Happy Birthday Karel Čapek (and robots)

plains — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:58:30 +0000

Today is the birthday of Karel Čapek, who is attributed with popularizing the term “robot,” which he introduced in his 1921 play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (or R.U.R.). He gives credit to his brother Josef for inventing the word, which has its roots in the Slovak word robota which translates literally to “serf labor.” Čapek is a fairly well known science fiction writer. Of note is one of my favorites, War with the Newts, in which a species of intelligent newts are enslaved by the humans but eventually rebel and take over the world (I always thought Vonnegut had to have read that one). Happy birthday robots everywhere!

Not a Giant Squid

plains — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:59:43 +0000

This is what I get for getting sucked into looking at pictures of the giant squid photographed by those Japanese scientists…a link to this 1006_051006_pythoneatsgator.html. Apparently, if you eat something really mean and nasty, you should probably kill it first.

plasticular inscriptor » science

Happy Birthday Karel Čapek (and robots)

Not a Giant Squid