Search Results for: armageddon

You know me, nothing makes me happier than a good apocalypse. Partly because it’s fun to watch, allegedly, rational people run out and build arks or underground shelters or what have you. Heck there’s even a group of people out west who plan on riding out the next apocalypse in mobile homes. Anyway, as you are well aware, this week marks the latest apocalypse, this one courtesy of a bunch of, long dead, Mayans. It’s all gloriously terrifying as long as you don’t actually find out any facts. Silly things like the Mayans said no such thing and have other calendars that go beyond this date. Add in more silly stuff like there aren’t any planet busting sized asteroids anywhere near us and December 21 starts to look kind of boring. Nevertheless, since a Mayan themed apocalypse party is too fun to miss, I strongly suggest you have one. Scientist / author David Brin is going to Mexico to sit in a Mayan temple and, if all goes well, drink tequila.

And he’s not alone. Gabriel Stargardter reports that Mexico is making bank off of tourists who want to be at ground zero for the end of all things.

A few words by an American scholar, a crumbling Mexican monument and the love of a good yarn were all it took to spawn the belief that the world could end this week.

December 21 marks the end of an age in a 5,125 year-old Maya calendar, an event that is variously interpreted as the end of days, the start of a new era or just a good excuse for a party.

Thousands of New Age mystics, spiritual adventurers and canny businessmen are converging on ancient ruins in southern Mexico and Guatemala to find out what will happen.

“No one knows what it will look like on the other side,” said Michael DiMartino, 46, a long-haired American who is organizing one of the biggest December 21 celebrations at the Maya temple site of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula.

It is not the world but “the way we perceive it” that will end, said DiMartino, who pledged his event at ground zero for 2012 acolytes will be a “distilling down of various perspectives into a unified intention for positive transformation, evolution and co-creation of a new way of being.”

A mash-up of academic speculation and existential angst seasoned with elements from several world religions, the 2012 phenomenon has been fueled by Hollywood movies and computer games, and relentlessly disseminated by Internet doom-mongers.

Mass hysteria in a Russian prison, a Chinese man building survival pods for doomsday and UFO lovers seeking refuge with aliens in a French mountain village are just some of the reports that have sprung up in the final countdown to December 21.

Robert Bast, a New Zealander living in Melbourne who wrote a book called “Survive 2012” on how to cope with the possible catastrophe, believes the Maya may have sent out a warning.

“The most likely thing for me is a solar storm, but that’s not going to kill you straight away. It’s more of a long term disaster,” said Bast, 47, noting a flu pandemic could also strike the planet. “I feel the world isn’t as safe as we think it is. The last couple of generations have had it very cozy.”

When dawn breaks on Friday, according to the Maya Long Count calendar, it marks the end of the 13th bak’tun – an epoch lasting some 400 years – and the beginning of the 14th.

This fact would probably have languished in academic obscurity had not a young Maya expert named Michael Coe written in the 1960s that to the ancient Mesoamerican culture the date could herald an “Armageddon” to cleanse humanity.

Since then, the cult of 2012 has snowballed.

Among the sun-bleached pyramids, shaded mangroves and deep cenotes of the Maya heartland, there are hopes December 21 will bring a spiritual re-birth.

Nobody seems quite sure what to expect on Friday, but it has not stopped people getting their hopes up.

“This is the Arab Spring of the spiritual movement,” said Geoffrey Ocean Dreyer, a 52-year-old U.S. musician wearing a sombrero and mardi gras beads. “We’re going to create world peace. We’re going to Jerusalem and we’re going to rebuild Solomon’s temple.”

ANXIETY ATTACKS

The words of Coe, a highly respected Maya scholar, were published in 1966 at the height of the Cold War, stirring fears in a world haunted by the prospect of nuclear holocaust.

Coe could not be reached for comment for this article, but friends and academics who know him insist he never meant to inspire a vision of apocalypse when he committed them to paper.

Stephen Houston, a Maya expert at Brown University in Rhode Island and student of Coe’s, said too much has been read into the end of the 13th bak’tun, which was little more than a “dull mathematical declaration” used to bracket dates.

“I see it all as an expression of present day anxiety and not much more than that,” Houston said.

Few remaining inscriptions refer to the event, and the best known one is part of a monument recovered from a Maya site in Tabasco state called Tortuguero – much of which was torn down in the 1960s to make way for the construction of a cement factory.

Still, the mix of religion, ancient inscriptions and media-driven speculation about impending doom remains potent.

“I got an email the other day from a mother who was contemplating taking her own life, because she didn’t know what was really going to happen, she didn’t want her children to live through this ordeal,” said David Stuart, a Maya expert at the University of Texas. “We can dismiss it as a kooky idea, which it is, but they’re still ideas and they still have power.”

U.S. space agency NASA has sought to allay fears of impending catastrophe, noting that “our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”

Nothing has given the 2012 theories more oxygen in the run-up to the big day than the Internet, noted John Hoopes, a Maya anthropologist at the University of Kansas.

“Computers come straight out of the same people who were smoking pot and protesting at Berkeley and Stanford,” he said, referring to U.S. student movements in the 1960s.

“This Maya calendar stuff has been part of hacktivism lore for 40 years, since the beginning, and with every significant change in computer technology, it’s gotten another boost.”

