It’s like we’re begging the robots to kill us

cylonportrait.PNG

This shit just has to stop:

As if the idea of colonoscopies didn’t sound uncomfortable enough, now researchers are developing self-propelling probes that crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.

Still, these slithery devices could lead to better, safer, more comfortable colonoscopies to help uncover cancerous polyps.

OK, sure.

That’ll work until they realize that you never programmed them to love. And then they’ll be all like, “*Bzt!* Master! My chipset would like to know who wrote the book on *Bzt!* love?”

And then when you tell them that no one, in fact, wrote that particular book and that the question is rhetorical in nature… well, you don’t know what happens next. But let’s just say that a certain breed of heartbroken and vengeful machines are going to be drinking our colon-flavored milkshakes for the next 20 or so centuries.

 

Comments: 130

 
 
 

Yeah, sure.

But if you’ve ever had to go through the “somewhat invasive” sigmoid colonoscopy”, you would be very pleased if they somehow found a better way to do it…

mikey

 
 

mikey – I know, dude, I’m just playin’.

Robots still scare the crap out of me though. Especially the ones designed to go up my butt.

 
 

Brad, it sounds like you DON’T want autonomous robots crawling up your ass. Frankly I’m baffled.

 
 

What could possibly go wrong?

 
 

The Question for All New Technology: Can this be used for sex?

 
 

HW – well yeah. They, like, crawl up your butt and stuff. That’s pretty sexual.

BUT NOT FOR ME!!!! I AM SO SO SO NOT TEH GHEY!!!!11!!!!1!

 
 

They can be programmed to buy wine and point out that it’s their birthday.

 
 

Buttbots! Am I the only one seeing the cross-marketing potential here?
An animated series, toys, games, and in five years Michael Bay can direct the live-action feature.

 
 

As the most liberal member of this blog, i’ve had several robots to colonize my colon, for the sake of socialized medicine.

 
 

They can be programmed to buy wine and point out that it’s their birthday.

Oh man. If that don’t deserve a ROFLMFAO, I dunno what does. Well played.

 
 

I guess they’ll have to make them XXXL for Jonah

 
 

the correct term is “dirtpipe milkshakes”.

 
 

Do the Three Laws of Robotics cover this situation? Quite frankly, I would prefer a few caveats and codicils to clarify the limits of autonomy.
What would Dr. Susan Calvin say?

 
 

As a robosexual, i demand partner benefits for me and my butt-cylon.

 
 

Brad has just come up with the concept for the next Terminator movie or the next Captain Underpants book, or both. Congratulations.

 
 

…self-propelling probes that crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.

I foresee Rick Santorum’s next reincarnation.

 
 

My question is basically what will these robots do when exposed to Glenn Reynolds. I mean, he’s basically all colon and a perverted robot fancier.

 
 

I would say that I welcome our new anal overlords except…I don’t.

Assmasters of the Universe!!!

 
 

Brad said,

March 28, 2008 at 3:19

They can be programmed to buy wine and point out that it’s their birthday.

Oh man. If that don’t deserve a ROFLMFAO, I dunno what does. Well played.

RB is evil, and he and JanusNode plan to take over teh world.

 
 

“Also, the discomfort often linked with pushing the device through the colon can lead to patients calling off colonoscopies before they are complete.”

Wimps.

 
 

So they’ve given up on the trained gerbils?

with the aid of sticky films.

Personally, I’m very grateful for the aid of sticky films, although I eventually abandoned them in favor of VHS and more recently, DVD.

 
 

“It’s like we’re begging the robots to kill us”

…but first they’ll mock us.

automatic colonoscopies? jeez louise…

 
 

Thanks for forcing me to notice those long, pointy Cylon fingers in a new and disturbing way.

 
 

More advances for the medical specialists! And once again, ER docs are left to deal with the unintended consequences…

 
 

Not again!

 
 

You damn kids and yer newfangled gizmos. In my day we had to probe our lower alimentary canal with a little mirror taped to a wire hanger. And you know what? WE LIKED IT!

