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”.

As if we needed further proof that people are nuts…or easily angered…or both, along comes this guy to make my day.

“Who is this man?” you ask. Well, let’s do some deductive reasoning together.

They say your nose and ears keep growing your entire life, and obviously they do.

Look at this snarly mug. Does this man look angry?

Yes! Yes, he does!

Does he look like he forgot to take his meds?

Right again!

And does he look like a man capable of delivering a beat down onto a stranger’s two-year old child in a Georgia Wal-Mart?

Well, it should, because he did.

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. – Police say a 61-year-old man annoyed with a crying 2-year-old girl at a Walmart slapped the child several times after warning the toddler’s mother to keep her quiet.

A police report says after the stranger hit the girl at least four times, he said: “See, I told you I would shut her up.”

Roger Stephens of Stone Mountain is charged with felony cruelty to children. It was unclear if he had an attorney and a telehpone call to his home Wednesday was unanswered.

Authorities say the girl and her mother were shopping Monday when the toddler began crying. The police report says Stephens approached the mother and said, “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

Authorities say after Stephens slapped the girl, she began screaming.

I think the saddest sentence of this article is the last one, because it highlights the audacity of arrogance: Here this man was bragging about his ability to shut up babies, and when given a chance (or seizing a chance…either way) to demonstrate his skill, he failed miserably and made the baby even MORE upset. And then he decided to applaud his failed efforts by tossing a saucy, “See, I told you I would shut her up,” out for all to hear.

But you didn’t, Roger. You didn’t shut her up, you made her scream more.

On the other hand, just looking at him, maybe he didn’t know the difference? Or maybe general screaming sounded more pleasant to him than whining for cookies? It stands to reason he hasn’t had much contact with kids. Or at least I hope he hasn’t.

At the same time, there is a silver lining to be had. Now I’m not saying the toddler deserved this, but let’s break it down objectively here:

1. Kids are annoying. You know they are. You’ve met kids. You may even have kids. In either case, I can guarantee you’ve been annoyed by kids. And if you haven’t? Watch two minutes of that “Nanny 911″ show (whatever it’s called where the British nanny comes and straightens out the hopeless, raising a brood of horrifically spoiled brat parents) and prepare to be ANNOYED. Look, I’m not picking on kids: We were all kids once. We were all annoying. I’m not saying they’re ALWAYS annoying and don’t have their cute or charming moments, I’m just saying that a screaming two-year old – no matter how you slice it – is annoying.

2. In a way, Roger Stephens, Wal-Mart shopper and occasional looney toon, was doing this toddler a favor. The next time she sees a face like that? She’ll know what to do: Shut up and get the hell out of Dodge as fast as humanly possible. There’s no need to lecture this little one on ‘good touch’ or ‘bad touch’ or ‘getting a funny feeling about people.’ Just remind her about that time she was at Wal-Mart, and was physically assualted by a stranger, and she’s good to go.

3. In my opinion, any time you enter a Wal-Mart you really are on your own. All bets are off. Never wanted to see a 400-pound woman in a halter top? Too bad, because there’s one waiting for you by the toilet paper. Have no desire to be hit on by a toothless man in his 80s? That’s a shame, because there’s one hovering around the mangos hoping to pretend that he doesn’t know whether they’re a fruit or a vegetable in order to extract unnecessary cooking advice from you as part of a poorly constructed come-on. Don’t want to be bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake? Well, as we’ve all learned, stay out of Wal-Mart, because you are shooting your odds way up, baby.

You would think I would notice that the first two words in the title of this book are "Joseph" and "Smith" but nooooo....

So I was on Amazon.com placing an order for a few gifts, and at the bottom of the pages (below the reviews which I was reading, and thankfully so, as I was intrigued by this book called ‘Rough Rolling Stone’ because it had all these great reviews, but as I read the reviews, I started to learn that the book was not about The Rolling Stones, but about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons. And I guess it’s a good Joseph Smith book, as things go, and if you’re looking for that kind of reading.

That reminds me: This is akin to the time that I was supposed to be buying some kind of Buddhism or meditation book for someone and instead bought them a book of lesbian poetry [with the same title]. I felt bad because the lady had probably never sold a single copy of her lesbian poetry, and it had finally happened…and here I was returning it a few days later. And she may have had a full-on lady beard in the photo. I can’t quite remember. I do know that I took this kind of odd class once when I was getting my psychology degree, and was deep in the throes of ‘anything for credits toward my degree’ [which is how I ended up in a different class called 'The Prison as a Classroom' where we actually WENT TO A HIGH SECURITY PRISON!!! WTF?] and the teacher had us read all these lesbian [not homosexual. Just lesbian. And NOT The Color Purple. Just lame stuff that her friends must have written or something.] books about the first time and falling in love and being overweight [I think the class was about being overweight, come to think of it. Something like size and image. Or body image and size or something like that. As you can imagine, it had attracted some ladies of considerable size, and I stuck out like a sore thumb]. So anyway, my point here is that I do very clearly remember that on the back of the this one novel – which contained some very awkward and highly detailed love scenes – was a photo of the author and the way the light hit her was just tragic. She had a serious lady beard going on. I kept thinking WHY would you put that photo where other people can see it??? Or maybe in her country that’s considered hot?

