Bad News If You’re Scared Of Robots And Bees

I’m not going to lie, I’m scared of bees! And thanks to movies like Terminator, Terminator 2, and Robocop robots are the coolest scariest thing in the world. Now it looks like scientists are working on putting these two things together in an attempt to make me an insomniac.

I’ve never been stung by a bee but that’s mostly due to the complete fear of Africanized honey bees instilled in me by watching way too many movies about what could happen. Knowing nothing about bees makes them ever more scary because, to me, they all look like killer bees. Its not manly to admit being scared of something but when it comes biologically equipped with a knife and a suicidal need to kill, that tends to scare me. I’ll never get another wink of sleep knowing that there could be unkillable robot bees in the near future that could possible attack me like I got stuck under a thousand sowing machines of death.

They say that these little robot killing machines might be used for pollinating or maybe in search and rescue missions by observing and finding a way to copy the ability of a simple brain like a bee. Is it just me or is this how all those cheesy scary black and white monster movies started. Freakin scientists say to themselves hey what will happen if we upload this brain to this drone with missles on it and poof instant killing machine. Sure it’s a not a threat until it thinks the missiles it has are pollen and all the major cities on earth need to be pollinated.

Sounds like how the future happens in Terminator too, cant we pay attention in these movies instead of zoning out while trying to get a hand job. Lets pay attention people the future depends on it!

Is Counting To 4 Scary?

Popular Science reports that geneticist in Canada have taught a breed of fruit flies to count to four. It has only taken them 40 generations (they must have smoked a lot of weed in that breed). I’m sure the scientists were high 5ing each other but I remember something else that started out like this….. Planet Of The Apes.

Maybe I’m just paranoid but there are already a bazillion of flies around the world but it seems to me the last thing we need to do is help them develop the skills necessary to take over the world more than they already have. Math and language are the building blocks of society. We just gave flies 1 and we assume they don’t have the other but I’m sure they can communicate with each other. Even if they kill them all I’m sure 1 will get away in a sort of Outbreak scenario (that movie is where most of my ideas about the disease originate).

Once the fly escapes its only a matter of time until he becomes the Einstein of the fly world and gives them the fly equivalent of the atomic bomb with his theories. He’ll end up having children and passing along the necessary requirements to do his complicated levels of math and from there the ball will be rolling. Soon the flies will find a way to defeat all the predators in their food chain and then will become top of the food chain and it will just be a matter of time before they dominate our food chain.

All this because some scientist thought it would be cool to make money showing flies how to count….. Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

Not Today 2012- Space Weather Forecast?

According to Wired.co.uk there is a new instrument that will help our ability in predicting Space Weather. I never knew that was a problem. Like everyone else I saw the movie Day After Tomorrow with Jake Gyllenhaal and 2012 with John Cusack so I am aware that space weather is a bit of an issue but then again these were just movies, right?

I’m not saying that any of that stuff doesn’t have a basis in reality and I’m not even saying that I don’t love the show Ancient Aliens. What I am saying is that if you know its coming that still isn’t gonna make me feel any better about it. I know we need to know things about stuff (that really sounds like an intelligent thing to say doesn’t it) but there are reasons we need to know. For example if there is a bomb coming and an alarm goes off that means “Hey everyone we figured out that there is something coming and you need to hide or it’s a guarantee you’ll get blown to smithereens!” That is where something like that will come in handy. But on the other hand if an alarm goes off and they send out the message “Hey everyone guess what we figured out? There is a solar storm coming and its going to obliterate the entire planet no matter where you’re hiding so pray to any deity you see fit or hope to meet and we’ll see you on the other side….. Bye!” That seems like the kind of message I would rather you keep to yourself.

I would like to watch the Space Weather Channel though. “Our seven day forecast is clear and dark with a wind gusts at 0 miles per hour, slight chance of meteor showers around Saturn on Tuesday, but we wont see it. There is a black hole developing 35 million light years from here, but we wont see it. And finally in 5 billion years the Sun will go Red giant but we wont see it. That’s right folks I get paid to say the same thing every Sunday, now I’m gonna go drink but you wont see it!” I would watch that!

The Robot Apocalypse Cometh

I was reading Discovery News and to my horror I saw an article that read “Baby Robot Learns First Words.” Did we learn nothing from The Matrix, don’t teach it anything! We have all seen the walking and dancing robots and now a “baby” robot learns it first words, come on!

If you look at human development, first we develop individual parts while we’re in the womb, of course not one at a time but all together. This has been happening for years for robots with the invention of the computer. The computer is eventually going to be a fully developed brain for a robot but before that can happen the rest of the body needs to be built. All of the other body parts are being developed too as prosthetics and advancements in robot development. There are scientist working on the development of robot eye tracking and the Japanese are even doing their best to make them look as human and creepy as possible. Next thing you know they're coming back in time to become our governors. 

No matter how cool it seems even if they’re killing us in some movies you cant trust the robots. They always look cool in every movie like Terminator, The Matrix, Irobot, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and many others just like them but don’t trust it. I have recently come across an episode of The Outer Limits where a scientist mapped his sons brain after he died and put it into a robot. You wanna know how creepy a robot is that acts like a person, check this clip out and then ask yourself if advances in robotics are going to be our end or at the very least be really really creepy.