NANNY ROBOTS FOR CHILD CARE

When I was younger, ugh, I hate to go there, one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes was taken from a great Ray Bradbury story called “I Sing the Body Electric.” It’s about a group of children that lose their mother and the Father, who has to work all day goes and gets an android nanny to care for them. It was heartwarming, touching and fiction. Not any more. NEC has come up with a robot for child care called PaPeRo. Yes now you can drop your kids off with the cute cuddly little ‘droid. It is capable of recognising and talking to people. It can send images by mobile phone, as well as play games and sing along. OK now here comes the weird part and the one I don’t get. Adults can control the robot via the internet and see through it using cameras. They can even speak to children through the robot's voice. Now doesn’t this make the robot redundant and stupid. In other words if you have to monitor the children through the robot and the robot’s behavior, doesn’t it make as much sense or more to still just have a human day care worker? You haven’t eliminated the need. If it’s the parents that are monitoring the robot, how do they work? If it’s at a day care facility, you still have the day care worker monitoring the day care of the robot. You might as well have them in the room with them. All you’ve created is an expensive toy for the kids. You can do the same thing with a set of Transformers. OK, they get to interact with R2D2 but beyond that this is useless. Kids are smart. You wait, one of them will show up with a wrench and PaPeRo will be PartseRo spread all over the floor. The first time one of them shoots him with a squirt gun and short circuits him it’ll be the crap heap for PaPeRo. Trip him and see what happens, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” “Hey PaPeRo, would you like some of my pudding?” Nope. This just isn’t going to work.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=163013&in_page_id=34

TRYING TO SEE DEAD PEOPLE

Paranormal societies and ghost hunter groups are popping up all over. Unlike the tortured little boy in the movie the Sixth Sense who sees apparitions of the dead unintentionally, these people are going out and daily trying to stir up haunts from the other side. Personally, I think flirting with the dead is only asking for an accelerated means to join them. Just so we understand each other, I believe in ghosts, I’ve seen them. This does not mean that I want to encourage their presence into my everyday life. Scaring myself on purpose just is not fun. Now to the crux of things. Due to the popularity of TV shows like Ghost Whisperer and Sci-fi’s Ghost Hunters, paranormal societies all around the country are seeing a boom in membership. Yes everybody seems to want to know what goes on in the mind of a dead person. “Ghost reality shows have really opened the door for people to get involved themselves,” said James Willis, founder of The Ghosts of Ohio. Yep, the more the merrier. Apparently ghosts love a party. Forty of the 60 people who attended a recent dinner in Erie, Pa., that featured the Paranormal Study and Research Group asked if they could join the group or tag along on ghost hunts. A year earlier, only two or three asked to be involved after a similar event. Do ghosts like crowds? “Just thought I’d stop by to let you know I’m real. Got a cocktail?” Yea right. “We’re actually grateful for Ghost Hunters because instead of being a bunch of freaks, we’re like the cool people on TV,” founder Pat Jones said. “People used to look at us like we were absolutely insane, and now they want to come along with us. It’s almost like every day is Halloween.” Is that what this is about, not being considered flakes anymore, the endless search for credibility of the intangible. I know you were the kid that got beat up in school and now someone is paying attention to you in a way that doesn’t cause physical pain. Let’s see, I can go to Wal-mart, grab a video camera, throw up a website for a couple of bucks, call myself “Seekers of the Unknown, (Ya like that? Has a ring to it doesn’t it?) then run around in old houses and graveyards video taping nothing and hoping for something. If paint falls off the wall, I have ghostly activity. Cool. YouTube here I come. I can start my own channel, Spirits 24/7. “If you want to be taken seriously in this field, you have to acknowledge that some of the stuff out there is not real,” says Willis. So even if I get a video with nothing, it’s cool, because you don’t actually have to have ghosts to be a ghost hunter. Wow, sounds like a win win to me. This is almost too easy. And you get money for this? Yep, guest appearances, conventions, TV shows, elite memberships, sort of like the league of extraordinary ghost guys. Ghosts R Us, here I come. Next thing you know we will have someone going to the Denver City Council trying to get a commission on dealing with all the ghosts in town like Jeff Peckman is for UFOs. See previous blog.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2008/05/28/5696391-ap.html