Return of the Pooping Duck

Radiolab has an interesting story up about the a 16th century Spanish-made automaton in the shape of a monk.  I talked a lot in my spring class, "Mechanical Life and Modernity," about the history of automata and the emergence of the idea of the robot, but I had never heard of this monk.  It doesn't hold a candle to Vaucanson's digesting duck, but this story points out the interesting way in which the automaton functioned in the pre-Enlightenment religious mind. 

The story is worth giving a listen to here.

Also, here's a video of the monk in action:

Robots may be able to help you.

From the NYT, letters to Michelle Obama:

Dear Michelle Obama,

Hi, we are 10 and 9 years old. We live in Boston. We hope you send letters back to us.

I think that you should shut down cigarette and liquor companies and try to keep drugs off the streets. Robots may be able to help you. We all appreciate your hard work to make America better.

Sincerely,

— AIDAN SHEILL-LOOMIS, age 9, and NICOLAS ALLEN, age 10, Boston

From K., who's always recommending robots.

Awesome: Kansas City artists creating "nerdbots," robot sculptures made out of old junk. Must visit. Located on 9th St. in downtown KC.

From boingboing.

Thinking Outside the Box

A. Mitchel Fraas passes along a link from the Washington Post which suggests, once again, that Robots spoon-feeding the elderly is the solution to all our problems. (Either that, or the xenophobic fear of immigrants is fueling a boom in Japanese science fiction.)

Demographic Crisis, Robotic Cure?

TOKYO -- With a surfeit of the old and a shortage of the young, Japan is on course for a population collapse unlike any in human history.

What ails this prosperous nation could be treated with babies and immigrants. Yet many young women here do not want children, and the Japanese will not tolerate a lot of immigrants. So government and industry are marching into the depopulated future with the help of robots -- some with wheels, some with legs, some that you can wear like an overcoat with muscles.