 
 

Awesome! My sexual fantasies are coming true!

 
 

Shalom robots.

 
 

You’re plooving me too hard!

Also, don’t get no jism on the sofa…sofaaahh

 
 

BTW: I didn’t get the “flag on the moon” joke a thread or two ago.

 
 

Quite frankly, I don’t particularly want my robotic colon probe to be programmed for love. I doubt women would be terribly comfortable about overly amorous speculums either.

 
 

BTW: I didn’t get the “flag on the moon” joke a thread or two ago.

Me neither. But ass-fucking robots!! Ha ha!!

 
Werner Von Hinderocket
 

Zticky vilm? I tink got zum vheys ve can zoup up der propulsion system here . . .

 
 

The Question for All New Technology: Can this be used for sex?

Not “can” but “when.”

And I say unto the idea of a mindless gizmo crawling up my ass: Only if that sucker is moored to the wall by a very thick cable. (Hur!)

Nuh-uh. Nope. No way. We’ve seen this movie, we know how it ends. Why the hell can’t they just use a gut cam? you swallow those and you don’t have to worry that your little robot friend will decide to make a dash for your brain stem while it’s in there.

But I volunteer every member of the Bush Admin. to test it out.

 
 

Quite frankly, I don’t particularly want my robotic colon probe to be programmed for love. I doubt women would be terribly comfortable about overly amorous speculums either.

I on the other hand foresee monthly exams becoming increasingly common.

 
 

Brad, seen the latest Wired homage to Singularity prophet Ray Kurzweil?

To press his [Singularity] case, Kurzweil is writing and producing an autobiographical movie, with walk-ons by Alan Dershowitz and Tony Robbins. Kurzweil appears in two guises, as himself and as an intelligent computer named Ramona, played by an actress.

Dershowitz and Tony Robbins? And Tron? The only way this could be any better would be if there were a robot speed seduction guru. I prophesy that no matter how old Kurzweil gets, he will never live down the shame of this one.

 
 

Yeah, this “sticky films” business is strictly PR. About 3 seconds before the procedure the doctor will inform you that the developers decided months ago to revert to good old-fashioned mechanical claw-hooks, not giving you a chance to mount any protest before the savage-looking probe leaps out of his hand and lunges for your ass.

 
 

I have to say that I’m very skeptical. Sticky film? Isn’t there a whole industry built around latex-safe lubricants? Y’know, slippery stuff?

Now where did that Lube of the Month catalog get to….

 
 

the developers decided months ago to revert to good old-fashioned mechanical claw-hooks

Besides, Blue Cross probably won’t pay for any new-fangled film; if you don’t want the claw hooks, you have to, well, pay out the ass!

 
 

I’m just asking because I need to order more Boy Butter.

 
 

Well, if the robots run on MS Anus I’m not using it. I’ll wait for the Apple iButt, thankyewveddymuch.

 
 

Is this thing approved for lady parts? And can it drive a stick?

 
 

This thread just made me pee my pants.

 
 

There’s a robot for that, too.

 
Buddy "Seven Diamonds" Moleman
 

I’m predicting that butt probes will have four wheel drives and can roll themselves over like the coolest RC in 1/88th scale (N scale). Besides a camera, they will be equipped with adamantium polyp clippers. Taking the hairpin turn on two wheels, the foglamps point out every detail as the General Petraus jumps over the diverticulitis.

 
Buddy "Seven Diamonds" Moleman
 

By the way, did someone “spoiler” the reason the cylons don’t like humanity? ‘Cause they weren’t programmed to love? That’s it? I didn’t see that episode yet. Thanks for telling me. Also Darth Vader is your father. And Leia is your sister. Your mother. Your sister. Your mother and your sister.

 
Buddy "Seven Diamonds" Moleman
 

‘cancerous polyps’ are the Heritage Foundation of the lower intestine. I believe that is central to my predigestive nanobots.

 
 

I doubt women would be terribly comfortable about overly amorous speculums either.

Maybe not, but ‘Amorous Speculum’ would be a great name for a band.

