Tag: robots

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Dogs Make Better Pets Than Most Other Things (Including Yetis)

Like me, you’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking, “My dog’s pretty cool, but how amazing would it be to have a pet that’s really unique, like a dragon or a yeti?” This is an entirely reasonable question, and one you should not be ashamed of. The world can only take so many Labradoodles and Puguauas, after all.

But apart from the inconvenient fact that most of these mythical creatures are difficult to source, let alone adequately care for, there are better reasons for re-discovering why canines are top dog when it comes to the pet question. Unless, that is, someone knows how I can get my hands on a griffin.

I’d like to report a missing dog.

1. Sasquatch. Call it what you will – Sasquatch, Yeti, Bigfoot – just don’t call it a good pet. Where to start? Well for one thing, can you imagine how much an overgrown ape-man would eat? You can reason with a dog. A dog will be happy with whatever you give it, and the more care you put into your best friend’s diet, the more he will love you. A Sasquatch? I’ve heard a lot of things about Sasqui, but gratitude and loyalty have never featured among them. And while we’re on the topic, Bigfoot’s a bit of a lazy name for a hairy, lumbering creature with a stout base, and anyway it’s not very nice. Even if they’re big, dumb, graceless oafs, Sasqui have feelings, too.

2. Ewoks. Do you know what Ewoks do when they’re not on camera? They greet everything – soft furnishings, cuddly toys, home appliances – with a fervour that’s indelicate and overly familiar. Ewoks aren’t discerning and they’re not discreet. If you thought your Schnauzer could be a little uncouth sometimes, believe me, you do not want to leave an Ewok alone with your Great Aunt Marge’s leg.

3. Nessie. Oh come on, no one really believes in the Loch Ness Monster.

4. Dragons. Dragons are notoriously high maintenance. Your dog is quite happy to make do with a small bed or an area on the carpet she can continually scratch in hopes of scrunching it into something bed-like. A dragon needs a whole cave and I don’t know about you, but affordable caverns are pretty hard to come by in my neck of the woods. A dog’s breath may make you gag, but it’s not going to singe your eyebrows (probably.) A dog won’t lay waste to everything in its path (probably.) A dog won’t demand its own iTunes account or want to watch every episode of Loose Women ever made or sit around flicking its tail insolently and leaving little bits of chainmail everywhere. You really want high maintenance? Get a cat.

5. Robots. Look, you can have a robot if you want to. Nobody’s stopping you. It’s just robots make stupid pets, even robots that look like dogs. Especially robots that look like dogs. They’re not exactly going to shower you with unconditional love and affection, are they? They’re just machines that do what you tell them to do. Until they develop independent thought and decision-making capabilities, turn on you, destroy your home, steal your identity and take your favourite Def Leppard t-shirt. Not so cool then, are they?

6. Griffins. I’ve got to be honest, I really can’t think of a good reason not to have a pet that’s part-lion, part-eagle and all bad-ass. If anyone’s got a griffin for sale, just name your price.

7. Unicorns. Unicorns cannot play fetch. This is a fact. Some believe it’s because their magical sparkly horn gets in the way and punctures anything thrown to them, but that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that unicorns are plonkers. They’re petulant and temperamental and usually huffy. They care too much about not messing up their rainbow flowing mane and not enough about retrieving. Unicorns are essentially self-absorbed muppets.

Wait! Muppets! Now that’s a pet I could go for.

October 5, 2013
Guest Post: 7 Reasons The Earth Could Really End Today

We were close to the end of the world yesterday and today we are mere hours away from a good rapturing. In light of this I really admire you for coming back to 7 Reasons when you should probably be saying goodbye to your loved ones. In keeping with the end of the world theme, today’s guest post is an extraordinary look into another seven ways the world might end today. It’s written by Greg Buckskin, a writer and blogger for Comcast.USDirect.com – home to Comcast Cable Deals. At least that’s what he does when he’s not skiing the Utah powder. After the nice picture below, it’ll be Greg.

For many fundamentalist Christians, May 21st will be their last day at work—or on the planet for that matter. Harold Camping, owner of the $100 million Family Radio Christian network, has predicted that May 21st is the day of the rapture—the end of the world when the righteous will be taken to heaven and the wicked will be left here on earth wallowing in misery until October 21st, when the earth will finally be destroyed for good.

Although Camping’s predictions have failed in the past (he also predicted that the world would end in 1994—oops), he has many followers who are backing him up, selling their homes, quitting their jobs, and budgeting their last cent to run out on May 21st.

Who knows, maybe the world will end on May 21st. I’ve been wrong before; I thought Arnold and Maria would be together forever. But most likely, May 21st will be just like any other day, except for the lamenting cries of those who went into huge debt so they could live it up until the 21st and thought they’d never have to pay it back. However, there are tons of other ‘real’ ways the world could end this weekend, or even in the next half hour. These events would be so random that I’ll bet none of us ever even pay it much mind.

