Search Results for: overlord

I’ve written before about our impending robot overlords. Usually I am against this sort of thing. There have been – obvious – exceptions like the development of sexbots. Hey, I’ve been divorced twice, having a solid back up plan isn’t such a bad idea. Still, despite the awesoemeness of sexbots, most developments tend to be making Frank Herbert’s Dune seem like a documentary. And I, for one, would prefer not to live in a world ruled by some box of electrodes named Omnius. Still and all when a good thing comes along, even if it’s cybernetic, you have to laud it. And, speaking as a male who’s been to a doctor, I find myself cheering this invention. Or, to be polite, I am not of an opinion that the doctor needs to play the “how far in can my arm go” game with my butt.

Dr. Benjamin Lok & Dr. Carla Pugh have created a robot butt to train doctors how to perform rectal exams.

Researchers have invented something truly remarkable — no ifs or ands, but definitely a butt.

A robotic one at that.

The result is a plastic posterior is hooked up to a video screen featuring a virtual male named “Patrick” who is bent over a desk.

The derriere-device is designed to train budding doctors how to give a prostate exam, according to Dr. Benjamin Lok, the co-creator of the electronic hiney with Dr. Carla Pugh.

“In the experience, the student talks to a virtual person and is able to practice their communication skills” Lok told Geekosystem. “The mannequin is instrumented with force sensors that can measure where the student is examining and with how much pressure. This enables the system to provide a realistic encounter with a virtual patient that includes communication and physical exam components.”

The device even measures eye contact between the medical student and the virtual patient to help improve the bedside manner.

“Patrick” is also endowed with force sensors that alert the student when he or she is poking and prodding too hard. It can also register the thoroughness of the examination, Medical Daily reported.

“Patrick” is in use at Drexel University in Philadelphia and at the University of Florida and Lok hopes to use the “rear-search” to help improve virtual humans for other types of touchy situations.

This isn’t the first time virtual technology has been used to get to the bottom of the butt.

In 2012, Japanese artist Nobuhiro Takahashi created SHIRI, a robotic rump that can react to “a user’s touch, stroke, or slap” and can twitch or tense up on its own.

Of course the Japanese invented a robotic booty for spanking. This is the country that brought the world Orgasm Wars.

That link is for adults only.

But(t), the new robo-rear is a great idea. Every male who’s heard the snap of the rubber glove will be very grateful to learn that the robo-hiney has groomed your medical professional to not fist bump your colon.

Of course, not all science is all sciencey and stuff. Sometimes, just like the brilliant men and women who slaved to bring us sexbots, sometimes scientists get together and invent the robo-vagina.

Because, well, of course they did. Annalee Newitz at IO9 has the latest.

A programmable robotic vagina that looks sort of like a cake mixer promises to be the most exciting sex toy ever invented for men. Basically, it’s the rabbit pearl vibrator of boy toys.

As our sister site Fleshbot reports, live from a floor show at the Adult Entertainment Expo, AEBN’s Real Touch is a variable speed, textured delight – it even delivers “throbs” at appropriate moments. And it’s programmed to respond to input from porn movies. So plug this baby into your computer, fire up your favorite vid, and the Real Touch will match the speed and intensity of the action on screen.

No word yet on whether you can program it to emulate the stages of the female sexual response cycle, including involuntary muscle spams every 0.7 seconds. But Fleshbot does have a video of the device in action.

That video is VERY NSFW.

As in you should have access to a cold shower before you click the link.

But, that aside, you gotta love science.

Electric Six “Body Shot” (2009) – NSFW 18+ from Another Reybee Productions, Inc. on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Sunday was the pride parade. A day when a million people go out to celebrate diversity and then go home and hope none of that diversity stuff happens to them. I was on the bus Sunday morning on my way for my ritual breakfast with a couple of buddies. In case I’d forgotten about the pride parade the citizens on the bus quickly reminded me. Now, normally, when the phrase “hot, black and mini-skirt” gets tied together with “in my lap” I’m a pretty happy guy. However the exception that proved the rule was this nice young, African American, man in a kilt. The bus had hit a pothole and he was bounced from where he was to where I was. Nevertheless he seemed nice enough, I got off at the next stop (if you’ll pardon the phrase) and the world spun merrily onward. I’m no longer sure that’s good news. I’ll give you a good example; Paula Deen + Porn. No, you’ll never unsee that. A company called Pure Mature has offered Deen 6 figures to be their spokesperson. Allegedly nudity will not be involved but, still, ewwwww.

Or how about the story of Darrell Moore, that wacky guy who walked into a police station, reported a fake murder and then started masbturbating in the station. I know this is going to come as a shock to all of you, but Mr. Moore was arrested.

He was probably overstimulated thinking about Paula Deen.

The Huntsville Stars, a minor league baseball team in Alabama, had to cancel their big promotion of giving away guns to all their fans. It turns out that, among the many problems with this idea, that insurance companies frown on free weapons, ammo and beer being used in the same location.

Who knew?

Still, better than the soccer promotion in Russia. It seems that drunk kids decapitated a homeless guy and used his head for a ball.

Clearly the world’s gone to hell.

Scientists the world over, buying into the soccer theme, have decided to help usher humanity on its way to oblivion. Toby Sterling reports that they are building robots that will, sooner rather than later, be able to beat humans at sports.

With the score tied 1-1, it’s gone to a penalty shootout in a tense soccer match between teams from Israel and Australia.

As the Australian goalkeeper in his red jersey braces for the shot, the Israeli striker pauses. Then he breaks into a dance instead of kicking the ball.

Perhaps he can be forgiven: He’s a robot, after all.

Welcome to the RoboCup, where more than a thousand soccer-playing robots from forty countries have descended on the Dutch technology Mecca of Eindhoven this week with one goal in mind: beat the humans.

Eventually.

The tournament’s mission is to defeat the human World Cup winners by 2050 – creating technology along the way that will have applications far beyond the realm of sport.

To achieve the goal, organizers have created multiple competition classes – including small robots, large robots, humanoid robots and even virtual robots – with plans to merge their techniques into a single squad of all-star androids capable of one day winning a man vs. machine matchup.

For now, Lionel Messi doesn’t need to look over his shoulder. Humanoid robots have difficulty keeping their balance, and the largest – human height – move more like, well, robots than world-class athletes.