 
HairlessMonkeyDK
 

I’ve had my ballsack sliced open, which must surely outrank any fear of what might happen to your ass.
It was necessary surgery, though not robotic.
Eh, all I really wanted to say was that I’ve got a wicked cool pirate scar on my fuckin’ nutsack.
I rule.

 
 

I am fully prepared to send one of my purple hearts to HairlessMonkey.

Dood, seriously. I cannot imagine volunteering for that shit.

You’re a hero…

mikey

 
 

Lissen up, whippersnappers, this shit won’t be so dang-burned funny when yer all older and you use your poop-shoots for the purposes for which the good Lard intended rather than sexual deviation and drug-related fantasies and I don’t know what all, and all I know is yer all a buncha scalawag drug-addled kids that don’t know what’s what.

 
Focus Group Analysis
 

21% want it to be dishwasher safe.
17% want more festive colors.
18% want it to go “wocca-wocca” like packman.
4% want team logos.
33% want it to sound a little trumpet when its done.

 
 

Oh, colonoscopies have gotten a bum rap. I had mine just a few weeks ago, and had been looking forward to it for a while before that.

I got plenty of intravenous Versed, for that loosey-goosey feel; and also plenty of intravenous Fentanyl, for that warm, buzzy glow; several nurses, one with nice boobs and the low-cut top to prove it, hovering over me; and even the chance to watch the final few minutes up on the big screen.

And when it was over? Twenty companions on stretchers, all of us fresh from our little adventures, each behind our own little curtains blissfully farting out the air that had been pumped into us as part of the procedure (the empty colon collapses on itself like a balloon bereft of air, or like a used condom).

I can’t wait to go back.

 
 

And Hairless Monkey, don’t get me started on surgical scars. I’ve got tales that’d scare your other ball loose and send it out the door.

 
 

Next time ask if anybody wants to hear about your getting knifed in the groin first.

 
 

knifed in the groin? Ha! My spousal unit would beg to be knifed in the groin compared with what he’s been through. Okay, enough with my troubles. I’m old and I’m full of horror stories. Enjoy your surgery-free lives while you can, my little pretties.

 
 

You wussies and your butt-bots. Try having your stomach unzipped three times so the doctor can stick in his hand and pull out a 9-lb surprise.

 
HairlessMonkeyDK
 

Heh, I had fluid build up in one side of the sack,
so it started to look like I carried a football in my shorts.
A plumbing problem, basically.
Still, the scar is fucking huge.

 
 

I’ll tell ya whut. Hemerrhoid surgery changes your whole worldview regarding butseks.

I’m just saying.

Damn.

 
 

Susan of Texas: You tell ’em, sistah. Unzipped stomach? HA! Try 18 hours of “oh just breathe real deep and you’ll be fine” bullshit Lamaze sans drugs and then tell me you have the next one without any drugs and I’ll show you a textbook masochist.

Please excuse me. I’m waiting for halftime to end so I can watch the Vols try to win it back.

 
 

I actually didn’t mind the colonoscopy itself. It was the fucking purging and fasting before the thing that was hard to bear.

Not only that — I’d sustained myself the day of the procedure by thinking about the fact that there was a great deli down the street from the med center, and after the procedure, I was planning to go there and eat something delicious.

But I was so zoned out fromthe drugs that I ended up just going home and going to sleep.

 
 

Susan, three C-sections? Ouch. At least you get something nice to take home out of them! I had one, about a thousand years ago, and the scar still feels funny. Had the colonoscopy last month for the first time, and thank gods for Fentanyl … not only do I not remember the start of it, I also don’t remember getting up afterwards, having a conversation with the doctor about the results (clean and clear), and getting dressed all by myself (apparently). I woke up about the time my husband was helping me into the car, so I asked him why the doctor hadn’t come to talk to me, at which point ….

If only every medical adventure was so unmemorable!

 
 

As one of the most liberal people around these parts, I can match any scar story stitch for stitch.

Try having your abdomen ripped open time and time again to have various body parts removed. Then tell your little stories about ballsacks and c-sections.

