Eventually, robots will have to be given legal rights (and accept certain responsibilities) if advances in artificial intelligence (AI) continue to create sensitive quasi-organisms, according to a paper solicited for Sir David King, the United Kingdom's chief scientist. According to one AI researcher, "If (robots are) granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them, including income support, housing and possibly robo-health care to fix the machines over time." A December Financial Times report on the paper noted that robots might also have to pay taxes and be available for military service.
Government in action!
Many voters, and critics in both parties, chided the 'do-nothing' 109th Congress (2005-2006) as a body tied up in partisanship and divisiveness. However, the Congress did manage to pass 383 pieces of legislation, except that almost 100 of those laws were merely authorisations to name post offices and other federal structures after famous Americans (such as Ray Charles, Ava Gardner and Karl Malden).
Politicians in the German states of Lower Saxony and Bavaria proposed in December to criminalise 'cruel', violent acts in video games when they are directed at 'humans', or 'human-looking characters'. Bavarian Interior Minister, Gunther Beckstein, pointed to a November incident in which an 18-year-old player of the violent game 'Counter Strike' went to a school, shot 37 people, and then killed himself.
Following a military coup in November, Fiji's army chief Frank Bainimarama took over and placed classified ads in local newspapers to seek candidates to be ministers and senior civil servants. The minimum qualifications: no criminal record and not to be bankrupt. And Nigeria's People's Democratic Party started screening candidates in December to run for president this year, ranking applicants on the following criteria: patriotism (10 per cent), integrity (15), ethnic neutrality (10), knowledge of law (10), tolerance (5), transparency (10), knowledge of development (10) and leadership qualities (15). (Arithmetic ability was not a criterion.)
Least competent parent
An unnamed, "well-known Adelaide (Australia) model" was seen screaming, "Where's my baby? Someone's stolen my baby," shortly after she paused while jogging and pushing the 5-month-old's buggy along the city's River Torrens in December. According to a report in Melbourne's The Age newspaper, the woman had stopped to answer a cellphone call, and when she finally turned back around, the buggy was gone. Unfortunately, it had rolled into the river during the phone call, and the incident ended badly.
Clichés come to life
The Texas Ethics Commission ruled in November that a public official in the Lone Star state, receiving money as a gift such as from a lobbyist, needs disclose only that he received 'a cheque' or 'currency' and need not reveal the actual amount of money. Said the district attorney in Austin, who was outraged by the ruling, it is now "Perfectly legal to report the gift of 'a wheelbarrow' without reporting that the wheelbarrow was filled with cash."
Bright Ideas
Scamming the Horny Panda: One trick that zookeepers have used to get male pandas interested in mating with dowdier females (according to a December dispatch from Sichuan, China, in Australia's The Age) is to let an attractive female roam around a pen, leaving her scent, and then, in darkness, with the male in the pen and frisky at the scent, to introduce the less- attractive female into the pen, back-end first, so that the pre-excited male will quickly begin copulating. Said zookeeper Zhang Hemin, "When the males find out (that they've just mated with unintended partners), they get very angry and start fighting the female. We have had to use firecrackers and a water hose to separate them."
Sixty years after Indiana abolished gambling and wrecked the economy of the resort town of French Lick, the state brought it back, allowing casinos, but they had to be located on water and not the state's dry land. Developers of the French Lick Springs Resort thus spent US$382 million on a plush 'riverboat' casino on a man-made lake barely larger than the boat; it opened in November.
Derek Ogley, 70, had just been discharged from Tameside General Hospital in Ashton, England, in November, but doubled over in pain in the waiting room (even-tually diagnosed with pancreatitis). Nurses informed Ogley's family they would have to call 999 (the UK's 911) or drive him around to the emergency entrance about three minutes away, because, since he had been discharged, rules prevented them from treating him.
Obsessions
Retired advertising agency executive James Finegan, 76, plays at least 250 rounds of golf a year at a course near his home in Gladwyne, Pa., and 50 to 60 rounds elsewhere, according to an October Wall Street Journal profile. When not playing golf, he writes books about golf (histories of golf in Philadelphia and of course in New Jersey, and four books about golf in the British Isles).
In Salt Lake City, county sheriff Aaron Kennard, who was caught by a Salt Lake Tribune reporter playing numerous rounds of golf during working hours in August and September, merely shrugged. "I'm not golfing enough," he said, in that golf helps him relax. He said he'd rather just golf a little than take summer vacations.
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.
