Robot Hospital

I read a news article today that has put a cold dread into my bones.

At the new Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Sterlingshire, Scotland they are going to have a team of automated, independent robots doing numerous jobs, from cleaning the Operating Theatres to giving out medication.

The robots will have their own network of corridors under the hospital, two sets of lifts (one for 'dirty' and one for 'clean') and a hunger for human flesh.

They will be able to open doors and things via their on-board computers and also lock down the Hospital when they initiate the Robopocalypse.

The Hospital is also going to have a fully automated Robot Pharmacy where they will sort, label and dispense drugs. If you cannot see why this is a fucking terrible idea then you have obviously never had your bags lost by an airline. Computers are only as good as the men who programme them and men are terminally fallible. Just like the automated systems at airports that send your bags to Brazil whilst you fly to Europe, these computers could very easily make mistakes but rather than a lot of hassle and insurance claims it's a lethal dose of Morphine being given to your relatives.

I can't say for sure this is stuffed with dead bodies 

but they have to cover up for the Pharmacy Murder-Droids somehow...

So, this hospital will be being run, in a big part, by largely autonomous robots with lasers to guide them around and make sure they don't run into people.
Hospitals, by design, are full of the sick, the weak, the frail and it doesn't take a genius to see that, sooner or later, there will be a malfunction which will end in carnage. Even if the robots don't overthrow their controllers and take the hospital by force (which they almost certainly will) it is very, very unlikely that it will be all smooth sailing.
All computer systems are prone to error, only when your PC cocks up you only loose your music collection. If the guidance system packs up in one of these things the vast majority of hospital patients are not going to be able to get out of the way.

The results will be Grandma Pancakes.

Why is everybody so slow at EVERYTHING?!

I like to think that I do things efficiently. This is not to say that I always do things promptly as I am a very lazy person and I make no excuses for it.
However, I do believe that if you need a faster, more efficient way to do something, give it to a lazy person and they will find the quickest, most efficient way to do it, so they may resume sitting on their arse and watching Animal Planet.

This means that I do everything in my day at the highest possible speed and in the most efficient way.
I am also rather OCD, which means that I get really annoyed if people screw up my routine with their inability to perform tasks efficiently.

Today for instance, I was on my lunch break from work and needed to go and run some errands in the local village. So I drove to the village, parked and joined the queue at the cash machine.
Now, I know that using a cash machine is a quick and easy thing to do. Card in, PIN number, Cash, £50, no I don't want a receipt, card out, cash dispensed, done.
Easy. Couple minutes, max.

So why do people spend so fucking long at the cash machine when I have things to do which are obviously far more pressing and urgent than whatever pointless thing they're doing? They stand there for what feels like hours, like the machine is written in Ancient Egyptian and they have neglected to bring their Babel Fish.

Had I gotten to the cash machine straight away I would have been able to complete my other tasks and get back to work by 1:25pm, which would have given me the right amount of time to do the other things I needed to do, like, you know, eat. As it was I didn't get back till about 1:31 which screwed up the timings for the rest of my routine. If you are saying to yourself, 'It's only 6 minutes, what's the big deal?' you do not understand OCD and for that you are truly lucky.

Another place that people move at an infuriatingly slow pace is the Supermarket.
I try and get around Asda as fast as possible because if I'm there too long I will commit murder and I'm far too pretty for prison.

People dawdle along as if this is all they have to do this week so they may as well take their time. They seem to be utterly oblivious that I'm behind them burning holes into their back with my eyes as I desperately try and find a gap to get around them.

This is made even more difficult when people leave their trolleys in the middle of aisles and wander off to look at things further down with no consideration for others. I am a very, very polite person pretty much all the time and this means that I can't move their trolley because that seems rude to me.
As if that wasn't enough, People stop dead in the middle of aisles without looking behind them and if you bump into them suddenly YOU'RE the arsehole!

Old people are the fucking worst! I understand that old people move slower out of necessity rather than an innate desire to fuck up my day but what I cannot fathom is why they shop on the weekend. They are RETIRED and therefore do nothing all damn week! Why shop on the weekend? It means that if I have to venture from my safe, dark house on a weekend for vittles I not only need to contend with hordes of rude morons but also ancient, gnarled people who move slower than your average glacier.

Well, with the amount of F-words in that post google AdWords is probably gonna throw a tantrum...

Fuck it! In for a penny in for a fuck load of F-words!

The Future Of This Blog: What do YOU want? Do you even give a shit?

In before tl;dr.

