Faculty in the News: Making video game robots like living creatures, and trying to make sense of the Fresno shooting

CSUSB News



NOTE: Faculty, if you are interviewed and quoted by news media, or if your work has been cited, and you have an online link to the article or video, please let us know. Contact us at news@csusb.edu.
Stuart Sumida, professor of biology at Cal State San Bernardino, was specifically mentioned on a video game news website, Gamasutra.com, as a consultant for PlayStation 4’s “Horizon: Zero Dawn,” which features sophisticated robots, called Machines, that “also exhibit unmistakable animal-like behaviors and movements,” the article said. “These Machines are a key feature of the game’s unique primordial futurist milieu.”
Sumida has done anatomical consulting on myriad projects, including films “The Lion King,” “Dinosaur,” “Hercules,” and “Harry Potter,” and Disney World rides  “Countdown to Extinction” and “Expedition Everest.”
The article was published April 21, 2017, and may be read at “Making ‘Horizon: Zero Dawn’s ‘ machines feel like living creatures.”
News media continued to turn to Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice, in the aftermath of the April 18 shooting in Fresno, which is being investigated as a hate crime. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer has said the four killings were fueled by Muhammad’s hatred of white people. The suspect, Kori Muhammad is black. All of the murder victims were white.
In an interview with The Fresno Bee, Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, called some people’s haste to affiliate the suspected Fresno mass shooter with foreign terrorists “the bumper sticker analysis.”
“His rantings are not part of a violent Jihadist movement. He’s not inspired by ISIS or Al-Qaeda. He’s someone who has crafted his own brand of extremism,” Levin said. “Some of these violent extremists craft their own idiosyncratic ideology from a buffet of often related hatred that exists on social media – and that’s what happened here.”
Levin compared Muhammad ...

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