Monkeys!

I have never owned one of your quaint “internal combustion engine” vehicles, so I have not had to worry about the high price of gas, but I have been getting nailed on the cost of most foods appropriate for the Thringian Keg-Beast that I ride to work every day.

On my home planet, I fed my Keg-Beast leftover hyper-bananas from the über-chimp orgy the night before, but since I’ve been on Earth, there has been a dearth of both hyper-bananas (apparently they won’t grow in your frigid Earth climate) and über-chimp swinging events (this explains why I am so cranky). So, I’ve found alternatives; the Keg-Beast works best on a mixture of corn syrup, mescaline and the sweat of writers living in a state of quiet despair. Most of those elements are plentiful and relatively cheap, but do you have any idea how costly corn syrup is?

You humans are stupid! You’re burning fossil fuels to grow corn, which you turn into ethanol to burn along with your fossil fuels. Why don’t you just cut out the middle-man and take a flamethrower to your cornfields when they’re ripe? You will lose only a fraction of the energy value and most of the vegetable matter will end up adding to global warming. As an added bonus: big fire!

Then your planet will be able to grow hyper-bananas, and all will be well.

… Assuming we can get a few female über-chimps down here too.

Next time: I’m trapped in the Andromeda galaxy because my hyper-drive engine is asking for a better benefits package — how do it get it back to work without giving it full dental?

Alright, The Skwib has disappeared from the top thirty of humor-blogs.com. You know you have to sign up for an account and vote, or this sad state of affairs will go on? Do you really want such a travesty to continue? You do? Alright, then go visit Alltop instead. I won’t mention it again.

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Scientists had a major breakthrough in the quest to achieve the technological singularity last week, as researchers at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated robotic-armed killer monkeys.

Actually, they were using the robotic arms to eat bits of banana and marshmallows (the monkeys, not the scientists). According to the New Scientist: “The feat marks the first time a brain-controlled prosthetic limb has been wielded to perform a practical task.”

The rhesus monkeys were trained to use the arms with a joystick, and then their arms were restrained and they had to use their brains to control the devices. One of the monkeys was successful 61 percent of the time, and would often reach for another treat while he was chewing on the one he just got. (And with a 39 percent failure rate, I can see why. Poor little bugger was probably starving — not to mention a complete lack of protein in his diet.)

No word yet on what happened on those occasions when the treat did not get into the mouth of the monkey, but Rufus, the less successful at using the arms, was seen wandering the University of Pittsburg campus with an eye patch.

Getting us closer to the pirate singularity. (Pictured at right.)

You can read the story at the New Scientist Tech blog. More things accomplished by monkeys can be found here and here. Details about the Technological Singularity [wiki] are best ignored. Video evidence to follow:

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Oh, 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?

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