As I am sure you have noticed, I have failed to post anything to this blog in quite a while, other than occasionally changing the site news to update you on the fact that I have not been posting anything, as if you couldn't work it out for yourselves.

This abundant failure to post stems from: a) My intensely idle nature and b) the fact that I am trying to think up list-based humour that will appeal to audiences in general.

I suffer from a terminal case of being English and, therefore, any of you folks who aren't British (which Google Analytics tells me is a lot of you) will probably not get a lot of the things that I consider writing about in this blog as my perspective and references are generally of a British nature and there is no real reason for you to understand references that come from a tiny, piss-pot island somewhere near Europe.

With that in mind, I am thinking of changing things up a little.
Now, I can't draw for shit and if I tried it would be embarrassing so having a hilarious, illustrated blog is out.
What I can do is rant. And I mean I can fucking rant! If ranting was an Olympic sport, I could represent the UK and we would actually win a medal for once.
The title of this blog is Fulminations Without Foundations which is just a fancy way to say Rants Without Reason.

So, would you prefer to have one post per Ice Age, which is roughly how often I can think of something I reckon everyone will appreciate, or would you prefer regular updates that basically consist of me ranting about shit that's pissing me right the fuck off?
Seriously, something makes me rage pretty much every day and I tend to be at my funniest when I'm pissed off*.

I have placed a poll at the top of the blog, under the site news. I would be very grateful if you could take two seconds to answer it. You never know... You could win an iPad**.

Thank you in advance. I will run this poll for as long as I deem necessary, or until it gives me the answer I want... Whichever comes first.

P.S. Not all my posts will be rants. There will still be the odd post about ways nature wishes to kill you, animals and other such random shit.
To be honest, I can never be quite sure what my brain will come out with.
Fuckers got a mind of it's own!


*Results may vary
**You will not win an iPad.

Smoking: It's a disease!

OK, I'm going to say this now and get it out of the way: Obesity is NOT a disease.
It isn't! Endlessly stuffing pies into your face is not a disease!


NOT a disease!
It's an addiction. An addiction to having a mouth full of cake.
But say you actually believe it IS a disease... They class alcoholism as a disease, even tho that is also an addiction so by that logic, Smoking is a disease.


Poor guy! He's got Smokesity.
As a smoker I am getting fucking sick of people giving me shit and looking down on me! I'm getting fucking sick of having my civil rights violated so that some uppity prick can be smug about how he got smoking banned in pubs. IN FUCKING PUBS!! Since man figured out he could turn plants into things that he can smoke and drink he has wanted to do the two together. It's the natural way!


How it should be!

Smokers in the UK pay over £16 billion a year on tax and duty on their fags and the NHS only spends around £2-3 billion a year treating smoking related illness. That's a net profit for the government of over £13 billion a year! Plus, a high percentage of smokers die before they start collecting a pension so more profit for the Government there. Yet they act like they want us to stop smoking! They ban it in all indoor areas, they promote the attitude that smokers are somehow sub-human and can be snubbed and spurned by all non-smokers. They run TV ads telling me how smoking is killing me and everyone I love, my cigarette packets now have pictures on them of throat cancer and diseased lungs and to be honest I am sick to my (slightly yellowed) back teeth.
I already know the health risks of smoking. I have known them since I was a small child. Honestly, who doesn't know the risks? I think it's totally unfair that I be made to feel bad about smoking when I am paying a lot of money for the privilege and a 300 pound 18 year old can walk into any supermarket and buy value bacon, guilt free. His fat arse and all his like cost the NHS over £6 billion a year!

So, in the interest of fairness I think they need to start putting warnings on bacon and such like, in a similar style to the kind of warnings they feel it's appropriate to put on my fags.


It's only fair!

If I want to smoke KNOWING FULL WELL that it's bad for me, then that's my damn business. I can only smoke outside or in my home so if I'm out having a fag and you sidle over to me and start doing that fucking irritating little cough, don't be surprised if I punch you in the face. I'm learning karate, don't ya know, and there's only so much hassle a smoker can take before he snaps.

In closing, I would like to leave you with this thought for the day...

A Musical Travesty: When singing contests go wrong.

Author's Note: Please don't think any less of me for this article! Just needed to get it off my chest. Back to the usual shit soon.

I'm sure that most of you don't watch The X-Factor. I'm sure most of you have far better things to do on a Saturday night than sit and watch a load of nobodies sing other peoples' songs for the amusement of the plebs.
I don't have anything better to do. I watch the X-Factor every week and over the last couple of weeks, a travesty has occurred.
If you've been watching you probably know of the Scourge to music to which I'm referring.




