Third Time's The Charm

I've said before that the hardest thing for a writer to overcome is a blank page. The task is even more difficult when you're not a writer, and practically impossible when you're as unimaginative as I am. At this point, I have written two long posts -- one concerning the inner workings of my twisted mind and another about pornographic video games -- and have deemed them "utter crap." I suppose that says something about me as a person, that when offered to write a blog about anything at all, the first two subjects I consider are psychology and pornography. In any case, both of my compatriots have written blog posts, and now to save face I must scramble. (Also, I'm running an experiment right now which means I have about 10 minutes to kill.)

I really thought it would be pretty easy to just sit down and write. I like to talk, and I have a lot of opinions about a lot of subjects. But it's kind of like when you're talking to a girl and she just says, "Let's talk." No subject, no direction. She just expects you to start up a conversation out of nothing, from scratch, instantly, but it has to be on a topic that you BOTH are interested in (alright, let's be honest: she just wants it to be something SHE's interested in. AM I RIGHT FELLAS?!). If you're anything like me, this is paralyzing, because at any moment of the day my thoughts are pretty evenly split between (1) zombies, (2) robots, (3) monkeys, and (4) boobies. Do you know a girl who is interested in having an actual conversation along those lines? Do you know how quickly girls are turned off when you ask: "Could a robot make the distinction between a human and a zombie, and if so, would Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics still apply?" Because I do. Here's a little hint: very quickly. [Side note: I think I know what my next blog post will be about.]

As an example: I can already tell that this little thing I'm writing will be a disaster, because I know how weak it is to write a blog post about writing a blog post. Once I finish, I will stare at the "Publish Post" button for a little bit, highlight the whole thing, consider deleting it, actually delete it, then hit "Undo" to get it back, and waste more time considering what to do.

Wait... hang on a sec...

OH MY GOD. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I'd like to dedicate the remainder of this post to Digg, for pointing me to this article. It's like the Internet knew what I was writing and gave me a link to satisfy me.

Now, for those of you who didn't read the article, crazy scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine taught monkeys to control robots with their little freaking monkey brains, with the excuse that is used to justify any type of brain research, no matter how outlandish: "It could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's! Somehow!" Basically they stuck electrodes into the monkeys' brains, restrained their arms, and gave over total control of a robotic appendage. Eventually our cousins learned to feed themselves and flip off the researchers with their shiny new arms.

Combine that information with this one, about a monkey trying to kill fish with a spear, and you have set up a terrifying scenario. See, originally we were able to control a monkey outbreak because we were bigger and smarte... actually, on second thought, most of us are just bigger than they are. You'll notice that they weren't teaching "gorillas" to control the robots; the last thing we taught gorillas to do was sign, and seriously, when was the last time a deaf person was a threat to humankind?

But monkeys were always relatively harmless. Most were tiny, and all were furry and sufficiently humanlike to be almost lovable. But having been prodded their entire lives, castrated, vivisected, and ground up into a fine powder and snorted by mad scientists, I can imagine that they'd harbor more than a little ill will towards their human overlords. Now imagine them suddenly having access to technology that is aeons ahead of their evolutionary age. Specifically, robots. And they've watched us long enough to figure out how to hunt like ancient cavemen did. We've suddenly lost our edge, the same way the woolly mammoth did when we learned to throw things.

Let me put it another way. Imagine if gigantic aliens came down to Earth, enslaved us for a thousand years to perform experiments on us, and then thought it would be a hoot to teach us to use their apocalyptic "SunFucker" death ray. What do you think would happen?

Given the choice between a robot revolution and a monkeys-armed-with-robotic-exoskeletons revolution, I'll take my chances with the robots. Mechanical death engines are bad, but at least they aren't mechanical death engines driven by vengeful little animals.

So thank you, University of Pittsburgh. You've given me another reason to be terrified at the zoo.