Category Archives: Contraptions

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 10 – The machines are here.

…we humans are all scared.

Look, here’s the deal. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming and in many cases is already here. I get it. It’s a big part of autonomous cars which every technology company is now diving into along with every automaker. Again, I get this as well for the most part.

AI, and its capabilities are mind-blowing. Scientists have shown that after some quick training, AI can dominate in many previously human only tasks such as games like Checkers, Chess, Go, Jeopardy, and activities such as driving cars or repetitive jobs, etc.

But, what I don’t quite “get” is the early AI / Autonomous Cars entre into the Pizza Delivery business? Really? Look, we humans are all scared. We know the computers are coming for our jobs, but even ones that don’t provide retirements, 401(k)s, or health insurance? Cabs and pizza delivery drivers. Who knew these were the pillars of a declining capitalist society?

All of the science & technology will save the day from the wrath of pizza delivery drivers, taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, Buses, and any other form of simple employment for humans. I’m not a Luddite, in fact I am a fan of technology, but I guess I just didn’t wish for the machines to wipe us out so quickly.

Furthermore, with autonomous cars coming in the next 5-10 years full-bore, what is NASCAR’s position on all of this? Fans won’t be able to relate to the thrill of “Driving” as we do today. Are we going to cheer robot racing cars? I’m serious!

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 9 – Ice, Ice, Baby

…make ice for years !

Maybe, just maybe we’ve been going about this whole climate change / global warming issue the wrong way. Stay with me here. Society has tried pulling back on carbon emissions by the complete elimination of the incandescent light bulb, speeding up electric car adoption, even looking into the running of vehicles on everything from grease, to garbage, to sewage, and still the planet keeps warming.

Just this week there was new report about the melting Ice Caps and the fact that they are melting far faster than previously thought. The report stated that by the year 2100, the oceans will rise by 6 inches worldwide due to the amount that will be lost from the Ice Caps by that time.

So, what if we turned our best technological minds to re-creating the ice we are losing? I mean we already create snow for the olympics all the time! We have people working full-time on ways to desalinate ocean water. AirBNB and other time-sharing services are hurting the hotel industry. Let’s put a whole bunch of out of work motel commercial ice makers on the receiving end of the output of those water producers and make ice for years!

Ok, sure there won’t be anyone around to scoop and throw the ice about the Ice Caps, but this is just a rough idea-prototype mind you. The real idiot-idea circles back to the snow/ice makers throwing newly made ice/snow into new mountains of water turned to snow/ice! WAH-LAH!

No? Maybe? Not?

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 8 – Rain-X = Savant

Am I missing something here?

For me, it really takes a bad movie to outwardly criticize it. Even then, I reserve the right to recognize that other people could definitely feel otherwise and that’s great. However, I suffered through, for me, the WORST pile of movie garbage I have forcibly pushed myself through in a LONG, LONG time this past week and a 1/2. No, it wasn’t last night, or Thursday, it took almost a week to plow through this epic pile of crap.

I hate doing negative reviews but here goes. l love apocalyptic movies. I have my reasons. Anyway, this was a long-awaited follow-up to a movie from years ago starring Harrison Ford. Those of you who liked the original already know of what I speak. For the record, I never saw the original “Bladerunner” and based on “Bladerunner 2049” I never will. Harrison was in this one as was one of “The Ryan’s” as I like to call Ryan Gosling who I really like and loved in “The Place Beyond the Pines”.

I’ll save you any plot details or spoilers and just say that SURPRISE, it takes place in the year 2049 and the movie is, wait for it, 2 hours and 45 minutes long!

Being that far into the future, there is a great deal of futuristic technology such as really cool flying cars. They zip around like it’s nothing. Seemed pretty acceptable. However, as I was suffering through mid-hour 2, I noticed it was raining as Ryan Gosling’s character was driving his flying car and it was using regular old 20th century WINDSHIELD WIPERS.

Wait, what? Flying cars, the year 2049, and they are still using windshield wipers? Come on! At least put some Rain-X wipers on that bad-boy and you’d never even have to turn the wipers on let alone have wipers!

Am I missing something here? I’m not a futuristic movie maker, but PUL-LEASE! Even I use Rain-X on my jalopy of a used truck and feel like a savant. DUH!

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 6 – We’re OFF THE HOOK!

…this one’s not on us!

This week NASA had BIG NEWS! It was teased for days, until finally on June 7th the scientists at NASA announced that their rover on Mars, Curiosity, had discovered the building blocks of life in an ancient lakebed on Mars.

Specifically, the overly excited “Big Bang Theory” types revealed that Curiosity had located “organic molecules in rocks from an ancient lakebed”. This ancient lakebed and the rock were dated from about 3 BILLION years ago, give or take a decade or two I suppose.

This has everyone excited because these building blocks along with the recurring methane gas being identified on Mars could indicate previous life on Mars. I get excited because I feel a small insignificant weight being lifted off of my anxious societal shoulders. See, with these life building blocks being 3 BILLION years old, there is NO WAY we evil-oil-loving-Earth-gas-guzzling humans had ANYTHING to do with this planet’s life extinction event. NONE. Zero. Nada. TAH-DAH!

At least, this one’s not on us!

Or, maybe this BIG announcement about a 3 billion year old rock and some methane gas was really just NASA’s way of getting us ready for the real announcement in another month. What if there is in fact life on Mars, and they have captured Curiosity, re-engineered it into a planet killing death star and we have 30 days before it destroys Earth?

Whelp, we’ll just have to wait for NASA’s next announcement I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

MMeM, Vol. 13 Issue 47 – Thank you drone!

Again, I can’t say it enough,

So I’m not sure who to thank for this laugh, the person in the clip or the person(s) who posted it to YouTube.

Dateline: Western France during a castle tour. Thankfully, someone in the tourist group decided to bring a drone equiped with a camera. While touring the grounds of this particular chateau, the visitors found themselves posing for the drone that was flying around. Some chose to make funny faces and really ham it up for the camera.

Again, I can’t say it enough, thank you for all of the above.

%d bloggers like this: