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Startup Plans To Clean Up Cigarette Butts Using Crows (popularmechanics.com)
AmiMoJo writes: A startup in the Netherlands is developing the "Crowbar," a bird feeder that takes discarded cigarette butts as payment for dispensing food. A camera recognises cigarette filters and rejects any other objects placed in the Crowbar. The idea isn't entirely original, a gentleman in the US has already built a similar device and trained crows to deposit coins. The hope is that crows will be able to keep cities clean, sort through refuse and perform other tasks for our mutual benefit.
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Crows are smart, but I'm not sure about being smartest. I found an injured crow when I was a kid and took it home to nurse it back to health. It eventually got better, but didn't seem to have any interest in being returned to the wild. Whenever I would take it outside it would flop around like it still had a broken wing. It got to the point that it would start flopping around in the house anytime my mom would start bitching about it. She eventually threw it out the third story window, and it tried to fly back in. As soon as I opened the door to the house, it flew back in. It learned to ring the doorbell to get someone to open the door after a couple of days. I think my mom was happy when we moved, in part, to get rid of my pet crow.
I wonder what the unintended consiquences of rewarding a bunch of crows could be? They may start raiding public trash and ashtrays for food.
Hee hee, crows will swoop in on unsuspecting smokers and snatch their still-lit cigarettes from their hands. They will grab entire packs when they can. It will be hilarious.
To crows smoking marijuana. Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
Stone the crows!
Ezekiel 23:20
how about robots that pick up smoldering butts and use them to burn the faces of the smokers that throw them. I think this kind of negative reinforcement is a better solution and doesn't involve enslaving animals.
This sounds expensive to build and maintain. Let's just optimize it a little bit and just have robots that burn the faces of people that drop cigarette butts. No wait, that'll still be too expensive. Ok, so we can just have them burn the faces of people holding a cigarette butt. Hmm... still rather expensive. We could use a much slower processor if we just have robots that will burn people's faces. Now it's best if we optimize the mechanical aspect too so that we can really get the prices into range. We can do away with most moving and electronic components if we just have people line up to have their faces burned! It's perfect!
I think everyone will agree that faceburning stations are an affordable future we can all live with. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...why train them to pick cigarette butts? Why can't you train them to poop on the smokers?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact