Not Tonight... I'm Blogging

46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than go without access to the Internet for that long, according to the Wall Street Journal.


That includes 49% of women aged 18-34 (oh dear...), and 52% of women aged 35-44 (yikes!)

I know I would find life difficult without broadband, but since I don't currently spend 8-10 hours a day having sex, I don't feel I can make a valid comparison.

Gordie Is Absent

I would rather be anywhere else than here today.

A Pale Blue Dot

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan

Statistically Perfect but Sexually Confused

"Androgynous android, statistically perfect in physical appearance but confused about own sexuality, WLTM open-minded males, females and appliances for friendship, evenings out and no cables attached fun, possibly leading to LTR. Bristol, Bath, North East Somerset"

Advice from the Manufacturer

Each robot is individually hand-crafted and built to perform in a wide variety of applications, including entertainment, research, animation, and even consumer households. Over the years, we have mastered the art of bringing to life amazing characters by sculpting them into crowd drawing masterpieces. All HumanKind robots have the following capabilities:

• Emulate over 62 facial and neck muscles
• Embedded micro-cameras providing vision recognition
• Utilizes the latest in A.I. software technology for face and speech recognition, eye tracking, and conversational operations
• Capable of running in full autonomous or Robo-phone mode, meaning that you can turn off the A.I. to use the robot for local/remote pupeteering or even research
• Portable and can run on up to 1/20 the power required for comparable products
• Interface with standard computers (included with robot)
• Can function in a variety of environments.

Well, you know what they say...
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!