Gaak, a Role Model for Those of Us Feeling a Little Set Up for Futility at Work
This is a very old news article from June 2002 that apparently some people didn't see at the time. I've been thinking about this robot's reaction to the "survival of the fittest" tests it was being put through at work every day.
Robot on the Run from Theage.com.au.
Apparently this learning and science center - for kids!- designed robots which could learn from their mistakes, programmed them as "predator" and "prey" and had them fight it out for a paying audience. Didn't anyone read their Isaac Asimov? Well, the Predator and Prey Robot Shows "have now reached the end of their show period." After Gaak ran away I wonder if they had other jailbreaks. I wonder if their nice English neighborhood has a wild "Predator" robot out there competing in the job market.
I'm not saying the nonprofit NGO work world is like a robot gladiator spectacle, really I'm not. I just have my Gaak moments at work these days.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Some Things I've Noticed Recently, Apropos of Very Little
I finally have a taste for baseball and get myself a favorite player (and a sugar daddy to get me his baseball card and brilliant behind-home-place seats for one of the season closer games) and he fucking BARELY EVER plays these days. He's a creaky old man.
Please don't retire before I get to see you play, J.T. Snow.
I've also noticed that the Equinox brought about the phenomenon of my cat actually regularly oversleeping. She has a nook in my closet which she has wombified with layers of tabby hair, and I get the "huzzawhazzawho?" look from her when I wake her up to tell her I'm going to work, without my morning lap-sit thank you very much. It has freed up my morning to allow more (any) time for breakfast, but our little lap dance ritual has been a comfort for me in my widowhood. Maybe I'll go to bed with her food bowl empty on purpose so she'll wake me up with the usual bladder-stomp and earnest stare.
Everything has to come in threes, so what else have I noticed... hmmm... Sarah Vowell's 2002 book The Partly Cloudy Patriot is rocking my world. She manages to make me misty-eyed about intellectualist loners and their struggle in a democratic society. I'm almost writing a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter every day now.
(Yes. I know. It's a short book. I'm a slow reader.)
Oh look I've noticed something else. She's represented by the same agency as my beloved favorite living poet Jane Hirshfield. I wrote a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter to Jane once via her agency and she wrote right back the same day. Someday I'm sure I will be at the agency winter holiday party rubbing elbows with Sarah and Jane and we'll all bond over having a great company to represent us all. And about my Pulitzer and so on. (Memo to self: remember to submit poetry somewhere... Or maybe I could pay Barclay to pretend I'm on their roster just long enough to have me at one of their winter holiday parties...)
I finally have a taste for baseball and get myself a favorite player (and a sugar daddy to get me his baseball card and brilliant behind-home-place seats for one of the season closer games) and he fucking BARELY EVER plays these days. He's a creaky old man.
Please don't retire before I get to see you play, J.T. Snow.
I've also noticed that the Equinox brought about the phenomenon of my cat actually regularly oversleeping. She has a nook in my closet which she has wombified with layers of tabby hair, and I get the "huzzawhazzawho?" look from her when I wake her up to tell her I'm going to work, without my morning lap-sit thank you very much. It has freed up my morning to allow more (any) time for breakfast, but our little lap dance ritual has been a comfort for me in my widowhood. Maybe I'll go to bed with her food bowl empty on purpose so she'll wake me up with the usual bladder-stomp and earnest stare.
Everything has to come in threes, so what else have I noticed... hmmm... Sarah Vowell's 2002 book The Partly Cloudy Patriot is rocking my world. She manages to make me misty-eyed about intellectualist loners and their struggle in a democratic society. I'm almost writing a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter every day now.
(Yes. I know. It's a short book. I'm a slow reader.)
Oh look I've noticed something else. She's represented by the same agency as my beloved favorite living poet Jane Hirshfield. I wrote a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter to Jane once via her agency and she wrote right back the same day. Someday I'm sure I will be at the agency winter holiday party rubbing elbows with Sarah and Jane and we'll all bond over having a great company to represent us all. And about my Pulitzer and so on. (Memo to self: remember to submit poetry somewhere... Or maybe I could pay Barclay to pretend I'm on their roster just long enough to have me at one of their winter holiday parties...)