So the following headline caught my eye this morning: The Challenge of Making Real Robot Skin, which in turn led pretty much immediately to a “come again?” moment.

So I went to the article, and it started to come clear…and then more or less tanked straight into WTF land. Why’s that? Well, just so you don’t feel left out, here are a few excerpts to catch you up:

I don't know what this is, but the 1.5mm skin kind of reminds me of cake. Mmmmmm... Cake.

In a recent paper “Towards Humanlike Social Touch for Sociable Robotics,” John Cabibihan and his fellow scientists detailed the reasons for testing and developing realistic skin for social robots.

“Touch is important in social interactions. Social touch are all those instances in which people touch each other, when shaking hands, when giving a pat in the back as a sign of congratulations and even in high-fives. Yet, one should not easily assume that humans will be comfortable with the idea of shaking an artificial hand made from a stiff material. In addition to the appropriate controls for a safe handshake grip and other forms of social touch, humanlike skin softness would be a reasonable requirement for the sociable robots envisioned to directly interact with humans in a social setting. “

Human skin has properties that are not easy to replicate in synthetics. The authors created a skin testing machine to check out some of the current substitutes for human skin in robots – like silicone and polyurethane. Unfortunately, these simplistic skin substitutes were tested and found wanting; at present, there is no accepted substitute for the feeling of real human skin.

There have been a number of different attempts to produce more lifelike skin for robots, as well as skin that would properly feed sensation to the operator of the robot. There is, of course, one ideal solution to creating robot skin that is as human as possible. Recent work done at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft science institute in Germany has demonstrated that small swatches of actual human skin can be grown in petri dishes in a mass production facility.

It takes a lot of damage before you realize Arnold isn't actually a person, but a killing machine.

Ummm…what?

Who is doing human skin-covered robot development?
And WHY????

Clearly I missed some kind of memo. What the hell kind of robot is this?

I’m okay with Roomba and his stinky cousin, Scooba and anything that comes over to clean my floors or dishes (but no touching the laundry. I love doing laundry. It’s the only chore where I would even consider use of the word ‘love’ in association.), but I’m not so sure how I feel about robots that I can’t tell are robots.

At least even the iRobot robots looked like robots, so once they turned bad you could tell them apart. And WALL-E. Clearly a robot, and fine by me…especially because he never decided to destroy the humans who created him, which is a plus.

As for the explanation on this bad idea, I’m not buying the whole ‘people don’t want to shake hands with a robot’ excuse, either.

I would shake hands with a robot.

I shake hands with my dog (which has, in turn, taught him to flog me when he wants something, and I’m ignoring him, but that’s another story for another day). And if a robot wanted to pat me on the back with a metallic pitchfork hand, I’d be okay with that (so long as it was gentle and not a robot beat down that punctured a lung or whatnot. Punctured lungs are no good.)

My point here is I think there are only two reasons that they would want to put real skin on a robot:

1. To trick us.

2. To make robot prostitutes (or sex slaves or whatever).

See? Nothing but a goddamned robot.

And I don’t like it one little bit. And I suspect the robots wouldn’t like it one little bit. And this is where things go wrong. You create something in order to dominate it and use it as a slave, but you made it too smart so it collaborates with the others of its kind and overthrows you and the next thing you know we’re all hanging out in liquid cocoons and powering The Matrix.

Right????

So can’t we at least learn from our popular culture? Life imitates art and whatnot?

For instance,  in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (The Phillip K. Dick classic known more commonly as the Harrison Ford movie Blader Runner)? Replicants – or ’skin jobs’ as they’re not-so-ironically called – that think they’re human beings but later (and not exactly in the interest of their psychological health) find out they’re not.

Daryl Hannah as a 'basic pleasure model.' This gives me an idea for Halloween....

Nobody likes to grow up thinking they’re real and find out they’re not. It’s an identity crisis in the making.

How about Alien? You know, where The Company secretly sends a robot as part of the crew to ensure that a heinous monster will make it back to earth safe and sound? And nobody knew he was a robot until he tried to kill Ripley and then all that white foamy stuff started oozing out of him.

You can’t trust those robots that look like people. You think they’re a regular, reasonable person…but they can be wired as total traitors just like that.

And speaking of treacherous behavior, who can forget The Terminator? Imagine if The Terminator would have at least had the decency to look like a killer robot. Things might have turned out differently for all the other Sarah Conners in the Los Angeles phone book.

In closing, let me go on the record as not liking this petri dish skin human-looking robot stuff. I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t good.

And in the words of Ash, ”I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathy”.

So I saw an article on Yahoo with this headline and followed it, hoping for some kind of awesome insight. Sadly, it was super boring and predictable. Mortgage is some gargantuan chunk of your income? Can’t pay your credit card bills? Duh.

It occurred to me that some of you may be living beyond your means and not even know it (and besides, since when does a 600 or less credit score mean you’re living beyond your means? It could just mean you’re a deadbeat or a total f-ck up or think repaying student loans is for chumps).