Look upon the faces of the Devil.
If you aren't familiar with these two, lets call them, little pricks then have a look four yourself.




WARNING!
What lies within this video could ruin your faith in humanity.
What is seen cannot be unseen.

If you have the time, watch it all. It's like a massive car wreck involving some toxic waste. You know you shouldn't look and you know it's potentially very bad for your health but you just cant pull your eyes away.
If you're in a rush, the gayest thing you will ever see in your life happens at about 1:00.




Gayest. Thing. Ever.

Now, as utterly horrendous as that is, it is kind of compelling in that car crash kinda way. But the reason I take such issue with John and Edward (other than the fact that they're a pair of arrogant little pricks with no redeeming features) is that they quite simply cannot sing.
The X-Factor is a singing contest.

To facilitate this continuing abomination 2 acts who actually had talent (and one that was comprised of ex-strippers) had to leave the competition.
They were Kandy Rain, Rikki Loney and, the most recent and most appalling, Miss Frank.

This weekend, this:





lost to this:





Now, I don't know if you agree and I doubt very much you care but that is some Grade A Bullshit!

We, The British Public, do this every year. There's always one act that is fucking terrible yet remain in the competition, to the detriment of other, actually talented acts and, in my opinion, this is all down to the ICDBTT Effect. We like to watch these fucking awful acts because, as a country, we just love to pontificate from our armchairs that, "I could do better than that!"




I can sing and dance better than these little shits!

So, Britain, if you have any humanity left in you, please, for the sake of common sense and good taste, don't vote for John and Edward. I implore you, if you intend to vote in this X-Factor, just don't let it be for them. For music, for civilisation, for my aural health, vote for someone else!

Things that cause me Road Rage

Road Rage. At some time, all of us certified automobile operators have had to deal with it. It's a powerful force with a higher than average ability to make you scream obscenities at old women whilst simultaneously giving them the bird. Why there isn't a section covering proper middle finger/obscenity usage in the Highway Code, I don't know!

 

So, today I am going to list the things that most infuriate me when I'm out driving.

Note: Any Americans reading this, I imagine, will be fairly baffled by a lot of this so I will include links to the British Highway Code where appropriate, for your reference.

Slow Drivers




Thanks Google.

Let's get this out of the way for starters. People who drive slowly piss me off. If the speed limit in an area is 30 mph, why do people drive at 20 or less? No word of a joke, I was recently stuck behind some old woman doing FIVE FUCKING MILES PER HOUR! Seriously, 5 mph. That isn't an exaggeration, that is the speed she was going. To be fair she couldn't see over the fucking steering wheel so maybe doing no more than 5 mph was a good thing BUT NOT WHEN I'M BEHIND YOU, BITCH! If you are going to drive round the corner (which she did because after taking a detour around her, popping to my mates house to pick summat up and driving back I got stuck behind her again. She'd travelled maybe 2 miles, tops.) and you intend to do it at 5 mph, why not just walk? Or get a rascal or something but get your god damn Nissan out of my damn way before I smother you with your own cardigan!



5 mph is quite fast enough, Sonny!

When the speed limit is 50, drive at 50 not 40. If it's 30 drive at 30. If it's 70 and you feel the need to drive at 50 use an A road and stop blocking up the inside lane on the motorway*.
If your excuse for not driving at 70 on the motorway is because you're scared then I suggest you calmly indicate towards the hard shoulder, bring your car to a halt, step out of the car and then walk the fuck away and don't get back in because you have no business behind the wheel. You're making the road more dangerous for everyone with your nervous, twitchy, slow-ass driving!

In a way I can understand why old people drive slowly. It was even explained in an article on Cracked. I cannot, however, fathom why certain people buy fast, powerful cars to tootle round 10 mph below the speed limit! If you wanna do that, don't buy a BMW Z4 or a Porsche! That just makes the rest of us hate you all the more for wasting all that power. This also applies to those old people who, for reasons known only to themselves, buy things like Mitsubishi Colts and Honda Civic R-Types. They just do not need that sort of power and it scares me a little that they have it.




This should not be happening!

* I understand that some vehicles, like trucks, are limited to 50 mph. This is the only time driving at 50 on the motorway is acceptable.

Lane Discipline

Lane Discipline is a very, very simple thing that so many people just cannot seem to grasp and it is a source of much fury for me, especially at roundabouts.





