I May Meet a Sex Robot: or, I may be in prison soon

Aaaaaaah, nooooooo! You guys! Oh my god, whyyyy? True Companion will be unveiling the world's first sex robot at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Vegas on January 9! I am going to be there! I HATE robots! This one is the evilest of evil robots! It has a name, voice recognition, vocabulary... sex organs... Oh my god, dude, I am going to have to keep a wide berth of this horrible thing to avoid hacking it to bits!

But... is avoiding it really the Right Thing to Do? Maybe, for the sake of humanity, I should just do it and go to jail?

But then, I guess it's not a prototype, is it? There are probably hundreds of others out there somewhere, just waiting to talk and walk and "think" and "love" and fuck.

Oh... Oh god....


I can't deal with it. Here's the press release:




“Roxxxy TrueCompanion,” World’s First Sex Robot Scheduled

To Be Unveiled by True Companion at AEE Press Conference



True Companion, LLC (www.TrueCompanion.com) will be unveiling the world’s first sex robot at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. The press conference to cover this momentous event will take place on the main stage at the Expo on Saturday, January 9, 2010 at 11:00 am. The female sex robot, which has taken years to develop, knows its owner’s name, can carry on a discussion, has its own unique personality, knows your likes and dislikes, expresses her love to you, can feel your touch and can even have an orgasm.



“Roxxxy TrueCompanion,” the name of the world’s first sex robot, will also be on stage during the presentation.



Additional details covering the extensive features will be covered during the press conference.



There will be a brief Q & A period following the presentation. The staff at True Companion will then be available to schedule interviews and provide additional information at their booth, # 7031. It is recommended to email your requested date and time for interviews to Info@TrueCompanion.com prior to the Expo.



Douglas Hines, the founder of True Companion, stated “Our sex robots are committed to pleasing their owner. This may involve having a nice discussion or engaging in an intimate encounter. They are fully anatomically correct just like a real person. We have electrical and robotics engineers, artists, fashion models, beauty and makeup professionals all working together to make our customer’s dream a reality.”

The Beating Heart of Doom: or, the horrible slime monster from hell

Ohhhhhhmyyyyyyyygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!

I was all set to write something intelligent today for the blog, because I've been neglecting it terribly and I feel badly about it. Truth is, I've been sprinting just to stay in the same place with all my projects lately and I haven't been devoting enough time to weird news reading, people watching, or paranoid musing to really hold up much of the deadly serious content you've all come to expect from me, so I've been steering clear.

Well, today I thought, screw it, I'll write about the discrimination that I and my friends faced at a club over the weekend when we tried to show porn at a porn-themed party we were holding at an East Village bar (the owner turned off our projector and would not allow us to plug it back in, or show any kind of graphic sexual content--at a PORN-THEMED PARTY, and that is bullshit on a whole cadre of different levels). Or the racist comment I heard from a guy crossing the street yesterday ("God bless you, whitey," he said as I passed by; I should have replied, "God bless you, racist" but I didn't because I'm POLITE). Or the totally insane breakdown I saw a totally insane guy having on the subway the other day (there was screaming, kicking, cursing, and, at one point, singing: "Beverly, Peverly, Rise and shine, If you don't get up, Your ass is mine"; actually, now that I'm thinking of it, that might have been a straight-up demon possession). Or something.

But then.

Through the wonders of facebook, I came across this little piece of vomit-inducing horror. It's a... I don't know. Oh, GOD, I just looked at it again! That thing is horrendous. Apparently it's a large group of tubifex worms living in a sewer and responding as a single organism to the lights cast on it by the sewer robot, which is filming it.

Let me reiterate. Many small, primitive life forms with little in the way of intelligence, living unbeknownst to the people above in the shopping center until this video broke, coming into contact with... a robot. Sound familiar? And pee-your-pants terrifying?

It does to me.

My advice to the city of Raleigh: if you don't want to see footage coming back from the next "sewer robot" featuring a face-off between technology and primordial-ooze-cum-intelligent-being that results in the two becoming fast friends, the ooze attaching itself to the robot and then riding it back out of the sewers and into your offices to visit bloody acts of doom upon you, then please, please, for the sake of all humanity, pour some goddamn Clorox down those pipes, followed by Draino, followed by every other imaginable micro-organism-killing chemical known to man (but be careful to avoid doing so in a science lab with a crazy American scientist, a la "The Host," lest ye end up with this monster loose in your streets). KEEP THE ROBOTS OUT OF THERE for at least a few days, and when you DO send them back down, keep them on a friggin leash so you can yank them out if any sad, lonely, survivor worms try to make friends with it.

That is all.

The great mosquito conspiracy: or, I am really itchy...

The mosquitos are in league with somebody, folks. Some force of evil out there has caught on to my prophesying and has hired a force of mosquitos to hunt me down and persecute me mercilessly for trying to warn the masses about their plans to kill off humanity. It might be the slime molds; in their multi-species proclivities and doom-mongering depravity, they would seem to be rather well disposed toward going into cahoots with a group of blood-sucking, still-water-loving jerk-offs like mosquitos. But then again, it could be the robots, because they know it'd seem unlikely for them to team up with any organic life form and therefore I might not catch on to their little scheme. Or, god help us, maybe it's the slime-mold robot! God, I hate that guy.

Anyway, the point is, I'm wise to their game, whoever it is that's overseeing it. I'm no dummy. I know the difference between the acceptable number of bites I can expect to get in an evening of sitting outdoors in the city. For me, the number is higher than it is for many, since I've always been a mosquito magnet, but it hovers somewhere around 3. 10, however, is unacceptable, abnormal, and extremely f-ing uncomfortable. Especially given that on the night in question, during which said 10 bites appeared, I was with a group of at least 6 people at all times, none of whom have told me they are suffering from a single bite. Furthermore, for much of the time in question, I was seated in a beer garden the size of a football field, surrounded by hundreds of other people. There is no way that my 10 bites are proportionate.

And, yes, I know it's been a wet summer, leaving more than the typical amount of standing water sitting around in the city and leading to a lot more mosquitos than there usually are in the urban colossus. I know this. But even my usual high level of attractiveness to vampiric bugs, multiplied by the above-average number of the little monsters hanging about, still does not equal the overwhelming number and intensity of bites I'm trying to cope with in this hot weather. It's just not mathematically correct (yes I've done the math, but it's way too complicated to post up here. Most brains just can't handle it.). These bloodthirsty cretins are after me, specifically. I'm certain of it.

I know it sounds paranoid. I was thinking maybe it was. So last night I put my theory to the test and took a chance on walking outside in a friend's backyard to see his tomato plants. It was around 11:00, and we stood out in the garden for less than 2 minutes. When I went back inside, I told myself that if I didn't have any mosquito bites, I'd let the mosquito-robot/slime mold theory go. If the bastards aren't really out to get me, I'd be unlikely to get a bite in such a small amount of time.

Well. When I walked back in and looked down at my knee, there was a mother-f-ing mosquito ON IT, sucking out my lifeblood. 2 minutes, people. 2 minutes of outdoor activity (during which I was constantly swatting the air, running my hands over my limbs, etc, in pre-emptive fear of blood-letting), and I was already a banquet.

