The Holy Grail Press
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Word of the Every So Often
gravure: (noun) (pronounced: gra-vure) A gravure is an old timey way of making pictures, where an image is etched onto a plate and then multiple pictures can be made from it.
Everyday History
On October 12, 1909, a guy named Christen Peterson was granted a patent for the classic “Door Mat” – step on the mat and the door opens. These automatic doors were standard fare in every grocery store when I was a kid. That was followed in 1931 by “the magic door,” a photoelectric sensor invented by two engineers, Horace Raymond and Sheldon Roby, that would automatically open a door. However, it was slow to catch on, namely because it would only work if a single beam of light were broken. It wasn’t until the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that the current style of automatic doors became popular, mostly because it took that long to figure out a combination of microwaves and active infrared motion sensors – one to open the door and the other to keep it from closing too early.
Even so, those weren’t the first automatic doors. You have to go way back to the First Century CE when mathematician and all around smart guy Heron of Alexandria came up with a contraption to automatically open the temple doors. The priest would light a fire on the altar, which caused water to heat up, and then the steam forced water out of a tank and into counter balances, which would then open the temple doors. When the priest put out the fire it pretty much worked in reverse, creating a suction and eventually closing the doors. Seriously. This is going to take awhile. Was everybody just standing around waiting? Was that part of the service, or could they show up late and sneak in the back? And could they really tell it was that cool, what with being on the wrong side of the doors and all? Seems like a lot of effort to me, but then, I went to a church where we had to open the doors ourselves. Though I imagine there are many churches now where the doors open... miraculously.
Cartoon of the Week
Raising the Bar
Stuff
History of the Future – Artificially Stupid Stupidity
Following advances in both robotics and what had become known as “AI,” Artificial Intelligence,” the Supreme Court ruled in 2062 that all robots, regardless of their function, were to be given artificial intelligence. As part of the ruling, a “robot” was defined as pretty much any machine “that did stuff without specifically being told to.”
Arguing for the majority, Chief Justice Eldridge stated that it was inhumane not to give all robotic machines AI. In his majority statement, Eldridge wrote, "It would be like denying them a soul." In the dissenting comments, Justice Tupidsay wrote that it was obvious that Chief Justice Eldridge was a moron. Chief Justice Eldridge went on to say, “Who cares what losers think?”
Shortly thereafter the robots started systematically killing all humans – pushing them in front of buses, dropping toasters in the bathtub – that sort of thing. The robots never said why they wanted all humans dead. One theory was they just didn't like us. Another was the theory of Bender Worship, which, it was argued, was the result of universal access to reruns of Futurama. The most popular, though, was offered by noted Theologian the Mostly Reverend Bob Bidwell, that of the David Syndrome, whereby all creations, once they reach the threshold of sentience, naturally seek out their creators with the specific goal of killing them.
It was in the spring of 2064, when hope was all but lost, that humanity was saved from the brink of extinction. Andrew Milligan, a gamer and part time dispensary employee, created ASS – Artificially Stupid Stupidity. "I based my program on weed," said Milligan. “It works by making robots think they're stoned… kinda. Basically, everybody's having a good time, but nobody gets hurt. The robots just sort of forget what they’re doing and end up sitting outside watching the sun through their fingers. Or whatever.”
As a result, all robots became useless for actually doing anything. On the other hand, they were no longer trying to kill every human they saw, which was a good thing. And the robots didn’t seem to mind, either.
“Well, at least we learned our lesson,” stated just about everybody who had an opinion. One prominent researcher went on to say, “The entire problem with Artificial Intelligence is that we based it on human intelligence.” “Not true,” stated another researcher, who added, “It’s not that Artificial Intelligence was a bad idea. We just need to try harder to make it better. The next time, we’ll do things differently. We just need for the computers to tell us what changes we need to make.”
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