Warning: This post may contain spoilers. I am Iron Man. Today we saw Iron Man. And I am going to go out on a limb and say this is the best sci fi film I have seen since Blade Runner. Not that others — ET, Close Encounters, Serenity, iRobot among others — haven’t been good. But this film rocked. And not just because of the Black Sabbath tune. In fact, it may get a place on my top ten films of all time. What’s so great? The story. And Robert Downey Jr’s performance. When he’s on the scree
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BAE Systems is developing tiny robots to help soldiers gather information in battlefield situations while maintaing their safety. (Credit: BAE Systems) Warfare is scary enough, but now some scientists want to throw some spiders and snakes into the action, but with the intention of making it safer for soldiers. BAE Systems is developing electronic spiders, insects, and snakes to help soldiers gather information without exposing them to dangerous situations on the battlefield, accord
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Le Taser iRobot PackBot Explorer by npesblog Helmet tip to Pam. Update- Tasering: It’s not just for black people, anymore. MONROE, NC — A North Carolina man faces child abuse charges for allegedly using a Taser on his 10-year-old son. Deputies say 30-year-old Donald Ricci, Jr., used the Taser at least three times. The boy was visiting his grandparents in Georgia when they noticed burns on his bottom, neck and chest and took him to a hospital. “I was shocked and sickened,” said Detective
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Need I say more? Now it’s come down to official scrubbing the use and abuse of Tasers by law enforcement. From Ohio, a look at where the police state is going.A Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered the county medical examiner to delete any reference that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three Ohio men. All three men were in an ‘agitated’ state and ‘on drugs’ when police officers shot them with Tasers, and the judge ordered their deaths be ruled ‘accidental’ also that any reference to “ho
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The Automaton blog (http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/04/28/npr_science_friday_talks_robots.html) is reporting the NPR featured robots on its weekly Science Friday (http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/04/28/npr_science_friday_talks_robots.html) talk show. Can’t find anyone to hang out with? Maybe you should invite a robot into your home. In this segment, Ira and guests talk about developing robots with personalities — moving on beyond the mechanical arms found in today’s f
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Need I say more? Now it’s come down to official scrubbing the use and abuse of Tasers by law enforcement. From Ohio, a look at where the police state is going. A Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered the county medical examiner to delete any reference that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three Ohio men. All three men were in an ‘agitated’ state and ‘on drugs’ when police officers shot them with Tasers, and the judge ordered their deaths be ruled ‘accidental’ also that any reference to
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We decided to go to the Poke Salat Festival this weekend in Arab, Alabama (Arab: “AY-rab”). On the way, we stopped at a U-Pick strawberry farm, but because it’s been raining so hard, the ground which is usually very sandy in those fields had just turned into this super-sticky clay. It was so yucky/mucky that we decided to just come back when the ground was dry and pick then. The state of Alabama has a PDF of U-Pick farms that can be downloaded here. I can’t wait to take Shug to pick all kinds o
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Okatoma Fest full of fun Hattiesburg American, MS - 15 minutes ago Koehn, who is from Scooba, said it was his first time coming to Okatoma. He hadn't sold much ice cream by noon. The theme of this year's festival was "Live …

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Popular Mechanics website recently carried an article about the ‘fragility’ of the nascent robotics industry and the unlikeliness that we’ll be seeing robots making our martinis anytime soon. Colin Angle, the CEO of iRobot (a company that specializes in ‘home robotics’*) said in his keynote address at the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh last month that ‘the killer app that will drive the industry hasn’t yet emerged‘. When he says ‘killer app’ I don’t think he’s talking about the heavil
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