That's it, you bastards. I'm on to your game. You will NOT drain me to the point of hospitalization, thereby shutting down my warnings about your plans for world domination and doom! I will not leave my readers in the lurch of your evil scheming! Anopheles quadrimaculatus, you, your gang of buddies, and your robot/slime mold employers will not bring me down!

I bought some bug spray, dammit. And I'm using it every time I step out the door. For all your scheming, mosquitos, you're pretty easy to repel with storebought spray. So take that and shove it up your proboscus! I'm armed and ready. Bring it.


(Post Script: I figured all this out last night and am now carrying my bug spray in my purse, displayed prominently near the top to warn the suckers that I'm not afraid to fight back. Well, whoever it is that hired the mosquitos to track me is apparently on top of things. This morning, at the 59th and Lex stop, I got literally attacked by a COCKROACH. They're bringing in the big guns. I was walking toward the staircase to the street, and a cockroach the size of my big toe suddenly came running at me--me, specifically, out of the entire crowd of people!--from across the stairwell. Well, screw you guys. I can carry Raid around, too, if you want.)

Slime Molds: or coming to terms with oblivion...

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygoooooood you guys. Woah. Holy crap. I feel kind of bad about having to tell you guys this, because I take the responsibility upon myself to warn you of impending doom and this seems to have almost slipped by me unnoticed. I mean, I try to be pretty thorough in my coverage of overlooked phenomena that might have doom-bringing potential: I've brought you news about ant invasions, robot intelligence, our existence inside the Matrix, and countless other important revelations about our imminent demise.

But I didn't realize this one was even out there until a few days ago. And every thing I've learned since has been more ominous than the last. This is serious trouble.

Slime Molds. Dude, I can hear you laughing, but trust me, this is no joke. Sure they sound gross and creepy, and trust me they are, but there is something much more sinister going on with these creepy gooey... things. That's what they are, just things. They're not molds. They're not actually fungi of any kind. They ARE slimy. But beyond that nobody knows what the hell they are. They don't seem to fit into any kind of classification of animal, plant, bacterium, or anything else for that matter. There are several different kinds of things called slime molds, and scientists don't even really know if they're related to each other closely enough to be in the same category. Nobody knows what they are.

I guess I can go ahead and admit it to all you hippies out there with sky-high ideals: I like labels. Ok? As far as other life forms go, I like to have a clear label on a weird life form so that if I'm ever confronted by it in a life or death situation, I'll have some basic mooring to which to attach myself as per how it might behave. For instance, if I know I'm being faced with some type of bear as opposed to a dog, then I know that climbing a tree might not help me because some bears can climb trees quite well, but dogs cannot. Likewise, if I know that the terrifying sound coming from the other room is coming from a llama as opposed to a wildcat, I can proceed with less caution because being spat upon is a hell of a lot less scary than being eviscerated. Labels are good.

I would therefore feel a little better about the following facts if I knew what the hell a slime mold was in the first place:

Slime molds (I'm referring to Mycetozoan types here, but Bikont types are probably just as bad in one way or another) start life as amoeba-like single-celled doo-dads (which are in fact NOT amoeba, but it's helpful in picturing the situation. see? labels are good) that go around eating bacteria and pretty much minding their own business, until food runs out. That's when things get weird. When food is running low, the Mycetozoan slime mold amoeba-like doo-dads release a chemical signal that brings all the others near it running (or oozing, I guess) out from their respective woodwork. They join together to, quote, "join up into a tiny multicellular slug-like coordinated creature, which crawls to an open lit place and grows into a fruiting body" according to Wikipedia. The fruiting body grows up into a stalk formed by dead cells which actually sacrifice themselves in order to let the other cells make it to the top (confounding evolutionary theorists along with the rest of us, since why would any living thing sacrifice itself and give up its chance to reproduce?), where they finish their life cycles by sending out spores into the air (hence the stalk - the higher the spores are released from, the farther they'll go), which in turn grow into more amoeba-like doo-dads.

Pretty cool, huh? Except. Wait a second. Here we have a life form that can adopt not only four different forms (I mean, butterflies have been metamorphizing for ages and I'm ok with them - they're purdy), but which also behave in ways similar to that of FOUR DIFFERENT CLASSES OF LIVING THING. I'm probably using the wrong terminology here, but to be honest, after a certain amount of research I got too freaked out to check up on my bio vocab. But think about it: they start out as amoeba-like doo-dads that are NOT actually amoebas. Then they get together to form a SLUG-LIKE conglomeration that behaves like an amimal. THEN, they form into a "fruiting body" very much like a PLANT. And then they release SPORES, very much like a plant or fungus.

What the hell IS this thing? I don't like it at all. I don't trust this shape-shifting doom-monger. Seems to me it could just turn itself into a bat anytime and fly away, or, hell, just turn into a rock if it felt like it and make it through the next ice age intact, only to become a goddamn lion or something and kill the few of us that survive. But, hey, maybe I'm being paranoid. I mean, really, all it does is shuffle around like a slug and then turn into a flower, right? Not much to worry about on the intelligence level, right?

Wrong.

1) Allow me to just quote. This needs no editorializing:

"Japanese scientists claim that amoeba-like organisms have a primitive form of intelligence, following an experiment where a slime mould found its way through a maze."

Yup. My buddy Physarum polycephalum (pictured above - ain't he cute?) is smart enough - somehow, despite the lack of a brain - to find the shortest way through a maze when food is placed at either end.


2) Oh, and also this:

"Single-celled slime molds demonstrate the ability to memorize and anticipate repeated events, a team of Japanese researchers reported in January. The study [pdf] clearly shows “a primitive version of brain function” in an organism with no brain at all." Good old Physarum polycephalum again. "As the cells crawled across an agar plate, the researchers subjected them to cold, dry conditions for the first 10 minutes of every hour. During these cool spells, the cells slowed down their motion. After three cold snaps the scientists stopped changing the temperature and humidity and watched to see whether the amoebas had learned the pattern. Sure enough, many of the cells throttled back right on the hour in anticipation of another bout of cold weather. When conditions stayed stable for a while, the slime-mold amoebas gave up on their hourly braking, but when another single jolt of cold was applied, they resumed the behavior and correctly recalled the 60-minute interval."

Smart little... er, big... amoebas... er, plants... er, slugs... er... WTF!

Well, I might be ok falling asleep tonight knowing that somehwere out there in the woods on a rotting log is a weirdly intelligent but brainless blob of gooey unidentifiable life matter that at least isn't aspiring to any high leve of doom-mongering at the moment.



3) But then. This:

"A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot. ... The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot's movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself."

Yup. Slime robots. As if this world couldn't get any more insane or terrifying with android battle drones and slime molds operating separately. Oh, no. Not bad enough. We need, and I quote, "autonomous components" to provide energy and biological bases for "autonomous robots." Cause, heck, who doesn't need a robot that can power and move itself even independent of a human-made source of electricity? Who wouldn't want a robot that can feed and power itself and cause unending and unendable destruction by using a slime mold to move and possibly power it?

