Slashdot Mirror
Robots Might Allow For Space Surgery
An anonymous reader writes "Robots might allow for delicate surgeries in space, reports the Washington Post." From the article: "The tiny, wheeled robots, which are about 3 inches tall and as wide as a lipstick case, can be slipped into small incisions and computer-controlled by surgeons in different locations. Some robots are equipped with cameras and lights and can send back images to surgeons. Others have surgical tools attached that can be controlled remotely ... Officials hope that next spring, NASA will teach astronauts to use the robots so that surgeries could one day be performed in space. Delays in communication because of the distance to space would mean surgeons on earth would have tell astronauts what commands to give the robots"
So this is off topic, so what...I can afford it.
Quality Control on Slashdot is low, and this is represented by the following fortune I was just provided:
"My idea of roughing it turning the air conditioner too low."
Which is a mangled version of the original quote, which went something like: "My idea of roughing it is turning the air conditioner to low". This is another example of the hazards involved in letting a spelling checking program do all of the quality control in a prose composition. Even though the sentence has two errors, neither of them were caused by spelling.
I guess Slashdot could feel in good company, though. I remember when, it the distant past, the New York Times had a special prize if you found an error on the first page of the paper. I think the prize was nominal, something such as being credited in the paper, in the corrections section or something similar. It's obvious they no longer care. It's pretty easy to find grammatical mistakes on the front page of the Time. But my favorite one of all was quite a huge and obvious one, which I hope I was not the only one to notice. When the Pope visited New York, the Times made a reference to the large number of Catholics in New York, "...the almost six Catholics...", dropping the word million. Pretty damned funny, if you ask me.
What amazes me about spelling and grammar errors is how often they are committed by people who are much more meticulous in other endeavors, pften while in the process of picking nite. So many programmers, for instance, who will make criticism over the structure of a program - its "correctness" - can't be bothered to make the elementary efforts to correct their own prose.