“To be honest, I think a 3-year-old could win against any of the humanoid teams,” says Marcell Missura of the University of Bonn, whose NimbRO team won the “teen” humanoid class in Mexico City last year.

NimbRO’s 3-foot (120 centimeter) striker sports a shock of white hair and a flashy pink bandanna as it towers above a Japanese opponent in one match. That’s because the Japanese player doesn’t have a head, just a prong with a camera mounted on top.

The NimbRO striker shuffles over to the ball where it lies near one sideline, centers itself carefully, and then raises its head to gauge the placement of the goal. It then shifts its weight to one foot, draws back the other foot and kicks.

GOAAAAAAL!

The shot is not powerful, but it’s spot on, and it leaves the opposing keeper flat-footed.

“It’s starting to look like soccer,” Missura says hopefully.

Missura says his robot’s outfit, which also includes a pair of shorts that hang clumsily from its robotic hips, actually hinders its performance, leading to overheating. But making the bots look human is part of his task.

“If they’re ugly they will not be accepted by people,” he said. “Plus it is a little fun.”

While the humanoid robots have a long way to go, it’s a different story when robots are allowed to be robots – that is, with wheels, joints that can pivot 360 degrees and a wide array of sensors.

The smallest robots, each about the size and shape of a birthday cake, swarm across their field, weaving around like piranhas. These bots play with a golf ball they tick into the goal so powerfully it’s difficult to see it happen.

As in all the divisions, once a game starts, there’s no human interference – except for substitutions, when humans are allowed to remove a bot that has broken down, and when referees eject a player for fouling an opponent.

The mid-size robot competition – which some fans refer to as “the R2-D2 league” – most resembles real soccer, played on a 60 foot (18 meter) long court.

Majid Gholipour, leader of teams from Iran’s Qazvin Open University, says his mid-size bots, which are shaped like buoys, have a top speed of around 14 mph (22 kph).

The bots use different kicks for passing and shooting, and they communicate their position to each other via wireless Internet connections.

The University of Eindhoven’s “Tech United” is favored to repeat as mid-size winner. But the Iranians were runners-up in 2012, and Gholipour says his robots’ strategy is becoming more complex.

“If they are losing, they go on the attack,” he says. “If they are winning, everybody goes to defense. Like Italians.”

Both the Dutch team and the Iranian team confide that they’ve got a secret weapon this year: “path planning,” where the ball is passed toward open space as a robot scoots to intercept it.

But arguably the most enjoyable matches to watch are in the “standard platform” division, where all contestants use the same small humanoid robot, manufactured by Aldebaran Robotics. These are built with a stylish white design that includes glowing eyes that can change color to signal `emotion.’

In this league, the challenge is purely in the software: the best computer code wins.

Many teams play looking like they’re drunk. When programmers push the limits on speed, the bots tend to fall down even more often than human professionals do.

But watching the bots stand back up, rotating their knees forward and pushing up off of one hand, it’s possible to envision them running and jumping someday.

Unlike with human players, there are no prima donnas among the robots. Each plays every position equally wall, and they shift roles seamlessly. Goalkeepers have been known to come out and act as strikers. And when a bot gets a shot on goal, it rarely misses.

“That’s the advantage a robot has over a human,” says Dickens He, on the University of Pennsylvania’s `UPennalizers’ team. “There are no mistakes: a robot does what it is programmed to do.”

Tournament director Rene van de Molengraft says the humanoid bots range from as little as $5,000 for the standard platform bots, when bought in bulk, to $35,000 or more for handmade adult-size models, which are taller.

Still a bargain compared to the $75 million Barcelona just paid for Brazil star Neymar.

That’s right, what could possibly go wrong if you build a race of immortal beings who are smarter and stronger than you and then discount their price for bulk buying?

I’ve written about this before so there’s no need to dredge up uncomfortable memories. Suffice it to say good things are never the result.

And, no, I have no idea what today’s music video is about. But since we’ll all be extinct soon anyway I guess it doesn’t matter

Chinese Grandpa – Components Music Video from Ashes Wednesday on Vimeo.

Ah, where to begin today. After the British government attempted to lure women into scientific fields with an ad more demeaning than anything ever released by Victoria’s Secret a group of actual female scientists responded with an ad of their own. Their ad features real scientists having fun with science and dancing to “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” Ladies, there is a career for you in science and it does not require you to do math on a bathroom mirror or wear heels. The fact that I need to point that out simply proves that there is another category where we have a long way to go. Consider it added to my “to do” list. Put it this way, the first video, stripped of its techno soundtrack and embellished with David Lee Roth in his prime would have been great fun on MTV in 1985. Much like Hot for Teacher was in its day. In fact there are a couple of scenes in the first video that appear to have been outtakes from the Van Halen classic. That is not actually a good thing in this case.

This is not to say that science can’t be sexy. Daan Rosengarde has designed the ultimate example of sexy science. He has designed a dress that becomes more and more transparent the more excited a woman gets.

You don’t get to choose whether this dress is revealing or not — your carnal instincts do.

The ‘Intimacy 2.0’ dress, designed by Daan Roosegaarde, is getting a rise out of the fashion world because its opaque fabric becomes transparent when you get aroused. Finally, all the cards will be on the table. You’ll have your date saying, “Is your dress disappearing, or are you just happy to see me?”

The already barely-there garment features ribbons of leather and opaque “e-foils,” which can detect the model’s heartbeat, the Daily Mail reports.

Another caveat: Though Roosegaarde has said he’s “in talks” to produce a ready-to-wear line of Intimacy clothing, the current dress is only a prototype and a project.

Not to be a noodge or rain on anyone’s parade, but doesn’t a heartbeat increase if you see a car crash, hear some exciting music or in any of a hundred other situations? You might find yourself being the hit of the party for all the wrong, yet oh so right, reasons.

So what can I do to get your heartbeat down? Easy. Let’s discuss the joys of whale poop.

What’s yellowish-gray, stinks to high heaven and is worth tens of thousands of dollars per pound?

Just ask Ken Wilman, whose dog Madge went nuts over a dirty old rock the pair found on a lonely, windswept beach near Morecambe, England. But it wasn’t actually a rock: “When I picked it up and smelled it, I put it back down again, and I thought ‘urgh,'” Wilman told the BBC.

Wilman didn’t think much of the strange blob until he got home and, like any enterprising treasure hunter, immediately did a Google search. The chunky object, Wilman learned, was probably a valuable piece of ambergris, which comes from the digestive tract of the sperm whale and is a very expensive ingredient in luxury fragrances such as Chanel No. 5.

Realizing the foul stench emitted by the lump was actually the scent of money, Wilman sprang into action. “When I saw how much it could be worth, I went back to the beach and grabbed it!” Wilman told the Metro.

One French ambergris dealer has already offered Wilman $68,000 for his beach find, though it’s probably worth much more. “It’s quite a find,” Chris Hill, curator at the Aquarium of the Lakes in Cumbria, England, told the Mirror.

“There are places in Europe that will buy it from you,” Hill said. “They will age it, like a fine wine, and then test it for perfume. “How much it’s worth will depend on how fresh it is, but it’s potentially $180,000.”

Despite the centuries-old passion for ambergris, nobody’s really certain how the sperm whale produces it, or how the whale excretes the lump.

Most experts agree that whales create ambergris inside their intestines as a kind of fatty coating around sharp, hard-to-digest items, like the beaks of giant squid (a favorite food of the whale), the BBC reports. And squid beaks have been found inside pieces of ambergris.

But while some reports call ambergris “whale vomit,” others insist it’s not puke. “It’s poop,” molecular biologist Christopher Kemp told ABC News.

Kemp, the author of “Floating Gold: the Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris” (University Of Chicago Press, 2012), notes that the stuff commands a high price because “only one percent of the 350,000 sperm whales can actually make it,” he told ABC News. “Because it’s so rare, it’s very valuable.”

Fearing a flood of fortune hunters looking for ambergris, local authorities in Morecambe are now warning beachcombers of some potential risks involved in their search.

“The tide comes in so very quickly that it catches people unaware,” Mike Guy, manager of lifeboat operations for Morecambe, told the BBC. “We’re really worried about people just wandering off on the beach searching for ambergris. They’re very, very unlikely to find any because it’s very rare.”

Just when you think that people getting killed hunting pythons was the dumbest way to die ever invented, along comes a group who could die hunting whale poop. A quick update on the python hunt. As of this writing there have been over 1,000 hunters and under 50 pythons killed. Many humans have suffered various injuries but no fatalities yet.

This is like a real life episode of Benny Hill.

So, what to do about all of this? Well, the best solution I can see is robots. Unfortunately, as Jerremy Hsu points out, robots are meant to be feared and some may want to kill us.

Metal Madness
Real robot names such as Roomba and Asimo don’t evoke as much fear as the fictional “Terminator.” But consider that Roomba, the automated vacuum cleaner, is manufactured by iRobot, creator also of armed robot warriors for the U.S. military. And Asimo represents just the first wave of an incoming tsunami of robots that strive to look and act eerily human.

It goes beyond automated vacuums and mildly entertaining dance-bots. Japan and Korea plan to deploy humanoid robots to care for the elderly, while the United States already fields thousands of robot warriors on the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, plenty of people have enhanced their bodies technologically in ways that bring them closer to their robotic brethren.

So it’s OK to become a bit of a paranoid android, because many experts say that the robotic future is rapidly approaching, if not already here. Robots probably won’t completely take over or annihilate the human race anytime soon, but they may supplant us by other means — and LiveScience is here to count the reasons why you need not hide your fear of the metal ones.

Your Grandkids Will Be Robots
Whether humans and robots fight or make love, the most probable scenario involves marching toward a convergence point in the future. On one hand, humans continue to add more technological gizmos and tiny computers to their daily wear. You can already see many such 21st-century cyborgs playing around with their iPhones, or staring off into the distance with earbuds piping music into their heads. Artificial limbs, organs and bionic eyes? Check. Coming from the other direction, robots have steadily improved in almost every possible way: walking, talking and learning. Man and machine increasingly look alike, and at some point the difference may not exist. But on a brighter note, humans won’t worry so much about robots once they’ve merged with them. See you on the other side.

Robots Take Our Jobs
Anything you can do, they can do better. Well, lots of things, anyway. Modern humans have not gone obsolete just yet, but robots have already found their place as space explorers that can endure harsh environments off and on Earth. They have also brought their tireless efficiency to everything from assembly line work to humdrum gene sequencing in labs, and have appeared in growing numbers on real-life battlefields — although the latter can lead to the different problem if robots stage a rebellion, or even just have a weapons malfunction. For now, robots complement rather than replace elements of the human workforce and armed forces due to limits on their intelligence. But they’re evolving quickly, and a few have even begun tinkering with science themselves.

Robot Insurrection: Kill All Humans
A scenario where machines rise up against their makers presents perhaps the least appealing convergence of science fiction and real life. That doesn’t mean preliminary signs of an incipient insurrection don’t exist, though. Thousands of drones and ground robots have been deployed by many nations, and particularly the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. An automatic antiaircraft gun killed human soldiers on its own when it malfunctioned during a South African training exercise. Military researchers refer to “Terminator” scenarios, and seriously discuss how armed robots are changing the rules and ways of modern war. If that’s not enough to make you a bit leery, consider that Great Britain has established a network of satellites for the purpose of coordinating all those drones and other military assets. It shares the same name as a certain villainous artificial intelligence that dominates the “Terminator” movies — Skynet.

Humans May Prefer Robot Lovers
Experts aren’t wondering if humans will ever make love to robots — they’re already discussing what happens when that day comes. It may sound snicker-worthy, but consider that many people have had online relationships that get pretty intimate through Internet chat rooms and participate in socially intense massively multiplayer online games for years. A flesh-and-steel robot that feels, looks and sounds like a human would have even greater appeal, robotics researchers say. And if history serves as any guide, you don’t need the perfect Stepford Wife to tempt spouses or significant others into a little robotic addiction and strain existing human relationships.

Robots Steal Our Hearts
Robots don’t need to take over by force, if humans have already fallen for their cute, clumsy antics. Blame the human brain for allowing toddlers and soldiers alike to feel warm fuzzy feelings for robots. People are hardwired to perceive faces and get emotional about almost everything, whether it’s a stuffed animal or a car. However, robots still have to navigate one tricky obstacle of the mind — the “Uncanny Valley” phenomenon where a robot looks almost human, save for a bizarre twitch or stutter or glassy-eyed stare which can creep people out. Many researchers currently try to bypass the issue by simply designing robots to look less human, and retain that clunky robotic cuteness

Number 5 is Alive!!!