Holy amoeba-like doo-dads, Batman, am I the only sane person left on this crazy rock? Why the hell are we giving these frenzied, label-bending, unclassifiable monsters access to our technology? Can't we leave them in the woods, quietly plotting our demise where they'd at least take a long time to get to us? Or shall we just go ahead and bring them into our labs, hook them up to advanced robotics, and let them mow us all down? Why delay the inevitable? If there really was a Dr. Evil out there, he'd be right on top of this one.

Dammit.

I'm going straight home tonight and pulling up the covers and... I dunno. Just trying not have nightmares. Seems like the only thing to do.

OH. MY. GOD. And how the media is trying to send us all into a panicked frenzy.

Ok, so when I first read this: Ant Mega-Colony Takes Over World ... I kinda freaked out a little. I mean. C'mon. Takes Over World?? That's a little terrifying no matter who's doing it, but ANTS? I got these pictures of huge 1950's B-movie Ant Monsters the size of 3 story buildings running around in traffic, wiggling their 20-foot antennae and clicking their human-sized mandibles together and doing any number of the horrible scary things that ants do (ever read up on bullet ants? blind ants? fire ants? nasty little buggers, I'm telling you!) on a ginormous scale. I almost peed myself.

Needless to say, this was not exactly the scenario that Matt Walker from the BBC's Earth News was trying to describe. The story itself isn't all that fantastic: basically there's this highly invasive species of Argentine ant that has been spread all over the world by human activity, and that has now established 'super colonies' in Europe, the US, two in Japan, and of course in South America. The ants are currently on every continent except for Antarctica. This is bad, because according to Suite101.com, these ants are among the world's worst invaders of new territory, causing serious damage to ecosystems when they land in new places and start up their monstrous colonies. And while that's kind of so-so on the unpleasant scale (at least for us; I'm sure there's some species of native ant out there lignering on the brink of starvation in little ant refugee camps, huddled around campfires and singing their native ant-farm songs in the night), things got a little creepy when researchers from Japan started putting the ants from super-colonies thousands of miles apart together to see how they'd react - and they got along. Ants are pretty aggressive critters, and as a consequence, when presented from an ant not of their own colony they usually get into fights. But these Argentine invaders (those from the bigges of the super-colonies) had no beef with each other. They basically just bought each other beers and started telling crazy stories about their mutual extended relatives antics at the last Argentine invaders' company holiday party. The researchers, surprised and unnerved, apparently let it slip that ants usually only act this chummy around others from their own specific colony, and that "the enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society."

Well, yeah. Ok. But then the BBC turned these observations into statements like these:
-"billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony."
-"The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination."
-"further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition."

Dude. Come on.

Unless you have evidence that someone has actually found a giant underground series of tunnels leading from Japan and the US and Europe to an Argentinian home base with a giant ant-head that glows transmitting doom thoughts to billions of other ants around the world, don't give me shit like this. I'm way disappointed.

BUT! I am published again! My little Rant Rez from the other day went up today on The Whiskey Dregs. I rule!

The Brooke of Eternal Youth...

Well, folks, I guess this is it. I've probably said this before, but I'm pretty certain I'm right this time around. We are fast approaching The End of All Things.

Oh, you want evidence? Well, I could easily point to several posts in the history of this blog, like perhaps the one about Nicolas Cage making a live-action Sorcerer's Apprentice film, or my personal discovery that we are already living in the Matrix (thanks, Wall-E, you little bastard), or that my dream of killing geese is coming true on a genocidal level.
Or, I could point out that we are on movie #6 of the Harry Potter series (once that #7 comes out, it'll all be over - mark my words), that whats-her-other-OTHER-face from The Hills is getting HER own reality show as well, or that Buzz Aldrin is recording a hip-hop album with Talib Kweli and Snoop Dogg (yes, he is).

But instead, I'll just point to the adorable Brooke Greenberg here.


That is a current picture of Brooke, who turned 16 in January. She has the body of an infant, the bone age of a 10 year old, the assumed mental capacity (because she doesn't speak, it's hard to tell) of a toddler, and despite the fact that she obviously does not age normally, she has no apparent disease, syndrome, or real disorder of any kind. There is nothing physically wrong with her at all (except of course that she appears to be wearing a scrunchie around her head, but I think that might have more to do with her mother). In fact, she's survived seven stomach ulcers, a brain tumor, a seizure, and a stroke, and has survived all these maladies with no lasting damage whatsoever to her system; most of her medical problems, actually, have gone away mysteriously, as if by magic.

She was put on growth hormones early in her life, which had no effect on her at all. She stayed the same height and weight as before.

Not a single doctor who has looked at her bizarre case has any clue what's going on, since there isn't anything actually WRONG with her. The closest they've come to an explanation is that her body systems seem to be aging at different rates, none of which are normal.

Her family conjectures that she might be the key to the "fountain of youth," and doctors who are examining her DNA are calling her "that golden ring" of power to the age-old mysteries of why - and, worse, HOW - we age and die.

Know what I'm gonna call her? And I mean absolutely no offense to Brooke or her family or her doctors or anyone when I say this, because it's not their fault in any way, but... I'm gonna go ahead and assume she's the AntiChrist ("He will appear to survive a fatal injury" [Rev. 13:3; 17:8]? Check. "He will have no regard for the desire of women" [Dan 11:37]? Check. "He will rise from obscurity…a 'little horn'" [Daniel 7:8]? Check. "His arrival on the world scene will be accompanied by miracles, signs and wonders" [2 Thess 2:9]? Check.)

Or if you're not into the whole Revelations thing, she might be easily labeled The End of the World. Yes, I am a-ok with labels in situations like this. Because, call her what you will, it seems unlikely that little Brooke here really has any designs on ending the world as we know it. Well, at least at this stage, unless her one and only cognizant thought is the word "Doom" on repeat (which would be interesting, because that's pretty much what goes on in my head - I'm just too much of a wimp to put it into action). Although, if that's the case and she IS a Doombeast, little Brooke would need to either develop the ability to speak or put others under the control of her Doom Brain in order to enact her evil plans. She hasn't done so yet, but she might just be biding her time until her immediate family dies so she won't have to upset or hurt them personally, since it appears they've been pretty good to her. And I suppose I shouldn't put it past her to take the world down to hell if she wants, given that she seems more than capable of performing miracles already - her brain tumor just disappeared. Poof. Gone. It would seem, to my paranoia-crazed brain, that whatever Powers of Good are trying to do her in are failing.

But the point here is, I'm not necessarily pinning any active evil on Brooke herself. Would an evil entity really submit to wearing the scrunchie? Probably not. No, I'm more worried about what will happen if scientists do manage to turn that golden ring into a key and unlock the secret of eternal life. Even if scientific inquiry as a whole (which, now that I'm reading about the characteristics of the Biblical AntiChrist, seems to be a perfect fit, since modern people worship it) were to do The Right Thing with the information and keep it highly classified and away from the greedy prying eyes of the masses, that information would immediately become The Most Valuable Thing In The World and those who had it would... well... do I need to go into the details of human nature?

Let's just say I see one of several things happening, and none of them are in any way enticing. One: a few rich, rich, rich and greedy souls get their hands on the key to eternal life and implement it in themselves and a few of their buddies, eventually coming to rule the world, probably in a not-so-fun fashion for the rest of us dirt-people. Two: we all get access to it and way too many people become "immortal" or close to it and we end up overpopulating like a bunch of dumb bunnies and killng each other and everything else in our path. Three: nobody implements the immortality secret, necessarily, but somebody HAS it and that knowledge, and the desire for it, lead to World War III in which we all die horrible nuclear holocaust deaths.

