OK class, since this is my first real blog post, I thought I’d set the tone for the rest of this site. So today we’re going to talk about the reign of King Edward III. Edward III (1312-1377) is responsible for making England a global power and one of the architects of the British Parliament. Edward chose to renew the military conflict his father had started with Scotland in which his father had engaged with varying success. Edward repudiated the Treaty of Northampton that had been signed during the regency, thus renewing claims of English sovereignty over Scotland and resulting in the 2nd war of Scottish Independence. Although Edward III committed very large armies to Scottish operations, by 1337 the vast majority of Scotland had been recovered by the forces of David II, leaving only a few castles such as Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling in Plantagenet possession. These installations were not adequate to impose Edward’s rule and by 1339 Edward had moved from a policy of conquest to one of containment. Edward faced military problems on two fronts; the challenge from the French monarchy was of no less concern. The French represented a problem in three areas: first, they provided constant support to the Scots through the Franco-Scottish Alliance………
Sike!
I’m just messin’ with ya. The tone that I really thought I’d set for this blog was on some of my favorite subjects. Specifically for today, sex and robots. However, I couldn’t choose which one of those to focus on, so I thought I’d combine the two and focus on sex with robots. This has been floating through my mind recently due to two works of some importance.
The first is the book Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy. Although somewhat dry reading, it goes into detail about the human psychological aspects of love and coupling, and later how the psychosexual aspects of love-making with robots would work. If you’re looking for some high-class porn, you are doomed to disappointment, but there is a lot of real meaty (no pun intended) information about actual experiments with how two humans meet and fall in love each other. Eventually though, his theory is basically we’ll be able to schtup Rosie the Jetsons’ Maid by the year 2050. Good reading, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The other important work I’ve been thinking about recently is this article on cracked.com.
For some reason, it got me thinking about all the weird and interesting quirks we deal with in our day to day lives with computers. For the purposes of disclosure, I should mention I primarily use Mac OS X as my OS of choice. However, I am also a Windows XP user (haven’t spent too much with Vista yet). I believe the Mac is a better choice for what most home users need their computers for, but I am not down on Microsoft. In capable hands, I believe Windows is a very able and powerful platform. However, I also feel that Windows is in more incapable hands than capable ones. But that’s a blog post for another day.
About a two months ago, I had the good fortune to read the David Levy book. And then earlier this week, I read the Cracked article. My mind started thinking about all the little glitches we deal with on our computers. You know the glitches I’m talking about:
- Your computer eventually slows down.
- Programs begin exhibiting errors
- Failed updates
- Minor program crashes
I also own a first-gen Robosapien. While infinitely simpler than any computer, it also has a tendency to exhibit some quirks of its own:
- Slows down when batteries drain
- Doesn’t always catch the remote’s commands
- Sometimes trips
- The servo-motors in it are quite loud
- The hand-claw doesn’t really grasp anything
- Scares the living shit out of all our cats
And what I was thinking, was when sex with robots becomes a reality, what if some of these quirks of everyday computing continue to exist? For example, all computers occasionally exhibit something known as a “memory leak.” What’s a memory leak, you ask? Well, whenever a computer program runs, it calls on some of the RAM in your computer. That is fine. RAM is like food to a computer program. However, when the program is not actually running or you quit the program, it is supposed to release the memory back to the computer for other programs to use. That is also good. But sometimes, random glitches tend to cause these programs to not only keep the memory for itself, but also continually call on more memory unnecessarily. That is bad. Eventually, the RAM gets completely sucked dry and your OS and computer stall like a Chevelle on a Montana winter morning. This is also known as the “blue screen of death.”
This is what the blue screen of death looks like on Windows:
XP & Vista Blue Screens
Oh, and Mac OS X users, don’t get all smug and shitty about how smooth your OS operates. You have the same issue, it’s just a lot more graceful. Here’s what the “blue” screen of death looks like on your machines:
OS X "Leopard" blue screen
So as you can see, it’s a problem both major OS’s experience (yes, LINUX users also have this issue. Google your own damn images if you want to see what that looks like). And I started thinking: “you know, if these memory leak problems don’t get permenantly corrected, and we actually start having sex with robots, then, in the middle of the act, just as things are starting to get real good, you could get the blue screen of death. And then you will have two other things that are blue. And then this would be you:
The moment is gone
Think about it.
How’s that for setting an initial tone for this blog? Tell your friends. Comments below.