Many of those gathering in Chichen Itza praised the Internet as a discussion forum and organizing tool for New Age events.

“We don’t need leaders now we have the Internet,” said Muggy Burton, 66, who had traveled to Mexico from Canada with her 15-year-old, blue-haired granddaughter, Talis Hardy.

The two, who communicate with each other by whistling, plan to live in Mexico for six months, according to Burton, who is going to homeschool Hardy. “It’s the end of the world for her, and the beginning of a new one,” she added.

MAYA SKEPTICS

Mexico’s federal government is not officially marking the phenomenon, but the country’s tourism agency has launched a “Mundo Maya 2012” website with a countdown to December 21.

Up to 200,000 people are expected to descend on Chichen Itza alone for the night of December 20.

Among modern descendants of the Maya, the idea it could all come to an end on Friday generally raises a wry smile – but they are happy to play along if it makes money.

“It’s a psychic epidemic,” said Miguel Coral, 56, a cigar salesman in Merida, a colonial town and capital of Yucatan state. “It’s all about business, but that’s fine. It helps our country. I think it’s excellent we’ve exported this idea.”

Nearby, workers built a pyramid of spray-painted polystyrene blocks for the opening of the town’s Maya festival.

“If people who believe in this joke want to come, let them,” said Jose May, a Merida tourism official of Maya descent. “Nobody here believes that. Those people were sold an idea.”

Hazy rumors have helped feed the sense of anticipation.

A few hours’ drive south of Merida in the remote Maya town of Xul, which means “the end,” media reports began circulating as early as 2008 that a group of Italians were readying themselves for impending doom by building apocalypse-proof bunkers.

Today, the settlement dubbed the “end of the world resort” is open for business as “Eco Spa Las Aguilas.”

“There’s no truth in it,” said deputy manager Andrea Podesta, 45, referring to speculation it was a cult.

“Some people came here, took some hidden photos, and published some very unpleasant articles about us,” he added, noting the glistening new spa was booked up well into 2013.

Inside, a group of elderly Italians, mostly dressed in white, were watching the path of an asteroid on a giant screen. A black-and-white image of Christ’s face hung from the wall and a large stone statue of a robed woman greeted visitors.

Whatever lies in store for the planet, even Maya academics who have fought to play down the hype surrounding the passing of another 24 hours feel there could still be some surprises.

“I think there may be some mischief on December 21 because the whole world is watching,” said Hoopes in Kansas, citing rumors hacktivist group Anonymous was planning a stunt. “It’s a very fertile opportunity for a tremendous prank.”

Oh the fun we could have just setting off a large firecracker at the right moment.

Whenever I wonder what kind of people would be dumb enough to fall for this malarkey I just pop on over to Facebook and read some wall posts. There I will learn how the CIA programmed that kid to kill all those people in Newtown, how the Illuminati runs a shadow government from an island off the coast of Spain and how positive waves can affect how your fruit trees grow.

Facebook is very educational.

And everyone who believes the stuff in the paragraph above is planning on the world ending or altering this week.

The people I feel sorry for are the children of these idiots. When the whole Nibiru / rouge planet apocalypse was coming to town kids were calling NASA asking for suicide tips so they wouldn’t suffer when it hit.

How do you politely tell a child that their parent’s a moron?

Radio Radio: Cargué dans ma chaise from Bonsound

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
contact Bill McCormick

I have written on a few occasions about how it took Florida four tries to pass a law outlawing bestiality. We all had a good laugh at the time when they outlawed all sex between mammals until they found out that humans are mammals too. But, eventually, they got it right and it is now illegal in Florida to frolic with a filly in a flirtatious manner. Naturally, becasue this is Florida we’re talking about, someone is upset at the government’s intrusion into their private life. It should be noted that said “private life” was witnessed by several people who called the cops. And the man who owned the farm had no qualms about firing this person for enjoying his “private life” with the company’s critters. So, there is hope for Florida. Yet, somehow, Floridians seem unable to grasp some basic concepts. Earlier this week a dude died in a parking lot after eating hundreds of live cockroaches and worms. Why did he do that? To win an expensive snake, which he couldn’t afford otherwise. So it would probably end up in the swamps with the other snakes which are multiplying at a rate that makes me think that Florida is ground zero for Armageddon.

But one animal law that Florida has had on the books for decades finally got put to the test. While you may have been allowed to do the horizontal mambo with a moo moo, you have never been allowed to ride a matinee.

Kids, have your parents explain the word “priorities” to you. It will be fun.

A woman who police said was seen touching and riding a manatee in Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas, Fla., over the weekend turned herself in to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, Tampa Bay Times reported.

Ana Gloria Garcia Gutierrez, 52, told police Tuesday that she wasn’t aware what she did was against the law, the report said.

Witnesses gave authorities her description and photos of her riding the sea cow, which is a second-degree misdemeanor. She was seen riding the manatee at 1 p.m. Sunday in the water north of Gulf Pier, authorities said.

Gutierrez was not arrested or charged, but the charges were referred to the state attorney’s office, according to the Times.

The Florida Manatee Sanctuary Acts states that: “It is unlawful for any person at any time, by any means, or in any manner intentionally or negligently to annoy, molest, harass, or disturb or attempt to molest, harass, or disturb any manatee.”