1. Nuclear War. Stanford Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman figures that at any given moment there is about a 10% chance of the world ending in nuclear war. That’s a bigger percentage than most of us have of dying from common forms of cancer—more than 10 times bigger in most cases. There are still over 25,000 nuclear weapons in existence today. North Korea, Iran, some pissed off fundamentalist who finds one of Sadam’s WMDs buried in the desert somewhere—theses are all likely candidates and extremely unpredictable. How is your bomb shelter coming along?

2. Asteroid. We all know that Armageddon was a completely unrealistic movie, right? I mean who would hire an oil rig captain to blow up an asteroid? Well, it may not be so far from the truth. Right now scientists from NASA and other organizations around the globe are predicting that asteroid 1999 RQ36 could have as big as a 1/1000 chance of hitting earth in 2182. When you think about the vastness of the universe, that’s actually pretty good odds. If a big asteroid took out the dinosaurs, why couldn’t we be next.

3. Super Volcano. We all learned about volcanoes in 3rd grade science class, but most of that curriculum focused on places like Hawaii and Mt. Saint Helens. Chances are your teacher didn’t tell you about the super volcano that is Yellowstone National Park. Only fairly recently have scientists discovered that Yellowstone is a giant caldera, an underground volcano where magma has been building for hundreds of thousands of years. The last time a super volcano erupted (75,000 years ago in Sumatra), it exploded with the force of over 10,000 Mt. Saint Helens, covered the world with ash and brought about a global ice age. According to calculations, the Yellowstone caldera explodes about once every 600,000 years. The last explosion was over 640,000 years ago. Yikes!

4. Disease. Bird flu? Swine flu? Forget about it. What about airborne HIV? Or some new disease that has not even developed yet? If you’ve ever read The Andromeda Strain you know that all it takes is for one virus to mutate in exactly the right way to kill us all instantly. Then the zombie apocalypse hits, and it’s every man for himself.

5. Gamma Ray Burst. Gamma ray bursts have been observed in far distant galaxies for many years. A Gamma ray burst generally happens as a star goes supenova and can release more energy in ten milliseconds than our sun will release over its 10 billion year lifetime. Most of the observed bursts are in galaxies that are billions of light years from earth. But what if a closer star decided to explode (or our sun) and send a beam of high-energy gamma rays our way? We’d be space dust before any of us even knew what happened.

6. Global Warming. Global warming is a slow phenomenon compared to our short human lives, but it can be a rather quick event in the earth’s life. A warmer planet won’t simply mean that we can’t wear long pants anymore, it will change the entire way the planet functions. It will disrupt plant growth, extend the life cycle of many animals and insects, especially those that live in tropical regions and carry diseases like malaria. It also increases air pollution and causes flooding and wildfires and increases the size a magnitude of tropical storms—think Katrina, but on a scale that would cover all of North America. Currently, about 150,000 deaths can be attributed to global warming. If we don’t watch out, we could face a slow death by a warming planet.

7. Big Robots From Outer Space. So this one is a little more far-fetched. But astronomers are discovering new planets all the time, some that could even support life like earth’s. In fact, recently, Gliese 581g—a planet similar to earth—was discovered only 20 light-years from our solar system. Who is to say that life does not exist elsewhere in the cosmos, that they may be more technologically advanced than ourselves, and can travel the stars? And if there is one thing I’ve learned from watching movies, it’s that aliens rarely come to earth just to see what’s here. They usually (much like we are doing right now) have destroyed their own planet and are looking for a new home. And they don’t take too kindly to the natives. Will they send giant robots to annihilate us or will it be pod people to snatch our bodies? I don’t know. All I can say is, “watch the skies.”

May 21, 2011
7 Reasons That RoboEarth is a Bad Idea

Readers of 7 Reasons and people of Earth, some horrendous news has reached us: According to the BBC, robots could soon get their own internet. Yes, the internet. For robots. Now, an ill-considered, knee-jerk reaction to this news would be that it is an appalling development that exudes menace and could prove potentially disastrous to humankind. And we agree. So here are seven reasons that RoboEarth is a bad idea.

1. Time. The internet is wonderful innovation that saves so much time in communication, research, the dissemination of information; in just about every field. But the internet is also a colossal usurper of time. After all, if you want to waste time, where do you go? Online, that’s where. That’s where you’ll find Farmville and Failblog and Facebook, and other sites not beginning with F that rob you of time. But who’s to say that, eventually, like the human internet, the robot internet won’t develop from a useful tool into a place where robots sit about in their tin pants eating breakfast cereal and generally cocking about? And robots shouldn’t be doing that. That’s not what they’re for. Robots are supposed to be making the lives of people easier which, as far as I can tell, means making futuristic cocktails for us (preferably in blue or green) and impersonating Stephen Hawking while we lounge around in spangly jumpsuits on white swivel chairs. I’ve seen Space 1999, I know these things.