(more…)

I’ve been having these strange episodes every day around 3pm where I become so exhausted I have to nap. And I never nap.

In fact, I think there’s a whole blog post about how much I hate napping.

But my body doesn’t care that I hate napping. It just goes into full shut down like a laptop with a worn out battery. Basically, my body starts an automatic hibernation process and refuses to take no for an answer.

So anyway, I’m presuming that’s some lingering after effect of last week’s e. Coli nightmare, and some type of recuperating/healing…and thus that’s not the weird thing I’m referencing in the title.

The weird thing is that I was sitting outside yesterday trying to get my 12 pages done (I’ve upped my daily quota on my book to 12 pages so that I can absolutely be done next Friday and then immediately get down to the business of editing), and I suddenly realized that I was falling asleep and had to shut my eyes for a minute. Okay, that’s not weird either, that’s the ‘new normal,’ but the weird thing is coming. I swear it is.

So I was on my stomach on the lawn chair and fell asleep in one of those light, still kind of aware of what’s going on around you ways – although to my shock, I later realized that I managed to burn through an hour like that –  and heard a noise that sounded like something in my beach bag might’ve fallen over. Since my computer was there, perched semi-precariously in the bag, I propped myself up on my elbows to see what was going on.

It looked like this. Except it's beak was pointed at the sky.

Everything looked normal EXCEPT about two feet from my head, sitting on the concrete was a robin. And without my glasses on, I can’t see jack sh*t, and so my brain pasted the face of my dog on the face of this robin. Generally speaking, my dog’s face isn’t terribly descriptive. It’s bright white with two little beady eyes (they’re a beautiful amber color, but let’s be honest here: In proportion to the size of his skull, they’re kind of small and thus I feel ‘beady’ is an accurate description) and a big black nose and sometimes a pink-tongued smile. But not always. And the non-smiling version was what seemed to be looking at me from this bird’s face.

So I sat there and ‘looked’ at that for a while (which was rather surreal), and wondered if this was some kind of strange spiritual messenger and why had it taken the form of a hybrid between my dog and a bird, and then decided that enough was enough and I needed to get my glasses and see what was really going on here, because even if it was just a common robin, why wasn’t it flying away?

So I sat up slowly and reached over and got my glasses and the whole time the robin just sat there, literally within reaching distance, and I restored my vision and realized it had it’s beak straight up in the air. It was a small robin, and it’s chest was orange-ish with lots of brown spots all over it. (And in my hunt for a suitable likeness online, I have learned it was a juvenile robin.)

(more…)

And by Jesus, I mean Jesus…like the Hispanic name.

And speaking of which, I have a vivid memory which comes to me once in a while of being ten or eleven years old and in Manhattan with my dad, my brother, and my dad’s girlfriend at the time, (and maybe her awful son. If so, I’ve blocked him out of my memory. Poor kid. He really was a train wreck, and at this age I feel empathetic. However, when we were all the same age, my brother and I just thought he was an insufferable jerk. [He was.])

So anyway, we’re in Manhattan and in some kind of establishment selling kitschy gifts and there was a big display of New York license plate keychains, and I thought MAYBE I could find one with ‘Vanessa’ on it.

Sufficed to say, in the early 80’s – the emergent time for Vanessa Williams and Vanessa Huxtable – there was no Vanessa ANYTHING. I spent my whole early childhood being asked, “Were you named after Vanessa Redgrave?”  and even though I had absolutely no idea who that was, I would always say, “Yes.”

So anyway, I was frustrated at (yet again) not finding a single Vanessa trinket and ran across a keychain that said ‘Jesus’ and I remember being outrageously annoyed that they would make a Jesus (not knowing, again about ‘Jesus’ as in the Spanish version, so I mean Jesuschristo) keychain and not a Vanessa.

I mean the LORD gets a keychain, but I don’t!?!?!

(and is it any wonder I now write a self-indulgent and self-important blog? Not so much.)

But I digress…

I’m worn out on book writing (and yet bearing down on my 8/7 finish date. Yay me!), and received the following from a good friend. We spent all day together Sunday, so she is well-aware of my recent…um…adventure.

Which makes this all the funnier.

Water or Wine

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine.. and those who don’t.

As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
in beer there is freedom,
in water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials,
scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli,

(E. coli) – bacteria  found in feces.

In other words, we are consuming
1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when
drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, scotch, vodka, whisky or other liquor), because alcohol has to go through a purification
process of distilling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:

Water = Poop,        Wine = Health .

Therefore, it’s better to drink wine and talk stupid,
than to drink water and be full of sh*t.

Touche.

And pass the tequila…

(and enjoy the random font-size craziness, because – as usual – I have absolutely no idea why that happens or how to fix it.)