Authorities say the penalty for the woman could be up to 60 days in jail and a possible fine of $500.

Authorities don’t believe any manatees were injured.

“It’s a wild animal. It’s not something to be ridden,” Susan Butler, a manatee expert with the U.S. Geological Survey in Gainesville, told the Times. “I can’t say that as a biologist I would ever, ever condone that, or say that (the manatee) wanted them to do that.”

Here’s where we find out about statutes of limitations and extradition laws. When I was a kid I would visit relatives in Florida and we rode manatees all the time. They’re friendly and, as long as you don’t startle them, reasonably safe to be around. Also, they tend to live in and around harbors so they are pretty used to people.

Not that I want to advoacte anyone trying for a Humanatee hybrid, but swimming around them seems fine.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the law. It was designed to keep yahoos from harming these gentle beasts. People used to deliberately hit them with their boats and leave horrible gashes on their flesh which would, sometimes, kill them.

The manatees, not the yahoos. Sadly.

Anyway, the law, like most laws in Florida, is poorly written and erratically enforced. I doubt that anything will happen to the fun loving lady.

But up in the land of super strip clubs and pawn shops, they have a different problem with an animal whose name starts with “m.”

That’s right, the Mysterious Monkey of Mongo Mongo (actually, Tampa Bay) has decided to attack the local residents.

Well, one of them anyway.

A woman who fended off an attack by a celebrity simian known as the ‘Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay’ was recovering from her injuries on Wednesday as authorities searched for the wild animal, Florida wildlife officials said.

The woman, who said she didn’t want her name to be released, was reportedly sitting on her front porch on Monday when the monkey jumped on her back and began scratching and gnawing on her skin. She reached behind, grabbed the monkey’s leg and tossed him in to the bushes before he ran off, Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told the Tampa Bay Times.

“She could hear the clicking of teeth,” the woman’s daughter told the newspaper, who said she was inside cooking when she heard her mother scream.

The woman suffered several puncture wounds and scratches and was taken to the hospital, where doctors gave her shots to prevent infections.

The monkey, which has gained notoriety in recent years after numerous sightings throughout the area, is a 40-pound wild rhesus macaque, which officials believe may have been cast out of a colony in Silver Springs near Ocala, Fla.

Officials in the area were attempting to track and trap the monkey Wednesday morning. Morse said they will try to trap the monkey alive, but given the attack it’s possible that trappers will have to kill it, he said.

Residents say the monkey has never been aggressive until now, the Times reported.

Officials said in the past year, the monkey has settled quietly into the area where residents have given him food despite warnings from authorities about coming into contact with the animal.

“The public was warned about the dangers of feeding this animal,” Morse told the Times. “It is a shame that it has come to this. Human kindness and food cannot overcome millions of years of genetic evolution.”

The monkey has become something of a celebrity, the Tampa Bay Times reported. A Facebook page for the mystery monkey has been featured on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” and in a National Geographic special.

Officials are asking anyone who sees the monkey to stay away and call police immediately.

Forget the monkey, here’s where I call BULL***T.

• (1) Monkeys, pound for pound, are four times stronger than humans. If it has you in its grasp you aren’t just going to grab the monkey’s leg and toss it in the bushes.
• (2) monkeys that are used to humans only attack for four reasons

(a) They are provoked
(b) they are insane (this does happen often enough to make it a concern)
(c) If they are teased with strong smells or shiny objects
(d) If they see food

None of the above seem to apply to her story. Just a sittin’ & a grinnin’ won’t set a monkey off. If this woman was really attacked by a monkey she wouldn’t have minor scratches, she’d be hooked up to tubes while doctors grew her new skin.

What probably happened was she was a sittin’ & a grinnin’ on her porch a=waving some food at the poor little dude and he got tangled up. He would be easy to disengage then since he would want off just as much as she wanted him off.

Of course, I’m looking for logic and facts in Florida.

That monkey’s doomed.

WeWereMonkeys: Land of Talk – It’s Okay from WeWereMonkeys on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

It’s been a rough week. By the time you read this the Obama / Romney debates will have happened, 13 more parodies of Gangam Style will have ben released and one, at least, will feature someone naked claiming to be an artist in their own right. Don’t let them confuse you. They will be wrong. Your email will have been filled, yet again, with emails loudly proclaiming that President Obama is a Muslim terrorist (with one or more words spelled wrong) or that Governor Romney is a robotic unicorn (with one or more words spelled wrong). Of course sane people know that neither is true and that world peace will come from Muslim unicorns and Armageddon will come via robot terrorists. The Internet confuses people. And, just as Aristophanes once famously said, “It must be true if you read t on the Internet” there are websites devoted to making you think you’re right. He just neglected to include the sarcasm smiley so people would know he was kidding. Such a kidder that Aristophanes.

Anyway, you’ve been through a lot. It’s my job, from time to time, to lighten your mood. So I did some research to find out what people really want out of the greatest source of raw data ever conceived. Is it texts related to religious history? Is it fact finding to see what foods are healthy for their children? Maybe people are looking for alternatives to traditional vacation plans and are searching out international penis festivals. Or were people clamoring for ways to use the word “Bootylicious” when referring to disease spreading flies. Nope. None of that crap. What people want is pictures of cats. And then, once those are exhausted, they want more pictures of cats.

