, and instead it's about dysfunctional teen girl relationships? Why do I want to see Amanda Seyfried talking about her feelings for 90 minutes?

Reviews of the film seem to bear this interpretation out. Women and Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein points to a quick survey that Screen Rant did of critical responses to the film:

There were many more reviews by men (77) than women (26). The majority of these were culled from the Rotten Tomatoes site . . . Here's the breakdown: Male movie reviewers: 39% liked it, 61% disliked it; Female movie reviewers: 54% liked it, 46% disliked it.

Director Karyn Kusama told MTV.com:

I don't know if selling the film as a straight horror film and selling it primarily to boys is really going to do any of us any favors, frankly.

And indeed it didn't. Marketing attracted primarily men to the movie (including male reviewers), and a majority disliked it. Fewer women saw it, but of those who did, a majority (including myself) liked it.

I think it's clear that misguided marketing was a huge factor in what destroyed Jennifer's Body. As I said, the movie isn't Criterion Collection material, but it's a damn good genre picture. It's better than most other horror movies out there, with an original premise and a smart, fresh take on a very old monster story. If the marketing droids at Fox had just been smart enough to realize that the movie was aimed at women - not unlike most horror movies - they might have had a cult hit on their hands.

A team of researchers at University College London showed volunteers a series of words with positive, negative, and neutral connotations. Each word was shown too quickly for the viewer to consciously perceive it, but the researchers asked the viewers to identify whether the word had an emotional value. Viewers correctly identified negative words as having an emotional value 77 percent of the time, while they correctly identified positive words as having an emotional value just 59 percent of the time.

The researchers believe that this superior subliminal perception of negative words is tied to a primal tendency to be more alert to threats than to non-threats. Thus, words that create a sense of fear or anxiety are more acutely perceived by the human brain and are more likely to trigger an emotional response. That suggests that, if advertisers are looking to utilize subliminal messages, it's less effective to tout your product's virtues than it is to bash the competition.

Power of the hidden message revealed [The Independent]

Additional reporting and pictures from Julia Carusillo, Ray Wert and Cailtin Petrakovitz.

While the themed menu was hideously overpriced and frankly we got a bit tired of the gimmicky menus awaiting us at every turn, the actual setup of Syfy's off-the-floor booth was amazing. They recreated Eureka's Cafe Diem with a white picket fence placed out front. The fully-functional diner was a nice break from the crowded Con.

Circular Stargate desserts at the MGM SGU Launch party were not only adorable, but delicious.

The Where The Wild Things Are Gold Crowns made everyone smile, except the movie's targeted sad indie kid demographic. Massive props to We Love You So for getting a picture of Spike Jonze's Wild Things audience in the actual crown.

We already told you all about Flynn's Arcade and the secret back room with the world's most beautiful light cycle. But playing the arcade's real life Space Paranoids was living the dream.

Half of the True Blood ads annoyed us, but this elevator button placement did not. Picture from imdb.

"The Fantastic Mr. Fox" fellas from Wes Anderson's flick, and their coveted fur ties, were a giant success. Let's hope they spark a khaki suit Con craze.

Zombieland hand sanitizer straight from the movie. Even though the director told us later it would do nothing for an actual zombie infection, still we like cleanliness and all that.

This little Star Trek USB was a great way to remember this year's Con - it even says Comic Con 2009 on the side. Frankly I think that's better than a t-shirt.

Finally this is more of an announcement, but we're still giddy about it. Tru Blood is going to be made and manufactured for $16.00 in packs of four and will taste like a blood orange soda. HBO is taking orders now. Oh, go buy some you big dork - I already did.

Enjoy your Gender Specificity while it lasts.
Sorry, we still do not have personal jet packs.
Save the Rainforests, thats where the ape overlords say the best bananas come from.
Racism is no longer a problem now that all inferior humans are slaves.
Don't worry, it turns out the moon is made out of fossil fuels.

Surprisingly amusing. You can check out more of these, along with the original ads that aired 10 years ago, by visiting None Inc. Just ignore the "visit Syfy" image that pops up and scroll down the top, orange window.

I know it is wearying to see ads masquerading as editorial, and it's especially difficult for us at io9 since we've been covering the show True Blood for over a year without any incentive other than the fact that it's part of our beat. Oh, and some of us actually like the damn show, and even think the idea of a fake vampire blog is a cool ARG.

What is uncool is that the ARG is not marked as advertising, and is therefore designed to hoodwink io9 readers in two ways. One, it makes it seem that our parent company has bought a blog written by vampires. Two, it taints our legitimate editorial posts about the show True Blood, calling into question our coverage and reviews because it seems that we've been paid off to write about the show. Already, Media Bistro has commented that io9 is "promoting" True Blood by posting a clip from it. This simply isn't true. If you look at the tag True Blood on io9, you can see that we have been posting clips and recaps of the show starting last year, long before the Blood Copy campaign launched on Gawker. In particular, our resident vampire expert Meredith Woerner has made the show her beat, and recapped every episode for you last season.

