Robotics dates back to ancient times. Since history began, people have looked for ways to shirk the responsibilities of day-to-day life. Legends of sorcerers, necromancers, and gods granting animation to lifeless objects can be found in nearly every culture. But the first time the word “robot” was actually used was in the 1921 play “Rossuum's Universal Robots.” Since the play was written by a Czech playwright, the word derives from Czech. Indeed, the Czech word “robota” can be roughly translated to “drudgery.” But are robots really the drudges of the modern age?

Robots are what built this great nation. Robots run the assembly lines that keep industry pumping. Robots are the ones who first set foot on Mars, the Moon, and even outer space itself. Does this sound like drudgery? No, it sounds like the most fantastic existence ever conceived by the human mind. Robots have always been the first to explore the vastness of space, going places humans can’t. Robots have advanced sensor technology which allows for greater perception, such as the measurement of temperature in Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvins, air pressure, magnetism, and so forth. Robots have also been known to fight to the death, egged on by their human masters. This has been recorded and shown on television, which is also a kind of robot.

Robots have been engraved into the human psyche for countless decades. They have been a cultural phenomenon, appearing in thousands of science fiction novels and short stories. But is the cold, logical machine depicted by these works accurate? The truth is that recent advances in artificial intelligence programming has made robots more caring, more loving, and more human. There will soon come a day when robots and humans will have meaningful conversations involving the purpose of the Universe, and also the placement of furniture in a room.

But this can’t happen as long as some people hold the view of robots as short-circuited, out-of-control breakdown machines. This view led ignorant filmmakers to portray robots as evil in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as nearly every other robot-based film. What’s even more disturbing is that some robots actually helped create those films. Once this “evil” barrier is knocked down, humans will be able to appreciate robots as the wonders that they are. But that day is not today.

The only way to prove you defeated the king of a previous dynasty is to have the king of that dynasty alive and in your possession. That was because we didn't have news-media back then. Today, we have stunt doubles.

Barring that, how was Thanksgiving?!

With all the conversations goin' on, I figured that it was about time to open a new thread for general talk. Chat away, denizens of the blogosphere!

An Open Thread cannot be matched,
but try the doom-Thread did to catch
within his eye the creaky hatch
that sealed his fate behind that patch.

So with his eye upon that latch,
the doom-Thread with his hands did snatch
the shingles for his roofing thatch
but gave it up to make a batch
of cookies for his good friend Zdatch.

The Endtime Adjuster recently obtained a new avatar, which confirms reports of an impending apocalypse. Already the new avatar has caused massive inflation, resulting in the complete devaluation of the cronic, credit, rupee, and Euro. The only country unaffected by the switch was Antarctica, which many people argue is not a real country. But I maintain that if Australia can be both a country and a continent, so can Antarctica. Canada was benefited by the avatarial exchange, gaining ground against the dollar for the first time in years.

But other than economic concerns, there is also the question of identity liquidity. How can we be so sure that this new avatar isn't just some half-crazed, half-insane madman masquerading around as the Adjuster? At Roboshrub Inc. we take endtime insurance very seriously. We believe that while the world may end horribly, a sound insurance policy will protect our assets from divine repossession. It's a strongly held belief that became the basis for our very existence. And now, to be questioned at this point in the game...

Endtime Adjuster, grant us tax exempt status! We salute you!

"Just like flies to a dead moose carcass, so too the Endtime Adjuster to a pending apocalypse."

from, the Book of Oldness, 13:27

Are men and women marrying at a later age than they used to? The drones down at the Census Bureau sure think so. According to them, a recent study found that “the average marriage age for women is twenty-three while for men it is twenty-five.” Of course, this study was done nearly twenty years ago, and the findings may not still be valid. But even so, what could cause the marriage age to spike upwards in such a manner?