 
 

Try 18 hours of “oh just breathe real deep and you’ll be fine”

Who was it that said having a baby is like shitting a watermelon? Germaine Greer? Bella Abzug?

And was it while they were a guest on Dick Cavett?

Anywhoozle, I thought that was pretty stark. I can’t even shit a peach pit.

 
 

Try 18 hours of “oh just breathe real deep and you’ll be fine” bullshit Lamaze sans drugs

Well…..I showed up at the hospital at 8 p.m. dilated at 9 cm, and the midwife said, Oh, well, you’re tired and you need to sleep” so she gave me a shot of demerol and I was too naive to say no. I then when into a deep sleep between contractions, and by 4 a.m. they were so worried about the baby being “in distress” they were going to get the gyno to do a C-section.

I was so spaced out I said – “Fine” but when they told me the surgeon was 2 hours travel time away, I said “fuckit” and pushed the little guy out. I didn’t want to wait that long.

If they hadn’t come at me with the damn needle, he’d have had a birthday a day earlier. Stupid fuckers.

 
 

I can match any scar story stitch for stitch.

It’s not a contest.

Try having your abdomen ripped open time and time again to have various body parts removed

I sympathize with your experience. Not sure I want you to share, but if you wish to, please do.

 
 

Or try this: The doc “puts you under” for your breast biopsy, but you’re still zoning in and out. You hear the attendants conversing with each other for a while, then you realize there’s silence. You hear yourself say, “It’s malignant, isn’t it?” and after an extremely pregnant pause the doc says, “Well, it’s more complicated than we thought, but…yes, it appears to be…malignant.” And then you fall back into a black hole and you’re aware enough to wish you wouldn’t come back out of it, but you do.

Is halftime over yet?

 
 

“It was the fucking purging and fasting before the thing that was hard to bear.”

Amen to that. I don’t get sedated just so I can get the hell out of there and get some food. And I get to do it at least once a year.

 
 

Who was it that said having a baby is like shitting a watermelon?

Don’t know, but the way I heard it was, “like farting a football.”

 
 

Rightwingsnarkle: I think it was Carol Burnett who said of giving birth: Try pulling your lower lip up over your head. That’s a pretty good description.

 
 

So I had this chicken breast.

It was looking at me. I had to come up with something, right?

Foil Pouch!! That’s the solution, right?

I made this sort of loose sauce with white wine, worcestershire, ranch dressing, herbs, garlic, diced onion and sliced mushrooms. I put the chicken on a piece of foil, poured the crap over the top, sprinkled in the ‘shrooms, sealed it up and let it cook for 40 minutes. Served it over calrose rice with steamed asparagus.

Damn. Big win…

mikey

 
 

Jesus, this started out as a nice little thread about technology gone horribly awry up people’s butts.

 
 

“Jesus, this started out as a nice little thread about technology gone horribly awry up people’s butts.”

And it ends with steamed asparagus.

Or does it?

 
 

I don’t particularly want my robotic colon probe to be programmed for love.

They’re not programmed for it – once microprocessors got fast enough, love just sort of happened.

/cybercheese

 
HairlessMonkeyDK
 

tb, yeah.
I kinda derailed it from the beginning with my hydro-cele scar-story.
Sorry.

 
 

I’m sorry I said you got “stabbed in the dick”. Hell, I knew it probably wasn’t voluntary. It was callous of me.

 
 

“It’s not a contest.”

Sure it is. It is a contest to stay one step ahead of the reaper. That’s what life and colonoscopies are all about.

 
Late Night Letdown
 

So no more making funny with the sphincter cyborg jokes then? Shit.

 
 

Funny away, my friend. It would really suck if there wasn’t any funny to be found.

 
HairlessMonkeyDK
 

Heh, tb, no, I didn’t get stabbed in the dick.
And all my equipment works fine, by the way.

 
 

the doctor can stick in his hand and pull out a 9-lb surprise.

Oh, c’mon… It couldn’t have been that much of a surprise, what with the 8-ish/9-ish month lead time… I mean, you were there for the first part, right?

 
 

I didn’t get stabbed in the dick.

