A construction worker died of a caffeine-induced heart attack while watching the England-Sweden football match on Tuesday night.

From the Bangkok Press story:

“Hall Kiddee, 38, of Sakhon Nakhon, was found dead in his living quarter of an industrial estate in tambon Tha Toom of Si Maha Phot district.

Friends told police Mr Hall was not a drinker and was very fond of watching the World Cup matches.

He stayed up late to catch the matches on television in the past several nights. To keep himself awake, Mr Hall bought himself coffee and large portions of an energy-boosting drink, according to the friends.

On Tuesday evening, Mr Hall was seen taking a cup of freshly-brewed coffee up to his living quarter after telling his friends he looked forward to watching the England-Sweden match.”

Link (via Bangkok Press)

The robotic head of an android Philip K. Dick has gone missing.

Mr. Dick, the science fiction writer whose work was the basis of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Blade Runner” and “Minority Report,” has been dead since 1982. Last year an admiring doctoral student at the University of Texas at Dallas, David Hanson, 36, built a life-size robot-version of Mr. Dick.

The android was able to conduct basic conversations abour Mr. Dick’s work, keep eye contact and make several facial expressions. The robot made several public appearances last year, including at the Comic Con in San Diego, where it was on a panel for a coming movie based on a Dick Novel, “A Scanner Darkly.”

Mr. Dick’s android had several more public appearances scheduled—that is, until robot-creator Hanson left the robotic head on an America West flight from Dallas to Las Vegas in December en route to San Francisco.

Sucks!

Link (via NY Times)

I was going to make some punny jokes about this very emotional, life-size robotic panda (actually, it’s technically a robotic panda head on top of a guy in a panda suit), but Thomas Ricker over at Engadget made them all for me!

From Engadget:

“Ahh Giant Pandas… cute and cuddly until they rip out your jugular with a swipe from those massive thumbed paws. What better avatar to lull us into complacency while cleansing the fields of our human scourge? Ok, ok, only the head can actually be considered robotic with 14 servo motors used to create realistic panda expressions like confusion: ‘has anyone seen my bamboo?’ or anger: ‘I am not a teddy bear!’ The rest is just some guy in a fancy monkey suit drunk on Billy Beer. Now isn’t it about time we forget about all this endangered species crap since man clearly possesses the power to preserve these giant bears raccoons automatons forever in some kind of It’s a Small World freak show?”

Click the link for more fun photos.

Link (via Engadget)

European researchers are in the process of developing a new generation of robots that will be able to adapt their communication systems to their physical environments and communicate with one another without direct human intervention.

The project, dubbed ECAgents, is sponsored by the Future and Emerging Technologies program of the European Commission’s Community Research. It’s being conducted by researchers at the Intituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione in Rome.

The aim is ambitious: researcher say they seek to utilize existing technologies (like mobile phones, Wi-Fi devices, and existing robots) to eventually develop new technologies. Right now, they’re programming Sony AIBOs.

The project website mentions that their communication system is adaptive, meaning it adapts and changes in response to environmental input changes. The linked-to article from The Engineer Online also mentions that the “words” used by the AIBO dogs are built “from scratch.”

From The Enginner Online article:

“Whereas we humans use the word ‘ball’ to refer to a ball, the AIBO dogs start from scratch to develop common agreement on a word to use to refer the ball. They also develop the language structures to express, for instance, that the ball is rolling to the left. The researchers achieved this through instilling their robots with a sense of ‘curiosity.’

. . .

Also like children, the AIBOs initially started babbling aimlessly until two or more settled on a sound to describe an object or aspect of their environment, gradually building a lexicon and grammatical rules through which to communicate.”

I’d like to see more on these robots. I’m always skeptical about sensational stories like these—I’ve seen too many that originate with an overzealous publicist committing a factual faux pas when writing the press release on a technological breakthrough she didn’t research—but if the robots were actually creating a grammar, what a breakthrough that’d be!

Link

Caffeine consumption caused female rats to seek more frequent sex, according to the results of a new study at Southwestern University.

Researchers gave 108 female rats moderate doses of caffeine and found that it shortened the amount of time it took the lady rats to return to the gentleman rats after a first frolic in the woodchips. The shortened time between romps indicates the lady rats were hornier than normal.

Unfortunately, the same effect is not expected to improve human ladies’ sex drives in most cases, researchers say.

“These rats had never had caffeine before,” study leader Fay Guarraci, an assistant professor of psychology at Southwestern University, told Live Science. “In humans, it might enhance the sexual experience only among people who are not habitual users.”

That means not you, Little Miss Triple Espresso.

The research is detailed in an already-released issue of Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.

Link (via Live Science)

I’ve seen some pretty dramatic press releases, but few standouts like the one I received via e-mail today.

From PR-Inside.com:

“KEANE TOOK DRUGS TO PAY FOR THE MUSIC

British rockers KEANE had to sell their bodies to medical science to finance their early music careers.

The SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW trio’s frontman TOM CHAPLIN was so broke that he took drugs as part of a medical trial.

Drummer RICHARD HUGHES tells, ‘Did he not tell you about the medical trial? I think it was £80 he got for testing this drug. I remember meeting him for lunch the morning after he did it.

‘It was a schizophrenia drug. I mean, I don’t suppose you’re expected to take schizophrenia drugs unless you’re schizophrenic. And if you’re not, they probably have the wrong effect. I think it was OK, but then you never know if you’re the one who got the placebo.’”

KEANE is TAKING DRUGS and SELLING THEIR BODIES? Oh no, wait . . . their singer tested pharmaceuticals for some cash once.

I don’t know what publicist wrote this, but it WREAKS OF DESPERATION. It’s the type of tidbit that belongs in chit-chat with David Letterman—not as a stand-alone press release. But it sure has a sensational headline!

Link

The German government has sanctioned the construction of a field-sized brothel next to the main soccer stadium in Berlin, according to concerned Catholics.

The U.S. Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) has accused the German government of allowing 40,000 young women to be taken to Deutschland from Central and Eastern Europe to “sexually service” men attending the World Cup football championship matches.

Prostitution is legal in Germany, and income from prostitution is taxed, although the rate of taxation is slightly higher than income is from more mainstream occupations. Every city has the legal right to ban prostitution in certain areas—Munich, for example, forbids street prostitution within city limits—however, it is virtually unregulated in Berlin.

From a statement released by C-FAM:

“Whatever their circumstances, each and every one of these young women is someone’s daughter, a child of God and deserves our protection. They do not deserve to be exploited and sentenced to a life of misery to satisfy the sexual appetites of soccer fans.”

C-FAM plans to collect signatures in opposition to the legalized World Cup prostitution to be delivered to the German government, the United Nations, the European Parliament and the governing body of the World Cup.

(You have to go through Google News to get to the article without being a paid subscriber, so the link below takes you to the Good News link. You can click your way in from there.)

Link

World-class robot athletes from around the globe will go to bed early tonight, because tomorrow they’ll compete in the RoboCup 2006 World Championships in Bremen, Germany!

The RoboCup 2006 World Championship matches are scheduled from tomorrow through next Tuesday, June 20, and as exciting as some of the competitors are, they won’t be the most interesting automated entities at this year’s festivities. This year, the commentators will be robotic!

Academic nerdy birds at Carnegie Mellon University have adapted two Sony Qrio robots to serve as play-by-play commentators for many of the scheduled RoboCup matches!

Prepping the two Qrio robots wasn’t easy, computer science professor Manuela Veloso of Carnegie Mellon told MSNBC. For example, when programmers attempted to have the robots emulate Telemundo commentator Andres Cantor’s signature call—“GOOOOOOOOOOAL!”—they found that the robots’ synthesized voices weren’t capable of sustaining a long “O” the way Cantor does. The compromised version instead repeats the synthesized “L,” so the call comes out ” Goal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal!”

Link

Hammacher Schlemmer is now selling the Robonova-1 (listed as the Advanced Acrobatic Robot) for the slightly inflated price of $1200, as listed in their online catalog.

The programmable robot can walk, run, kick, stand on one leg, do cartwheels, dance, lie down, get up, flip, do your taxes . . . okay, it can’t do your taxes.

You can watch a video of it in action or buy one of your own.

*Sigh.* If only I had a robot friend.

Link

Mainichi Daily News has a new spread entitled “The Wackiest World of Japanese Ice Cream” that inventories some rather unusual flavors.

Pictured is a miso ramen ice cream—true to its name, it’s a frozen blend of miso ramen and creamy, sugary ice cream.

Other delightfully disgusting flavors cataloged include squid ink, tomato, pickled plum, garlic, soy sauce, salad, cheese risotto, char grilled seaweed and charcoal.

Mmmmmmm . . . charcoal-flavored ice cream.

Link

A blogger who calls himself “the last young angry man” is committed to sustaining himself on only monkey chow for a week. I admire his valor. I don’t think I could get through a single bowl.

From The Monkey Chow Diaries website:

“Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I’m about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: “a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.” Maybe I’ll lose weight. Maybe I’ll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I’ll go crazy. Maybe it’s too late. Check back here every day to follow along with the Monkey Chow Diaries. Comments, criticisms, questions and advice can be left on the blog.”

Link

The Addiction Research Unit at University at Buffalo’s Department of Psychology has posted a series of images of psychotropic substances that were legally available in the United States and Europe in the preprohibition era.

Among other gems, the morphine-laced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for teething children.

From the website:

“Morphine, cocaine, and even heroin were seen as miracle cures when they were first discovered. During the mid to late 19th century, many manufacturers proudly proclaimed that their products contained cocaine or opium. “

Link

Nick Osborn of Square America, a site “dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots,” has an intriguing collection of very strange slides, and he needs your help in figuring out what exactly they mean.

From the SWAMPATORIUM blog:

“I got this lot of slides about three years ago and I’ve never been able to figure out just what is going on. There are about 50 slides in all- all dating from between 1959 and 1969 and all of young women. Some, like the ones here have letters written on their foreheads, others have press type with their names on it affixed to either their temples or foreheads. Were the slides taken by a dermatologist or plastic surgeon or were these young women part of some now forgotten experiment. In less than fifty years these slides have gone from most likey being unambiguous data for some medical study to being a complete mystery.”

The theories that have been postulated thus far speculate that the photos could have been taken for anything from gender reassignment surgery studies to rhinoplasty to fraternity/sorority hazing.

Link

Infantilism is the desire to dress and be treated as a helpless infant, and those who indulge in the practice are known as “adult babies.” According to Thomas John Speaker’s dissertation, Psychosexual Infantilism in Adults: The Eroticization of Regression, a majority of practitioners are heterosexual males and the condition is unrelated to pedophilia.

Anyway, if you happen to be an infantilist or “adult baby,” there’s now an online clothing store packed full of adult-sized kid clothes just for you! Adult-sized rompers, overalls, jumpers, footed sleepers, pantaloons, play pants, etc.

I found this through a string of other sites: I was searching for the correct formatting for the term “Never Never Land,” and I found the site of a guy who likes to dress like Peter Pan, through which I found a link to this clothing store called Forever A Kid.

Where did people get this sort of stuff before the internet, I wonder?

Link