If you know that phrase you know how cute our eventual overlords can be.

And, yes, you read that article correctly. The nice people who build your vacuum are the same people who build death dealing cyber warriors. Bonus for you? Most of the technology is interchangeable. It would take no effort at all to make your vacuum cleaner kill you in your sleep..

How’s your heart rate now?

Robots of Brixton from Kibwe Tavares on Vimeo.

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

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I have written about the joys of our impending robot overlords. The sex bots are the good news, the biological slave camps are the bad. But, hey, why should we worry? It isn’t like science is anywhere close to developing a true artificial brain or anything like that. Actually, given the fact that college entrance exams can be filled in using 140 characters or less, I sincerely doubt there are any humans capable of doing the requisite math. And given that there are schools offering degrees in how to use cardboard boxes, you would think we would be safe from impending robot overlords. But there’s always that one kid. The Bill Gates in his garage or the Steve Jobs in his whatever it is Steve Jobs hid in to escape his teenage years. There’s always that one really smart person who refuses to be held back by silly things like societal norms.

Sebastian Anthony reports that a small group of Canadian terrorists, a/k/a brilliant scientists, have built an artificial brain.

And not just to be a dinning alternative for the zombie apocalypse.

A group of neuroscientists and software engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada are claiming to have built the world’s most complex, large-scale model simulation of the human brain. The simulated brain, which runs on a supercomputer, has a digital eye which it uses for visual input, a robotic arm that it uses to draw its responses — and it can pass the basic elements of an IQ test.

The brain, called Spaun (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network), consists of 2.5 million simulated neurons, allowing it to perform eight different tasks. These tasks range from copy drawing to counting, to question answering and fluid reasoning. At this point, you should watch the video below to get a rough idea of how Spaun works — and then read on to find out why Spaun is so interesting.

Now, the nitty-gritty details. Spaun has a 28×28 (784-pixel) digital eye, and a robotic arm which can write on some paper. Every interaction with Spaun is through its 784-pixel eye. The scientists flash up a bunch of numbers and letters, which Spaun reads into memory, and then another letter or symbol acts as the command, telling Spaun what to do with its memory. The output of the task is then inscribed by the robotic arm.

Spaun’s brain consists of 2.5 million neurons that are broken down into a bunch of simulated cranial subsystems, including the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus, which are wired together with simulated neurons that very accurately mimic the wiring of a real human brain. The basic idea is that these subsystems behave very similarly to a real brain: Visual input is processed by the thalamus, the data is stored in the neurons, and then the basal ganglia fires off a task to a part of the cortex that’s designed to handle that task.

All of this computation is performed in a physiologically accurate way, with simulated voltage spikes and neurotransmitters. Even the limitations of the human brain are simulated, as you can see in the video below, with Spaun struggling to store more than a few numbers in its short-term memory.

The end result is a brain that is mechanistically simple (2.5 million neurons isn’t really much to write home about), but which is surprisingly flexible. By implementing just a handful of very basic tasks, it’s interesting to see how complex behavior begins to emerge. There are some tantalizing hints as to how the brain evolved: starting with simple tasks, and then building upon and weaving them together to build complex functionality. In the video below, Spaun recognizes the pattern of a number sequence — the kind of question you would find on an actual IQ test.

Moving forward, the research team, led by Chris Eliasmith, wants to imbue Spaun with adaptive plasticity — the ability to rewire its neurons and learn new tasks simply by doing, rather than being pre-programmed. As for the ultimate end goal, Eliasmith is excited about Spaun’s prospects. “It lets us understand how the brain, the biological substrate, and behavior relate. That’s important for all sorts of health applications,” he says in an interview with PopSci. In testing he has “killed” synthetic neurons and watched performance degrade, which could provide an interesting insight into natural aging and degenerative disorders.

Spaun is built upon Nengo, a graphical open-source software package for building simulated neural systems. You can actually download the Spaun neural model, if you want to simulate your own brain — though I suspect it might require a little more processing power than your desktop PC.

Ah yes, Spaun, rhymes with Spawn. As in Hell Spawn. What could possibly go wrong?

Well as it turns out, a little more than you might have thought. You see every digital interface has to have a way in and out to adjust programming. And to create the digital interface they have, they need to map the human brain. Naturally, you knew this was coming, hackers have now found a way to hack into your brain.

With a chilling hint of the not-so-distant future, researchers at the Usenix Security conference have demonstrated a zero-day vulnerability in your brain. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it’s possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you’d rather keep secret.

As we’ve covered in the past, a brain-computer interface is a two-part device: There’s the hardware — which is usually a headset (an EEG; an electroencephalograph) with sensors that rest on your scalp — and software, which processes your brain activity and tries to work out what you’re trying to do (turn left, double click, open box, etc.) BCIs are generally used in a medical setting with very expensive equipment, but in the last few years cheaper, commercial offerings have emerged. For $200-300, you can buy an Emotiv or Neurosky BCI, go through a short training process, and begin mind controlling your computer.

Both of these commercial BCIs have an API — an interface that allows developers to use the BCI’s output in their own programs. In this case, the security researchers — from the Universities of Oxford and Geneva, and the University of California, Berkeley — created a custom program that was specially designed with the sole purpose of finding out sensitive data, such as the location of your home, your debit card PIN, which bank you use, and your date of birth. The researchers tried out their program on 28 participants (who were cooperative and didn’t know that they were being brain-hacked), and in general the experiments had a 10 to 40% chance of success of obtaining useful information (pictured above).

P300 responseTo extract this information, the researchers rely on what’s known as the P300 response — a very specific brainwave pattern (pictured right) that occurs when you recognize something that is meaningful (a person’s face), or when you recognize something that fits your current task (a hammer in the shed). The researchers basically designed a program that flashes up pictures of maps, banks, and card PINs, and makes a note every time your brain experiences a P300. Afterwards, it’s easy to pore through the data and work out — with fairly good accuracy — where a person banks, where they live, and so on.

The security researchers’ brain hacking setupIn a real-world scenario, the researchers foresee a game that is specially tailored by hackers to extract sensitive information from your brain — or perhaps an attack vector that also uses social engineering to lull you into a false sense of security. It’s harder to extract data from someone who knows they’re being attacked — as interrogators and torturers well know.