People are shallow and dumb.

But, people read my blog so that means, once in a while, I need to write something they like or will care about. So, today, I give you dead cats.

We start with a kitty named Ni Hao who stowed away on board a Chinese freighter and went without food or water for three weeks.

Here is the law of threes that any doctor can tell you about;

YOU WILL DIE AFTER:
3 minutes without air
3 days without water
3 weeks without food
3 months without sex

Now that you know that, let’s read about the dead cat from China.

A stowaway kitten who survived a three-week ocean voyage from China to California trapped in a storage container without food or water has found a new home.

Los Angeles County animal control officials said Friday that the cat, which has been named Ni Hao (NEE’ how) or “hello” in Chinese, will leave the animal hospital he’s called home since turning up in the U.S. last month to start life next week with a family in the LA suburb of Redondo Beach.

The family has not been further identified, but officials say it was chosen from more than 80 serious candidates who applied to adopt the stowaway.

The now 5-month-old kitten was found July 11.

It couldn’t walk, see, or make any sounds.

An officer said the kitten had shallow breathing and was “curled up in a ball with his eyes shut,” said animal control official Aaron Reyes.

“And he actually appeared deceased,” he added said.

The cat was rushed to a care center where veterinarians say he has thrived.

The only lingering sign of trauma is a limp, which Reyes describes as “his own strut.”

The kitten suffered considerable muscle atrophy on the journey, causing him to walk with a ginger, unusual gait, Reyes said.

Ni Hao is “still a bit wobbly” and “may end up being a special needs kitty for life,” said Reyes, deputy director of the county’s animal control department.

But, Reyes said, “he’s gone from this shriveled up little kitten with shallow breathing and knocking on death’s door to this curious, playful, bouncy, affectionate, patient, little furry kitty.”

Ni Hao created a media buzz while at the center. Dozens of news outlets from all over the globe have visited. At one time, there were so many requests, the shelter set up a media day to handle them all.

County shelter workers have a couple of theories to explain how Ni Hao survived, Reyes said. They think he ate or drank something just before wandering into the container, he said, or “he is so young his resilience is off the charts.”

Do they have to use Mao to Mao resuscitation to save a Chinese cat?

Oh, read a book damnit.

Moving on, not all of our dead cats today are sneaky foreigners attempting to circumvent our sacred borders so they can live off our free, God given, kibble and never pay taxes. No, some are from Ohio. Which is kind of the same but Ohio is the home of Devo and not the bizarre hairless monkey people. Use the links if you’re not sure which is which.

An Ohio woman says the pet cat that sneaked into her luggage for a flight to Florida has returned home safely and seems relatively unaffected by his surprise vacation in Orlando.

Ethel Maze tells The Circleville Herald (http://bit.ly/RmaZfy ) that Bob-Bob the stowaway spent 10 hours in a suitcase before she opened it last week. She says he was lethargic and wet from perspiration, and she initially thought he’d died.

Eventually he perked up, and he spent the week in a crate at Maze’s hotel. He rode in a carrier near Maze’s seat for the return flight.

Somehow the cat had made it through screening at Port Columbus International Airport. The man who handled the bags for Maze’s group told reporters he thought he saw the bag move but loaded it anyway.

The TSA just keeps getting better and better doesn’t it? We might be better off if we were defended by the hairless monkey people,

“Hey Bobby Jo, is it okay if the luggage is squirming?”

“Heck yeah, TJ. Why not? Umm, what’s ‘squirming’ mean?”

But some cats did not need to bypass billions of dollars worth of high tech security to seek the afterlife. No, sometimes all they need is an uptown girl and a Volvo.

A woman says a 6-week-old kitten hitched a ride on the outside of her vehicle as she drove about 100 miles over upstate New York roads.

Stacey Pulsifer tells the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh (http://bit.ly/Q4LJeX ) that she recently drove from her home in Plattsburgh to Elizabethtown in the Adirondacks, then back to her apartment. Along the way she stopped for coffee and heard meowing coming from her Jeep.

She asked two friends to help her search the vehicle. They finally found the kitten wedged behind a bumper and had to cut it free.

Pulsifer has since adopted the hitchhiker and named it Pumpkin. She estimates the lucky black cat was lodged in the car for about 22 hours and traveled some 100 miles. She suffered a broken paw during the ride.

AWWWW.

Okay, so all our dead cats today ended up living. Sorry about that.

But, what if you do have a dead cat? What to do? One U.S. company suggests cat jerky.

Welcome to Kitty Beef, your online Premium Cat Meat Supermarket, where you can order your meat, and have it delivered in vacuum sealed freshness directly to your door. We provide top quality meat and stand by all our products.

For the last 9 years Puppy Beef has been the world’s leading dog meat distributor. We now have 4 free range cat farms supplying the world’s most premium grade cat meat to over 10 countries and bring you KittyBeef. We have established a reputation for having only the highest quality cat meat products and dedicated customer service representatives. Because we only cater to a select group of people, we try to keep a close relationship with all of our customers.

This allows us to help you get the best quality cat meat for your budget, and ship it right to your front door. And after 9 years of business, you can now access our products and services online!

