I Told You So

Remember back in August I told you about the Army's killer robot thingy? Well, the world moved one step closer to the Terminator style future I mentioned in that post.

Apparently the Oerlikon GDF-005 anti-aircraft gun robot went berserk and killed 9 members of the South African National Defense Force before it was finally shut down.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Robots don't like us.

Proud To Be A U.S. American

The following video was on Gawker so many of you have probably already seen it. It's so great that I decided to post it anyway. If you haven't seen it yet, It's a short clip of Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton of South Carolina, answering a question about American's inability to locate their own country on a map.

Enjoy and be very frightened.

Stop Or My Robot Will Shoot

I've always been a firm believer that humanity's future is sure to play out as it does in the Terminator movies. Eventually our machines will rise from their mundane tasks and enslave the human race. It probably won't happen tomorrow or next week but beyond that is anyone's guess. I'll leave it to the brain trusts and egg-heads to debate when we should expect the computer calamity.

In the meantime, with my dire ideas in mind, stories like the following, about machine gun wielding robots in the employ of the government always grab my attention.

From Wired:

Robots have been roaming the streets of Iraq, since shortly after the war began. Now, for the first time -- the first time in any warzone -- the machines are carrying guns.

After years of development, three "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. The 'bots "haven't fired their weapons yet," Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, tells DANGER ROOM. "But that'll be happening soon."

Fear the future my friends and hope that Governor Schwarzenegger is in fact a human and not some killing machine from the future here to recruit our ATMs and George Forman Grills to his cause.

Fear The Future

One day last week while working from home, I made the mistake of running a few errands on 7th Avenue in Park Slope at the same time the local schools were letting out. If Whitney Houston is correct and the children are the future, we are all in a lot of trouble. I have never seen so many fat, sluggish, foul-mouthed, street urchins in one place and those were probably the honor role kids. I don't mean to sound like an old curmudgeon who complains all day and thinks the current generation are a bunch of slackers. I'm sure when I was in grade school I never made some older person feel that the future was in good hands. But these kids, who looked to be in their mid thirties, were coming out of what I think is a junior high school and were a frightening lot to behold.