Japan to New York Times: "All Your Job Are Belong to Us"

One of the long-standing excuses for journalistic bias is that reporters are "only human".

Well, problem solved:

Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds.

According to the article, the robot can "detect changes in its surroundings", determine their relevance, interview bystanders, take photos, use the Internet to "round out its understanding" of the story, and publish directly to the web.

Surprisingly, researchers have not named the bot. I humbly submit: w00dward.

This is fantastic progress. Most cable news networks have already abandoned the charade of objectivity, and focus instead on naked opinion-driven analysis, something that even Skynet can't synthesize. But fact-finding and reporting should be a rote process, and it is my (now-encouraged) hope that future societies will wax nostalgic about reporters the same way we do about chimney sweeps and elevator operators.

And just in case you were thinking: "Robot reporters? Bah. I was promised a future with jetpacks, dammit! Where are my jetpacks?!" Well, your time has come as well.

Reporter-bot link via Pro Libertate and the Über Troll Urkobold.

Egon Warned you not to Cross the Streams

Have you, like millions of other Americans, ever thought: "I like war, but something about it just seems a little too... reverent"? Well fret no longer. The Pentagon (which is now evidently headed by George A Romero) has contracts with a Maryland robotics company that is developing a robot capable of running on... wait for it... dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

I'm certain I'm not the only one who recognizes that there is absolutely no difference to a fuel-seeking program between a corpse and a live person. What could possibly go wrong?