Thank God for that. I hope everybody’s knocking on wood right now.

And all my equipment works fine, by the way.

It really isn’t a laughing matter. If I ever have to have that kind of surgery I’m telling the doctor before he puts me under “doc, please relax and do a good job, but if you blow this so help me God I’ll fuck you up.”

 
 

I hope everybody’s knocking on wood right now.
Could you perhaps rephrase that in an even less appropriate way?

 
 

We’re charging our battery
And now we’re full of energy
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots

We dig like automatic mole in
Photograph your sigmoid colon
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots
We are butt-robots

Ja tvoi sluga,
ja tvoi Rabotnik

we are programmed just to plough
right up to your lower bowel
we are butt-robots
we are butt-robots
we are butt-robots
we are butt-robots

[Repeat to fade:]
We are butt-robots

 
 

Could you perhaps rephrase that in an even less appropriate way?

I am one choked-up chicken when I think of sliced cock.

 
 

Could you perhaps rephrase that in an even less appropriate way?

An unfortunate coincidence. If anyone can suggest a better way of saying “everybody pray you don’t get stabbed in the dick”, I’m all ears.

 
 

robo bugs or robo snakes up tha patooty. Take your pick.

 
A Different Jake H.
 

I’m just LMAO that PeeJ’s “Boy Butter” is a real product.

That’s a fucking great name. I’m perfectly happy with Astroglide myself, which also has a cool name in that it was actually discovered by a guy working on the cooling system of the Space Shuttle, which makes for a great story too.

In college I knew a guy who had worked at a fast food restaurant of some kind and had snagged a bunch of big tubes of “shake machine lube”, which apparently worked fairly well for lubricating other things that shake but aren’t machines.

That doesn’t mean you couldn’t also use it with butt-spelunking autonomous robots, presumably.

 
 

That doesn’t mean you couldn’t also use it with butt-spelunking autonomous robots, presumably.

This is a sentence that can apply to a panoply of substances and housepets depending on the whims of our gleaming overlords.

 
A Different Jake H.
 

I remember that time I saw ‘Amorous Speculum’ at Bottom Of The Hill back in 1999. I believe the opening band was ‘Autonomous Butt-Spelunking Robots’.

Good times.

 
A Different Jake H.
 

Things that have been removed from people’s butts by doctors.

Of the wide variety of items on the list, gerbils and hamsters? Not on the list. As Cecil Adams reported many years ago, “gerbil stuffing” is apparently a complete urban legend, and thank FSM for that.

I can’t help but think that part of the reason Richard Gere became so enamored of Buddhism in recent years was that he must have wondered what sort of karmic crimes he had to have committed in previous incarnations in order to have such a terrible rumor spread about him. What’s even sadder is that his Wikipedia entry mentions the gerbil story (as an urban myth of course).

 
 

Well colonoscopies (..pii?) aren’t so bad when you don’t remember them. At my first one, I was sitting on the table talking to the nurse when the doc walked in carrying three syringes.

I woke up in the recovery room.

Fleet sux. I made the mistake of riding the bus to my first colonoscopy ’cause I didn’t want to wake up the spouse to drive me across town to the hospital. Didn’t do that for number 2, you can bet.

Heh, I said number 2.

Finally I get to combine one of my favorite things with a least-favorite. Gentle people, I present to you the Austin Lounge Lizards!

…and now, I shuffle off to bed. Many thanks for the belly laffs.

 
 

What would Dr. Susan Calvin say?

“They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are . . . IN MY PANTS!”

 
 

hey y’all. i could’ve hung in here and talkeda ll kind of hiplefty talk. but instead I drank wine and watched “The Music Man ” on cable TV.

All I can say is – “There was Love all around and I never heard it singing, no I never heard it at all til there was you.”

K bye

 
 

Isaac Asimov’s Petroleum Chai

Ingredients:
7 jiggers well-intentioned burro prostatic fluid, stirred
4 ounces petroleum

Add the burro prostatic fluid caddishly to the petroleum since it’s heavier. Serve in a small particular old-fashioned glass. Await compliments.