If you”re more of a DIY sort, you can always hop up to How to Cook Cats for some easy to follow recipes.

One of those last two links is meant to be funny. The other is 100% real.

Glamourpuss: The Enchanting World of Kitty Wigs from Julie Jackson on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Everything in the universe contains flaws, ourselves included. Even God does not attempt perfection in His creations. Only humankind has such foolish arrogance. – Cogitor Kwyna (Dune: The Butlerian Jihad). Not that you asked, but I happen to like the Dune books not written by Frank Herbert. They are less predictable. Anyway, the quote is nevertheless true. And man’s arrogance is leading, rapidly, to a really (and I mean insanely) bad idea. Back on November 18, 2010, I first wrote about how mankind was greasing the skids to its eventual doom. Seriously, I even posted links so that humans could learn to speak binary and be useful to their new masters. You would think that a warning like that would resonate.

You would be wrong. A quick search of this site shows multiple articles about our impending doom at the hands of robots. From Deathbots to Sexbots, robots are infiltrating our every aspect of our lives.

And scientists, the very people who should know better, are happily abetting Robo-Armageddon. For example, they are developing a robot that can hide from humans indefinitely. You know, a “stealth bot.”

A team of researchers led by George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, has already broken new engineering ground with the development of soft, silicone-based robots inspired by creatures like starfish and squid.

Now, they’re working to give those robots the ability to disguise themselves.

As demonstrated in an August 16 paper published in Science, researchers have developed a system — again, inspired by nature — that allows the soft robots to either camouflage themselves against a background, or to make bold color displays. Such a “dynamic coloration” system could one day have a host of uses, ranging from helping doctors plan complex surgeries to acting as a visual marker to help search crews following a disaster, said Stephen Morin, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology and first author of the paper.

“When we began working on soft robots, we were inspired by soft organisms, including octopi and squid,” Morin said. “One of the fascinating characteristics of these animals is their ability to control their appearance, and that inspired us to take this idea further and explore dynamic coloration. I think the important thing we’ve shown in this paper is that even when using simple systems — in this case we have simple, open-ended micro-channels — you can achieve a great deal in terms of your ability to camouflage an object, or to display where an object is.”

“One of the most interesting questions in science is ‘Why do animals have the shape, and color, and capabilities that they do?'” said Whitesides. “Evolution might lead to a particular form, but why? One function of our work on robotics is to give us, and others interested in this kind of question, systems that we can use to test ideas. Here the question might be: ‘How does a small crawling organism most efficiently disguise (or advertise) itself in leaves?’ These robots are test-beds for ideas about form and color and movement.”

Just as with the soft robots, the “color layers” used in the camouflage start as molds created using 3D printers. Silicone is then poured into the molds to create micro-channels, which are topped with another layer of silicone. The layers can be created as a separate sheet that sits atop the soft robots, or incorporated directly into their structure. Once created, researchers can pump colored liquids into the channels, causing the robot to mimic the colors and patterns of its environment.

The system’s camouflage capabilities aren’t limited to visible colors though.

By pumping heated or cooled liquids into the channels, researchers can camouflage the robots thermally (infrared color). Other tests described in the Science paper used fluorescent liquids that allowed the color layers to literally glow in the dark.

The uses for the color-layer technology, however, don’t end at camouflage.

Just as animals use color change to communicate, Morin envisions robots using the system as a way to signal their position, both to other robots, and to the public. As an example, he cited the possible use of the soft machines during search and rescue operations following a disaster. In dimly lit conditions, he said, a robot that stands out from its surroundings (or even glows in the dark) could be useful in leading rescue crews trying to locate survivors.

“What we hope is that this work can inspire other researchers to think about these problems and approach them from different angles,” he continued. “There are many biologists who are studying animal behavior as it relates to camouflage, and they use different models to do that. We think something like this might enable them to explore new questions, and that will be valuable.”

Sure, Stealth Bots that can avoid detection by any method known to man and can then just jump out and catch us? Gosh, what could possibly go wrong? Well at least they can’t run us down.

Ooops, spoke too soon.

Robots are already stronger than humans, able to lift thousands of pounds at a time. In many ways, they’re smarter than people, too; machines can perform millions of calculations per second, and even beat us at chess. But we could at least take solace in the fact that we could still outrun our brawny, genius robot overlords if we needed to.

Until now, that is. A four-legged robot, funded by the Pentagon, has just run 28.3 miles per hour. That’s faster than the fastest man’s fastest time ever. Oh well, ruling the planet was fun while it lasted.

The world record for the 100 meter dash was set in 2009 by sprinter Usain Bolt, who averaged 23.35 mph during his run for a time of 9.58 seconds. Over one 20-meter stretch, he managed to get up to 27.78 mph. It was a pretty impressive feat.

The Cheetah — a quadrupedal machine built by master roboteers Boston Dynamics and backed by Darpa, the Defense Department’s far-out research division — not only topped Bolt’s record-setting time. It also beat its previous top speed of 18 mph, set just a half-year ago.

“To be fair, keep in mind that the Cheetah robot runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it does not carry,” a Boston Dynamics press release reminds us. “So Bolt is still the superior athlete.”

But the company is looking to change all that, and soon.