In the meantime, peeps, I'd recommend really enjoying the hell out of these last two Harry Potter movies, and buying Buzz Aldrin's hip hop record.

Another animal ethics dilemma, and mercury poisoning...

1) I just read this article about skinny-pigs, a genetically mutated strain of Guinea pigs originally developed by dermatological testing labs in the 70's, but which were subsequently turned over the pet market, re-bred with normal Guinea pigs (which, by the way, are not from Guinea) to improve their overall health, and are now becoming new "designer" pets.

I'm torn here, because I really hate it when human beings fuck with nature for entirely selfish reasons. I think it really overstates the importance of our species (although I suppose every OTHER species overstates its own importance as much as possible - it's just that we have the brain power and emotional understanding to NOT do so because it's so stunningly arrogant, I find that irresponsible and short-sighted; but I digress...) and highlights the imaginary rights we have invented for ourselves as humans. Poor Guinea pigs are just going along their merry, squeaky way, nibbling on things, and then in comes a giant rubber-glove clad hand, scooping them up and doing weird experiments and forcing them to breed with genetically inferior pigs until they turn into hairless, unhealthy freaks that nobody wants. It's kind of sick and utterly self-serving and just plain mean.

But, I have to admit, I'm happy that the unfortunate offspring of the more-unfortunate lab pigs are being given a chance at happiness. I'm just worried about the implications of an entirely new genetically modified species entering into the world - it just seems so patently unwise. Who knows what could happen? Chaos theory and a very basic working knowledge of biology says: Nobody has any idea what could go on when an entirely new and non-evolutionarily developed species enters into the game. Could be earth-shatteringly terrible.

So I'm kind of against the idea of these pigs continuing as a species, given they're mostly the product of our crazed imaginations.

But. Look at this!

I think I NEED one. How incredibly and mind-bogglingly CUTE! I could hold one and pet it and squeeze it and love it!

...but. Maybe that's part of the plan of the egotistical, selfishly over-important mindset of the dermatologically tested skinny-pig brain. Maybe they WANT us to find them too cute to resist, so they can enter our homes, then infiltrate our hearts and souls until one day we wake up to find that each one, upon contact with water, has asexually reproduced to form 5,000 MORE skinny-pigs and we'll all be doomed to a life of running on oversized hampster wheels while our captors squeak at us from outside the bars of our huge cages, cedar chips strewn on our floors, gigantic and unspeakably difficult to operate water dispensers hanging in the corner... Oh man.

2) Anyway, on the other hand, here's something a little more blatantly terrifying and yet, so beautifully and wonderfully right:


Oh, Johnny... I love it when you look at me like you've gotten mercury poisoning from putting the shine on too many hats over the course of a long and twisted career of luring hapless head models into your hat shop over the meat pie shop and then stuffing mercury down their throats while you lovingly stroke your top hats with the precious silver liquid and croon songs about the world deserving to die...

I made it!

I feel like the number 100 is indicative, generally, of some sort of victory. If you've made it to 100 years old, you are no longer a creepy old person but a venerable piece of living history who garners respect from everyone. If you're a TV show, you've made it through a few seasons and are offically "A Success," possibly even "A Hit." And if you're a blog, and you've made it to 100 posts without garnering a big following, getting a book deal, or giving up entirely, you're either persistent or dumb or masochistic. I'm going to go with persistent, becuase this is my 100th post, this blog has gotten me nowhere really, but I'm still totally into it!
According to the NY Times, "only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled." Well, I'm still here and I'm still blogging and the blog may have looped around a few times and changed themes and such, but I'm hanging in there! I'm a trooper! A centurion, if you will! Hehehe.

But seriously, folks, this is an important blog not just to me (because it makes me keep my brain working and myself writing), but also to the world, whether it knows it or not yet. People need a source for a little laughter at the expense of the weirdos and weirdness of New York (as in the very lost and very unintelligible Albanian woman who was probably close to 60 years old and wearing a clubbing outfit who I met last night in Astoria. She was trying to get to the L train but had no idea where she was going, and decided that she needed to regale me with tales of her life in Yugoslavia until she moved here 10 years ago... and still somehow didn't know the subway lines...).

And people need someone to look out for them, to be willing to shout warnings from the mountaintops about things that are easily mislabeled as 'cool' rather than insidious examples of human stupidity, like these little gems about 120,000 year old (or older) microbes that scientists from my very own Penn State University have dug out from the Greenland glacier and, after months of careful and loving incubation, have finally succeeded in culturing. They have a few mysterious colonies going of "very small purple-brown ... ultramicrobacteria," and they're super excited because they think these hardy little guys could provide hints as to how living things could survive harsh conditions, possibly on other planets. I guess I can't blame them for being excited - getting a living thing re-started after hundreds of thousands of years is quite an accomplishment. But what worries me is this quote: '"H glaciei isn't a pathogen and is not harmful to humans", Dr Loveland-Curtze added, "but it can pass through a 0.2 micron filter, which is the filter pore size commonly used in sterilization of fluids in laboratories and hospitals.' ...once again, science at its finest, people.

Let's just do some quick, slightly paranoid but nonetheless self-preservative thinking here, folks. I'm sure that scientists who study microbiology can be pretty well certain when things are or are not pathogens, but given that they've admitted to not having ANY IDEA how old these things are ("...at least 120,000 years and possibly much longer") or how they normally behaved before being frozen and slowing down their metabolic processes way back whenever it was, how can we expect to know how these things will respond to being brought back up to speed? And given they're so tiny they can easily escape normal filtration systems, how can we be sure they won't break free and start some form of insidious mind-boggling-ly fast reproduction cycle that will cover half the planet in possibly methan-emitting global-warming-causing disgusting purple mold in like, ten minutes? Come on, people. A little caution, please?

Where would you guys be without me to point out the dangers and idiocy inherent in these 'scientific' schemes? Or the absolute horror of modern culture, as presented in this article about a 15 year old girl from Iowa winning 50 G's at the National Texting Championship on Tuesday. 50. Grand. For texting. This girl has a habit of 500 texts a day, 290-page cell phone bills, and using expressions like "IDK," "lyk," and "2ce." What's even scarier than the fact that texting has taken such a hold over our youth, however, is that it's also taking over our news media, which might not be the finest upstanding institution of cultural excellence, but which should at least hold itself up to the standards of using REAL ENGLISH. But no, no, in the article I've linked to above, they do a TEXT INTERVIEW with the winner of the 50 grand.

People, we need to fight these things. With paranoia, fear, violent uprisings when necessary, and even more violent mockery of things like text interviews. And that's why, even if this blog never makes me rich or famous, I know it's important. I know the world needs me. I'm at 100 posts and I'm not stopping.

Real quick...

