freaking awesome robots

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alright, so the story starts, the best way to find a land mine is with a pair of feet, this isn't so great if your human. so one smart computer scientist working at a college in the south west builds a five foot long robot with a bunch of legs, it walks along the battle field until it steps on a landmine then it compensates for the missing leg continuing on it's path through the minefield.

they were testing this at a bomb range with a us colonel overseeing. true to the scientists word the robot started it's path, and as he hit land mine after landmine, kept going. finally even as it was on it's last leg it was still following the path it was given, just crawling along the desert floor, "the scientist was ecstatic" however the colonel blew a fuse and called the test off, the sheer pathos of watching this robot crawl along the desert floor towards a mine set the colonel off. he called the test inhumane.

what's great is that this isn't the only case, a lot of the military bot operators often need to recuperate while their robot is being fixed, there was one robot that was even promoted to staff sergeant and given 3 purple hearts. not the operator, the robot.

it's called empathy, I'm a christian so i believe in God, i believe that his empathy towards us is why he keeps getting the short end of the stick. at the same time i believe that the empathy the creator has for the created is so deep that it's universal. i mean here is this robot, that will never feel, never think past directions, and yet he is humanized by the robot's operators and his operator's comrades.

so i just have to ask people, is it really so strange that i name my computer? the window to my world where i happen to spend a good deal of time at? i think not, i think that it is human to attach yourself to anything that you have a vested interest in, and, i think, that with the right amount of time between:dating and married, you can grow attached to somebody and finally perceive them as human. i mean you wouldn't bang a chick then be gone before she woke up if you knew her would you? if you say yes you are horrible and inhumane.

i think that empathy is something that we all should look into more often, not just for other humans, but the things us as humans have created. however be careful, it is impossible to constantly live around a lot of people and to care for each and every single one, as if you knew them.