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Hookers, Bacon & Robots

April 17, 2012 by

Of course we would know where to find images of a bacon bikini. How could you doubt us?
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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

See Bill Not

February 22, 2012 by

Funny little terrorists.

See Bill not write. Not write Bill not write. See Bill not write about politics. Why Bill not write about politics? Because people who like to read about politics are clinically insane. Even the people who say nice things say them in such a way that makes Bill want to hide sharp objects and hide under his bed. See Bill write more about science. Bill may make mistakes in his research but since he vets everything before he puts it up here only the scientists know his errors. You, yes even you in the back, all benefit from the latest and most accurate information. The fact that Bill has occasionally made a NASA scientist laugh is just a bonus. Bill will also write about the joys of midget porn, Floridians, stupid criminals, robot overlords, odd Asian stuff and the rest. But Bill will not write about politics.

I should note that I am not talking about the adults who posted here. They used their real names and, agree or disagree, shared their opinions in a civil manner. Instead I am talking about the very scary people who think the Internet is a license to kill. I’m talking about people who make the Lost Bunny of the Apocalypse look sane.

One lady, who seemed to agree with me concerning the electability of the current crop of Republicans, blithely noted that all Republicans should be sterilized. Her email had all the passion of a “to do” list; pick up apples, make brownies for kids, sterilize Republicans, meet Ann for tea ….. I went back and re-read what I’d posted to see if I’d suffered a breakdown and forgot the part where I’d advocated genocide.

I hadn’t.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the criminally insane, but fun, people on our planet.

Like the next president of the United States, Phil Hill.

UFO Phil, a self-appointed intergalactic frontrunner for president, announced today he has been granted authority to assume the job without waiting for the November election.

“I’m going to become your new president. … Don’t worry, [Barak] Obama, Mitt Romney and whoever else can still have their little election. That’s not going to affect me,” said UFO Phil, whose real name is Phil Hill.

A published composer, comedy songwriter, documentary filmmaker and self-proclaimed “man of science,” Hill has even appeared on the small screen alongside actor and comedian Tom Green. His single “Listening to Coast to Coast” serves as a theme song for “Coast to Coast AM” on the Premiere Radio Network.

In interviews with Peter King of CBS, The Huffington Post and other media outlets, Hill revealed he is in possession of secret scrolls that are written by beings from another planet. Those documents, Hill claims, give him the authority to assume presidential leadership without a democratic election.

Once he assumed presidency, Hill said he would establish a “Senate for Terrestrial Alien Relations,” to welcome the arrival of “brothers from space.” Hill also said he will decommission all military ships at sea, in favor of a new fleet of flying discs with spaceports in major cities around the globe.

In addition, Phil wants to build a giant stone pyramid behind the Hollywood sign. The pyramid would be similar to the ones he wants to build on top of Pikes Peak in Colorado and on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

The pyramids, however, won’t be the only change coming, Hill said.

“The Statue of Liberty has to come down,” Hill told HuffPost. In its place, Hill said he will erect a much taller “Monument of Zaxon.” Zaxon, according to Hill, is the leader of the good aliens. “He has very nice skin and will look phenomenal as a statue,” Hill said.

If UFO Phil’s campaign promises sound a bit over-ambitious, it’s because he plans to become president of earth, not just the United States.

Hill also plans to hold a live concert for extraterrestrials on June 10, 2012, to correspond with the arrival of aliens on Earth, an event foretold centuries ago by the Mayans, he said. The show will take place in California at the site of the legendary 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival.

“When I’m president we’ll finally have full disclosure,” Hill promised. “I’m going to release all the top secret government UFO files to the public on DVD and Blu-ray, with special features.”

I feel better already. But to really cleanse my palette I needed something just a little more delusional.

THANK GOD FOR FLORIDA!

Mark Roeschler, an admitted half orangutan / half Elvis, was recently arrested in Naples.

If the police officers who arrested Mark Loescher for assault didn’t think he was slightly bananas at first, it’s possible they changed their minds when he allegedly told them he was half orangutan.

Florida police also say Loescher told them he was also Elvis Presley’s brother, a friend of President Bush, and director of the CIA.

Deputies confronted Loescher in Naples, Fla., last week after after a woman said he had threatened her with a gun, Newser.com reported.