Today has been a little nutty and I'm immersed in book-writing so I won't go on about this too much, but... check this out. I'll cut and paste the article from Mental_Floss:

Pollution-Sniffing Robofish to Scour Thames

by Linda Rodriguez - March 25, 2009 - 12:38 PM They’re a lot like Robocop – except instead of patrolling the mean streets of Detroit in a fictional future, they could be patrolling the mean waters of the Thames. Researchers at the University of Essex at Colchester, working with a £2.5 million grant from the EU, are currently developing pollution-sniffing robofish to help detect harmful chemicals in the Thames and other bodies of water.

The robofish are each armed with internal GPS systems, artificial intelligence software, and sensors capable of detecting levels of pollution. They move, much like real fish do, by undulating their faux-scaly bodies. The pollution-detecting robofish’s movement is based on an existing battery operated working model on view at the London Aquarium, which employs an internal motor in a watertight compartment and moves eerily exactly like a real fish. Here’s a video of an early model:

The robofish will be deployed in schools of five and can communicate with one another using wi-fi; when one robofish has detected a contaminant, it sends a message to the others, which will then motor on over and take readings of the area. The fish will swim about the Thames, or another body of water, unmonitored by humans unless they find pollution. Researchers plan to have a working prototype, jam-packed with sensors, ready in as little as 18 months..."

The article goes on to describe the history of the Thames and its super-pollutedness up until the 1950's and how it's sprung back to health after the docks were closed in recent decades, yadda yadda yadda.

But check out that video of the robo-fish. Is it just me, or is it completely and utterly unecessary for a robotic pollution-sniffing device designed for the sole purpose of monitoring the river's health to look and move just like a real fish? It's creepy! It's like a real-fish doppleganger. Terminator Fish. Ahhnold Fisheneggar...

Seriously, though. What is the point of the realistic fish-like movement? Why the scales? Why the fishiness? Couldn't they just send out some little submarine-y things? I'm venturing to say that it's for the same reason that engineers think they should make androids and battle-bots. Because, well, they can. And hey, isn't it COOL?

I say hell no, it's not cool. It's bad enough that human beings are being subjected to the quiet invasion of Roombas and pro-robot propaganda at every turn. Can't we leave British salmon alone? They don't need this bullshit - being a fish in the Thames is tough enough without the confusion of faux-fish. Ridiculous.

A bit in the way of explanation...

So a friend gave me a very interesting essay to read about 'humanoid', 'sociable' robots and their development at MIT. There are a ton of things in here (sorry, it's on paper so I can't link it) that strike me as ridiculously stupid and equally ridiculously terrifying, so if no news stories pop up that strike my fancy for a little while, this may be fodder for a whole lot of posts. Here's one:

The essay describes the development of more human-like robots, their programming to learn like human beings, and the potential for them to experience their own form of very mechanistic emotion, and juxtaposes these developments with the idea that robots are intended to make our lives easier - to do the jobs we find boring or repugnant. And it eventually makes a statement that I found refreshing (and personal):

"To some observers, the real challenge is not how to make human-robot interaction smoother and more natural but how to keep it from overshadowing, and eventually seeming superior to, a different, messier, more complicated, more flawed kind of interaction - the one between one human and another."

The author, Robin Marantz Henig, has hit the nail absolutely on the head. This idea that one day we may prefer and rely so much on robot interaction is absolutely terrifying to me in many ways, but here I'll try to explain the most practical.

In a word, it's the preservation of human interaction, which modern society seems to be trying to forget is probably the most important aspect to our survival as a species and to the planet entirely, that is at stake here. I fear and distrust robots and other high tech gadgets assimilation into the fabric of our lives for the very simple reason that reliance on them, rather than on other people, for meeting our daily needs, invites rampant individualism on a devastating scale. The more we learn to interact with computers and gadgets and robots, even if they are tools for interacting remotely with other people, the more we forget what it's like to actually interact with people. When we become accustomed to having our coffee ready and waiting for us in the morning because our coffee maker was programmed to do it, and when we're used to having conversations via texting or e-mail (giving the person on the other end ample time to carefully consider every word before sending the message), and when our entertainment options are movies so heavily computer-digitized that we hardly see a person's face on screen, etc etc etc ad infinitum, it's easy to forget that there are real people contributing to all these processes. The hands that picked the coffee beans, the mind that created the text message, the team of people that filmed and produced and labored to make that movie... all are easily lost behind the veneer of robotic precision and easy perfection we get on the receiving end.

We come to assume that all these things are easy to make because they are easy for us to get. We forget that there are people who have dedicated their lives to bringing us these things. We forget how to think about and interact with these people. We become, rather than self-supporting individuals, helpless isolationists who have no idea whose labor went into making the goods that we buy, or the real emotions behind someone's e-mail (much less how we'd deal with these emotions if confronted with them face-to-face with no time to plan out typed responses). We become a bunch of isolated freaks, sipping Mountain Dew in front of our sweatshop-produced computer screens at 3:00 am, making up characters to speak for us in chat rooms and avatars to be us in virtual worlds. Reality drops from our consciousness. We forget about other people.

And in so doing we do what we've seen the people at the top of Wall Street do. The heads of giant corporations with their private jets and gold-inlaid toilets who don't know about or understand or give a shit about what the people he stepped on to get there are doing or experiencing. And it's easy for us in America, using all our gadgets, to do the same exact thing, if on a less-grand scale. It's easy, when you're surrounded by gadgets that do everything for you, to forget that people made these gadgets and made the food they're preparing for you. To forgot that other people exist and have feelings and needs and wants and dreams just like you.

It's a slippery slope, and before you know it we've got people killing each other and dying of starvation in one part of the world, where there aren't computers to send e-mails from, or cameras to record the happenings. And we in places where we have computers and cameras and gadgets just... forget... about those people because they have no presence in our tech world. We forget that our actions affect these people. That our actions affect the world itself. We become so self-centered and self-obsessed that we develop neuroses and allergies and diseases the rest of the world has never heard of, just to keep ourselves busy, because our lives are so easy with all the gadgets we have to take care of our everyday tasks. We sit around and watch other people's neuroses on television.

Real, face-to-face, one-on-one interaction is a powerful antidote to allt hese terrors. Even remembering to make face time with a friend or call a relative on her birthday, remembering that other people are there and are real and legitimate entitites can remind us that our iPods are NOT entities, but the product of the hard work of other people, which is a slippery slope in a more positive direction. Reminders of other people. If we allow ourselves to continue making human connections, we arrive at a kind of globalization of consciousness rather than of wealth or materials goods. If, however, we allow ourselves to continue making and interacting with and relying more heavily on machines to run our lives, we are asking for problems and destruction...

That's enough for now.

Where has my bitterness gone?

Seriously, you guys, I've been sitting here at my desk for like an hour now, poring through all my regular sources of news and blogs and commentary and cute animals pictures and anti-cute animal pictures and trivia... And I haven't seen one piece of information that has enraged me or piqued my paranoia. There were things I'm sure I could have written something pseudo-intelligent and properly rant-y about, for instance, Gmail going down for four hours during the European workday and this being enough fodder for articles in all major publications because it ground business to an almost complete halt. This is a bad sign regarding our total dependence on the internet, and on Google, which is just enough of a cloud site to be sinister, but then I realized that, well, I use Google for Gmail and this blog and some documents and who knows what else, and if my Gmail went down during my business day, I'd be pretty much lost too.