In recent months, the Cheetah team “increased the amount of power available to the robot. More power means faster motion and more margin in the actuators for better control,” Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert tells Danger Room in an email. The robot-makers have also been “working on the control system, refining how the coordination of legs and back works and developing a better understanding of the dynamics.

He adds, “You can see that there is still room for improvement at the end of the video we just posted, where the robot starts to go faster, but loses control and trips.”

But those control systems are improving. The next major step is to build an untethered version — one with an onboard engine and operator controls that work in 3D.

“Our real goal is to create a robot that moves freely outdoors while it runs fast. We are building an outdoor version that we call WildCat, that should be ready for testing early next year,” Dr. Alfred Rizzi, the technical lead for the Cheetah effort, says in a statement.

It may sound a little outlandish. But keep in mind: Boston Dynamics has done this before. Its alarmingly like-like BigDog quadruped is able to tramp across ice, snow, and hills — all without the off-board hydraulic pump and boom-like device now used to keep the Cheetah on track. An improved version of the BigDog can haul 400 pounds for up to 20 miles. (See what we mean about robot brawn?) The company also has a biped ‘bot, Petman, that looks like a mechanical human — minus the head.

The idea behind these biologically-inspired robots is that legs can carry machines across terrain that would leave wheels or tracks stuck. To be a true partner to a human soldier, a robot has to walk like one, too. Darpa says Cheetah and company will “contribute to emergency response, humanitarian assistance and other defense missions.” But when the robot was first introduced, Boston Dynamics noted that its flexible spine would help it “zigzag to chase and evade.”

As if being brilliant and super-strong wasn’t unnerving enough.

Yeah, go ahead, yuck it up. Super fast stealth bots with the ability to hunt us down and kill us just makes me giggle too.

But at least killing us is all they can do. They can’t perform hideous medical experiments on us.

I have got to learn to keep my big mouth shut.

Surgeons at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System are developing new treatment options for obese kidney patients.

Many U.S. transplant centers currently refuse to transplant these patients due to poorer outcomes.
By simultaneously undergoing two procedures — robotic-assisted kidney transplantation and robotic-assisted sleeve gastrectomy — patients have only one visit to the operating room and one general anesthesia. Surgeons can utilize the same minimally invasive incisions.

Aidee Diaz, a 35-year-old Chicago woman, is the first patient in the world to have the combined procedure, according to UI surgeons. When Diaz was diagnosed with kidney disease and high blood pressure five years ago, doctors began intensive treatment, including chemotherapy and steroids, to treat abnormal protein production that was causing her kidney disease.

In Diaz’s case, her weight jumped from 180 pounds to 300 pounds, and she needed dialysis three times a week.
“Many obese patients come to us because they have been excluded from transplant waiting lists or been told that they must lose weight prior to transplantation,” said Dr. Enrico Benedetti, professor and head of surgery at UIC. “Unfortunately, successful weight loss in patients with chronic illness is uncommon and often unrealistic.”

On July 9, Dr. Subhashini Ayloo, assistant professor of surgery at UIC, performed the robot-assisted sleeve gastrectomy by removing 70 percent of Diaz’s stomach. The procedure created a smaller stomach through which ingested food can enter the digestive tract without diverting or bypassing the intestines.
Immediately following the sleeve gastrectomy procedure, Benedetti performed a living-related kidney transplant. Diaz said she appreciates the gift of both procedures — having kidney function with weight loss.

Surgeons at the UI Hospital routinely perform robotic-assisted kidney transplantation (more than 65 cases since 2009) and sleeve gastrectomies for weight loss (more than 150 since 2007). The team has data, in press, demonstrating the safety of robotic kidney transplantation in obese patients with a body mass index above 40 and up to 60.

“The combination of gastric sleeve surgery and kidney transplantation could provide patients with the greatest benefit post-transplantation, when there is the greatest risk related to the combined complications of obesity and renal failure,” said Ayloo, who is principal investigator of an ongoing clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the combined procedure.

The trial will determine whether simultaneous robotic-assisted kidney transplant and sleeve gastrectomy has fewer surgical complications and better medical outcomes for obese patients with end-stage renal disease compared to kidney transplant alone. The institutional review board (IRB) has approved the protocol but the trial is ongoing and results are not yet available.

Co-investigators include Benedetti, Dr. Pier Giulianotti, Dr. Jose Oberholzer and Dr. Ivo Tzvetanov of UIC.

Previous studies have reported outcomes of other laparoscopic bariatric procedures (gastric bypass and gastric banding) before and after kidney transplantation, but there is no data on sleeve gastrectomy combined with kidney transplantation, Ayloo said.

Yeah, right in my own state they are teaching robots how to remove kidneys. Well, it isn’t like we need them or anything.

But robots like that are wildly expensive and rare. It’s not like you can knock one up in the garage.

HA HA! Fooled you.

Of course you can build your own artificial intelligence. How could you think otherwise?

Ask any roboticist of a certain age, whether a professional or hobbyist, how they first got interested in robots. Odds are good they’ll mention a 1976 TAB book, written by David L. Heiserman, called Build Your Own Working Robot. The book described the construction of Buster, a small, wheeled robot. This was before the era of ubiquitous microprocessors. Buster’s brain was a mass of TTL logic chips that implemented surprisingly complex behaviours. In some ways, Buster was not unlike Grey Walter’s vacuum tube-based turtle robots from the late 1940s and was likely the first significant step forward in behavior-based robots since Walter’s turtles. Did you ever wonder what Dave did after writing those books or what he’s up to today? Read on to find out!