When the deputies got to the bank shortly before 5 p.m., they found Loescher still sitting in the driver’s seat while another woman, not the one who called the police, sat in the front passenger seat, according to the Naples Daily News.

The paper also reports that Loescher allegedly told police that he needed to call the “Fusion Center” about his monkey blood.

Just so you know, there really is a Fusion Center but it has nothing to do with monkey blood.

This next one is so obvious I’m not even going to bother sharing the whole story. The TSA has committed more terrorist acts on American soil than actual terrorists.

The list includes theft, race based hate crimes, drug sales, money laundering and so on. Who would have thought that giving barely literate people no training, minimal pay and loaded guns would cause problems?

Oh wait, I kind of mentioned that a whole bunch of times. Well, no one listens to me.

Moving on we come to what made America great (excluding the TSA). Obviously I am talking about the Buffalo Bars Boobs for Beads promotion.

Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

A group of Buffalo bars is offering free breast augmentation surgery to whomever collects the most beads during Mardi Gras celebrations this year.

The winner of the “Boobs For Beads” promotion– technically open to men and women, although ladies get in free– will receive the free boob job from Dr. Lakshmanan Rajendran, and can opt instead for a tummy tuck, nose job or any other cosmetic surgery similarly priced to the breasts procedure.

“I wanted an attention grabber,” Sean Coughlin, manager of Bayou nightclub, and organizer of the event, told The Buffalo News Monday, adding, “As bad as the promotion sounds, I don’t want it executed in a tacky way.” (How could a free boob job contest possibly be executed in a tacky way?).

The contest has drawn criticism from those who say the schtick reinforces poor body image in women.

Sharon Mitchell, director of counseling services for the University at Buffalo, told The News,”I think the overall message is here’s a shortcut to fixing something that’s wrong with you — which may or may not be wrong.””

Although some women on the event’s Facebook wall have commented, “Oh it’s onnnnn!!!!” and “Bigger is better,” at least one woman wrote she’d rather give the money to charity than win a free boob job.

Anything that ends up with me seeing naked breasts is a good thing. I may have to visit Buffalo more often. Besides being the new home for my buddy Ed, they are the birthplace of Buffalo wings and now this. And they have beer.

Lots of beer.

In the meantime, here’s some “behind the scenes” footage of the World News Center staff gathering nude news for you.

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

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Playing a Little Catch Up

February 21, 2012 by

Mathematical mnemonics.

The other day I wrote about how the four Republican candidates were unelectable. Obviously upset that only a second tier blog like this had figured that out they ramped up their efforts over the weekend to make sure that every breathing sentient being on the planet knew it as well. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich continued to espouse the philosophies of Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, respectively, and that appears to be sufficient to render them harmless. Rick Santorum, not content to be known as the dangerously crazy candidate, upped the ante impressively by letting everyone know that he’s the dangerously bat-s**t crazy candidate.

He started off his weekend by announcing that President Obama was treacherously soft on terrorists. Since killing them is too easy the only thing left, as far as I can tell, is lobbing some nukes and letting God sort them out. His God, that is. Not mine or yours. Radioactive wastelands would fit well with his other theme for the day; humans aren’t the stewards of the planet and anyone who thinks so is a radical environmentalist. While paving the way to start strip mining in Chicago he left unanswered the question of who would be responsible for the planet. My guess would be our impending robot overlords or, maybe, those radiation loving aliens from Alpha-Centauri. Oh, and just as a bonus, he’d stop all that silly funding of public education.

Not to be outdone Mitt Romney spent the day decrying the hazardous political policies of Mitt Romney and promising that Mitt Romney would repeal all of those horrible Mitt Romney programs and replace them with well conceived programs by and from Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was so violently opposed to Mitt Romney that I wondered if we were going to see a scene out of Fight Club where Mitt Romney beat the snot out of Mitt Romney in a parking lot.

On the other side of the coin, the one where there is hope for the human race, yesterday I wrote about the WOW Signal and what it implies. In return for my efforts I received a lovely email from world renowned astrophysicist and international bestselling author, David Brin. He has offered our Hippo-teers (is that the right term?) a chance to participate in the greatest experiment known to man. All you need to do is CLICK HERE to find out all about SETI@Home.

