Curious
Times No. 310
August 18, 2005
DOMO
ARIGATO, MISS ROBOTO
Japanese professors have finished the most human-looking robot
ever built, a female android with a name only a complete robotics
nerd could enjoy, Repliee Q1Expo. Repliee has flexible silicon
skin, can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human,
and has dozens of sensors and motors in her upper body powered
by an air compressor which allow her to move and react in a human-like
manner. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, creator of the android, claims
that people forget that Repliee is an android when they are interacting
with her. “A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong
feeling of presence,” said Ishiguro, “consciously, it
is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react
to the android as if she were a woman.” The team of scientists
hope to continue to improve their androids until they are able
to fool people into believing they are human. “An android
could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However,
if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to
perhaps 10 minutes,” he said. (BBC)
MAYBE VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES WILL CALM THEM DOWN
A high-security prison in Norway has abandoned its yoga classes
after it made some of the prisoners even more dangerously aggressive
than usual. The experimental program was introduced earlier this
year at Ringerike prison, home to some of the country’s most
dangerous prisoners, with the hope that the calming effect of
yoga practice would help to keep the prisoner’s anger in
check. Instead, staff at the prison reported that the deep breathing
exercises unblocked the prisoner’s psychological barriers,
unleashing otherwise repressed emotions and leading to increased
agitation, aggression, mental confusion and even insomnia among
the inmates. The group who had introduced the yoga program to
the prison expressed surprise at the results, claiming that their
techniques have worked with great success on about 100,000 prisoners
in 15 countries. (The
Independent UK)
MY NEW FAVORITE GENRE: POEMS ABOUT FORESKINS
It might take a million monkeys with a million typewriters a million
years to write a sonnet, but it only takes one bozo with an internet
connection to write a poem titled “Ode to My Husband’s
Missing Foreskin.” As seen at www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org:
I never knew you. I wish I had / Someone said you were bad / Ripped
you off before you were complete / thought that bare glans looked
so neat / Now we deal with wet against dry / and rely on KY /
How much fun it would have been / to slide you back and forth
again / And see the pleasure in his eyes / as his pressure starts
to rise / Circumcision robs more than one / of the perfect design
for fun / He doesn’t miss what he never had / so why does
it make me so sad?
GRAVITY ISN’T JUST A GOOD IDEA, IT’S THE LAW
Although this next news report didn’t mention anything about
alcohol, I can only assume this story belongs in the “Drunk
and Stupid” files, after an Australian man managed to send
himself to the hospital by falling off the same building twice
within a few minutes. The 30-year-old man had locked himself out
of his apartment and proceeded to climb up the outside of his
building in order to get in. After falling a few stories onto
a parked car and smashing its windshield, the man decided to tempt
fate one more time. On his second climb, the man fell from the
third story and landed on his head. (ninemsm.com)
INSTEAD OF TAKING ALL THE FUN JOBS, MAKE THOSE ROBOTS STITCH
SOME SNEAKERS
More
robots in the news out of the United Arab Emirates where a recent
ban on using children as jockeys in camel races has led to that
country’s first ever camel race using robot jockeys. The
robots successfully rode camels on the three kilometer testing
track while the robot’s handlers drove along side in 4x4’s
using remote controls to command the jockeys. (New
Scientist)
IT’S AN EMERGENCY, MY OWNER IS A MORON
A woman in New Jersey ended up with three police cars parked outside
of her house in the middle of the night after she trained her
dog to dial 911 in case of an emergency. After a night of long
training she went to sleep, but Slayer, her dog, stayed up and
practiced dialling the number, managing to call 911 three times
before police arrived at the home. (Ananova)
YOU’LL WANT TRAVEL INSURANCE FOR THIS TRIP
An official in Hong Kong has proposed the opening of the world’s
first suicide theme park, an attraction were guests would be dared
to spend a night in one of the supposedly haunted flats on an
island which has been a favorite spot of suicides over the years.
City councillor Lam Kit-sing suggested that Cheung Chau island
should cash in on the grisly reputation of one of it’s holiday
homes where 20 people have killed themselves over the last eight
years and another five have attempted suicide. “A dirty spot
yesterday will be an attraction tomorrow,” rationalized Lam.
(South
China Morning Post)
UNTIL THEY INVENT TELEPORTATION, THIS TRICK WILL HAVE TO DO
Okay, try this and let me know if it works... Supposedly, some
elevators are designed with a hidden feature which can turn your
ride into a non-stop express lift to your floor. Simply press
the “door close” button and the button for the floor
you want to zoom to at the same time and away you go.
“I READ IT ON THE INTERNET SO IT MUST BE TRUE” FACT
OF THE WEEK
If you could use up all the unredeemed frequent flyer miles of
everyone in the world, you could take 42,500 round-trip flights
to the sun.
Copyright 2005 by Andreas Ohrt
