old glory insurance with robot coverage

paul smith robots

the wall-e screen kiss

Wall-E.  A bit Woody Allen, yes.  Terribly earnest.  Friendly with roaches.  Diligent in his work. And a participant in one of the greatest screen kisses I've ever seen.  Over on noahbrier.com, a nice bit about how we can only accept unadulterated joy in a dystopian future universe in which the beings that find and experience true love are, well, robots.

That is the role of sci-fi, though - to let us explore things under the comforting guise of a world we pretend is not like our own.  Dad used to teach an ethics course using sci-fi paperbacks.  I was able to learn about bigotry, genocide, environmental destruction, genetically modified food, and lord knows what else all by reading Buy Jupiter, and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov one summer as a kid.  Interracial couples could kiss on the deck of the Enterprise, and Russians could be trusted.  Blonde girls can experience the loneliness of leadership and strength in Sunnydale.  How to balance liberty and safety, and how not to, can be demonstrated onboard a Battleship.

It's about allegory.  I work in a business that could stand to use more allegory to explain its ideas.  This makes me want to go play with some allegories.  Be back later.

first of all, hulu kind of sucks

Yeah. Let's start there.  It kind of sucks.  A few minutes of hilarity never expires.  That's crazy!  Eventually I'll seek out some link to the robot bit on Colbert that will not expire, all willy-nilly.  But right now I have another topic in mind.

So.  It's been awhile. About a month, I guess. How are you?  Oh, good.

I wanted to watch a movie the other day - something fun and simple, etc.  I am that person who has an AppleTV, so I thought I'd check out the new releases there.  Sadly, they don't really have a 'new releases' section, but the other day, they did have a robot section.  Behold.

Oh, I was just so excited.  I did this screen grab (above), and made a mental note to blog about it and then I left the country.  For, say, three, maybe four, weeks.  A little distracted, then. Whatevs.

I'll try to post more, that's my point.

crazy robots in heat to blame for economic meltdown!

stephen colbert inspires me to blog. i've been on a hiatus created - in more than one way - by the financial markets meltdown, but i seem to be back... check this out:

you ask and the universe (and amc) provides

so.

i've taken to twittering. and then gareth kay pointed out that don draper, the lead character of the AMC show "Mad Men" is also twittering. so i followed his tweets, and now he's following mine, and so is peggy olsen, and so is betty and so is salvatore and it's just so much to follow! i'm not even sure if it's linked to the show, and there seems to be office intrigue that's going on in the twitterverse but not on the screen and it's just really so much big geek fun. i heart it the heartiest.

and then i put up a simple tweet about trying to combine don draper and robots. a simple dream, from a simple girl.

the other day, on the plane to dallas, i caught up on mad men - a show i find so resplendent, so detestable, so delicious in its period accuracy that i can't turn away. i noticed two important things.

1. i'm a better tv viewer on a plane with my iPhone then i am at home. i actually watch the show instead of also checking email or also reading my googlereader feeds or also playing mah-jongg.
2. don draper destroyed a robot. little bobby was playing with the robot at the dinner table and he knocked over sally's glass with the robot and betty went apeshit and don, fed up with the day and probably most of his life, picked up the robot and dashed it against the kitchen wall. i have one word for this: hot.

i did some searching for the robot. i didn't get a good look at it before it met its unfortunate end, but i think this might be it... you see, robots are for everyone. i bet i could work some serious symbolism out of that robot - robot as symbol of labor, lack of free will, oppression, slavery. a mere plaything to a child, but a tyrant to a man. who keeps don draper down? only himself. when his wife tries to submit him to her will, force upon him decisiveness and authority to overwhelm her own parental defects (and what's with her total resentment of the kid?), he rebels, grasps the idol of his own slavery and demolishes it like some golden calf. i think this means that don draper is moses.

this is so worthwhile

hi there - coming at you LIVE from the westin buckhead in beautiful, muggy atlanta. i just had linguine in white clam sauce - frankly, too much linguine. safely back in my hotel room, i unbuttoned my jeans and heaved a deep sigh and turned to the ever-trusty google to do my robot bidding. what was the most newsworthy connection between robots and atlanta, i wondered?

well, back in april, the FIRST robotics championship was held here in the georgia dome. to get a sense of the competition, you can search for it on youtube, or just check this out:


chris anderson, blogging on geek dad over at wired filed a report about his adventures there, though he was more enamored of his LEGO Mindstorms UAV. go ahead and read the comments section - i dare you.

the description of the competition is pretty inspiring:

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a unique varsity sport of the mind designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be.

The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals.

FIRST redefines winning for these students because they are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and the ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. Winning means building partnerships that last.

(all bolds mine)

judging by the topics at the FIRST robotics championship conference, robots truly are for everyone, though this competition focuses on high school students. there were the sorts of uber-geek topics you'd expect:

• Building and sustaining a community robotics program
  
• Overall robot design & strategy
  
• Integrating design & engineering concepts to the robot development process
  
• Pneumatic power concepts
  
• Omni-directional drive systems
  

and then there were some topics that spoke to a higher social and cultural calling - and a real desire to integrate more kinds of people into the robot clan:

• Leadership basics
  
• Motivating yourself and your team members
  
• The benefits of the FLL program for children with cancer
  
• And what about minority kids?
  
• Women in engineering: recruitment challenges and responses
  
• FIRST scholarships: how will you pay for college?
  

but of course, not to be outdone by the other geeks in school - you know, the ones who will be writers and designers when they grow up - they also offered a few topics near and dear to a marketing geek's heart:

• Lights, camera, action: video journaling for robotics
  
• Animation: ideation to creation
  
• Blogs, podcasts and community service: extending the FLL theme beyond competition
  
• and so on...
  

(at first i wasn't sure of the lingo, but FLL stands for FIRST Lego League - a similar competition for younger kids (aged 9-14) to get them interested in science and engineering.)

most of my computer time these days is spent in front of powerpoint, google, youtube, flickr, facebook, blogger and twitter - but there was a day when i was definitely into the science of it all and sometimes rolled up my sleeves and got elbow deep in the guts of a computer or rocket or whatever. my parents put me and my brother in classes at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and i still think what i learned there was useful. even the driest bit of physics or chemistry or (obviously) robotics has a creative, storytelling side to it.

anyway, it's late and i haven't that much to say except congratulations to the winners, and that this is a fantastically worthwhile program that more kids should get involved in - if nothing else, it looks like great fun.