Two years after Build Your Own Working Robot was published, Dave Heiserman returned with another robot book that brought behaviour-based robots into the computer age. The new book, called How to Build Your Own Self-Programming Robot, described the construction of Rodney. Starting with no knowledge, Rodney explored and learned about his world through trial-and-error, using what he learned to anticipate future explorations.

All of this behaviour-based robotics stuff was considered a bit kooky by mainstream researchers in the 1970s, who favored top-down strong AI. Why bother building little insect-level robots that puttered around on the floor? Machines needed to understand deep philosophical questions first. They needed to represent the entire world symbolically and reason about it like human brains. Only then would we be ready to put them on wheels or legs. So even though hobbyists almost immediately set to work building Buster clones, Heiserman was largely ignored elsewhere. But mainstream AI was already running into dead ends, entering what’s now known as the AI Winter. And those Buster-building hobbyists were entering Universities and beginning to set the stage for a change in the direction of AI research. Before long, Rodney Brooks arrived on scene and coined the name ‘subsumption architecture’ to describe his own bottom-up, behaviour-based robots. Robotics and AI research were revitalized.

While you aren’t likely to see a mention of Heiserman in any official history of AI or robotics, it hard to imagine that his books didn’t play a part in those changes. Even today I find that most hobby roboticists still remember him. Many still have the two books shown above or one of his many other books. I was reminded of this recently when, during a visit the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, I ran across several copies of Build Your Own Working Robot in the group’s library. I picked one up, opened it, and realized it was the very copy that I had bought in 1976 and later donated to the DPRG. It got me thinking about all of this and I wondered whether Dave might still be around. I set out to find him and, along the way, I collected questions from other robot builders; questions they’d always wanted to ask the author whose books inspired their interest in robotics.

If you click on the link there’s a fascinating interview to go along with all this. But look at the dates. Over 40 years ago this happy go lucky madman was inviting people to participate in their own destruction and, instead of jailing him for treason, he’s been allowed to become a living icon to those who would gleefully flush humanity down the drain.

Then again, after watching the vicious screed that is passing for political discourse these days, maybe they have the right idea.

SexBot from Joseph Gonzales on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

People write me and point out that “any idiot can write about the end of the world.” After all, you just need to show how that apocalypse believers have been wrong over 200 times before. And I suppose that’s true. To an extent. But here at Nude Hippo’s World News Center we don’t just want to highlight historical inaccuracies. We want to completely humiliate the morons who pollute our gene poll and believe this crap. Fox! has its agenda, we have ours. Either way, MSNBC has its viewer and we all ignore her. She’d kind of odd. You know what? Come to think of it, abject humiliation is too good for them. We want to psychologically castrate them.

Let’s start by individually showcasing a few folks who should never be allowed to procreate.

Chicago’s very own Edward L. Brown who got naked in front of a theater full of kids because he was promised, allegedly, free cocaine. Don’t try and make sense of it, just accept it and move on.

Whitney Streiber, the author of that godawful book Communion about meeting a UFO, is back with more crap explaining how the paranormal is complicated. Much of his new tack on things seems to be based on the fact that many people, including your beloved author, pointed out that you could drive trucks through the holes in the logic of his alleged encounter. What bothers me about delusional tools like Streiber is when authors write crap like this; “Still, there’s enough compelling material to make even the rigid skeptic ask questions.” The only questions that anyone should ask is why this idiot isn’t in a rubber room. Nothing else is valid or justified.

Let us not forget the self proclaimed Barbie mom, Sarah Burge, who just bought her 7 year old daughter a gift certificate for liposuction. She also got her a gift certificate for breast augmentation. She is doing this so her daughter can always feel good about herself. Well, that’s her claim. In reality she’s doing this because she’s an ignorant, shallow, moron who believes that beauty is the sole source of self worth.

The good news is that she’s too stupid to home school her kid so there’s still hope.

Moving on.

In the aggregate we can dismiss the people in England who saw an ET doll float up on the beach and called the police to report an alien invasion, the people who saw orographic clouds (they’re the circular ones) and called police to report an alien invasion and the prostitutes for Paul who supported his run in the Iowa caucuses even though they’re based in Nevada and aren’t allowed to vote in Iowa.

On the plus side, Ron Paul may not attract the most educated people but he does attract the most interesting.

On another plus side, Mitch Horowitz does a nice job of debunking every single myth about the 2012 end of the world myths. My favorite part is the way he deals with the many predictions people post online.

6. The famous early-20th century psychic Edgar Cayce foretold bad tidings for 2012, didn’t he?

No. While this rumor widely circulates on the web, and while Cayce did forecast earth-change prophecies for the late 20th century, he never uttered a word about 2012.