 
 

“The Music Man”

Carrion and Marian is a great rhyme.

 
 

I have had it with these robo snakes up my…
…oh forget it.

Oh, colonoscopies have gotten a bum rap. I had mine just a few weeks ago, and had been looking forward to it for a while before that.
So what’s the right venue for a colonoscopy party?
Perhaps I should check with some mates about the possibility of hiring the Tuatara Brewery. Over the years there has been a great deal of debate about whether or not I could actually organise a piss-up in a brewery, and I would like to put it to the empirical test.
Who would have thought that the Firefox spell-check would not accept “colonoscopy” as a real word?

 
 

You try walking through a mall with an autonomous butt bot and see how you get treated!

 
 

crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.
I would never have imagined that there was a sub-culture of adhesion fetishists, let alone that they would turn their paraphilia into porno movies (also known as ‘duct tapes’).

 
 

This will make an outstanding robot body for when Reynolds finally gets to upload his consciousness. Imagine, he wakes up from the hospital bed to an eternity of colon-spelunking and polyp-hunting.

 
 

My question is basically what will these robots do when exposed to Glenn Reynolds. I mean, he’s basically all colon and a perverted robot fancier.

I advise the robots to take out a restraining order well in advance.

Thanks to my HMO, I got one of the last “old-fashioned” (non laparoscopic) gall-bladder removals. Compared scars with a friend who’d had a C-section and discovered that *mine* was bigger. When I mentioned this to the surgeon during the follow-up, he gave far too graphic a description of “having to get BOTH hands in there to suture a duct no bigger than the point of a pen”…

 
 

I mean, you were there for the first part, right?

Yeah, and the little nipper gave herself away during the last few months. . Whenever she stretched in the womb, a little foot pressed against the stomach and I could feel and see its outline.

It was a little freakish. There were “Alien” jokes.

 
 

It’s not likely that these butt robots will have the “brain” capacity to ask “who wrote the book of love?”. It’s more likely that they’ll have the brains of a cockroach.

Therefore, it will just be like having a bug up your butt. 😉

 
 

It’s not likely that these butt robots will have the “brain” capacity to ask “who wrote the book of love?”.

They’ll have off-board brains operating wirelessly…WATCHING YOU.

 
 

[…] The folks at Sadly, No dug up something even more terrifying than colonoscopies: colonoscopies conducted by self-propelled colon-burrowing robots. […]

 
 

Yeah, the “prep” is the worst part. But not as bad as I’d feared (after putting it off for seven years.) When they wheeled me into the surgery suite there was a boombox playing (like on Nip, Tuck). As the anesthesia began to take, the song became The Way We Were. My last sentient thought was, “Is this how I will die? In some tragic surgical accident, listening to Barbra Streisand?”

And then I woke up, and it felt like I’d taken a nice nap.

Oh, and:

“I’m predicting that butt probes will have four wheel drives and can roll themselves over like the coolest RC in 1/88th scale (N scale).”

…and GPS. Just in case.

 
 

OK. I surrender. All the women who’ve given birth totally win the “painful medical procedure” contest. I mean, I’ve had 4 surgeries but I was out for the main event, drugged to the gills for a long time after and no one expected me to be happy.

I am ready to welcome our mindless metallic rectum roaming overlords.

 
 

I already own a Roomba, why not a Reamba?

 
 

What the hell is this “fentanyl” crap? It’s been about 15 years since my last colonoscopy, but the absolute best thing about it was the demorol, man … that’s some good shit right there.

Oh, and while I’ll give the butt-bots a pass, if they can come up with bots that take the alternate route, I’d do that over another endoscopy …

-me

 
 

…And now for a Public Service Announcement:

Please, if you’re over 50 or have a family member who has had colorectal cancer, hie yourself to your doc and get yourself checked out.. This is the easiest kind of cancer to avoid and devastating if you contract it. A couple hours’ discomfort is no reason to avoid getting an exam.

I have a brother who died from colon cancer. I, and his wife and kids, sure wish someone had persuaded him to get checked out.

