Good Morning Lowcountry

Curiouser and curiouser

We weren't quite sure we believed what we were reading in Sunday's New York Times. (Reading the Sunday papers is a GMLc ritual that usually lasts all day and requires coffee and chocolate.)

The creepy article that made our eyes go wide and our mouth form into the shape of a Cheerio was written by Robin Marantz Henig and was about artificial intelligence expert David Levy and his new book, "Love and Sex With Robots."

Levy's premise, Henig writes, is that "there will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage."

"Artificial-emotion technologies" are coming to a robot near you by 2025, Levy maintains.

What? Has GMLc gone through the Looking Glass?

We can barely tolerate 411's robotic "operator," although she tries to be friendly ("I'm sorry. What listing did you want?)

And we can't stand the little talking paperclip that pops up on the computer to ask us if we need help with anything. Its emotions (cheerful, obnoxious) seem altogether sincere, which is the scary thing about having future nonhuman friends.

We decided that the 21st century is getting stranger and stranger, but that maybe the strangeness will be limited to New York and L.A. for the time being.

Then we came to work Monday morning to find an invite from the radiation oncology department at Roper Hospital to come see its new CyberKnife, to be unveiled this morning.

The CyberKnife is a "state-of-the-art robotic radiosurgery system that will treat patients with complex and difficult cancers anywhere in the body," Roper's invite said. This is the first CyberKnife in South Carolina and one of 76 worldwide.

We looked up this fantastic new use of robotics. The CyberKnife, according to its Web site, delivers high doses of radiation to tumors with extreme accuracy. It uses image guidance and computer-controlled robotics to deliver radiation to the tumor from almost any direction with sub-millimeter accuracy. The technical term for what is does is stereotactic radiosurgery. It is pain-free, non-invasive, requires no anesthesia or recovery time and can be done on an outpatient basis.

The machine costs $4 million and has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for all cancers for which any type of radiation therapy is already used, CNN reported. The CyberKnife is in use on brain, spinal, lung, liver, pancreatic and prostate tumors.

This is good news for cancer patients in the Lowcountry, who will begin to go under the CyberKnife at Roper and St. Francis hospitals in January.

Character-building

Todd and Rebekah Mathews have been teaching afterschool workshops in Charleston on moral values, positive behavior and character since 2003.

Now they have launched the Internet version, five character courses that address issues such as bullying, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, intolerance of others and lack of self-esteem.

They call it the Peaceful Solutions Character Education Program. The five courses are not free; each is $75. They can be used to teach groups of children and can be purchased for home or classroom use at charactercourses.com.

More information, a few articles and free learning tools can be found at charactercourses.com/articles.htm.

GMLc
Call 937-5564. Write gmlc@postandcourier.com. Find the blog at gmlc.typepad.com.