7. But the soothsayer Nostradamus warned us over 2012, right?

Again, no. While this is another rumor that makes the rounds online and in tabloid weeklies, the Renaissance-age seer never mentioned 2012. Of course, many analysts of Nostradamus would find that debatable. Nearly all of the middle-French quatrains produced by Nostradamus were imbued with ambiguous, shadowy images and language, which led to the profitable development of a cottage industry out of their interpretation and translation. But the best scholars in the field, which include Stephane Gerson (author of a monumental forthcoming biography of the seer) and Richard Smoley, who has recently retranslated the middle-French quatrains, find nothing in the work of Nostradamus that deals specifically with the year 2012 (or with the events 9/11 either, for that matter).

8. Didn’t a computer program called Web Bot predict a 2012 apocalypse?

The Web Bot Project is a program that scans the Internet for repeat phrases to search out cultural and business trends. Its findings are broad and widely open to interpretation — and some do use its data for prognostication. But it hasn’t pinpointed anything that plainly speaks to 2012.

“The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s difficult to discern whether or not they are genuine.” – Abraham Lincoln

But it is our new best friend Jason Boyett who does the Lord’s work in dissembling the whole end of the world in 2012 crap.

“We were warned.” That’s the ominous tagline of the late 2009 disaster film staring John Cusack. The one in which earthquakes tear the world apart, tsunamis flood the planet, Los Angeles crumbles into the Pacific Ocean, and we all learn that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar predicted the whole thing. We also learned that you don’t need a coherent script when you’re destroying the planet, but that’s a separate post.

Now that it’s actually 2012, the year in which those fictional events supposedly were to have taken place, you may be wondering: Is the Mayan calendar a real thing? Were we warned? Is 2012 the end of the world?

The answers, in order: Yes. No. And probably not.

Yes, there is such a thing as the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, as mentioned in the movie. And yes, it does come to an end on the Winter Solstice of this year — Dec. 21, 2012. Just like your desk calendar came to an end on Dec. 31, 2011. And just like your car’s odometer will “come to an end” should you drive it all the way to 99,999.9 miles.

Only you know as well as I do that calendars and odometers don’t “end.” They reset and start over. Your car doesn’t implode when the odometer resets. Time didn’t end when the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve. Numbers change, totals reset to zero, and we keep counting.

Though it’s based on different intervals of time, the Mayan’s Long Count Calendar isn’t that different from modern calendars. Our calendars measure days, weeks, months, years and centuries, with our largest interval (for practical purposes) being a millennium, or one thousand years. The largest interval on the Long Count is called a b’ak’tun, which is around 144,000 days. The calendar resets each time it measures another b’ak’tun.

Though there is some disagreement on it, most Mayanist scholars date the starting point of this calendar back to Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. If this is accurate, then the calendar “resets” by reaching the 13th B’ak’tun on Dec. 21, 2012, at which point it rolls over and begins counting toward another milestone — just like our calendars rolled over at the end of 2011 and began counting the days and weeks of 2012.

So what’s the big deal? Why all the end-of-the-world stuff? According to ancient Mayan mythology, the world we’re living in now wasn’t our Creators’ first try. They attempted to create the world three times prior to it, but each of these early attempts failed. Before beginning our now-successful world, the Creators destroyed the previous world at the 13th B’ak’tun.

The arrival of the 13th B’ak’tun on Dec. 21, 2012, means that our current world will have surpassed the “expiration date” of the previous world. So it’s a significant occasion — if you believe in the Mayanist creation narrative.

If you don’t believe that our mythological Creators trashed three previous worlds before finally getting it right with this one, then the arrival of the 13th B’ak’tun on the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar should mean nothing to you.

But that hasn’t stopped fear mongers, conspiracy theorists, New Age kooks and other apocalypse aficionados from hitching their doomsday wagons to Dec. 21, 2012, as a potential date for the end of the world. We praise the ancient Mayan culture for being advanced mathematicians and astronomers. Couldn’t they maybe have been onto something with this end-of-the-calendar thing? Did they know something we didn’t?

That’s why a quick search of 2012 doomsday or Mayan apocalypse or something similar will result in a rainbow of fruity scenarios supposedly slated for Dec. 21 of this year, including an Earth-scorching supernova, catastrophic solar flares, alien invasion, asteroid collision, supervolcano eruption, a “dangerous” planetary alignment, nuclear Armageddon, the biblical apocalypse or the arrival of yet another Roland Emmerich disaster film.

If you believe the doomsayers, the transcendentally wise Mayans predicted it thousands of years ago, and created their ancient calendar to warn us. When the calendar ends, so does life as we know it. If you buy into their mythology, go ahead and freak out about our impending demise.

But if you don’t, then feel free to relax. The world is no more likely to end in December than it was when Harold Camping predicted apocalypse for October of 2011, or when Marian Keech predicted the world’s end in 1954, or when William Miller predicted the Rapture and Second Coming in 1844.

Humanity is obsessed with the end of the world. We predict it all the time. We are always wrong. The 2012 doomsayers will be wrong, too.

Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker and author of several books. His latest is “Pocket Guide to 2012: Your Once-in-a-Lifetime Guide to Not Completely Freaking Out,” currently available on Kindle and Nook. Learn more at jasonboyett.com or follow Jason on Twitter @jasonboyett.

Now, can you please tell anyone who thinks this is the year that people finally get the apocalypse right to just shut the f*** up and sit the f*** down? The rest of us have useful things to do and learn.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/33117677 w=400&h=300]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!