And even though that made me realize that there probably is a conspiracy going on - and not even a robot conspiracy, but a real human one, which is in many ways more infuriating because you can't expect anything but treachery from a damn AI machine, you SHOULD be able to expect some sort of loyalty from your own species, dammit! - to sell all my personal information to anyone willing to pay for it... And even though I have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, and it would probably be best for me to cancel my facebook and myspace and google accounts, or at least remove the vast majority of information I have saved on them all... I just... Well I'm just in too good a mood to go on the long tangent this subject deserves.

I'm just... not upset.

I'm having way too good of a week so far. I've been productive, I got an e-mail from one of my favorite musicians, it's Mardi Gras, I'm getting enough sleep, I had a delicious lunch... I'm just... Content.

Sorry, readers. I'll have to work up some angst for tomorrow.

The scientific mind.

I will freely admit that my brain is not one that likes numbers and facts. It tends toward fanciful, curlique-d, sparkly fantasies because it finds them more appealing. It doesn't like the concept that according to mathematics, everything has one correct answer, or that according to science, everything can be explained in concrete terms. My brain enjoys mystery and imagination and seeing the magic in everyday occurrences. It is not analytical, reasonable, rational, or in any way modern, and that probably accounts for my innate fear of mathematical and scientific principals being applied to the natural world. To my way of thinking, Nature is not beyond math or science - it embodies them and is made of their principles - but it goes beyond their rules and straight lines and angles and numbers into something so vast and divine that it transcends what we can understand logically. And so when I see things like - ahem - robots, or for that matter genetically engineered food or animals, being made by us in a lab and then put out into the world that, despite our best efforts, is still controlled mostly by the large, unpredictable, uncontrollable whims of Nature, I shudder to think of what could happen. We are striving, in these instances, to control Life itself, which is not only beyond our grasp but beyond our ability to understand.

We cannot predict the future, even if we populate it with artificial things that we have engineered to behave predictably. Because those things, once they leave us and enter into the Natural world, are no longer under our control, whether they are pre-programmed to be or not. Nature is bigger than us and it takes over for us where we leave off. We are not smaller versions of some omnipotent personification of God simply because we understand a few theories about space and time and engineering, and even if we were, who can honestly say that that version of God the Creator we're trying to become didn't monumentally screw up when he made us? We've run absolutely amok. Our robots and genetically altered foods and creatures might do the same to us, and likely will if we don't rein ourselves in, and I don't care who laughs at me for thinking it.

Look at it this way. What's the point of robot technology, at its base? To make human life easier (so we can accomplish more 'worthwhile' things like watching TV and eating our Cheeto's without having to crumple up the bag and throw it away ourselves, presumably). Let's say that, a few years in the future, somebody develops a robot sophisticated eough that its primary goal in existing is to make human life easier. Not sure how you'd go about programming such an abstract idea, but let's go with the robot's reason for being as reducing human irritation, frustration, pain, and suffering. Let's say this sophisticated robot spent some time observing human life and realized at some point that human beings are almost always irritated, frustrated, pained, and undergoing suffering - as long as they are alive. Might not the logic that we have come up with and tried to bestow upon our lab experiment be put to use to conclude that life is suffering, and that therefore humans should be killed, so they will no longer suffer?

That's probably been a movie or sci-fi book plot somewhere along the line, so I don't claim it to be some groundbreaking idea, but you see what I mean, right?

Now let's imagine that rather than just having babies in our chaotic, natural, unscientific (or at least the vast majority being unscientific) way and making a few robots (which I think is a bad idea but it's already being done) and messing around with existing life forms to make them "better" (like we did with Africanizing honey bees, remember how that went? KILLER BEES?) and domesticating other life forms that don't want to be domesticated (the killer chimp? anyone?), we decide to start BRINGING EXTINCT LIFE FORMS BACK BECAUSE IT WOULD BE COOL? Does this seem like a good idea? It does, apparently, to a researcher at Harvard, George Church, who has declared that now that we have mapped the entire Neanderthal genome, we could bring a Neanderthal to life for around $30 million. John Tierny, that genius at the New York Times, apparently thinks that's a really nifty idea. "So why not do it? Why not give Harvard’s George Church the money he says could be used to resurrect a Neanderthal from DNA?" he asks.

...has anybody read about the crazed chimp who tore off his master's friend's face? Or read about the horrible things they do to monkeys in lab experiments and felt bad? Or watched JURASSIC PARK, for God's sake??? (I know, I know, that was science fiction, Lynsey, not reality. Well I have a whole buttload of opinions about why science fiction should be taken seriously, but not enough time or room here to list them.) Neanderthals, for all that we know about them - which is in fact quite a lot, given that we've mapped their genome and studied them ad nauseum anthropologically and paleontologically - were very much, VERY much, like modern Homo sapiens. Modern Homo sapiens being ourselves, being the least predictable or controllable animal on earth (if you put aside what advertising campaigns and brainwashing can do), being the ones who thought it'd be a good idea to stockpile nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet. Who can make robots to do their work but can't figure out how to coexist without shooting each other over whose version of the God we want to be is the best.

And these guys... want to... bring back a near-identical species, the capabilities of which we have no inkling and the reason for whose extinction was probably, like most other of Nature's reasons for extinction except for the ones WE'VE inflicted on other species, very good.

If a chimpanzee (chimps are our second closest living relatives, next to bonobos, and are much, much stronger than humans) who'd been living a pampered life in a woman's home, dressing and feeding himself and using a computer, for years, could rip her friend's face off in a moment of frenzy, what do we think a NEANDERTHAL being raised in a lab, most likely, and poked and prodded and examined and tested to no end by scientists who think it's just fascinating, possessed of an intelligence and self-awareness at least close to that of our own, will do?

I know these sentences are long and confusing, but I find the logic here absolutely mystifying myself. This is madness.

I'm going home, locking myself in my room with my Cheeto's, and not coming out till tomorrow. Forget this. My brain might not be great at calculus, but I'll take my common sense and my imagination and my curliques over this nonsense, thankyouverymuch.

A PS to yesterday's post

I realized when I took a peek at my blog today that yesterday's title "Oh No, Stephen King, Not You, Too!" made absolutely no sense in light of the subject matter of the post itself, which of course was the Kindle 2.0 from Amazon. (This is why I maintain that one should never give things titles until one is FINISHED with them, and why my book will not have a title until I have written it.)

I titled it as I did because, when I started the post, I intended to write something about how it appears that one of the greatest writers of our time (yes I do believe that, and I don't care what my hoity-toity literati friends say) has released a short story for release ONLY on the Kindle 2.0 medium, at least for the time being. I can't believe one of the smartest guys out there has fallen for the robot scheme, too. But he has, and I was dismayed, and was going to write about my disappointment, but if you read the post, you can plainly see that I became far too wrapped up in my ranting. So. Yeah, post explained! On to today's!

No, Stephen King! Not you, too!

Ok I realize that I appear a little overly paranoid about robots from time to time. Probably a lot of the time. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because in all honesty I'm not sure how seriously I take this paranoia; part of me is worried that if I continue to write about it, I will become more paranoid with each word, until someday I'm living in a dark apartment alone with my cats, with the blinds all drawn and fifteen deadbolts on the door, using only candles and moldy books to entertain myself and babbling about how the robots are out there just waiting to get me. I'll probably have a shotgun and be living on wasabi peas and beef jerky. ...but I'll have strong teeth, I guess, and that's important when fending off starving cats...