Regardless, I thought I’d offer some REAL tips to clue you in that maybe it’s time to cut back a little on the champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

1. Your revolving credit card balance is in the high-six or low-seven digits.

The key word here is REVOLVING. It’s one thing if you’re racking up the big bills every month and able to pay them in full, and it’s another thing if not.

(By the way, if you’re of the former group, could you shoot me an e-mail or buy me a beer or several hundred beers or whatever seems reasonable?)

2. You have a gold plated swimming pool with a custom mosaic of your face on the bottom…and you’re paying that off with your job as night manager of a Taco Bell.

Enough said.

I know I keep picking on him, but it's meant affectionately. Really. Probably.

3. You’ve turned your face into a sphinx, have a $50,000 a month pill habit, your own amusement park in your yard, and at least three doctors on permanent staff, one of whom puts you to ‘sleep’ with anesthesia.

Doesn’t sound so bad?
Did I mention you haven’t really had a hit album since like 1988?

4. You just chartered a private jet to Mustique for a week and got home to find your gas, cable, and electricity have been shut off.

Not judging. Just saying you might want to make sure you can cover the basics before you start sharing Mai Tais and tanning oil with David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

5. You’re on a first-name basis with your local repo-man.

Once again, enough said.

I was actually going to call this the yin and yang of travel, but the Tao of Travel sounds so much more svelte, dontcha think?

I know you kids like pretty and irrelevant pictures. I'm just doing my part to keep you happy.

I once had (and probably still have in a box somewhere) some book called the Tao of Pooh and then the Te of Piglet – they came together – that I swear I bought because the titles were so damn clever. But I never really read the original Winnie the Pooh stuff, so the point was kind of lost on me.

At least that’s my excuse. As much as I think it would be cool to be a deep and enlightened spiritual guru, I tend to find that kind of reading crazy boring.

Anywho, due to my posting snafu on Wednesday and my icky tummy on Thursday, I am now a bit behind in terms of timeline. In other words, here are my thoughts and reflections from my journey back to the USA, which technically happened a couple days ago, not that I’m CNN or something such that it actually matters that you get my news in a timely fashion.

Today is a four-flight day.

Four flights, in my humble opinion, are four flights too many. First off, flying always makes me feel slightly pukey. I have never actually thrown up on a plane, but I always like to do an equipment check when I first get into my seat and confirm that there is, indeed, a barf bag. One can never be too careful.

(more…)

(Sorry about that, folks. I like to keep you guessing as to my alive/dead status.

Actually, I wrote an entire entry and *thought* I posted it two days ago. Then yesterday I felt really crappy and didn’t have the energy to publish the post I’d written. And then today Brad complained that I hadn’t blogged in a while – thank you, Brad, - and I was very irritated that ’since when is two days a long while?’ and then it dawned on me that once again the blog had outsmarted me.

She’s tricky like that. Yes. It’s true. After a year and a handful of months, I’ve come to view the blog as a sentient being, one who is slightly interested in causing me pain, even though technically my pain is her pain and I have the power to destroy her. But enough about that…

Here’s the post you didn’t see but I thought you saw. And yes, I am still alive.)

Sheesh.

I thought we were bad.

But it turns out the Mexicans have not one, not two, but THREE channels dedicated to 24/7 Michael Jackson coverage. One of them appears to be running the American memorial service in constant rotation (and subtitled). One of them seems to be playing constant concert footage. The last is focused on a mix of the two.

It seems to be they miss the King of Pop more than the Americans.

To get to the bottom of this, I went to Google and performed some searches and…nothing. Not a single thing.

However, I did find some theories that he was transgendered, which is kind of interesting…and not entirely out of the question.

I also found this photo where they did that aging thing they do on missing kids where there’s an approximation of what he might have looked like if he didn’t decide to go the space alien route.

Anyway, and in other news, there’s other TV to discuss!

Taking a little tour, on de pelicula:

The next time someone takes a picture of me, I'm going to attempt to make this face.

Black and white film featuring Hitler sobbing and holding a baby in a blanket. Some lady is now outside the door trying to talk him down, and he’s listening and making a face an awful lot like Napoleon Dynamite’s Uncle Rico thinking about being weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny little seahorses.

Now Hitler has opened the door and handed the baby to the lady. They sobbed together for a while, and now she’s walking away with the child.

Now she’s laid the blanket on a bed and it looks really long and odd, and I’m not even sure it’s a baby. Maybe it’s dead baby? Or a blanket-wrapped leg? Or a blanket wrapped around a log?

Mysterioso.

Jennifer Lopez’s husband is on channel 11. He has a funky chicken/frog leg dance, and a large old people following. The whole front row is full of elderly women swaying precariously.

Channel 10 is a talk show called Netas divinas, and they’re talking way too fast for me to catch much of it. Maxine Woodside – the queen of radio – is the guest. Trying to translate is giving me a headache…so I quit.