Moving forward, this brain hack can only improve in efficacy as BCIs become cheaper, more accurate, and thus more extensively used. Really, your only defense is to not think about the topic — but if you’re proactively on the defensive, then the hacker has already messed up. The only viable solution that I can think of is to ensure that you don’t use your brain-computer interface with shady software, brain malware — but then again, in a science-fictional future, isn’t it almost guaranteed that the government would mandate the inclusion of brain-hacking software in the operating system itself?

Seriously, for less than the cost of a weekend vacation you can hack into a human brain.

I’m sure everything will be just fine.

I’m also sure the bunnies in my head know how to make the perfect martini.

Good Books “Metamorphosis” from Antfood

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Before we get to the meat and potatoes of today’s blog, I’d like to take a moment to add another log to the “What the hell were they thinking” fire. Principal Janet Jones, of Utica High School, yanked a 14 year old girl, who was wearing a pirate costume for Halloween, into her office and informed her that she “looked like a porn star.” When the girl, who comes from a connservative family, asked “what’s a porn star” she received a VERY graphic answer. So now the young lady’s father is upset and parading around town with a trailer that sports the nifty saying “Mrs. Jones taught my daughter about porn. ‘All men watch porn.'” Mrs. Jones also added a “grow up” admonition to her screed. And while this situation is spiraling out of control with citizens taking sides and refusing to budge, to the detriment of the young woman’s psyche, the school system is backing the principal by saying she fosters a “positive learning environment.” Add Utica to my personal “do not fly list” and move on.

Oh, the costume? On a 14 year old girl it’s cute. On your 25 year old girlfriend, it’s smoking hot. The same as with Catholic school girl outfits. If you get those confused you can, and should, end up in prison.

Okay, moving on. Some of you may have heard that Mitt Romney did not win the presidential election. There may be a downside to that. Back in 2008 a group of Mormon moms advocated a new Olympic sport: “Pole dancing for Jesus.” Considering that he didn’t even get the vote of Mormon moms, the Salt Lake City Tribune endorsed President Obama, my guess is that he would have used his many Olympic connections to make that happen. Just in case you were still looking for anything positive that might have come from his presidency.

Quick question for FOX! News; why is it Mr. Obama yet President Bush? Just curious.

Anyway, once again, the World Pole Dancing Championships were held without Mormons in Zurich, Switzerland. And, once again, Americans were shut out of the top prizes.

After Americans went to the polls, the rest of the world went to the poles — for the World Pole Dancing Championships this past weekend in Zurich, Switzerland.

Dancers from 26 countries did what they could do to raise the bar for the sport, which has become as popular in gyms as it has in exotic night clubs.

Some say the physical act of climbing and twirling around a pole has roots in the Chinese circus, according to PolicyMic.com. Back then, it was performed by men more than women.

It wasn’t until the late 1980s that pole dancing moved into gentlemen’s clubs.

Because of pole dancing’s Asian roots, the Chinese pole dancing team had high hopes to win big in Zurich, according to GlobalTimes.

Instead, the country remains the sport’s sleeping giant. The competition was dominated by Russian and Ukraine dancers, including Ukraine’s own Natalia Tatarintseva, the top female, according to HuffPost UK.

You would think, with the fact that the Tampa area alone employs over 2,000 strippers and pole dancers, that one might be worthy of international competition. Then again, I once got stuck in Oneonta, New York, and saw the worst strippers ever. It was a couple of girls who seem to have finished their day as cashiers at WalMart and just wandered in and got naked. They had the sexy moves of beached walruses.

And I owe an apology to the walruses.

But, as bad as that news is for Americans, I have worse news for men in general. Scientists say that women who have sex with robots live longer, and happier lives.

Could sex with robots help extend human life spans? Some futurists seem to think so.

A Nov. 7 article on the futurist website Transhumanity argues that robot lovers could help extend life spans by giving users mind-blowing “longevity orgasms” far superior in quality to those from human “meat-bag” partners.

Warning: Graphic Descriptions Follow

The link between orgasms and health is not unexplored. Some have argued that orgasms have significant health benefits, and “The Longevity Project,” a book about an eight-decade study of long-life factors, observed that women with higher frequency of orgasm during sex lived longer.

But assuming robots can do it better than humans, is there necessarily a correlation between the quality of orgasm and longevity? Or is frequency of climax the most important factor?

If the latter is the case, then a sex robot’s superior skills in the sack might be less of a game changer than the fact that a sexbot will never be too tired or unwilling to get it on.

Still, the futurist scouting report on longevity orgasms sounds pretty complex.

Transhumanity elaborates:

“[Sexbots will] be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices… They’ll offer us quadruple-tongued cunnilingus, open-throat silky fellatio, deliriously gentle kissing, transcendent nipple tweaking, g-spot massage & prostate milking dexterity, plus 2,000 varieties of coital rhythm with scented lubes.”

At the moment, it appears humanity will have to wait and see if “shrieking, frothy, bug-eyed, amnesia-inducing orgasms” administered by sex robots provide the key to longevity.

But it won’t have to wait too long. A scenario envisioned by Victoria University researchers plots the rise of robot prostitutes by 2050, the Dominion Post notes.

Mid-century was also the sexbot timeframe given by artificial intelligence expert Dr. Robert Levy in his book, “Love and Sex With Robots,” which postulates that it would be entirely possible for humans to fall in love with their robotic partners.

Well, you can’t say I haven’t warned you that this was going to happen. Time and time again I have railed against our impending robot overlords. And what thanks to do I get? I get replaced by 2 D batteries and some attachments.

Gee. Thanks.

Well, America, we once led the free world and can again. Get your sisters, moms, wives, mistresses and/or girlfriends, sexed up and ready to rock. Get them a pole in the living room so they can practice and practice until it hurts and then go reclaim our national honor in Switzerland.

And when they’re done you can rub them down, oil them up and ….. well, reclaim that glory as well.

Try and replace me with batteries will they? I’ll show them.

gisele-pole dancing from Michael Wilkes Photography 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.

You, being a sane and rational person, rarely take talk of impending apocalypses very seriously. You are of a mind that rational people will work things out. And, in the main, history has proven you right. Granted, sometimes, it has taken rational people and a well trained army, but still, in the end everything worked out. So when I write about our eventual enslavement by our robot overlords and the like, you smile and then go have another latte. Sometimes you even send me a funny email. That’s very nice of you by the way. And when I mention that scientists, far too long at play in the fields of the Lord, have decided to build the world a singing mouse, you don’t panic, but you do make sure you have some of those lethal mouse traps. Simply put, you are a person of infinite jest, Horatio, and it takes a bit to get you riled up.

