Ice Pirates: Robot Pimp

Tonight I had the pleasure of screening Ice Pirates, a 1984 film starring Robert Urich and Anjelica Huston. The movie has a kind of cool kitschy production design and a ridiculous assortment of Star Wars inspired space opera tropes. While there a number of silly robots in the movie, this jive-talking robot pimp completely captured my heart:

Gizmodo’s CES Robot Roundup

Check out an awesome video of the various robots on display at CES 2008 going nuts at Gizmodo.

Aibo is Coming Back To Life and Walking Onto Your PSP & PS3

Kotaku is spreading a rumor that started in Stuff Magazine about the possibility of an upcoming Aibo, working with the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3.

Apparently Sony’s Playstation division is attempting to “bolster the PS3’s arsenal” by resuscitating the robotic dog as Aibo PS and giving him a whole new bag of tricks.

The Aibo PS will appear with its own avatar within Home and react in the real world as he does in the PS3’s upcoming interactive environment, according to the article. The rumor article goes on to say that you will be able to download new personalities for the dog from the Playstation Network– but the coolest part is that the dog will be fully controllable using a PSP via WiFi! And the dog’s head camera will send a real world video feed to the PSP’s screen!

Stuff magazine rates this rumor as having a 53 percent probability, so Sony is probably testing the waters by seeing how people respond to the idea of an Aibo redux. As a proud owner of I-Cybie and Nintendogs, I can say that Aibo PS would be enough to finally make me buy a PS3.

Face it: No Matter What You Say, Teens Won’t Stop Having Sex

In human sexuality news, abstinence only programs don’t work. Big shocker there.

A study released by the nonpartison group National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy says that teenage sexual behavior is completely unaffected by programs that focus exclusively on abstinence — although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.

“At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers, the study concluded.

While abstinence-only efforts have proven futile, comprehensive sex ed programs have shown “positive outcomes” including teenagers “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.”

“Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect,” said the report.

A spending bill before Congress would provide $141 million in assistance for abstinence-only sex ed– that’s $4 million more than President Bush requested.

I don’t understand why it costs so much money for such an ineffective program. It seems like a class called “Don’t have sex” that doesn’t even have to pay for bananas & condoms would be pretty cheap.

The headline says “Computer Can Read Minds”… but actually it only knows if you’re working or not

Thanks to a $450,000 grant from the NSF, the Human Computer Interaction group at Tufts University has created a headband that measures the metabolic demands your brain is making and calculates whether you’re overworked–and unfortunately, the headband also detects if you’re under-worked or not working at all.

“Measuring mental workload, frustration and distraction is typically limited to qualitatively observing computer users or to administering surveys after completion of a task, potentially missing valuable insight into the users’ changing experiences,” according to computer science professor Robert Jacob from Tufts.

I see how this is useful in business to make sure workers are on task and measure program effectiveness, but personally I don’t want my computer tattling on me when I’m trying to properly goof off.

Originally from LiveScience, via Yahoo.

Future Slash Presents: Kirk and Spock

The All Ages Kirk/Spock Archive always puts a smile on my face. This site is “a celebration of the love between Kirk and Spock that is accessible for a wider audience.” There is no explicit sex presented on the site, and a lot of the art has a coy (McCoy?!) sense of humor, as seen in the three pieces below.

Robo-Einstein hug!

That last post was a doozie…so here’s a Hubo hug to make it all better.

There, there. Robots are your friends again!

The History of the Vibrator

In case you’ve always wondered how it all began, Slate has a history of the vibrator told in slides.

The Future is Now

So it begins. Nymph will be covering the best in current developments in robotics, as well as androids and robots in pop culture–that includes reviews of the new Bionic Woman, Battlestar, and depending on how much robots figure into it, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. We’ll also have a decent amount of sex tech– along with fun robot toys, transhuman news, android videos, you name it. I’ll try to keep it as safe for work as I can. Suggestions and links are welcome– please send them to nymphblog@yahoo.com