This isn't the first time we've written about media created by sponsors of the site. We've had ads from Star Trek running next to coverage of the movie on our blog for the past few weeks (and not all of that coverage was exactly flattering). We've had book ads for books that we reviewed like Neal Stephenson's Anathem. A few weeks ago, we had an ad for a new Alastair Reynolds book next to a somewhat negative review of the novel.

Blood Copy's ads, however, are not clearly marked as advertising and that is the problem. We're not happy with that, and you shouldn't be either. But that isn't going to stop us from covering a show that we think is worth critical attention. Please learn to be a critical reader yourself, and when a post comes up with a red circle around it that says "Blood Copy," realize that is an ad. Anything else is legitimate io9 content.

This goes for other ads you see on the site too. Hopefully, nobody has yet mistaken the Star Trek CheezIt ads on io9 for actual editorial.

The point is, we're not going to change our coverage of a media property just because somebody paid to put an ad on our site. We aren't going to make fun of Sookie any less because of this advertising deal, and we aren't going to stop telling you when the episodes get too cheesy for words. At the same time, if there is a good episode or breaking news about the series we'll tell you about that too - just as we have been for the past year.

If you aren't happy about the Blood Copy advertising campaign, you can make your voice heard in comments on that fake blog. They aren't going to turn comments off or edit them.

And you have my apologies in advance for the Blood Copy sponsorship campaign. If it had only been clearly marked as an advertisement, it might have been a pretty cool ARG. As it is now, I'm afraid it's only advertising.

UPDATE: I am happy to report that Blood Copy posts will now come with a notice that says "sponsored post." Thanks to Gawker top brass, who heard everybody's complaints and acted quickly.

I actually don't know where to begin with these weird Burger King ads. Apparently there are creatures called "Kingons," not to be confused with "Klingons," and Burger King's infamously scary-looking mascot is one of them. And because Burger King's Star Trek glasses contain dilithium crystals (is that safe for drinking?) the "Kingons" are determined to steal them from you. But apart from the "dance of seduction," the Kingons mostly use weird playground bullying tactics to steal your glass, such as wedgies and nipple attacks. Yes, really. A "Kingon" is going to attack your nipples. There's a whole website, the Kingon Defense Academy, devoted to protecting you from these insidious attacks.

Actually, though, the Trek glasses are pretty nice. Here are some images of them. (More over at TrekMovie.)

And here are some more bizarre "Kingon" attack strategies, including the weird nipple assault. I just don't know if I can take nipple-grabbing aliens seriously.

Warp-Five Wedgie:

Scary guitar-playing!

How to punch a guy in the crotch:

A woman gets nerve-pinched and paralysed:

And finally, the nipple thing. WTF!

Pectoral grease? Did they just show a Starfleet officer putting grease on a guy's nipples? Was this, by any chance, Burger King grease?

[AdAge]

The weird innards-revealing ad is supposed to show how cutting-edge the phone is, and highlight the fact that you can see the phone's inner workings. Says Beckham, "I love classic watches so a phone that exposes its mechanics while also being so stylish is really unique."

Here's a video of the ad campaign, which weirdly doesn't make me want to get this human-killing phone at all:

[Guardian]

Start unpacking that backpack of homo sapiens privilege, and tune into these awesome posters by Milan ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi. They're designed to promote Sci Fi Channel but let's just ignore that and remember that there are two sides to every alien encounter story.

I'm not entirely joking.

See these posters in an even more giant size at Copyranter.

The two deep-voiced shouters of scifi are dueling at last, in an ad for Talk Talk, some British phone service. Admit it, you've always wanted to hear Brian Blessed scream about "added internet security for the family." Baker retorts that his Talk Talk gives him "double download capacity." "Your Talk talk has its priorities wrong!" Blessed counters. "Could it be that your TalkTalk is different than my TalkTalk???" In one version of the ad (not online, sadly), Tom calls Brian a "flash Harry." Which I think is an insult, but doesn't involve showing your naughty bits to old ladies on the street or anything.

Here's the epoch-making confrontation of our idols:

Alas, they both sound a little too mellow, maybe thanks to a few decades of serene reflection, so we don't really get to hear the clash of titans so many of us have been awaiting for years. [Guardian]

The Mumbai branch of advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather created this giant ad for the HSBC’s global warming initiative, attaching an aerial photograph of New York City to the bottom of a swimming pool. It’s certainly an eye-catching way to advertise the bank’s interest in global warming, and the bank has made a point of investing in firms working to tackle the problem.