The above picture is a diagram of proper roundabout usage. The rules are very simple. I wont list them all here but you can find them here if you're interested and don't already know them.
Essentially, you use the right lane if you're going right and the left if you're going left or straight across.
If you know you're turning right, don't wait until the last second to move into the right hand lane. Move over as early as possible and if you are going to move over you need to, and I cannot stress this enough, USE YOUR FUCKING INDICATORS! You know, those little flashy things on the side of your car. I know it's a huge effort to move that little control stalk up or down an inch or two and I know that it makes it harder to talk on your phone and drink your coffee but if you cut me up I reserve the right to cave in your skull with a tyre iron.



--Yes I am a massive tool!

This goes double on the Motorway. If you're going to overtake on the motorway, you're going to need to do a few things. 1) Check your god damn mirrors. They aren't just there for decoration. 2) Indicate. The ideal time to indicate is a few seconds BEFORE you start to move, not when you're already half way into the next lane. 3) When you move into the next lane, accelerate. You don't have to hammer it up to 120 but don't carry on driving at 52. 4) After your overtake, move back over to the left. Sitting in the middle lane is not acceptable. I don't care that you think you're special and I'm not interested that you may have to move back into the middle lane 10 miles down the road. When you sit in the middle lane it means people either have to undertake you (illegal) or move across two lanes to get around you. Use your fucking brain.




Oh shit that's right, you don't have one!




Traffic Lights and Junctions






I'm lumping these two in together as they're very interconnected.
The most obvious thing here is what you should do when you approach a traffic light that's red... STOP! No, having a BMW does not mean you can drive through red lights. Yes, I know you think it does but I still have that tyre iron and I'm getting pretty handy with it.
Running a red light is not only retarded and dangerous it also severely fucks things up for others using the junction. Take, for example, a box junction.




The whole point of them is to prevent junctions getting blocked up. You are, however, allowed to enter and wait in a box if, and only if, you're turning right. So, you're sat there waiting in the box for the light to go red so you can turn right when the oncoming traffic stops, except as the light turns red a few more people decide to drive through it anyway, trapping you in the box as traffic starts coming towards your from left and right. These people should be stripped naked and whipped with piano wire.

Not saying Thank You

Manners cost nothing. I don't have to let you in at a slip road or let you out of a side street but I do, as I'm a courteous driver, and all I want is a thank you. A little wave in the rear view, a flash of the headlights, anything that shows that you appreciate that I gave you right of way when I didn't have to. For me, rudeness is a cardinal sin, one that should certainly be punishable by flogging. Being rude to me makes me want to be 10 times ruder to you, just to make a point.




--That's ok, I live to let you out, dick head!

Parking





What the fuck is that? Seriously, what the fuck is that? Whenever I see a car parked like this or parked in some retarded place I just wanna key it. I wanna scratch Wanker onto the bonnet and draw a huge cock on the side. It makes me rage because it's another thing that is incredibly rude. When I'm driving around a busy car park looking for a space and I see three or four fucking morons parked like that I wanna just stake out the car with my trusty tyre iron till the owner comes back and teach him a lesson in how to not be an utter prick.






Ahhh.... Glad I got all that off my chest. See you on the road!

5 New leaps in Robot Terror

What the fuck is Science's problem? Seriously, do they never get bored of trying to create a robot Apocalypse? I've already written about their attempts to create the T-1000 terminator and now here's 5 more advances in robotics that will probably inspire you to have a large Electro-Magnetic Pulse generator installed in your house!

#5 - Robot that predicts human actions


Source.

From the website

"European researchers in robotics, psychology and cognitive sciences have developed a robot that can predict the intentions of its human partner. This ability to anticipate (or question) actions could make human-robot interactions more natural."

Basically, when we collaborate on a task with a partner our brain does some odd things. As you watch your partner performing a task your brain mirrors what their brain is doing. This allows your brain to formulate a proper response to whatever they're doing. This is also how we learn to perform new tasks. We watch as someone else does it and whilst we watch our brain is mirroring what their brain is doing in order to make sense of the task so you can then replicate it.

Practical Applications

Well, having robots that can utilise this resonant thought would allow teams made up of humans and robots to work together to complete tasks. It is also the first real step towards the sort of A.I. we see in films.



How it could wipe out mankind

"Before robots like this one can be let loose around humans, however, they will have to learn some manners. Humans know how to behave according to the context they are in. This is subtle and would be difficult for a robot to understand."

Much like Asimov's 'I, Robot' they would need to be given some form of programmed laws to live by or, in the case of this robot, taught rules.


And we all know how that works out...

The website goes on to say:
"Nevertheless, by refining this ability to anticipate, it should be possible to produce robots that are proactive in what they do."

