We occasionally joke about the looming robot menace, but seriously. Discoblog has picked out the Niftiest Robots of 2009, but “Scariest” would have been an equally appropriate appellation.

Yes, there is a robot that crawls around inside your colon, not to mention a Japanese emobot, but the one I would least like to meet in a dark alley is Chembot. It’s a blob-shaped thing that uses jamming in granular materials to make a robot that can alter its shape.

Still pretty primitive, but you can see where we’re headed here. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Here are the opening sentences of Chapter Five of my book:

When most people hear ?scientist,? they think ?Einstein.? Albert Einstein is an iconic figure; not many theoretical physicists attain a level of celebrity where their likeness appears regularly on T-shirts. But it?s an intimidating, distant celebrity. Unlike, say, Tiger Woods, the precise achievements that Einstein is actually famous for remain somewhat mysterious to many people who would easily recognize his name.

And now we can add, “and some achievements should really stay mysterious, thanks just the same.”