Ok, Go...To Sleep

So here's the situation; for a number of reasons I decided to stay up all night. The plan was to do homework, mostly comp sci, all night to get it out of the way. It's now about 3am. I'm most of the way through my first lab (due Thursday) but don't feel confident in my ability to check it well or do the "If you want to get an A on this assignment" part, so its been set aside for now. I still have another lab (due Monday) and calculus problem set (also due Thursday) still on the table. However, my motivation and ability to focus (or even read) are slipping. I've already exhausted the blogosphere and RK, leaving basically sleep (no), youtube (not a good idea, but gaining appeal), or doing this. Obviously, the latter won out. For now.

There's a problem though. I have a few ideas of nice, long, hopefully quality posts to write, but I don't want to fuck any of them up by writing them at 3am. And yet, 3am (and on) can be a goldmine of out-of-it humor. Oh, wait. Dr. K told me to write about empathy and telepathy or some such. Sweet.

Case 1: Empathy. The Star Trek: (half) Betazoids. In the world of Star Trek, someone who has some Betazoid heritage (Deanna Troi) have the ability to detect other people's emotions. So if you were in a room (or, like, thousands of miles away apparently) she could tell what you were feeling (unless you had a very disciplined mind or some manner of psychic defense). Very hand skill.

Here's the IRL bit. Someone (I think the Japanese) built this robot with creepy face-pieces (think Mr. Potato head). When you talk to it, a combination of voice-recognition software and other trippy programming stuff makes it react with appropriate facial expressions depending on your word choice and tone. Basically, it's a robot that can detect how you feel.

You're probably thinking, "well, I can tell how people feel based on that. What's the big deal?" You're right. Not a big deal. But think about this: looking at a brain scan of you, someone could tell how you were feeling. Someone, or something! So if a robot were reading your brain, it could tell how you were feeling. So, when everyone gets replaced by robots, your brain-chip will wirelessly broadcast brain scans and all the robots will know how you are feeling. Like Betazoids.

Betazoids are robots. You can tell because they never got the eyes right.

You know, like in "Westworld", except eyes instead of hands...

You know will also be cool about the brain-chips? Companies will pay to have subliminal messages about their products sent directly into your brain. The alien overlords that own you will sell your brain to advertisers. How cool is that?

According to Wikipedia (I know, a sin), "telepathy" is the communication of ideas or emotions through some means other than the classic five senses. Um...I have two words for you: brain chips.

Dr K's paper? Done. As for me, I need more Monster so maybe I'll do homework. And no, I didn't edit or proofread this post because my eyes hurt. Deal with it.