Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a kind of fiction to do with robots which pre-dated the fiction to do with androids. It was the kind of fiction that predated notions of 'the uncanny valley' and went straight to positioning robots as heroic. If you think 'Astroboy', then you're certainly there. Instead of an anxiety about a technological Frankenstein, the fiction to do with robots had us thinking of them going into situations where robots would tread where humans fear. The hope was robots could accomplish things human couldn't.
In that light, I bring depressing news with the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. The radiation leak in Fukushima is so bad it's killing robots sent in to repair it.
Five years after Fukushima, the exclusion zone is in better shape, but still a mess. The area around its once functional nuclear reactors are by far the most inhospitable. So much so that the radiation even managed to kill robots that had been sent in to help clean up.
Five robots that have gone into the reactor in order to help remove spent fuel rods have failed to return, reports Reuters. The issue? The radiation levels are so high that the robot's internals just melt. We've seen this happen before.
Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning, explained the difficulties the company faces in an interview. Not only do the robots tend to fail do to the failure of their wiring, but it's also not easy to get replacements. These aren't just off-the-shelf bots; they have to be designed specifically for the challenges of the particular building they enter, and that takes about two years of design.
If you go to the link on "we've seen this happen before", you'll see another article showing what one of the earlier robots saw before it went down.
It's a terrible thing that the Fukushima plants still in the state that it is, but moreover it is terrible that the limits of robotics got shown in the high radiation environment.
When You're This Bad At Remembering Things
The Hillary Clinton campaign is slightly gaffe prone. Earlier in the week she praised Nancy Reagan for raising AIDS awareness - which was not the way I remember the 1980s and the AIDS crisis. By 1983, everybody on the planet was freaking about AIDS except the White House.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Surely she would have remembered the Senator helping her with her bill. Which leads me to wonder just what in the world is going on inside the Clinton campaign office.
When You're This Bad At Remembering Things
The Hillary Clinton campaign is slightly gaffe prone. Earlier in the week she praised Nancy Reagan for raising AIDS awareness - which was not the way I remember the 1980s and the AIDS crisis. By 1983, everybody on the planet was freaking about AIDS except the White House.
“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s,” Mrs. Clinton, who was attending Mrs. Reagan’s funeral in Simi Valley, California, told MSNBC.
“And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular, Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it,” she said.
The former Secretary of State said she appreciated Mrs. Reagan’s “low-key advocacy” on HIV/AIDS, saying “it penetrated the public conscience, and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this.’ “
Her comments prompted major backlash online, where gay men and LGBT groups were quick to point out that the Reagans kept quiet on the AIDS crisis for most of their administration, despite desperate pleas for help and thousands of deaths.Just about anybody with a memory could remember this turn of events. So of course this ended up with Hillary Clinton offering an apology.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first identified the disease in 1981, but former President Ronald Reagan did not publicly acknowledge the disease until 1985 and he didn’t give a speech about the crisis until 1987.
“While the Reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, I misspoke about their record on HIV and AIDS,” she said in a statement about two hours after her interview had been shown on MSNBC. “For that, I’m sorry.”The worse gaffe this week was her claim that she didn't know where Bernie Sanders was back in '93 and '94 when she tried to put a Health Care plan through.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Surely she would have remembered the Senator helping her with her bill. Which leads me to wonder just what in the world is going on inside the Clinton campaign office.
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