If you have a backyard or a computer you can participate.

If you CLICK HERE you can see exactly what the various arguments are, in a scientific discussion not a bar fight, when it comes to how we should, or should not, make ourselves known in the universe.

It’s not as clear cut as you might think.

As he noted in his email to the World News Center, the SETI-Allen Array isn’t really set up to find pings – quick signals searching for life – or similar broadcasts, which is what the WOW Signal most resembles. While I would, and did, argue that a planet technologically developed enough would be broadcasting all the time anyway (a fact I later discovered is meaningless), I can still see the logic in looking for those pings. Rather than a mish mash of I Love Lucy reruns that no one but us would understand they could send out a dedicated mathematical message. Prime numbers or something similar. Just enough to let everyone know they were in the neighborhood and looking to be friends.

Although, given the level of shockingly willful ignorance displayed above, I’m unsure if anyone would want to talk to us even if they did find us.

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

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Frothy Anal Secretions

February 18, 2012 by

It only counts if you make it count.
It only counts if you make it count.
If you’re like me, and that may be illegal in the state where you reside, you woke up this morning with a cat firmly planted between your butt cheeks. If you’re not then you didn’t. Feel free to use this as a handy guide if you’re ever unsure in the future. As most of you know I avoid writing about politics. To be honest, compared to the midget porn, the impending robot overlords, the perverts and the Floridians who normally festoon these pages politicians appear unseemly. We do try and maintain some standards around here. But a couple of things have happened over the last few days that made me change my mind and throw caution to the wind.

First, as regular listeners of the podcast know, we have been getting a growing audience in Asia. Specifically India. They appear to be using the World News Center as a tool to learn more about America. I have no idea how that started and am not sure it matters. They’re here, they’re polite and they have questions. Very intelligent and probing questions. The second thing has to do with a gentleman I know. He is white, Catholic, relatively wealthy, has a wife and a couple of kids and has been a Republican all the time I’ve known him. Yesterday he asked me a question that, to him, sounded perfectly rational; “Do you think anyone’s gonna vote for the nigger in chief?”

Ladies and gentleman, meet the target market for the current crop of Republican candidates.

A buddy of mine works for Super PAC that is pro-Obama. He figures the Democrats could run out Billy Carter in November and win 54% of the vote. That’s how little he, and those who work with him, respect the Republican Party this year. So let’s look at the chances of the four remaining candidates who did not get back into the clown car and drive off into the sunset. We’ll do it in alphabetical order.

Gingrich, Newt. A serial adulterer, thrice married, member of numerous conservative Christian religions over the years (currently Catholic) and the only presidential candidate in history to have been expelled from, and by, his own party for ethics violations. Oh, and as an added bonus, he’s named after a reptile. He offers no plan for America other than he wants to be its president. The problem Newt has is that he really doesn’t want to be a leader; he wants (needs?) to be a ruler. The smart thing for Newt to do would be to learn Korean and move to Pyongyang. If he doesn’t require nuclear weapons in his realm then that opens up some major parts of Africa and the Caribbean as well. Many of whom already use English as their primary language. Fortunately for America even the crazies shy away from Newt so there is no chance of him becoming the Republican nominee.

Paul, Ron. I’ll give Paul this, he plays his gullible minions like a finely tuned violin. Every time he runs for president they line up to give him money. Goo gobs of it. Then they go online and talk about how much money they’ve given him. Then they put together committees to buy his ads out of their money and then they volunteer to be his staff. At no point does Paul use any of the money he’s been given to do anything other than enrich Ron Paul. Further, two of Ron Paul’s political positions put him in the far corner of Camp Crazy. First he wants to get rid of the EPA. He, like Ayn Rand before him, firmly believes that all companies, if left to their own devices, will do their best for their employees and the citizens of the world. Without wasting several hours on the history of evil corporations and previous economic collapses, I’ll simply point to Monsanto and Enron. If Paul was allowed anywhere near anything more important than a slot machine we’d all be indentured servants with three eyes and a hump. Secondly, he’s a noted fan of Charles “Hey, that Hitler guy ain’t so bad and who needs Jews anyway?” Lindbergh and a strong proponent of removing America from the world’s presence. Which would be completely impossible to do, since the world is round and we sometimes need to buy stuff that isn’t made here, but that’s what he wants. Many people point to the fact that Paul is supported by “Storm Front,” an offshoot of Aryan Nation. Trust me when I say that 30 Nazis in Utah are the least of his problems. Ron Paul has less of a chance of becoming president than I do of becoming a prima-ballerina.