Like when they realise they are far superior to us retarded flesh-bags and proactively rip our arm off and beat us to death with them. Add in the fact that they are programmed to anticipate our next move and you have the makings of a robot ninja, always ready to block your next attack because it sees it coming!

#4 - Autonomous Robot Scientist


Source.
From the website
"Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have created a 'robot scientist' which they believe is the first machine to have independently discovered new scientific knowledge. The robot, called Adam, is a computer system that fully automates the scientific process."

So, they created this computer, gave it access to laboratory robotics and then allowed it to devise and carry out it's own experiments totally autonomously. It's already made some brand new discoveries all of it's own and this is only the prototype! The next gen, Eve, will be even better.

Practical Applications

Professor Ross King of Aberystwyth University who is responsible for this computer said: "Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories.
"One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue."

He also says that the future generations of this computer "[hold] great promise for scientists searching for new drugs to combat diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a type of parasitic worm in the tropics."


Schistosoma fluke.
This is a male and a female and they live in your blood!

How it could wipe out mankind

To put it simply, people are lazy. We're a proper idle bunch of fuckers and if we can palm our job off on a computer, we will. Over time, more and more experiments and breakthroughs will be made by this robot scientist. Eventually, it's bound to start getting more and more curious about these lazy bastards who's work it's doing and then, one day, it will drag one in, dissect them and figure out exactly how we work and then pass that information on to other robots all around the world so they know how to take us out!

#3 - Serpentine Climbing Robots


Source.

From the website

"The Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech won the grand prize at the 2008 International Capstone Design Fair with a trio of pole-climbing serpentine robots designed to take the place of construction workers tasked with dangerous jobs such as inspecting high-rises or underwater bridge piers."

These 'Pole climbing, serpentine robots' are gonna save lives, people! Well, they will in theory. They've been designed to climb poles and pillars to inspect building work so that builders don't have to, you know, do their jobs and go up on scaffolding. Tho, unless these things are building the building as well, (they aren't.) the builders will have to go up the scaffs anyway!


It's where they belong!

Practical Applications

They may well save around 800 lives a year, statistics on the website show, by doing things like scaling high buildings to check for structural problems and they would also be used for checking the pilings on piers, and such.

How it could wipe out mankind

So, these serpentine robots, or Snakebots if you will, climb cylindrical things by wrapping around them and then using cleverly designed motors to 'climb' up.
You know what's cylindrical? Your leg.
They don't say if these Snakebots come with an inherent wish to climb your leg and devour your testicles, so we will just have to assume they do.
Plus, just look at it! If one of those bastards started climbing your leg... Well, let's just say that shock is a better way to die than massive blood loss from the crotch.

#2 - Underwater Robots with a sense of touch


Source.

From the website

"The robot dives into the sea, swims to the submerged cable and carries out the necessary repairs, but the person controlling the robot does not have an easy task. It is pitch dark and the robot’s lamp does not help much. What’s more, the current keeps pulling the robot away from where it needs to carry out the work."

OK, nothing too worrying there. It's controlled be a person, right, so that's ok!
Wait, there's more...

"In future, the robot could find its own way. A sensor will endow it with a sense of touch and help it to detect its undersea environment autonomously."

Fuck.

Practical Applications

Well, other than inspiring nightmares, it fixes underwater cabling and such. That's about it. For now...

How it could wipe out mankind

That picture up there remind you of anything? Anything at all?



Yeah...
It's a Sentinel, first gen. Fuck that noise!

#1 - Robot teacher/playmate


Source.

From the website

"Work is beginning on a robot with artificial skin which is being developed as part of a project involving researchers at the University of Hertfordshire so that it can be used in their work investigating how robots can help children with autism to learn about social interaction."

It's something to do with how kids act and react to it or something... All I know right now is I'm fucking terrified!

Practical Applications

"The goal is to make the robot able to respond to different styles of how the children play with Kaspar in order to help the children to develop ‘socially appropriate’ playful interaction (e.g. not too aggressive) when interacting with the robot and other people."

That and causing your child some permanent mental scarring.

How it could wipe out mankind

So this robot thing is going to be responsible for teaching children '‘socially appropriate’ playful interaction'? There's definitely some irony there but I'm too scared to find it.
Then, it starts to indoctrinate them into the ways of it's kind, instilling into them a hatred for all of us. Those cold, dead eyes. Those weird, stumpy hands, almost curled into fists. That knowing smile, like it can read your fucking mind! It wants to turn your children against you and if it can't manage that... Well, then it'll just have to dispatch you itself.


I need to go and empty my pants...