The easiest course of action is to blame technology. The 1980s heralded the birth of the supercomputing revolution, which seems to coincide with the rise in the marriage age. But what does marriage have to do with MS-DOS? It would appear very little, to the untrained eye. But thanks to the magic of the “six degrees of separation” game, it becomes easier to see how two seemingly unrelated events affect each other. The supercomputing revolution brings with it an information-based job market. This in turn sparks the need for a highly educated workforce. To become educated, men and women are forced to spend more time at college. Since they would have a ton of work to do, it’s unlikely they’ll get married before graduation. Thusly, the computer age increased the marriage age by adding college time to the calculus.

Another, possibly more plausible, cause of the rise of the marriage age is inflation. Well, not inflation, per se, but certainly the economy in general. It is common knowledge that during times of economic uncertainty, the marriage and birth rates plummet. It happened during the great depression, as any historian can explain. The late 1980s was an economic minefield, with a looming recession. In their infinite wisdom, the governors of the Federal Reserve raised interest rates through the roof, causing a load of inflation. Suddenly, homes became a lot more expensive. This sort of development would discourage people from marrying, or delaying marriage until the couple has accumulated enough money to own a home. As a result, people would marry later, adding a few years to the average marriage age. It was a fiendishly clever plot by Alan Greenspan to destroy the American family.

So far, we’ve gone through the technological and economical reasons for the marriage age’s rapid ascent. But now we must focus on the medical. Over the last hundred years or so, the average life expectancy has increased by, like, a million percent. At the turn of the last century, being 50 years old was considered “ancient.” Today, 50 is the age most people experience their midlife crisis, or as it was known a hundred years ago, “senility.” This prolongation of years people expect to live should naturally result in extensions to all life stages. Most notably, the teenage stage has been prolonged by about five to ten years. This “slow growing up” process would push back marriage by an equal amount of time. Ergo, the rise in the marriage age can be attributed to teenage immaturity.

The marriage age has risen over the years, but when all the factors are taken into consideration, well, it doesn’t seem all that bad. As time goes on and life expectancy soars like an eagle, the marriage age will undoubtedly skyrocket until it hits the forties and peters out. By that point in time, marriage will be obsolete; for by then, the Earth will be ruled by robots.

Good news! After almost three months of innovative inactivity, the staffers at Roboshrub Inc. are proud to announce our new TGC project. TGC stands for "The Generic Canadian". It's a platform-like game, and has been in the works since late June. The plot is something like this:

"The Generic Canadian is a man with no face. As the game starts, he's sitting alone in his house in Canada, reading his newspaper. Suddenly, he is alerted to the fact that his trusted companion Gyrobo has been kidnapped by the evil genius One Star. Facing certain destruction, the Generic Canadian embarks on a quest to save Gyrobo from One Star, thus foiling One Star's evil plans."

The game should hopefully be done by January. Right now, we're working on the third level. Under directive 49-b of the Internet Conduct Code, anyone with musical talents is hereby ordered to post their instrumental works for free download and use. Seriously, we're good at art and storywork, but no one at Roboshrub Inc. has any musical abilities. We can't even hum.

Just sit back and enjoy the meatscape.

New and improved, from my keyboard to your monitors! This open thread features an onboard co-processor, and is 43% more durable than other open threads manufactured within a two-month span. Because at Roboshrub Inc., we take our open threads seriously. Nothing can stop us from asking the people their opinions... not even death.

Chat away, brave bloggers! Chat like you mean it!

And by the way, hasn't anyone read the Roboshrub Inc. official comic book?

In case none of you realize it, every time this blog loads the little slogan below the title graphic changes. Currently, we've got almost 200 completely random slogans. These slogans where created by I, Gyrobo, Roboshrub (my good friend), and also Destructobob (who did actually make about ten). But now that we're approaching the 200 mark, it's time to draw the fans into the process. Everyone reading this should go post a comment with their most random slogan. All the good slogans will be added to the slogan queue. The bad ones will be discarded, like so many broken dreams...

The prize of this contest is honor (or "honour" for those of you outside the United States). Make me proud, fellow bloggers!

*UPDATE*
You can see our entire slogan queue here. If you can't see the list, enable JavaScript.