Now back to your regularly scheduled snark…

 
 

Mmmm….Demorol…

 
 

We wrote the Book of Love, and all those little inquisitive robots belong to us now!

 
 

Hinderaker, for one, would welcome our new assbot overlords

 
 

Brown- i, Robot

 
Duros Hussein 62
 

kinda derailed it from the beginning with my hydro-cele scar-story.

Hey, I got one of those. Fucker keeps coming back.

now researchers are developing self-propelling probes that crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.

Does it say anything anywhere about programming them to EXIT?

 
 

Just like a cut-and-run liberal to insist upon an exit strategy.

 
 

Jeethus Christ!

 
 

I wrote a comment about Haldane’s poem (“Cancer is a Funny Thing”), but WordPress swallowed it whole, and I can’t be arsed re-typing it.

 
 

WordPress swallowed it whole, and I can’t be arsed re-typing it.

I’ll type what I think you wrote:

Poo poo robot la la la
Poo is funny ha ha ha
Robot beeps and robot boops
Crawling through your bum bum poops

I am so namestealing you. I have you down.

 
Duros Hussein 62
 

Just like a cut-and-run liberal to insist upon an exit strategy.

Damn skippy, what with buttbots on the march. I could just do without the permanent bases, that’s all.

 
 

I’ll type what I think you wrote:
Philistine. I refer people to the actual poem. Sample:

I asked a doctor, now my friend,
To peer into my hinder end,
To prove or to disprove the rumour
That I had a malignant tumour.

True story now. J.B.S. Haldane is being prepped for surgery to remove his rectum (and the attached cancer). He may not survive the operation; if he does, he will be using a colostomy bag in the future — or in his own words,

A third much smaller hole is meant
To function as a ventral vent:
So now I am like two-faced Janus
The only god who sees his anus.

With him in the room are his student, John Marnard Smith, and Maynard Smith’s wife. Haldane beckons to them. They lean over the gurney, ready to hear and record what may be the last words of the great man.
“Well,” Haldane announces, “I’ve just had my last shit.” Then he grins and shuts his mouth, keeping it closed while he is wheeled into the theatre for anesthetic.

Maynard Smith told this story to his student (yet another Mikey) who passed it on to me. So it must be true

 
 

I am, er, passing that poem on.

 
 

OK, another J.B.S. Haldane anecdote.
In the course of his experiments on the effects of rapid recompression (i.e. when escaping from a submarine), he managed to perforate his eardrums a couple of times. He was blase about this: “The drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.”

 
 

I could just do without the permanent bases, that’s all.

Ha.

For all you six-string shredders: Gibson’s robot guitars.

 
 

: “The drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.”

Dammit. Now this makes me wish I still smoked.

Why didn’t I know this fifteen years ago?

Y’see? Life is NOT fair…

mikey

 
 

It looks like the robots are going to get us coming as well as going… Meet HeartLander :

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University designed and built the inch-long robot to move through the body and perform procedures on the surface of the human heart. Once inserted through a small incision, the inch-long robot (best pronounced “RO-bet,” as in 1950s horror films) is controlled by a doctor wielding a joystick in between light cycle games of Tron.

 
 

Hm. Note to self: no more comments ending in a blockquote…

 
Shut up, that's who
 

You can’t have too many Haldane anecdotes in a thread. Unpossible. Haldane and his father, John Scott Haldane, used to bond the old fashioned way. When he was a young lad he and dear old dad would take turns testing gas mask designs by exposing each other to various gases and timing each other to see how long it would take to pass out. So naturally as an adult J.B.S. sent his wife into a pressure chamber for a simulated rapid descent. This was a little more of his love than she could handle though and she flopped around the chamber for thirteen minutes in a fit. Yes, he timed it. When she came to he sent her home to make dinner.

 
 

Did anyone else notice that when you go to the original article there was a banner ad for BSG?

 
 

[…] the meantime, you have GOT to read this post over at Sadly, No! In particular, read the comments which are absolutely freaking hysterical. I think I started […]

 
 

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