Fact: If all the bees disappeared humanity would die within four years. That’s how long it would take for all the food to disappear from lack of pollenization and for us to starve.

Fact: Bees are disappearing at an alarming rate due to pollution infesting their pollen.

Fact: Zombie bees have been discovered in Washington state.

Feel free to run screaming from the room and then start stocking up on perishables. It may buy you an extra month or so after the world dies.

Washington state’s first “zombie bees” have been reported in Kent.

Novice beekeeper Mark Hohn returned home from vacation a few weeks ago to find many of his bees either dead or flying in jerky patterns and then flopping on the floor. He later learned they had a parasite that causes bees to fly at night and lurch around erratically until they die.
The infection is called “zombie bees.”

“I joke with my kids that the zombie apocalypse is starting at my house,” Hohn told The Seattle Times.

San Francisco State University biologist John Hafernik discovered the infection in California in 2008.

Hafernik now uses a website to recruit citizen scientists like Hohn to track the infection across the country. Observers have found zombie bees in California, Oregon, South Dakota and, now, Washington.

Zombie bees also are being studied by Steve Sheppard, chairman of the entomology department at Washington State University.

The infection is another threat to bees that are needed to pollinate crops. Hives have been failing in recent years due to a mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honey bees in a colony suddenly die.

Hohn had remembered hearing about zombie bees, so when he discovered the dead bees at his 1.25-acre spread, he collected several of the corpses and popped them into a plastic bag. About a week later, Hohn had evidence his bees were infected — the pupae of parasitic flies.

The life cycle of the fly that infects zombie bees is reminiscent of the movie “Alien,” the Times reported. A small adult female lands on the back of a honeybee and injects eggs into the bee’s abdomen. The eggs hatch into maggots.

“They basically eat the insides out of the bee,” Hafernik said.

After consuming their host, the maggots pupate, forming a hard outer shell that looks like a fat, brown grain of rice. That’s what Hohn found in the plastic bag with the dead bees. Adult flies emerge in three to four weeks.

There’s no evidence yet that the parasitic fly is a major player in the bees’ decline, but it does seem the pest is targeting new hosts, Sheppard said. “It may occur a lot more widely than we think.”

That’s what Hafernik hopes to find out with his website, zombeewatch.org. The site offers simple instructions for collecting suspect bees, watching for signs of parasites and reporting the results.

Once more people start looking here, the number of sightings will probably climb, Hohn said.
“I’m pretty confident I’m not the only one in Washington state who has them,” he said.

When you go to Zom Bee Watch you will see a map. It is a very nice map, very well laid out. It has nice colors and easy to understand symbols and clear definitions of what the symbols mean. Just in case you have vision problems they were kind enough to include a link to a full screen version of it as well.

You will quickly learn that Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, South Dakota, Indiana, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York either are infested or have shown enough wanring signs to warrant sampling.

That’s a little over a fifth of our country by area.

And it’s just the beginning.

Insecticides, water pollution, air pollution and genetically altered crops that poison the insects or, at the least, prevent them from pollinating the next plant, are all partially to blame for the decline of bees.

The Zombees are just a bonus to hurry us along so that we can shake off this mortal coil once and for all.

Vanishing of the Bees – Trailer from Bee The Change on Vimeo.

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

You know the drill. One minute you’re thinking about taking your special someone to the movies or on a picnic and the next thing you know death bots have destroyed your city. It’s become such a common occurrence that it doesn’t even make the news any more. Kind of like serial killers with the middle name Wayne. One minute you’re pretty sure there was a Castelnuovo in Tuscany and the next thing you know it’s a hole in the ground. And you’re pretty sure that Bruce Springsteen sang about the joys of life in Asbury Park but that seems to have fallen off the map as well. And, true, while our impending robot overlords are practicing by wiping out small civilizations they have also been perfecting the sex bots they will use to keep us focused on anything but what they are doing, so we have that to look forward to.

Keep in mind that we live in a world where a babysitting robot was named Kilbot and no one had any problems with it.

“Gosh mommy, can Kilbot vaporize Timmy tonight?”

“Not tonight dear, we still need his spleen to pay the cable bill.”

So it is with no small amount of trepidation that I popped the link to my friend Chayse Love’s blog on designer death bots. She even provided a link to Randy Nelson’s article which explains how you too can own a death bot.

All you need is $1.3 MIL and some patience.

Climbing inside of a giant humanoid robot and piloting it is a staple of Japanese cartoons, but has always been something you could only watch characters do on-screen while you imagined yourself into their shoes — until now. A team of hobbyists, skilled engineers, and robot-lovers in Japan have finally created an honest-to-goodness mech you can actually drive.

Called the Kuratas, the human-controlled robot was created by a group calling itself Suidobashi Heavy Industry lead by Kogoro Kurata, an ironworker and artist. Standing more than 12 feet tall and weighing 9,920 pounds, the Kuratas was unveiled over the weekend at Wonder Fest 2012, an annual hobby convention in Tokyo, Japan, where it was — unsurprisingly — the hit of the show.

The Kuratas features a humanoid upper body and four insect-like legs with wheels. It’s designed to seat one person in its “chest,” which pivots above a waist and has one fully-articulated arm on either side. Pressing a button on the front of the robot opens the driver compartment canopy, allowing you to climb inside its cramped interior. Once inside, the canopy closes and you’re presented with a large LCD display and an array of lighted indicators.

Controlling the robot is handheld through a custom control stick that’s part steering wheel, part puppetry rig. It can be turned to pivot the bot’s waist and steer it when moving — the Kuratas has a top speed of six miles per hour — while a pair of joysticks operates the arms. Twisting and bending these sticks allows you to control the arms similar to how puppeteers move the elaborate animatronics used in movies. It’s also possible to control the robot’s movements using an app installed on an iPhone.

In addition to its literal pair of arms, the Kuratas is armed with a multi-rocket launcher and two Gattling cannons. The former fires plastic rockets filled with compressed water, while the latter can shoot a terrifying 6,000 plastic BBs per minute when you smile. As inexplicable as it may seem, the robot is fitted with an Xbox Kinect sensor in order to pick up your gestures and facial expressions, including the one needed to unleash what its creators have dubbed the “smile shot.”

