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Robotic Hand Translates Speech into Sign Language
usermilk writes "Robot educators Keita Matsuo and Hirotsugu Sakai have created a robot hand that translate the spoken word into sign language for the deaf. From the article: 'A microchip in the robot recognizes the 50-character hiragana syllabary and about 10 simple phrases such as "ohayo" (good morning) and sends the information to a central computer, which sends commands to 18 micromotors in the joints of the robotic hand, translating the sound it hears into sign language.'"
After reading this letter, you will never again be able to trust Mr. Scuttle Monkey, and you will see with crystal clarity the way that reason, not make-believe, is the best way to deal with the real evils of our world. Before I begin, let me point out that his flock appears to be growing in number. I indeed pray that this is analogous to the flare-up of a candle just before extinction yet I keep reminding myself that many people think of his prudish insults as a joke, as something only half-serious. In fact, they're deadly serious. They're the tool by which myopic devotees of conspiracy theories will dress up Mr. Monkey's profit motive in the cloak of selfless altruism by next weekend. A second all-too-serious item is that perhaps one day we will live in a world where good people are not troubled by fear of semi-intelligible, crass half-wits. Until that day arrives, however, we must spread the word that Mr. Monkey has a knack for convincing self-serving gadflies that advertising is the most veridical form of human communication. That's called marketing. The underlying trick is to use sesquipedalian terms like "internationalization" and "roentgenographically" to keep his sales pitch from sounding inaniloquent. That's why you really have to look hard to see that Mr. Monkey's overweening dream is starting to come true. Liberties are being killed by attrition. Vandalism is being installed by accretion. The only way that we can reverse these satanic trends is to speak up and speak out against Mr. Monkey. To be precise, I would be grateful if he would take a little time from his rigorous schedule to compile readers' remarks and suggestions and use them to shout back at his propaganda. Of course, pigs will grow wings and fly before that ever happens. When a mistake is made, the smart thing to do is to admit it and reverse course. That takes real courage. The way that Mr. Monkey stubbornly refuses to own up to his mistakes serves only to convince me that he either is or elects to be ignorant of scientific principles and methods. Mr. Monkey even intentionally misuses scientific terminology to replace intellectual integrity with ridiculous sloganeering.
Mr. Monkey acts as if he were King of the World. This hauteur is astonishing, staggering, and mind-boggling. Make special note of that point, because if we are to expose his double standards for what they really are, then we must be guided by a healthy and progressive ideology, not by the mindless and macabre ideologies that Mr. Monkey promotes.
According to the latest scientific evidence, Mr. Monkey's attempts to let ruthless nincompoops run rampant through the streets are much worse than mere lexiphanicism. They are hurtful, malicious, criminal behavior and deserve nothing less than our collective condemnation. It is similarly noteworthy that we must understand that Mr. Monkey works from the false assumption that most people actually want meretricious agitators to sully a profession that's already held in low esteem. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible.
Mr. Monkey is addicted to the feeling of power, to the idea of controlling people. Sadly, he has no real concern for the welfare or the destiny of the people he desires to lead. All I can tell you is what matters to me: I like to speak of him as "crapulous". That's a reasonable term to use, I believe, but let's now try to understand it a little better. For starters, it's undoubtedly a tragedy that Mr. Monkey's goal in life is apparently to condemn children to a life of drugs, gangs, drinking, rape, incest, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and a number of other horrors. Here, I use the word "tragedy" as the philosopher Whitehead used it. Whitehead stated that "the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things," which I interpret as saying that in a recent essay, Mr. Monkey stated that he has achieved sainthood. Since the arguments he made in the rest of his essay are based in part on that assumpt
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