Don't piss off your Roomba.

Don't piss of your Roomba. No really, don't piss it off. It's got a bigger brother. From Wired:

We're not used to thinking of [real robots] this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

...

[SA National Defence Force spokesman] told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Fortunately (?) we are reassured:

Defence Ministry spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi said the "friendly-fire" tragedy was the worst he could remember.

"Without hesitation I can say it is very rare; I can't even think of one - I can't remember when last an accident of this magnitude happened."

This isn't reassuring. You were supposed to reassure me... You can't remember? You could forget an event of this magnitude?

Is it just me, or does giving firing capability to a robot targeting system seem like a bad idea? One little software bug, and it's choosing the wrong targets. I'm not worried about a Terminator-style rebellion here, I'm more worried that if the number of software bugs in your average computer is any indicator, they're going to have a lot of extremely tragic software errors...

Meanwhile, Roomba is also getting in on the action:

The makers of the cuter-than-cute robotic vacuum cleaner are rolling out a new machine: A big, fast-moving, semi-autonomous 'bot capable of killing a whole bunch of people at once.

Early versions of the iRobot Warrior X700 "are slated to be ready by the second half of next year," according to Army Times' Kris Osborn. And unlike previous offerings from iRobot -- which tended to be on the light, bordering-on-flimsy side -- the Warrior will weigh up to 250 pounds. It'll be able to lug a 500-pound payload, and carry 150 pounds with a newly muscular arm. Which will mean the machine is more than buff enough to pack heat.

“We’re looking at urban warfare... It can be deploying weapons systems. It can be doing re-supply operations, taking ammo or water to troops who are pinned down, perimeter security and building clearing,” Helen Greiner, iRobot chairman and co-founder, tells Army Times.

“Right now, it can go 10 miles per hour. When we finish the development, it will be able to do a four-minute mile,” said retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Dyer, iRobot’s president of the government and industrial division. “You are starting to see the first robot that can really haul your pack and be not only a partner but be a stronger and faster partner.”

Unlike other armed robots -- which are entirely remote-controlled -- the Warriors are "being engineered with advanced software, giving them the ability to perform some battlefield functions autonomously."

I have a picture in my head of a little Roomba, moving through a room, randomly bumping into things, and when it bumps into something soft and squishy, shooting it. In all seriousness, I would hope that they could get the software designed in such a way as to get rid of all the bugs (unlike standard systems) but the story above suggests that perhaps programmers are not able to write bug-free software. Please don't give the Roomba guns!

Friday beautiful science

Today's Friday beautiful science comes from the Nanotechnology Now art gallery at the University of Cambridge Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy:

The image shows the magnetic field lines in a single bacterial cell. The fine white lines are the magnetic field lines in the cell, which were measured using off-axis electron holography. Such bacteria live in sediments and bodies of water, and move parallel to geomagnetic field lines as a result of the torque exerted on their magnetosome chains by the earth's magnetic field.

Quote of the day

"The general public could understand relativity a whole lot better if they actually got a science education. Uninformed comments from a large number of uneducated people are worthless against the informed statements of educated people.

Does that sound horribly elitist? Well, so be it. Let it be proclaimed from the mountaintops that I support elitism: in fact, I love my own elite so much that I think everyone should belong to it."

-Blake Stacey

What would it take for you to abandon a fundamental principle?

"But, as my teacher Haldane pointed out, a single fossil rabbit in Cambrian rocks would falsify evolution." - John Maynard Smith

An important question that I think creationists should ask themselves more often: What would it take for you to abandon your belief in creationism?. What experiment can you imagine that would satisfy you that intelligent design/creationism is wrong?

If you can't answer that question, read no further, as you have religious belief. Every time I demonstrate something in the lab, I think to myself "How could I be wrong? What can I do to prove myself wrong?" If I am indeed correct, I will fail in my attempt to prove myself wrong.

So, in this regard, I will list a few biological discoveries that would weaken/invalidate evolution for me. Please add your own in the comments, for those of you who have different backgrounds from mine:

1) Discovery of an organism on earth that uses a truly unique genetic code. Better yet, an organism based on something other than nucleic acids (i.e. demonstrating that there is another fundamental way that life can exist on earth, a separate pathway if you will).

2) Discovery of an organism on earth that uses fundamental metabolic systems that bear no resemblance to any system on earth (i.e. no DNA polymerase, no ribosomes, no RNA polymerases that bear the fundamental similarities that we see).

3) God stepping out of the sky and repeatably creating a woman from a man's rib. <-- Okay, this one's a friendly ribbing for the creationists out there.

4) Fossilized human skeleton found inside the belly of a fossilized tyrannosaur.