The Kuratas might have robot fans grinning, but you’ll probably be grimacing when you learn that owning your own, while possible, starts at a whopping $1.35 million. Suidobashi Heavy Industry has set up a web page where you can customize your own Kuratas prior to purchase, including paint schemes, upholstery options, and other options. No word on how much they charge for shipping.

We live in a world where really scary people turn Super Soakers into shot guns. How hard do you think it will be to weaponize that rocket launcher and Gattling cannons?

If you guessed anything longer than a day you have not been paying attention.

Seriously, giving people the ability to play Voltron in real life is not as good an idea as it might seem after a bottle of tequila. And of course I knew there was a family friendly nude scene in that cartoon link (around 1:25). You expect me to know stuff like that.

Sexy Tron from Robert/Mechanical Whispers on Vimeo.

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

There is something very wrong with me. Most people see a pretty field of flowers and think “Aww, pretty.” I see a pretty field of flowers and think “I wonder if we could attach bio weapons to the pollen.” See? A slightly different point of view. Another example is obviated by my incessant ranting that we are soon to be overthrown by robot overlords. Of course there is a plus to that. I mean robot overlords automatically mean a world with sex bots. But scientists aren’t content just to supply mechanical overlords the keys to our kingdoms. No indeedy Bob, some scientists have been messing around in the Fields of the Lord and have been altering animals to make them more intelligent. Anyone who’s seen Planet of the Apes knows how well that can turn out. So, you can understand my concern when I saw an article about how scientists have invented a particle they can inject into people that will allow their blood to remain oxygenated without the person needing to breathe.

First the article, then my concerns.

This may seem like something out of a science fiction movie: researchers have designed microparticles that can be injected directly into the bloodstream to quickly oxygenate your body, even if you can’t breathe anymore. It’s one of the best medical breakthroughs in recent years, and one that could save millions of lives every year.

The invention, developed by a team at Boston Children’s Hospital, will allow medical teams to keep patients alive and well for 15 to 30 minutes despite major respiratory failure. This is enough time for doctors and emergency personnel to act without risking a heart attack or permanent brain injuries in the patient.

The solution has already been successfully tested on animals under critical lung failure. When the doctors injected this liquid into the patient’s veins, it restored oxygen in their blood to near-normal levels, granting them those precious additional minutes of life.

Particles of fat and oxygen

The particles are composed of oxygen gas pocketed in a layer of lipids, a natural molecule that usually stores energy or serves as a component to cell membranes. Lipids can be waxes, some vitamins, monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, phospholipids, or—as in this case—fats.

These fatty oxygen particles are about two to four micrometers in size. They are suspended in a liquid solution that can be easily carried and used by paramedics, emergency crews and intensive care personnel. This seemingly magic elixir carries “three to four times the oxygen content of our own red blood cells.”

Similar solutions have failed in the past because they caused gas embolism, rather than oxygenating the cells. According to John Kheir, MD at the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, they solved the problem by using deformable particles, rather than bubbles:

We have engineered around this problem by packaging the gas into small, deformable particles. They dramatically increase the surface area for gas exchange and are able to squeeze through capillaries where free gas would get stuck.

Kheir had the idea of an injected oxygen solution started after he had to treat a little girl in 2006. Because of a lung hemorrhage caused by pneumonia, the girl sustained severe brain injuries which, ultimately, lead to her death before the medical team could place her in a heart-lung machine.

Soon after, Kheir assembled a team of chemical engineers, particle scientists, and medical doctors to work on this idea, which had promising results from the very beginning:

Some of the most convincing experiments were the early ones. We drew each other’s blood, mixed it in a test tube with the microparticles, and watched blue blood turn immediately red, right before our eyes.

It sounds like magic, but it was just the start of what, after years of investigation, became this real life-giving liquid in a bottle.

This is what the future is about. And it’s a beautiful one indeed, one that is arriving earlier than we ever could have expected. I wonder if this would find its way to other uses. I can see it as an emergency injection in a spaceship, for example. But what about getting a shot for diving?

And that last sentence sets up a future where, as this particle improves, people will be able to, eventually, live underwater without mechanical aids. And once they accomplish that they will be a separate race from us and science has shown, again and again, that two dominant species cannot coexists in the same venue. And, let’s face it, the fish people would have going on it all over us. They could infect our rivers, our lakes and our oceans without missing a beat. And before you say “They’d be killing themselves” I remind you that their blood would self create oxygen, they wouldn’t need any of ours.

DYE “Fantasy” Official Video by JEREMIE PERIN from TIGERSUSHI on Vimeo.

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

If you’re like me – and there are 3 states where that is illegal and 11 more that require a permit (so check with a lawyer first) – then you know there’s no better way to start your day then with a committed threesome and a slathering of grease. Put down the phone, there’s nothing your congressperson can do about my past. And, yes, the powers that be knew all about me when they handed me a contract. Of course, this time they were very careful to make sure I had easy access to coffee first. Of course, I was hired for a specific purpose. Any idiot can cover Pippa Middleton and her toy gun. No, I was hired to find and report on stuff that real adults care about. The Mormon Underwear Protests of September 2011, are a good example. So is the Gay Pseudo-Porn Meets Beloved Comic Book Icon article that inspired half the staff to completely reconsider their thoughts on Wonder Woman. The other half went quietly to the bathroom to reconsider their own feelings on gender bias.

And each and every one of them wants to know more about the joys of bacon lube, the mutli-orifice enhancer.

Get your spandex and handcuffs out — it’s about to get real slippery in here.

There’s been plenty of coverage about the morning-sex-inducing, bacon-flavored lube. But what about all the other greasy love products out there?

Today, a major rival will have its say in what could be the sexiest debate since Lincoln vs. Douglas in 1858. We’re talking, of course, about Baconlube vs. Honey Lube.

Yes, the founders of each sexual condiment has decided to lube up and smack down to convince you, the reader, to take their product into the bedroom.

In one corner, there’s Baconlube by J & D’s Foods — the result of an April Fool’s joke gone viral. Co-founder Dave Lefkow said his product smells as wonderful as the morning waft of sizzling pork in the bedroom.

In the other, there’s Honey Lube — a sexy side project of Honey Care Products — the brainchild of 20-year-old Maxx Appelman. It’s got all the nutrients of honey, and all the fruit produced by the birds and the bees.