But in terms of alerting the public to the consequences of global warming, it seems to miss the mark. We’ve already been exposed to plenty of images of rising sea levels and submerged cities. For the issue to truly hit home, people need to be made aware of how global warming will affect humanity, not just the relics we’ll leave beneath the water. This image makes me think that I might like to visit a version of Earth where you can swim above the cities, even if intellectually I know I wouldn’t want to live there.

The Global Warming Swimming Pool: Swimming Above a Submerged City [Neatorama]

Following Oprah’s foot-stomping, fist-waving televised love letter to the digital reading device, the Kindle enjoyed a nice bump in search traffic. Couple that with the endorsement’s timing – a convenient two months before Christmas and Hanukkah – and we could see increased Kindle proliferation.

Of course, scifi does acknowledge that people of the future will be susceptible to marketing. The “suckdisk” game from Star Trek: The Next Generation topped our list of suckiest scifi video games, but everyone on the Enterprise plays it, preferring it to activities like the holodeck, eating, and defending the ship from space pirates. And it’s not because the game is any good (it’s not), but because it triggers the pleasure centers of the brain as you play it. Sure, it was all a scheme to distract the crew, but it was also a great way to market an otherwise lame-ass game. And Snow Crash’s neurolinguistic contagion adds a new layer to concept of “viral” marketing.

And technology can be marketed out of existence as well. The 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? suggested that one of the reasons battery-powered cars never took off was that negative campaigning by oil and car companies undermined potential government and consumer support. Regardless of whether it’s true, we can’t expect Vulcans to step out of the clouds and tell us our latest invention will change our role in the universe. We’ll just have to hope that Oprah knows what’s best for us.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, a non-profit organization funded by the Korean government, has filed a patent for electronic interactive billboards that display information relevant to the individual who touches it:

The display would download details about that person's interests and recent activities, and display a relevant advert. Downloads like detailed product brochures could also be offered. Whether people would want to interact with ads in this way is another matter.

To address this, the patent suggests goodies could be offered too – for example special-offer coupons, or even music and films. Billboards in places where people wait for buses or trains would be ideal spots to get people interacting, suggest the team.

Such an approach to advertising depends on the proliferation of body area networks, personal networks that would integrate all of your personal electronics devices:

Options for such body area networks include skin-clinging radio waves, or tiny vibrations through the skeleton that let people swap data with a handshake.

It may push us one step closer to cyborgdom, but if advertisers are interested in the identity tracking capabilities of this technology, governments can’t be too far behind.

Invention: Billboards that know you at a touch [New Scientist via Kurzweil]

Over on the show's writers blog, Eureka unscripted, Eric Wallace - the co-writer of "Here Come The Suns," the episode where Degree saved the day and the town, alongside executive producer Jaime Paglia - described the experience:

It all began way back in October 2007 when the Sci Fi Channel announced to the Eureka staff that 1) we would have an official commercial sponsor this season, one that was kicking in a lot of dough and would therefore 2) require tons of product placement throughout Season Three. We were also told that 3) ONE EPISODE in Season Three would have to incorporate a storyline in which the actual product HAD to save Eureka somehow, or at the very least, be INDISPENSABLE to Carter’s Act 5 solve.

Oooooookay…

That product turned out to be Degree Absolute Protection For Men (deodorant) and “Here Comes the Suns” (originally entitled “Little Miss Sunshine”) would become that episode.

And how did the staff feel about writing an episode of Eureka under so many pre-existing conditions? Well, on the one hand… Degree money meant a higher budget, which would hopefully translate into a better-looking show. On the other hand, there was the danger that this much product integration could throw our story off balance. Needless to say, great care was taken along the way during this one. Never before has any episode of our show been so scrutinized on all levels.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wasn’t just a bit nerve racking. But, man… it was also fun as heck, too.

Fun, perhaps, but also more research-intensive than Wallace had expected. Basic research, mind you:

Along the way we got tons of Network notes about the “Degree”-ness of things. The funniest one involved the ending. Originally Carter and Zane used a spray-on Degree deodorant to protect themselves from the heat in Act 5. However, it was then pointed out that Degree is a roll on. So the spray quickly got changed to a roll-on-esque fireproof goo.

It's that ability to roll with the punches that keeps the Eureka staff upright in the midst of production uncertainty. Revealed elsewhere on the blog is that fact that they don't know when the second half of the season will appear:

Honestly, we don’t know yet… and we’re as anxious to find out as you. Trust us, as soon as we can confirm airdates for those final thirteen episodes, we’ll let you know HERE FIRST.

(And, obviously, as soon as they confirm, we'll tell you.)

[Eureka Unscripted]