Wait, what?

Ok, anyway, so I know I sound a little batty about the robot thing, but I swear I AM trying to keep myself in line. But sometimes I feel like stopping in the middle of a busy intersection, as all the people go by me with cell phones literally attached to their heads, iPod cords dripping from their ears like white brain leakage, staring into their Blackberries and iPhones and PDA's of all sorts, and screaming, "HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD? AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?"

It's a good thing I'm meeting someone after work today and going somewhere with that person, who would be embarassed to be seen with me if I did that. Because otherwise, today might be the day. Check it: Amazon Launches the Kindle 2.

Ok, first things first: what kind of name is "the Kindle"? I've been wondering that ever since they launched the first, way-too-big, way-too-clunky, way-too-obnoxiously-dumb version. The KINDLE? That's not a word that makes one think of hip, sleek, intelligent, skinny-jeans and-gleasses wearing folk (are those the people who are selling things now? I think so?). No, it conjures up the image, at least in my mind, of small orange flames licking softly at small twigs or pieces of paper. This is not the way to go about selling something, my friends at Amazon. You guys, who so aptly named your company after a kickass mothafuckin band of warrior women who still spur on the wildest fantasies in men's and lesbians' minds (or a really deep and almost endless exotic river and its rainforest, which isn't bad either), could have done better. If you're not going to name it something that sounds super-sleek, at least go for "the Blaze," or "the Bonfire," or something that could whip up a mental picture of something exploding. People like that, too, maybe even more than the sleek, slim, hip thing.

But "the Kindle" just sounds like a few wussy little flames tottering away into smoke as you crouch by a campfire somewhere out in the woods, pretending like you're Davey Crockett in front of you unimpressed friends, who have been waiting there with their marshmallows on sticks unroasted for a while now and are starting to think you're a loser and have never been camping before, even though you have been assuring them you know what you're doing. But so far you've only managed to "kindle" a few sticks and leaves, and they keep going out. In desperation, you look around, and you find... an old book, perhaps. On the floor of your car. Something you forgot you had and so it was easy to overlook that it was missing. Something really dumb, like "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying a Stereo System," that you'll never look at again. You might as well just use it to "kindle" you fire, huh?

And hey, now that you're at it, since after all everyone wants to look cool in front of their friends, and as we've already explored, a big blaze is always better than a teeny little flame, who needs to chop up wood to make a fire? That takes way too long and is way too unimpressive. I mean, now that Amazon has launched the Kindle 2.0, nobody even needs books anymore. So - why not just throw your entire library into the flames? Let's "kindle" them all! Make it a blazing bonfire of knowledge and tradition! Who needs the satisfaction of a carefully tended and nurtured library that serves as a respite from the daily grind, decorates a wall of the house, shows friends what kinds of things they like to read, gives off that pleasant smell of leather and old paper, and makes a home feel like a home? As a matter of fact, who needs the very human experience of turning a page by hand, as human beings have been doing since ancient Chinese times? Who needs paper? Who needs books? Who cares if our words are passed down for posterity's sake? We can read them now, at the touch of a button, and who gives a crap if anyone remembers our name a hundred years from now, when ROBOTS will be just BEAMING IDEAS AND WORDS AND SYMBOLS directly into people's MINDS via MICROCHIPS because paper became so pase? Let's just KINDLE all the books ever written! Ban them! Burn them! Bonfires all around! Hell, when we've burned all of them we'll just simulate bonfires on television screens to make us all feel homie in the winter, and so we'll never have to go camping again? ...oh wait, they already do that, too?

...well...

Shit.

I rest my case.

I am so right!

Ok, you guys - I hope - saw my post yesterday pointing out the madness of Bill Gates, who I believe is trying to deal out doom to the masses by infecting us all with malaria as revenge for not all hopping onto his malaria-charity bandwagon the way we did on his shitty software in the 90's. You can't have everything, Mr. Gates, even though... well... you almost DO have eveyrhing, being a multi-billionaire and all. But that doesn't mean that people are all going to give as much of a crap about malaria as you do, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that you have the authority to do away with your biological nemesis, malaria, by infecting the world and starting anew with a select group of malaria-immune superhumans and a new kind of software program that actually works, you arrogant bastard! I'm on to you!

Any of you out there who are laughing a little and shaking your heads, thinking, "Oh, that Lynsey, she's so funny and paranoid. Bill Gates giving everyone malaria! Yeah, right!"... I've got news for you. He really IS trying to kill us all.

Take a look at this: a mysterious fungus has been wiping out entire bat populations in the northeast over the past two winters! Scientists have just now started to figure out the deadly fungus, which has caused a true bad epidemic that has killed thousands, but have yet to discover how to stop its spread or treat it. They're not sure how it got to where it is now, but it seems to be a new strain of a cold-loving fungus normally found in higher latitudes, which has somehow gotten into caves in the US.

Let's use our math skills here, peeps. Bill Gates has gone nutso and is trying to spread malaria by releasing mosquitos into crowds of people on the West coast. Bats on the East coast have been dying in droves. Bats eat mosquitos. Without enough bats to eat the mosquitos, the bug population could explode nationwide, and malaria could become a human epidemic as bad as the white nose fungus has been for bats since 2007! Bill Gates, as a multi-billionaire, has the ability to trek into any kind of territory he wants, anywhere in the world. I bet he's been to the arctic at least once, and I'll bet... mark my words people... he's responsible for transferring this white nose fungus from wherever he found it up there to the caves of the northeastern US.

I'm very serious when I say: keep your eyes on this guy. He's up to something and he probably has been from Day One. He thought he had humanity in his clutches when Microsoft became the most oft-used operating system in the world, but now that Apple is starting to finger his long-held sceptre of Supreme Computer Dominance, he's panicking. He's been on top for too long to understand the implications of his actions. He's gone Michael Jackson - he thinks he's so famous and rich that he can get away with anything.

But we're onto his game. Keep your eyes open, kiddies. We're in for a wild ride.

Bill Gates is making me re-niche

So, I niche-d myself the other day, into the area of human stupidity. But I've been thinking more about it recently, and I've noticed that I haven't really written since then, because there are two simultaneous obstacles to keeping up a steady flow of posts on that subject:

1) People are REALLY stupid, and it's kind of overwhelming to point out at all the interesting cases of such omnipresent dumbness.

2) There's a very specific kind of stupidity I'm really looking for, which is actually boiled down into a different concept than simply responding to acts of real mindlessness. What I'm really after are the kinds of dumbness that could, if people think critically (like I do. I mean, I have a blog. Obviously I'm a thinker.), cause fear and induce paranoia in the informed masses. I've realized that deep down inside, I distrust humanity because when we get together in large numbers, we do really, really idiotic things. Usually under the guidance of some megalomaniacal retard who started out with a notion of goodness, but who's morphed into a deranged mutant psychopath more obsessed with money, self-aggrandizement, and his own legacy that he fails to realize there will be no legacies if his plans are put into action and humanity dies a horrible collective death. These are the people who do stupid, stupid things like developing ever more sophisticated robotics in the face of all science fiction tells us. Or continuing to ignore the fact that sea levels will probably rise soon, and selling beach-front property like it's eternal. Or abandoning investments in renewable energy sources during the beginning of what could turn into a depression. The list goes on and on.