Romney, Mitt. First, let me say something nice about Romney. When he was elected governor of Massachusetts he took all his money and had it ensconced in a blind trust. That way, no matter what, no investment could be tied to him or influence his role as governor. The fact that this also allowed his money to get used for some very creative tax dodges and kept in offshore accounts was just a bonus. After all it was a blind trust, so that means he had no idea what his money was doing. Judging by some recent public statements, that is still true. When he was governor he enacted a health care program that inspired the nation and came down on the side of the angels when it came to LGBT rights. His problem is that he’s claiming to be a Republican and none of those things make Republicans happy. In fact they make some Republicans downright violent. His other problem is that he’s held more political positions than my pal Vicky Vette (NSFW) has held penises. And that’s impressive. I have seen her start her day with one in each orifice and one more in each hand. She loves her penises. Currently Romney is flatly contradicting himself on numerous issues. My personal favorite is his promise to repeal the very health care he inspired. If Romney wins the nomination look for the entire campaign against him to consist of recordings of him saying one thing and then denying he ever said anything like that. Simply put, he’s unelectable.

Santorum, Rick. Yes, thanks to Dan Savage we will forever associate the name Santorum with frothy anal leakage but that’s just one bonus of talking about Rick. You see, of all the candidates, he is, by far, the most honest. What you see is what you get. He is a member of a Catholic sect that compares favorably with Opus Dei and the Dominicans. The former were wonderfully lampooned in The Da Vinci Code and the latter are responsible for the worst case of religious sponsored genocide in history. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, look up the Spanish Inquisition and the history of Gnostics in France and Spain. Sure, the Dominicans gave us the singing nun, but she sings about the Sword of Christ. I know that the bible confuses some people but I can help here; when Jesus was offered the chance to be the king of Israel, first by Simon Zealotes and later by the Pharisees who were trying to trick him into admitting treason, He uttered his famous “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” line. No swords. No violent revolution. Nothing like that at all, just a statement that He was looking to a kingdom in heaven and not on Earth. Going forward, Santorum ignores the peaceful Jesus and does not believe that women are smart enough to know what to do with their uteruses so you can easily envision a future where women will need a note from their husbands to buy tampons. He also does not believe that homosexuals are humans, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word, so look for happy camps to be set up around the country to get those dangerous perverts off our streets. And those are just the obvious improvements he will make to America.

Oy Freaking Vey.

I have said in different arenas that the Republicans appear to have gone straight from 1899 to 2000 without noticing any of those annoying years in between. In any case, I’m not sure it matters who the Republicans choose as their nominee. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell that any of these clowns can get near the White House except as tourists.

And even then they’d need a note. Unless they brought donuts.

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

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Thank God No One Needs a Job

January 17, 2012 by

Hi sexy, we've come to take over the world.
People continue to ignore my dire, and completely rational, warnings about robots taking over the world. Even worse is the fact that scientists completely ignore my aforementioned dire warnings and keep making advances in the very technologies that will allow said future overlords to become … well, our overlords. I understand the basic underlying tenet that all knowledge is useful and it only becomes good or evil in the hands of its user. But, if we admit that we must also admit that certain technologies have very defined uses. For example, guns. Guns are built to kill things. Mostly people, but game for food is also on the list. You would not purchase a gun to, for example, fix your TV. It would be the wrong tool for the wrong job. By the same token you would not try to bring down a rampaging elephant with a socket wrench. Again, wrong tool for the wrong job.

But what does any of that have to do with the rise of our robot overlords?

Since you ask, I’ll answer.

Robots have long been built for specific tasks. Put the door on the Chevy. Weld the bathysphere to its struts. Things like that. Lately science, clearly on a tequila bender, has decided to see what would happen if robots could learn to think for themselves.

Now science has been dabbling in the fields of the Lord for a while, building “thinking” computers. But machines that can play chess or do well on Jeopardy are limited in scope. No one is going to quake in fear over a machine that can use quincunx correctly in a question.

