May 2009

Asimov's Laws of Robotics - Useful or Not?

Gizmodo has a funny article discussing Asimov's three laws of robotics, which is partly tongue-in-cheek, but raises some interesting questions.

We can tell that Asimov's laws were silly and ineffective, because his books hinged on one or more of the Three Laws being misused or loopholed into uselessness.   In a way, his robot novels relied on playing a trick upon the reader: the reader has to believe that the Three Laws are correct and complete, otherwise there is no "Aha!" when the plot unfolds as it must.  He did this so successfully that even now many people believe the Three Laws are right.  Even though the entire point of the Three Laws was that they never worked! 

Golf clap to Asimov.

Star Trek Burger King Tie-Ins

I'm so deeply ashamed. OK; not really, but as excited as I am about the new Star

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Trek movie—which my friends who have seen it are saying is definitely worth the wait—my Trek geek soul is absolutely determined to get all four of Burger King's tie-in glasses. In case you haven't seen them, they are genuine glasses, a set of four, for $1.99 each. They're beer-sized, which of course, makes them even better. The four glasses have etched color art all around, and feature Kirk/Enterprise, Uhura/Enterprise, Nero/Narada, and Spock/Original Spock with Jellfish Ship. They're sold in decorative card board boxes, which means, yes, buying at least one set to store. You don't want to know what I made last year by selling my set of Star Wars Burger King glasses from 1977. And, by the way, if you look around you can probably find left over Romulan Ale from the Las Vegas Star Trek Experience for sale.