And in all these things, there is the bud not only of serious stupidness, but of really insidious ignorance. An unwillingness to look ahead that can cost us the future of our species. Somebody has got to stand before the onslaught of institutionalized moronic behavior and try to take the deranged beast down. Somebody has got to try to educate the masses, to remind it of its responsibility to use its brain, the best part of itself.

The blinded, blinkered, money-drunk, fame-craving, glory-mongering mental patients running this whole spectacle are out to get us, and some of them are too stupid to even know it. We've got to sniff out the doom before it's birthed, folks. That's where I come in. I'll spend my hours of "work" every day staring at this computer screen, answering the phone, and dreaming of a better world where people aren't such drooling idiots, scouring the corners of the internets to bring you bits of information so bone-chillingly weird, so twisted and bizarre, that you'll get The Fear, too. And together, dear friends, we shall become The Informed. The Strong. And the Paranoid.

So, that being said, there's not a whole lot of stretching of the imagination that one has to perform to understand the abject terror that this has inspired in me. Bill Gates, at the annual TED conference, just today unleashed a swarm of mosquitos into a crowd of people during a talk, with the words "Not only poor people should experience this." 'This' being malaria. Of course, none of the mosquitos this madman released were actually carriers of the dread disease, but he didn't tell the terrified crowd this until several minutes later. Luckily, the crowd at the TED conference is a bunch of rich, pretentious bastards who wouldn't want to look undignified screaming and running from the scene over a bunch of bugs, and probably assumed that Bill Gates is too 'civilized' to actually infect them with a deadly disease, but this act goes way beyond just 'making a statement.' This is the onset of lunacy, my friends.

Remember what I said about money-drunk megalomaniacs? Not to say that Gates is necessarily a bad guy: he and his wife Melinda, two of the richest people in the world, give out huge amounts of money to charities, scholarships, and research funds every year, and are particularly interested in ending Malaria. All very nice of them. But just because you're richer than God doesn't mean you can go around releasing possibly-deadly insects into crowds, dude.

I'm telling you guys: keep an eye on this one. He's up to something. I think he's gotten so tired of yapping people's ears off about malaria and being ignored that he's thinking about taking matters into his own hands and just giving it to everyone, so he can rule the clan of survivors (who will be malaria-resistent and thus fit for his probably robot-run world) with an iron fist full of mosquitos.

Paranoia is really setting in.

Ok, so I know my hysterical posts about robots are probably making me look like a conspiracy theorist wack job, and I KNOW this post isn't going to help me assert that I'm actually pretty level-headed. But I think this is important, so screw the consequences. Maybe I'll niche this blog and become a conservative anti-science, anti-technology windbag. Why not?

So here's what I'm terrified of now: Immortal Jellyfish. No, seriously. I'm not kidding.

This a very small (around 5 mm high and across) jellyfish, the Turritopsis nutricula originated in the Caribbean, but has been spread around the world accidentally by being small and tough enough to survive in ship's ballast waters when it gets sucked in, then spit back out elsewhere. And, because it is biologically immortal (we'll get to that) it is of course flourishing everywhere, resulting in headlines like "'Immortal' Jellyfish Swarming Across the World". A scientist at no less esteemed an institute than The Smithsonian has called their advancement “a worldwide silent invasion”. Yeah. And they're friggin' immortal.

How they've achieved a real, true, honest form of immortality is this: somehow over time, these teensy little buggers have evolved the ability to acutally devolve. Each individual can revert to its youthful, pre-reproductive state after hving already reached adulthood and procreated. By actually changing its cells and returning to its polyp state until it decides to mature again, the creature can actually bypass death from old age - theoretically unto infinity. Theoretically forever. Unless it gets eaten, which I'm sure happens quite frequently to tiny jellyfish, this thing can outlive - well - everything.

As far as I'm concerned, this news is bordering on nightmare-inducing. Jellyfish are strange and scary enough without immortality - they are such an alien form of life to us, what with their lack of skeletons and long, often-stinging, sometimes-deadly tentacles, and the ability of some species - the most deadly, in fact - to flourish in ocean dead zones where other species cannot live, they're already akin to some monstrous nightmare Cthulu beings. And now they've achieved an even greater likeness to Lovecraft's ancient god-creature - they just don't want to die, so they've decided not to.

What terrifies me on a deeper level, though, isn't so much the idea of the jellyfish themselves and their weirdness or their evolutionary checkmate - after all, I try to avoid swimming in ocean dead zones or near giant hordes of jellyfish, so although their abundance presents a very real oceanic problem, I can hold that at a distance from my psyche. What scares me, as usual, is what WE are going to do with the knowledge we will undoubtedly try to glean from these creatures. I'm not really scared that they're out to get us, per se. The paranoia stems from elsewhere: ourselves.

Immortality, or at least extended physical youth, has been the fodnest dream of the human being for about as long as anyone knows. The world-wide anti-aging industry was estimated at $97 BILLION last year alone. If we exhaustively study these vampire jellyfish, and we already are doing so, to discover their anti-aging, wrinkle-free secrets, no doubt we will immediately begin using them to make ourselve immortal as well, or at least as close to it as we can manage. We're already working on it, and now with the example of the Turritopsis nutricula, it seems we're well on our way.

I'm certainly not saying that the idea of immortality isn't deliriously attractive. I don't know anyone, least of all myself, who wouldn't want a shot at it if it were available to be had. To live for as long as one chooses, to have no fear, to exist with more hindsight than anyone has before you... all these ideas are seductive. Who wouldn't want that chance? But. Well. Let's be honest with ourselves, about ourselves. There are far, far too many of us already. We're sucking the planet dry of its resources, polluting the crap out of everything, destroying cultures through globalization, running out of space to share with animals, destroying rainforests and every other kind of natural habitat, killing off species, and generally fucking up everything we touch. We're spewing babies everywhere and we have no decent place to put them. Now add to the already far-too-large population a race of mutant immortals who will never die to leave a little more space for those babies. And imagine that race of freaks growing larger with every generation, piling up like driftwood along a cliff as the waves of new people push them forward with nowhere to go. That'll be us. (Meanwhile, in a forward-thinking move by the genius state of Georgia, Coweta County's board of commissioners has unanimously passed an ordinance banning all products that are produced or marketed "as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs", which will probably extend to prohibit the sale of ribbed/studded/other fun condoms. Because that's a good idea. But that's another blog.)

In my humble, Darwinian and naturalist opinion, global warming/climate change is the planet's way of killing off as many of us as possible, to reset the clock in the same way that the Black Death did in the 14th century and give us some room to breathe, because WE NEED IT if we want to survive. If we keep shooting out more children and defacing the planet, and refuse to die, we'll eventually just kill ourselves in some dumb way, probably nuclear war or simple toxicity. Lust after it as much as we may, I don't think immortality is strictly what we need right now. Not that what we need versus what we want has EVER stopped us before, but if I can win a few souls over to my side - the pro-dying one, yeah that'll be popular - then I'll consider myself successful.