2. Information. According to RoboEarth researcher, Dr Markus Waibel: “The human equivalent (of the robot internet) would be Wikipedia”. Ah, so the robots will be sharing information amongst themselves via a robot equivalent of Wikipedia? Well that’s reassuring then. After all, Wikipedia’s a name and concept that we’re all familiar with and who isn’t comforted by the familiar and the…wait. Wikipedia? The user-generated website that’s less accurate than asking Geoffrey Archer for biographical information? The website that told me Pink was born in 1879 and that Carlos Puyol was a pig of the team of Barcelona? The website that I, myself, have mischievously altered in the past using these very fingers and this very keyboard that I’m typing on now? If the robot internet is to be based on Wikipedia, we’ll be filling our robots’ circuits and diodes with unsubstantiated gibberish and setting them loose among decent society like automaton hordes of aluminium and silicone Daily Mail readers. It’s going to be awful.

3. Broadband. Or, as we despairingly call it in my house, “gggaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!” Am I expected to share my bandwidth with robots now? I takes long enough for my videos to load as it is, without having a robot halve my bandwidth by downloading Rage Against The Person albums or trying to watch Cyberpets Do The Funniest Things. What if I want to see something on the iPlayer? I’ll get dizzy watching the little circle spinning round the centre of the screen. I don’t want to share my bandwidth with robots.

4. It’s Mysterious. I don’t even understand the practical application of the robot internet (so it must be evil). The only robot we have in the house is our Roomba robot hoover, and how will the internet benefit that? Is it going to be able to suck cat-hair off the floor better because it’s got access to the internet? No, of course it isn’t. After all, I don’t do the washing up any better because I’ve got the internet, quite the reverse. So why does my hoover need the internet?

5. Science. The robot internet is something that’s being developed by scientists. This means that it’s intrinsically bad. After all, scientists developed the H-bomb; scientists developed anthrax; scientists sent dogs into space; Margaret Thatcher was a chemist* for God’s sake. And because it’s been developed by scientists, it’s not just evil, it’s badly named. It’s called RoboEarth. RoboEarth! What sort of a shit name is that? We can all see that it’s a portmanteau of robot and Earth, but it’s about as uninspired as well…um…actually, it’s the least inspired name of anything, ever in the history of everything, ever. Even the BBC’s Cash in the Attic has a more inspiring moniker than RoboEarth and that’s a shit name too. If you want to get something named right you need to go to humourists. We’d soon tell you that the robot internet should be called Cyborgspace which, although there’s a dull, technical difference between robots and cyborgs (something achingly tedious to do with not being part-human or something), is at least a good bloody name. And also, if humourists had developed the thing it wouldn’t be evil, and it certainly wouldn’t work. And that’s important because…

6. This. Do you know what I said when I first read this news? No, no you don’t, because you weren’t here in the dining room with me when I read it unless you are a)my wife, or b) the cat, so I’ll save you a tricky guessing game that could involve a lengthy email correspondence and I’ll tell you. I said, “Fuck me! It’s the rise of the machines.” And it bloody is. This is how the Terminator movies start. The machines become sentient and then they try to kill us. To death. And what better way is there to give them a friendly helping hand on their merry way to freedom of thought and action, than to give them their own internet, where they can form ideas and opinions and plot with each other unmolested by us. Because there’s no way people will be able to control them. Most of us can’t even stop Microsoft Windows and Norton Anti-Virus when they choose to do stuff that we don’t want them to do on our own computers, so what chance do we have of stopping large sophisticated machines with lasers and stuff that are doing things in remote locations? Things that they want to keep secret from us? No chance, that’s what chance. Most of us are habitually outwitted by the controls of our own central heating systems, and our central heating isn’t actively trying to kill us, so we’re going to be powerless in the face of the robot-apocalypse. Robopacalypse. Robocalypse.** If you want to know how this is going to pan out just watch any of the Terminator films, but take the happy endings with a pinch of salt.***

7. Reasons. Because on the robot internet there’d inevitably be a robot 7 Reasons written by robots, for robots and that would never do, because we do 7 Reasons, and we’re irreplaceable. So, fuck you, robots! And toasters. You may take our lives but you’ll never take 7 Reasons.

*This is the nicest thing I’ve ever said about her.

**This is roughly how it will go. Half of humanity will be engaged in an epic struggle against the machines for our very existence and the other half of us will be sitting around trying to name it.

***Don’t take all happy endings with a pinch of salt. That could prove painful.

February 10, 2011