Japanese Scientists Build a Perfect (and Fake) Pop Star (Time.com)

Eguchi Aimi is your typical Japanese pop star: perfect skin, high-pitched girlish voice, lithe figure, and a team of computer designers, photographers, and other pop stars artificially constructing her every movement.

You read that correctly. Aimi does not exist - at least not in the traditional sense. But this drawback has not stopped the girl, who was announced as the newest member of all-girl supergroup AKB 48 earlier this month, has already graced the cover of Japan's Weekly Playboy, and is part of a prestigious campaign for Ice no Mi - an ice cream product made by confectionary company Glico. But Aimi has not only infiltrated the uppermost echelons of superstardom in her brief lifetime, she also convinced much of a nation that she was a real girl for several weeks.

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Eventually her true origins were revealed; Glico announced on June 19 that their newest spokesperson was created by a computer. But her technological background does not mean that Aimi is lacking in human components: in fact, every part of her - from her legs to her voice to her eyebrows - is borrowed from another member of AKB 48. She is simply composed of many photographs blended together to create a single composite pop star.

When Aimi was first introduced in a media blitz, her producer Akimoto Yasushi heralded her as "the heroine of the new age," and said that the reason he created the AKB family may have been in order to meet her. Aimi was hyped up to the Japanese public even more when her producer's accolades were outdone by the computer-generated beauty's magazine shoot whose captions read: "Ultimate Beautiful Girl, Ultimate Talented Girl, Ultimate Great Attack, Ultimate Fairy Tale Story."

But there were some who could not believe that Aimi's perfection could be born of nature. In fact, the CGI super-girl had her doubters from the start. Tokyo Hive reported that superfans of the pop group recognized some of her facial features and her voice from other girls, and that certain parts of her biography bore a striking resemblance to Gliko's own history.

There has been no formal announcement about whether Aimi will continue to be part of the pop group after the Gliko promotion has concluded. But, for fans of the concept of a make-your-own starlet, Ice no Mi's website allows users to create their fantasy superstar with the images of other AKB 48 members.

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How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs (Time.com)

It's further proof that Hitler was barking mad.

In his new book Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities, Cardiff University historian Jan Bondeson mines obscure German periodicals to reveal the Nazis' failed attempt to breed an army of educated dogs that could read, write and talk. "In the 1920s, Germany had numerous 'new animal psychologists' who believed dogs were nearly as intelligent as humans, and capable of abstract thinking and communication," he writes. "When the Nazi party took over, one might have thought they would be building concentration camps to lock these fanatics up, but instead they were actually very interested in their ideas."

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According to the book, scientists envisioned a day when dogs would serve alongside German troops, and perhaps free up SS officers by guarding concentration camps. So to unlock all that canine potential, Hitler set up a Tier-Sprechschule (Animal Talking School) near Hanover and recruited "educated dogs" from throughout the country. Teachers claimed a number of incredible findings. An Airedale terrier named Rolf became a mythic figure of the project after teachers said he could spell by tapping his paw on a board (the number of taps represented the various letters of the alphabet). With that skill in hand, he mused on religion, learned foreign languages and even asked a noblewoman, "Can you wag your tail?" Perhaps most outlandish is the claim by his German masters that he asked to serve in the German army because he disliked the French. Another mutt barked "Mein Fuhrer" when asked to describe Hitler. And Don, a German pointer, is said to have imitated a human voice to bark, "Hungry! Give me cakes!" in German.

Germany's love of dogs may have blinded the Nazis to the outlandish goals of their project. "Part of the Nazi philosophy was that there was a strong bond between humans and nature. They believed a good Nazi should be an animal friend," Bondeson says. "Indeed, when they started interning Jews, the newspapers were flooded with outraged letters from Germans wondering what had happened to the pets they left behind."

Hitler, a well-known dog-lover, had two German Shepherds named Blondi and Bella. He killed Blondi shortly before killing himself in 1945. (via The Sun)

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