The robots of Mega City are taken over by the evil Professor Bug.

The Amme Talks is a conversation between poet and machine. In 2003, poet Ulf Stolterfoht and a chatbot named Amme (which means "wet nurse" in German) met in Berlin. For one week, Stolterfoht interrogated Amme: not just a chatbot, actually, but a steel-and-glass construction with a computer interface, which is connected to a glass of milk, a robotic arm that tips over the glass, and a tube that releases water, as if urinating. Stolterfoht asked Amme--the creation of artist Peter Dittmer--about the nature of authorship and the agency of language; he intended to turn the answers into an essay on poetics. While Amme replied to every question, Stolterfoht observed that the output was "highly self-reflexive, if not entirely self-referential," and impossible for him to assimilate into his writing. He'd hoped to glean something from Amme's performance of an idiosyncratic and mechanical form of human speech. Instead, he stumbled on a remarkable "second-order realism" in which words refer not to things but to themselves. In the dialogue presented in this book, Stolterfoht glimpses something other than what we understand as poetry, something apart from "solipsistic exercises" with language, something like "endlessly liberated speech"--A potential revolution in poetry mounted by a milk-spilling chatbot.

Provides ideas and advice for teachers who are asked to teach English to very young children (3-6 years). Offers a wide variety of activities such as games, songs, drama, stories, and art and craft, all of which follow sound educational principles. Includes numerous photocopiable pages.

Fresh off training camp, with the support of his friends and upperclassmen, Tsukushi's long, hard days of practice are finally starting to pay off as he shows tremendous growth. His first chance to prove himself comes in the form of his shocking selection for Seiseki's team for the Inter-High-School Championships. But it won't be easy. He'll be facing off against Sakuragi Municipal High School, which burst onto the scene as a force to be reckoned with two years ago...and the duo of prodigies that make Sakuragi such a fearsome team, Kaoru Indo and Shuuji Narukami!

From the world-wide leader in strange-but-true stories comes a fascinating book full of the marvels of mechanical men, glimpses into tomorrow’s technology…and what happens when machines go mad. It’s a robot invasion! For more than 25 years, the writers at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have had a soft spot in their hearts for all things robotic. From the promise of artificial intelligence making the world a better place to the threat of an android apocalypse, we never get tired of reading about robots. They perform surgery, traverse the surface of Mars, and even cook a perfect steak…until they malfunction and chase after their human creators. Uncle John’s Robotica will stimulate your humor sensors with hundreds of incredible stories about robots from the past, the present…and the future. Prepare to be assimilated as you read about... • Robotic suits…controlled by monkeys • The robot that can rebuild itself • The world’s first robot • Pop-culture robots (such as the mecha-Michael Jackson with laser-shooting eyes) • Robotic roaches that herd real cockroaches • Microscopic nanobots that heal you before you know you’re sick • Garbage-eating robots • What are the actual chances of a Terminator-style robot war? And much, much more!

Fans and detractors of popular music tend to agree on one thing: popular music is a bellwether of an individual's political and cultural values. In the United States, for example, one cannot think of the counterculture apart from its music. For that reason, in virtually every country in the world, some group identifies popular music as a source of potential danger and wants to regulate it. Policing Pop looks into the many ways in which popular music and artists around the world are subjected to censorship, ranging from state control and repression to the efforts of special interest or religious groups to limit expression.The essays collected here focus on the forms of censorship as well as specific instances of how the state and other agencies have attempted to restrict the types of music produced, recorded and performed within a culture. Several show how even unsuccessful attempts to exert the power of the state can cause artists to self-censor. Others point to material that taxes even the most liberal defenders of free speech. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that censoring agents target popular music all over the world, and they raise questions about how artists and the public can resist the narrowing of cultural expression.