I am a board certified peekologist.

Used with permission.

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You've Got A (Imaginary) Friend

don't feel that we have enough attachment to the real world as it is-- I routinely see people at an event, ignoring the real people surrounding them and chattering away to an imaginary friend on their cellphone. (There was a recent cartoon, lauding the development of the "I-Bucket"; the drawing was of people walking down a streen, their heads fully obscured from passers-by by a large wooden bucket upended over them-- kind of a cone-of-silence a la Max Smart).

Now we have technology we can bond with. Paro, a therapeutic robot that looks like a baby harp seal, is a 'Mental Committment Robot', meaning:

Mental Commitment Robots" are developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as "cuteness" and comfort. Mental Commitment Robots are designed to provide 3 types of effects: psychological, such as relaxation and motivation, physiological, such as improvement in vital signs, and social effects such as instigating communication among inpatients and caregivers.

Watch the Swedish TV story http://paro.jp/english/index.html on the aging Japanese population, beautifully done although I speak neither a word of Swedish or Japanese. At about 7 minutes 45 seconds you'l meet Paro, but before that, you'll see a human dishwasher device to make washing the elderly easier-- and even less human interaction.

What is Paro? It seems to be a fuzzy animated version of those little Tamogotchi pets, that caused such distress to kids who forgot to feed and water them; with subsequent guilt upon the pets 'death' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi:

Paro is modeled after a baby harp seal. Paro is covered with soft artificial fur to make people feel comfortable, as if they are touching a real animal. A baby harp seal spends most of the day sleeping. However, Paro has a diurnal rhythm of morning, daytime, and night. For example, Paro is active during the daytime, but gets sleepy at night. Paro has five kinds of sensors: tactile, light, audition, temperature, and posture sensors, with which it can perceive people and its environment. With the light sensor, Paro can recognize light and dark. He feels being stroked and beaten by tactile sensor, or being held by the posture sensor. Paro can also recognize the direction of voice and words such as its name, greetings, and praise with its audio sensor. Paro can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers, and to respond to its new name. For example, if you stroke it every time you touch it, Paro will remember your previous action and try to repeat that action to be stroked. If you hit it, Paro remembers its previous action and tries not to do that action. By interaction with people, Paro responds as if it is alive, moving its head and legs, making sounds, and showing your preferred behavior. Paro also imitates the voice of a real baby harp seal.

Paro is an autonomous robot, so it can express its feelings, such as surprise and happiness, voluntarily by blinking its eyes and moving its head and legs. This behavior can be perceived as if Paro has feelings.

Please take care of Paro by touching it and talking to it. Paro feels happy when you stroke and hold it softly. Paro feels angry when you hit it. When Paro's whiskers are touched, it will be very shy and cry or turn its head because it does not like to be touched. You will be happy and relieved through interacting with Paro.

Paro is hand-made so that each Paro has its own individual facial expression. Paro will be very happy if you take care of it for a long time.

Paro's artificial fur is very hygienic with an anti-bacterial, soil resistant finish, and hair-loss prevention, so that it can be cared for a long time. Paro has an electromagnetic shield, so it can be used by people with a pacemaker. Paro's reliability and durability have been improved through long-term experimentation, such as the drop test and the stroking test, during which the tactile sensor is stimulated more than 100,000 times.

Where am I on Paro? Well, I woud like our elderly not to be warehoused and forgotten. But if this technology brings such smiles and joy to the faces I witnessed, bring it on!

Medical Humor Time:

The Night Before Christmas (as told by a physician)

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual
Yuletide celebration and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity
was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that
species of diminutive rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was
meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric
apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent
visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric
appellations is the honorific title of St. Nick.
The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated saccarinose fruit confections performing
choreography through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in
our nocturnal head-coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the
Arctic-like gloom when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds
there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise
with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the
precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this
fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflecting
as it was upon the surface of a recent crystalline aqueous precipitation,
might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself--thus permitting my
incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered
conveyance, drawn by an octet of diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer,
piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it
became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated beatified
caller. With this ungulate motive power traveling at a greater vertiginous
velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled
breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet
by his or her cognomen: "Now Dasher, now Dancer," et al, guiding them to
the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could
readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the sum total of the
thirty-two cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location and was performing a
pi radians pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved, with utmost celerity,
via a downward salutation, entry by way of the ceramic smoke passage. He was
clad entirely in animal integuments, soiled by the ebony residue from
partial oxidation of carboniferous fuels. His resemblance to a street
vendor I attributed to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore
dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with
reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every
evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and
nasal appurtenances were engorged with crimson circulatory fluid which, its
chroma suffusing the dermal layers, approximated the retinal sensation
reflected by the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and
supralabials resembled nothing so much as a flexible, curved strip of wood
associated with the American aborigines and their ambient, hirsute, facial
adornment had an absence of coloring comparable to crystalline frozen
hydrogen oxide vapor. Clenched firmly between his incisors was the
posterior projection of acalumet whose gray colloidal aerosol fumes, forming
a tenuous ellipticaltorus about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative
seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when
he waxed mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of
inpectinated fruit syrup in a colloidal gel state within a hemispherical
container. He was of Napoleonic stature, neither more nor less than an
obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered
me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from being so affected
by this risiblity. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and
rotating his head slightly eccentricly, he indicated that trepidation on my
part was superfluous. Without utterance, but with noticeable dispatch, he
commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the
articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously
dorsally transported cloth receptacle.

Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt pi radian rotation about
the vertical axis, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to
his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave
taking, and effected his egress by salutation up the smoke passage through
which he had made ingress. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto
his rustic winter conveyance. Contracting his oral sphincter, he emitted a
shrill series of notes to the antlered quadrupeds of burden and proceeded to
soar aloft in a movement hitherto observed chiefly among the seed bearing
portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible
immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility:
"Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to the selfsame
assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and
gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."