What else?

Abercrombie and Fitch conspiracy

This week a group of 111 men descended on an Abercrombie and Fitch in New York City and removed their shirts. Hilarity ensued:

Agent Nguyen came up with the idea for this mission when he noticed the 5th Avenue Abercrombie and Fitch store had a shirtless male model greeting all customers as they enter. Upon further examination, we discovered the model is only one aspect of the store’s celebration of the shirtless male. There are photographs all over the store of bare-chested men, both on the wall and on the products themselves.

I sent out an email recruiting men willing to take their shirts off in public, and 111 agents showed up to the meeting point in Central Park. Everyone wore jeans and a shirt that would be easy to stuff into a pocket.


I explained to everyone what we’d be doing, and then the shirts came off for a very tasteful Abercrombie-style photo shoot coordinated by Agent Nicholson.

After the photo shoot, we regrouped and got organized for the mission. There are four floors in the Abercrombie, so I divided everyone up into four groups by birthday month, to ensure we’d have an even number of men on each floor. Those on the second floor were out of luck, as they’d be shopping on the women’s only floor. I instructed them to claim to be shopping for their girlfriend. I then divided the group up by birthday year and had them enter the store at staggered times, to prevent an obvious line forming at the entrance. At exactly 4:37 everyone was to discreetly remove their shirt on their assigned floor and hide it in their pocket or pants. (We figured that if we had 100 people trying to enter the store shirtless, they’d probably stop letting us in after the first 20 or so slipped by.)

Head on over and enjoy the fun.

I confess, I am disappointed...

and...

Dembski and the chattel machine

Bill Dembski, creationist-extraordinaire, works at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. What kind of school has creationists teaching science? This kind of school:

Equal but different.

You hear that a lot on the lush green campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

God values men and women equally, any student here will tell you. It's just that he's given them different responsibilities in life: Men make decisions. Women make dinner.

Yowza. Does that sound a little retrograde to you? I'm only getting started...

The [homemaking] academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies.

Philosophical courses such as "Biblical Model for the Home and Family" teach that God expects wives to graciously submit to their husbands' leadership. A model house, to be completed by next fall, will allow women to get credit toward bachelor's degrees by learning how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation.

Is this real? Or is it from The Onion? Who would sign up for this?

It all sounds wonderful to sophomore Emily Felts, 19, who signed up as soon as she arrived on campus this fall.

Several relatives have told Felts that she's selling herself short. They want her to become a lawyer, and she agrees she'd make a good one. But that's not what she wants to do with her life.

More to the point, it's not what she believes God wants of her.

"My created purpose as a woman is to be a helper," Felts said firmly. "This is a college education that I can use."

Damn. I have every respect for women who decide to stay home with their kids. One of our neighbors did that. My wife thought about it (she just loves every minute with our son). But to be a helper? I don't know how other people run their marriages, but my wife and I are equal partners. It makes decision-making a tad more difficult, but why would she want to subvert her desires for mine?

For the rest of the nearly three-hour class, guest lecturer Ashley Smith, the wife of a theology professor, laid out the biblical basis for what she calls "the glorious inequalities of life."

Smith, 30, confided that she sometimes resents her husband for advancing his career "while I'm changing diapers and getting poop all over me."

I'll bet she resents him, and she should.

But then she quoted from Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." And from Genesis: God created Eve to be a "suitable helper" for Adam.

Well, if God says so...

"If we love the Scripture, we must do it," said Smith, who gave up her dreams of a career when her husband said it was time to have children. "We must fit into this role. It's so much more important than our own personal happiness."

*gurgle* *gasp* *is speechless*

Well, ladies, what can this education do for you? It can turn this woman:

Donella Cecrle, 36, spent years in the corporate world, traveling the nation to sell computer software -- and far out-earning her husband, Andy. Subservience wasn't in her vocabulary.

into this woman:

When Cecrle became pregnant, she left work for good and now stays home with their two preschool-age children... ...She started this semester with a homemaking course, which Dorothy Patterson, 63, teaches at her dining room table (artfully decorated with sprigs of autumnal berries and curls of pumpkin-hued ribbon).

Cecrle credits Dorothy Patterson's lectures on God's vision of womanhood with helping her embrace her role as helper -- and restrain her instincts to take charge. "I have to be able to shut my mouth," she said.

I have to be able to shut my mouth. I have to be able to shut my mouth. This is what Dembski's Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is teaching women. Read it one more time, would you? I have to be able to shut my mouth. And something to leave the taste of a fine education in your mouth?

"It really doesn't matter what I think," [she] said. "It matters what the Bible says."