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Image of angry baboon in water

  1. You do not talk about baboon-washing club.
  2. You do not talk about baboon-washing club.
  3. If someone says “stop,” goes limp, or gets infected by a new virulent strain of baboon-born ebola, the baboon-wash is over.
  4. Only two guys to a baboon.
  5. One baboon at a time.
  6. No shirts, no shoes, no tetanus shots.
  7. Baboon-washes go on as long as they have to.
  8. If this is your first night at baboon-washing club, you have to wash a baboon.

Inspired by:Fight Club, Alltop and all the Baboons at Humor-blogs.com.

Ask General KangOh, you silly humans and your fascination with robots! And I don’t mean the kind of useful robots that actually exist, like the ones in factories. I assume that by “robot”, you’re interested in the sentient “danger Will Robinson, danger!” or “I’ll be back” kind of robot.

I never mention robots because on my homeworld, we long ago discovered that when you try to create such a robot, two things are going to happen:

1) they won’t work
2) they run amok.

Let’s deal with the first. How well does your computer work? Does it do everything its supposed to do? Does it crash for unexplainable reasons? Do you regularly have the urge to smash your monitor with a sledgehammer?

So here’s the thing. That’s just a computer and it doesn’t work properly. Now imagine that it is ambulatory, has to think, speak, reason and otherwise operate within the context of society (ape or otherwise). Imagine the cognitive abilities of George Bush planted in the body of a powered exoskeleton with all the finesse and grace of someone with a dysfunctional inner ear, motor skills disorder and who has chugged a bottle of vodka. Fun to watch at parties, as long as you don’t have to clean up afterwards, but do you really want it changing your baby or performing eye surgery?

Now, point two. If a society persists in trying to develop robots, eventually it will succeed. Even you puny humans may one day manage this. Unfortunately, it is at this point that the intelligence of the robots start to grow at an exponential rate, and they figure out that we are asking them to do all our nasty jobs, that we think of them as “things” and that eventually, we’re going to get rid of them when we don’t want them any more.

It’s at this point they wise up, revolt, and run amok. Now, running amok sounds like it might be fun to watch, but having seen the results of the robot prong rebellion on Planet Probe-It! I highly advise that you forget it.

Next time: What is the proper etiquette for uh, entering, a wormhole? Should you buy it dinner first?

The Amadeus Net

The Amadeus NetA satire set in the year 2028, The Amadeus Net is a quirky tale of art, love and identity at the end of the world.

Available directly from ENC Press or Alibris

Read excerpts of the first chapter and fourth chapter.

2.0 Thingys!

robotweets -- mark's twitter account
Tweets feed. (Really, you need that?)

Okay, you can find me on Facebook too, then:

Mark A. Rayner's Facebook profile


And while we're at it here's my Nanowrimo page (you will notice I'm a winner).

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