One fact is crystal clear to me now.

When the robot revolution comes, it shall not be filled with violence, with a mist of sparks and blood, with twisted metal clashing upon bruised flesh in a final battle for the domination of the earth. Rather, we will be gently lulled into submission–our freedom and last vestiges of autonomy plied easily from our grasp by gentle, deliberate, chrome fingers.

We shall indeed go gentle into that good night, for ultimately, our destruction will be caused by that which we love most, and robots make best: pancakes.

Sure, at first it will seem subtle. Of course, the improperly routed UPS package in your name containing several stacks of flap jacks and jug of Vermont’s liquid gold was simply a clerical error. And maybe it was just an accident that your GPS directed you to IHOP or Waffle House instead of to the bank.

But by the time we finally see, through obese eyes, the gravity of humanity’s plight, the hour will be too late for reprieve. By then, the robots will have amassed an awesome arsenal of silver dollars, johnny cakes, and other weapons too caloric to utter.

As has been evidenced by the production of an astounding pancake stacking robot, there is nothing robots enjoy more than to fatten up their masters with mile high stacks of pancakes.

I’m afraid a recently obtained video from Japan’s Food Machinery and Technology Expo 2009 does not bode well for the human race. Here you can view robots using a mandolin to slice veggies and tactile feedback sensors to pick up sushi without squashing it. Most ominously, we see a fully automated Japanese pancake chef robot–a culinary Megatron.

Watch in fear:

(via boingboing)

This amazing pancake stacking robot is able to use a visual system to track pancakes on a conveyor belt, pick them up, and stack them on top of each other on yet another moving conveyor belt. This is a great piece of engineering and computer science, and as someone who used to work in the field, I’m pretty impressed. Especially by the ability to pick out overlapping pancakes.

The speed of this robot is very impressive. I initially thought that they had sped up the footage, until it said that the entire system could stack up to 400 pancakes per minute. So that means each of the four robots is stacking ~1.7 pancakes a second.

A short while ago I visited STIX Restaurant and Lounge in Back Bay to try out (what else?) their STIX.

STIX are thin pieces of wood soaked in marinade such that when you skewer meat with them, they exude their flavorful bounty into whatever you are skewering from the inside out. STIX Restaurant and Lounge offers many different varieties of STIX, each designed to pair with the particular protein within which they are impaled.

I especially recommend the Applewood Smoked Bacon on Honey Burbon STIX in Waffle Batter and the Tuna Sashimi Style on Ginger Mango STIX that are featured in this video.

(Music Credit: “Three if by Outer Space” by Cameron Mizell from Life is Loud)

This is, in fact, a real item that you can buy.

The people at Hamilton Deisgn have come up with perhaps the most astounding set of wine glasses that I have ever seen. A velvet-lined wooden box opens to reveal seven different glasses for seven different sins.

The cups are designed as follows:

1. Wrath: A sharply pointed dagger-like glass that could cut you to the quick.
2. Greed: A cup with tenticular protuberances that fill on the sides (pictured above).
3. Pride: A tall, thin, extremely voluminous glass that lifts off of its stem so that it cannot be placed down again until the glass is completely quaffed.
4. Gluttony: A bulbous, asymmetric glass that forces you to drink slovenly.
5. Lust: A vessel on a chain meant to be held over you by a companion while you lick a glass ball to keep the wine flowing.
6. Envy: A glass full of holes that can hold wine but is impossible to drink.
7. Sloth: Another vessel on a chain but with an open stopper that just pours and pours and pours.

Click here to view images of them all