Terminator of lurve
I learned a new word today: dildonics. Dildonics is the science of computer-controlled sex devices. I found this word in Robin Marantz Henig’s NYTBR review of David Levy’s Love and Sex with Robots, The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. According to Henig, Levy makes a good case for his assertion that robot-human sexual relationships will be common practice by the middle of this century. Not just guys-and-lovedolls, but people settling down for long, committed relationships to . . . Rosie.
. . . Levy cites the gradual shift in the public view of what is acceptable in terms of sexual pairings. People used to be widely appalled by such variations as oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality, but today these practices are “widely regarded as thoroughly normal and as leading to fulfilling relationships and satisfactory sex lives.” All he wants is for us to open our minds a tiny bit more, and make room for th e idea of having sex with the domestic robots that will soon be part of all our lives. In fact, he argues, the human/robot sex of the future promises to be better than most sex between humans is today.
(Anyone remember an old George R R Martin story, “Meathouse Man”?)
On the one hand, I think this is all very sad.
On the other, I can think of several people who would be better off with robo-spouses. Can’t you?
***
From the IMDB FAQ on Terminator 2, Judgment Day:
What about the T-800’s lost arm in the steel mill…Â [Huh. That’s a good point.]
If the T-800 model is a known serial killer from the first movie, why would the Human Resistence send back an identical model? [Yeah! Why?]
Why didn’t Reese warn Sarah about more advanced terminators travelling through time to kill her? [YEAH! And why didn’t they just send the baddest ass terminator they had, right from the start? And why didn’t they just kill Sarah’s grandfather? Doubt he was as buff as Linda Hamilton!]
***
I’m stuck in the office on dial-up, verrry slow, and I have a meeting from hell this evening. So, sorry folks, but no Thirteen today. This post was painful enough, watching letters appear o n e . . . a t . . . a . . . t i m e. If this laptop were a sex partner, she’d be the kind who could only function after three qualuudes and a half dozen massive bong hits.
D.
Essence of cute
A number of years ago, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay explaining why Disney heroes (like Mickey Mouse*) are heroes, and why other cartoon villains are villains. These characters are drawn with specific proportions in mind. Take Bugs and a few of his cohorts:
Bugs and Tweety have disproportionately large eyes, small noses, and flat faces. Daffy (who if not a villain, at least manifested the nastier spectrum of human behaviors) has relatively small eyes and a big “nose.” Taz is kind of interesting, because he shares many of Bugs’s infantile features, but not all of them. Our cues that Taz was not altogether heroic: his black blob of a nose and his prominent canines.
We need weapons.
One of my patients has a digital anemometer. With Sunday night’s storm, he clocked 90 mph winds.
Karen presented me with a list: axe, flares, dried food, rope, multi-tool, first aid kit, water, etc. You know, one of those lists. I spent Monday afternoon going from store to store, buying emergency supplies. Some are ingenious, like this block of magnesium with a flint built into it. You use your knife to scrape magnesium shavings, then strike your knife against the flint to ignite the magnesium shavings, which in turn ignites your kindling. Magnesium block plus flint: ten bucks. Box of matches: yeah, yeah, I know, but magnesium is neat.
I’m proud of the axe I bought. It’s an axe on one side, a maul on the other.
“For pounding posts into the ground,” I told Karen. “And then we tie rope to the posts.”
I have no idea why I would be pounding posts in the ground and tying rope to them, but it seems a useful thing to be able to do. Survivorman does it all the time. He also distills his own urine.
“We need weapons,” Karen said. I didn’t point out that the axe/maul makes one mean looking weapon, but I guess it wouldn’t stand up to a real firearm. “If things go to hell, do you suppose people invade big houses first, or trailers?”
We have a big house and our primary possessions are books. In the post-apocalyptic world, if you need reading material, invade our house.
Someone, one of my readers, I think, once recommended a shotgun. There is (my reader wrote) no better deterrent than the sound of a shotgun getting cocked. Shotguns have visceral appeal: point and shoot, little or no aiming necessary. Shotguns are not a surgeon’s weapon.
I need to buy another five gallons of water, dried food to last several days, and a radio. But what kind of radio? A two-way radio, I think, something primitive, something that won’t be destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse. A two-way radio so that I can call for help when my zombified neighbors start breaking down my doors and I have run out of shotgun cartridges.
And I need Cipro, for the anthrax attack.
Then I’ll be safe.
D.
Can a brain limp?
Yesterday, I slept in until past 10. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I had been coughing up my kishkes the night before, though, and kept dosing myself (never mind with what, but I think elephant tranquilizers would have been more gentle) until I could sleep without bothering Karen.
Last night, knowing I would have to wake up today at 7, I showed more restraint in my choice of remedies. Too much restraint, apparently, since I woke up coughing at 5. Dragged myself into work, where the power promptly failed.
More from my rhinovirus-addled brain below the cut . . .
Isaac and Ishmael
My old post from Blog Against Theocracy Day still generates interesting comments:
I have so many things I want to say but don’t know where to begin. First of all I am not very educated but still have opinions. I may not say this with the right words but hope you can figure out what I am trying to say. With so much hatered (which I don’t understand ) for the Jews and what they have gone through in Germany isn’t it amazing they have a state and manJews from all over the world are returning to the Land God gave them (Israel). Isn’t it amazing that most of their neighbors hate them and want to destroy them. They don’t have much land and in the bible God called it there land. I can’t help but wonder what all this means. I can’t help but believe what I have heard being said by others that it has something to do with Issac and Ishmael? I also am like many who can’t make since out of alot of things in the bible but it says that his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. To think that all the stuff going on seems to be over such a small piece of land and people really makes me wonder if we aren’t in the last days. Would like to here your comments. thanks, karen
Excerpted from my response to Karen’s comment:
Friday Flickr babes: the fine nurses of the intertubes
I keep trying to convince the nurses of St. Mammon’s (my hospital; not necessarily its real name) to put together a “Nurses of St. Mammon’s Calendar,” but they act like I’m kidding. Come on, y’all. I’ll bankroll it! I’ll even help take the pictures! Proceeds will go to my favorite charity, The Ear, Nose, and Throat Early Retirement Foundation.
Let’s see if I can find any likely candidates at Flickr.
I did it!
Yes indeed, I didn’t miss a single day for the month of November.
(Not an accomplishment, you say? Sssshhhhhhh! The NaBloPoMo judges don’t know that.)
The disembodied cat head reminds me of the wife in this story. She’s a patient of mine, you see, and in the old days she used to come to my office wearing, pinned to her sweater, a ferret head. Or perhaps a cat head, but a very small, very ugly cat head. It was all any of us could do to keep from pissing ourselves with laughter. To whomever convinced her to deep-six the ferret-head brooch: thank you.
Still to come: today’s Friday Flickr babe.
D.
Thirteen things I hate about TV
Admit it. Hatred is more interesting than love, snark trumps warmth, evil beats good hands down. Would you really want to read “Thirteen things I love about TV”? I didn’t think so.
Thirteen detestable things from the box . . . below the cut.