But what about robots that can comprehend architecture, know how to fly and are comfortable utilizing the latest construction techniques? Because what could possibly go wrong with flying, thinking, slave bots that have giant slabs of concrete they can drop on us at will?

According to Robert Krulwich, who is clearly avoiding becoming a mind washed pawn of the technorati, just the end of human usefulness.

Uh Oh. Construction workers please note: Somebody just built a 20-foot tower using flying robots. No people involved.

The demo took place in a warehouse-like art gallery called FRAC, just outside Paris.

As humans (none of them, I presume, in the construction trades) applauded and gaped, four helicopterish thingies swooped through the air, somehow avoiding each other, and one by one, settled on some “brick dispensers.” Using small plungers they then plucked one brick at a time, carried each to the “building site” and slowly created a wall. It took a few days, but what emerged is a twisting, undulating tower, designed by Swiss architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler.

As best I can tell, though the air was buzzing with brick-bearing bots, there were no unhappy accidents (the bricks weren’t heavy anyway, they were polystyrene foam). Whenever a robot’s batteries ran low, it would automatically plug itself into a charger, while other bots took its place.

“This,” said roboticist Raffaello D’Andrea, is the “first installation to be built by flying machines.” The whole scene was pretty surreal. Here’s what it looked like.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkMyfQ5YfY&w=420&h=315]

Humans, of course, helped. Erico Guizo, reporting for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ blog, Spectrum says:

The ceiling of the room where the assembly is taking place was equipped with a motion-capture system. A computer uses the vision data to keep track of the quadcopters and tell them where to go — the same approach used at ETH’s Flying Machine Arena

If you want to know how the robots avoided collisions, how the bricks got glued together, how the design was transmitted to the bots, details can be found here, but what got to me is how astonishing, beautiful technologies keep arriving with the promise of doing things differently, and increasingly, without us.

Maybe (probably?) robots will create new job opportunities in computing, repair, policing and who knows what else, and of course it will be years, maybe generations before they can do what high-rise construction workers do. Still, something I would have called outlandish just ten years ago, (maybe even 10 minutes ago) is suddenly, demonstrably possible.

Don’t Stop. It Gets Crazier

And, of course, as soon as I got interested in “brick swarming”, (as this technology is called by architects), something even more outlandish and even more beautiful popped up.

Yoon H. Kim and Yang-Kyu Han, two architects in Seoul, Korea have proposed a high-rise construction project to be built by “bees”. Not ordinary bees. That would be too tame. They think they could do it with robot bees, like this guy:

How would this work? Writing in eVolo, an architecture magazine, Danielle Del Sol says, “These bees aren’t interested in honey: these workers will actually build a structure. Each robot is capable of using cartridges filled with agents that enable them to construct literal physical material, which the designers dub “augmented synthetic material.”

I have no idea what that means. Maybe a cloud of bees will swarm into the sky and squirt a building into being. That can’t be. More likely, these bees will create subtle textures on a building’s surface that regulate heat, transmit information. They will build these systems in small dabs, requiring hundreds of thousands of construction bees. This sounds like crazy-talk, but then I saw the Korean version of what a construction site would look like and I thought, “Oh my god!”

Imagine walking down a street and seeing something like this on a city lot, or looking out from your high rise window into a cloud of swarming bots, what a sight!

Flying robotic construction clouds are increasingly being discussed in academia, so who knows, maybe one day all of us will have the “benefit” of high tech helpers and this blog will be typed by flying fingerbots, sent to a keyboard by pulses from my brain.

I’m OK with that, but my fingers, I don’t think they’ll be happy. What are they supposed to do when I’m writing in my head? For years and years, they’ve had all this exercise, writing, erasing, writing, erasing. The day they invent a thumbot will be a sad, sad day for my thumb.

I’m just sayin.

What’s scary is how quickly humans embrace their destiny. They’re like the Vichy in WWII who thought Nazis were a good idea. It’s just “Oh, okay, we’re doomed, they’re too powerful, we may as well make wine.”

NO PEOPLE!

We can and must stop the techno-terror from spreading. We’ve all seen what happens in the Terminator movies.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo-4w9A6sVE&w=420&h=315]

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

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