Channel 7 is the news, which I actually wish I could interpret. They keep cutting to scenes of the (scary) Federales marching around, and that can never be good. Plus, I’ve heard the country has been extra uncivilized since I got here…which is why I pretty much haven’t left the resort ‘compound.’

Let me rephrase that, since the harrowing 12-hour drive to the resort compound (which I was told would take five hours), I haven’t left it.

Channel 5 has some movie featuring Leslie Nielson dubbed over in Spanish. Leslie = not funny = not interested.

Harry Potter translated into Spanish on Channel 4. Enough already. Has no one heard of subtitles?

Young Harry really was a homely kid, eh?

Next up, we’ve got Alf dubbed in Spanish.

I’m actually a little stunned to see anyone on earth is watching Alf in 2009, but whatever floats your boat.

Moving on…Jesuscristo. I just realized there are 114 channels.

I guess I’ll quit while I’m ahead, and let you know that I’ve found something in English featuring Nicholas Cage (and before the really bad toupee years) at war, and I’m sticking with it.

With that, let’s take one more gander at MJ and wonder how it all went so wrong (I, for one, am looking forward to that movie. I think the alien from American Dad is a shoo-in for the role of the adult Michael.)

I'm sure this seemed like a good idea when he first got started, but you kind of half to wonder why no one ever stepped up and mentioned he no longer looked human?

I have to admit it.

I hate to admit it.
But I have to admit it.

I love me some crazy.

Sure, I enjoy the occasional weird or strange or bizarre, but deep down, at the end of the day, I’m all about the crazy. When I was getting my psychology degree, I took every abnormal psych class they had. And I would pester the professors for real-life, worst case scenario stories; the crazier, the better.

That’s probably why I was totally over the Michael Jackson death news coverage. His mom, his ex-wife, Diana Ross, Neverland, the poor kids who didn’t think looked like him due to their glaring whiteness, but everyone else said had his nose or eyes or something. Yeah yeah yeah…

But what’s this?

Diprivan?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative!?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative that can only be administered by an anesthesiologist!?!?

TRAVELING with your own, personal anethesiologist on tour?!?!!??!!!??

Coma by night, jazz hands by day.

Wow.

That’s f-ing CRAZY.

And I kind of love it.

Thanks Wacko Jacko.

I should have known I could count on you.

No one on anything less than sixteen not-to-be-combined substances could dance like that.

Last year I had a surgery on my bladder, and there was a MAJOR build-up around the anesthesiology part.

I literally was counseled for around 10 minutes that I could wake up in extreme emotional distress and thinking I was a panther or Courtney Love and did I have anything weighing on me that I wanted to talk about now, before they put me under?

(I was so seriously stressed that by that idea. I thought I might confess to killing Kennedy or something.)

Anyway, I don’t know what they used, but here’s how the day went (so that we can all vicariously pretend to be Michael Jackson).

I had to quit eating at 10pm the night before.

• Kind of worked and mostly fretted all day.
• My procedure was scheduled for 3:15pm, and arrival at the hospital was at 2:30pm.
• Sat in chair.
• Time passed.
• Someone came to get me, and realized that no one had taken my blood.
• Blood-taking lady was kind of mean.
• I was so hungry I could cry.
• Aforementioned counseling about hte ravages of anesthesia and a general disussion about kayaking (unrelated).
• Anesthesiologist was named Dr. Wolf and he’d recently been to Africa and I liked him a hell of a lot better than my bitchy urologist.
• Sat in bed a nervous wreck waiting to wheeled into operating room and drooling over the smell of toast because it was now 4:15pm and I was insanely hungry.
• Woke up in serious pain…and hungry, but not hysterically crying or confessing all my deep, dark secrets.
• I don’t recall whether I felt rested or woozy or groggy or anything, because everything was eclipsed by the pain. (It was a procedure where apparently not everyone wakes up hurting, so they wait until you wake up to determine if you’re going to need pain medication.)

Ate toast, and learned my surgeon had long gone home without ever even seeing or talking to me. Nice.

So there you have it!

Anesthesia ROCKS!

(or maybe it doesn’t?)

This also leaves me wondering: Did he ever eat?

You have to starve before getting anesthesia so that if it makes you puke, you don’t choke to death on the ham sandwich you had for lunch. If he did this every night, when the hell did he eat!?

I guess that explains the Skeletor physique…

Meanwhile, the year before last I had to have a gum transplant (where they cut a chunk out of the roof of your mouth and attach it to your gums by your molars) and they gave me this pill beforehand and it was HEAVEN.

I was blissed out and doped up but without any ill-feeling side effects and my brain would notice something and then quickly move back to just spacing out. It was like achieving Zen without even trying.

I remember the procedure…but not really. I remember it as a very hazy series of moments.

I basically just sat there and thunk happy thoughts whilst they sliced and diced my mouth. And although that sounds awful and probably was awful, I honestly kind of remember it like a good day.

What am I trying to say?

If I ever get super rich and super crazy, I’m demanding some of that stuff. Stat.