I strongly encourage all our Hippoteers to try each product several times before making up their minds. And, you have to admit, this may be the only place in the universe where you could read the phrase “sexual condiment” and think it’s the most the most normal part of the blog.

But what if your personal love puppet won’t let you lube that special place with bacon? Not a problem. The Geminoid Singing Fembot is here to serve.

Look, robots are going to take over the world anyway so we may as well get a little freak on with them before we’re eliminated.

The video: Renowned Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro wants to make androids that are so realistic they fool humans. And his most advanced effort, Geminoid F — the “F” is for female — is in the midst of her coming-out party at a Hong Kong mall, showing off for, and even singing to, passing shoppers and robot enthusiasts gathered for an international Robots in Motion exhibition. (See Geminoid sing below.) The fem-bot can smile, frown, pout, and make about 60 other facial expressions, powered by 12 mechanical actuators situated under her rubber skin. Most of Ishiguro’s androids sell for around $1.2 million, but Geminoid F will be more accessible at $110,000.

The reaction: “Girls, beware,” says the Daily Bhaskar. This “gorgeous female-looking robot” is so freakishly realistic, you may soon have some stiff competition. Yes, Geminoid F “can talk and sing like a human,” says John Walsh in Britain’s The Independent. But it’s not her “passive-aggressive sulk” or “blinking eyes and shy smile,” that I found creepy at a recent press conference — it was her minder, the twentysomething Japanese woman after whom Geminoid F is modeled. Stroking her android doppelganger’s cheek and hair with an indulgent smile, it looked like the minder wasn’t sure which one of them was the robot. See how real, or robotic, Geminoid F looks singing the Japanese pop song True True:

Of course, Sexbots have been around for a while. The basic concept hasn’t been that hard to bring to the fore. Mostly they’re just animated sex dolls with some cute features, like a willingness to say yes to whatever you want.

And it is in that spirit that a group is trying to save humanity by teaching perfectly boring young women how to be hookers. And, in fact, encourage them to compete in the International Miss Hooker Contest in Hollywood, California.

The “oldest living profession” was the backdrop for the oddest existing beauty pageant.

Nine gals were vying for the nation’s most coveted award: Miss Hooker 2012. The competition was held at the Dragonfly Bar in Hollywood, California. Questions darted through my head. Where was the tenth shady lady listed on the event flyer? Was she strolling down the runway at the county jail? Was Donald Trump her “one phone call?” Was this a battle of beauty, brains and bedroom skills; or something altogether different? And if turning tricks was a pageant prerequisite, what about an arrest record? Would this mean bonus points or disqualification? Might someone win Miss Congeniality; or were all gals deemed “congenial” by thriving in this “people person” profession in the first place?

After arriving at the contest, I learned my preconceived notions were premature: none of the girls were hookers. In fact, during backstage interviews with several contestants, I learned they had never even met a call girl.

“Frankly, I’m more qualified to be Miss Hooker than you,” I told Miss Anthropy, a tall brunette immersed in silver sequins. “At least, I’ve known prostitutes.”

Another competitor told me she had a serious crush on Johnny Depp, thus if given the opportunity, would charge him zero for her services. I informed her she clearly lacked the business acumen to work in this specialized field.

The talent competition was another area of consternation. One girl ate a hot dog. Another read a book on stage and still another twirled the hula hoop — clearly not the skills I expected from Heidi Fleiss wannabes.

Yet, when contestant Miss Kitty Cadillac worked the stripper pole and set her breasts on fire, the show climaxed. The crowd roared and the judges were mesmerized. Then Kitty purred through her interview question with a raunchiness that made her the ideal candidate for the crown. She was asked at what point a girl becomes a woman, and replied that it required mastering a particular sexual position (details which I cannot disclose without alarming the moral majority). Kitty’s erotic answer sealed the deal. She had come from humble beginnings in her lifelong quest (or rather her two-month quest) to be Miss Hooker 2012; and she had prevailed.

However, the competition was more than frivolity, gigolo jokes and roasted mammary glands. It was an opportunity to explore the deeper questions of life, such as, “Where the heck is contestant number ten and can she meet bail?” I was told she had never shown for rehearsals, thus proving two things: she had not taken prostitution training seriously, and she’d opted not to “show up” in life.

“Showing up” is a field of study unto itself. I’ve been informally examining it for the past eight years, since being elected into local political office and working as a Los Angeles city commissioner. Although women comprise 51 percent of the population, they are glaringly absent from political, legal and community events. Women fought tirelessly for the vote during the 19th and early 20th century, and they yearn for equality; but today they earn 77 cents on the male dollar. They claim to want leadership roles in society; but comprise only 16.4 percent of U.S. Congress and only 22.1 percent of executive positions — a number that has decreased in the past decade, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Politics is where the power is, so if women desire that power, why does testosterone consume the room when it is time to affect change? Why are political events crammed with dudes? Do most ladies lack interest in these matters? Are they secretly content with letting men lead? Or are they are intimidated by a society-wide “males only” mentality?

Miss Demeanor, who had hula-hooped her way to a loss in the Hooker pageant, told me that women don’t “show up” because the world is a boys’ club. Women are quietly edged out of the arena. “My mom said I could be whatever I wanted, but not every girl gets this sort of encouragement.”

Regardless of whether Miss Demeanor is right, the first step towards true equality is realizing where the power is and “showing up” to grab it. Females must burst into the public sphere, frequenting political meetings, community events and legal forums. They must run for political office, and elect each other. They must assert their opinions, rather than let males dominate the conversation. They must stop muffling their voice.

I was glad I “showed up” to meet the beautiful and empowered women who participated in this admittedly bizarre pageant; they were independent, stylish and strong. I congratulated the winner, Miss Kitty Cadillac, who flaunted her leg tattoo, leopard print leotard and rhinestone wand from the edge of the stage. She gave me reassurance that she was the right gal for the job, confiding that she had once met a call girl and had no interest in Johnny Depp.

“Good for you,” I smiled. “You’re as qualified as I am to wear that crown.”

**sniff**

Doesn’t that just make you proud to be a human?

While some of the “woman’s empowerment” campaigns baffle me, and most right thinking humans, combining fun, intellect and sexuality isn’t one of the confusing ones. It is this kind of stuff that, while superficially odd, is exactly what we humans need.

No robot overlord, no matter how well programmed, will ever replace a woman greased with bacon hanging off a stripper pole.

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