Now they are making Roombas into killing machines. The Onion is all over this story. Thanks to Yoders and Jordan for sending the links.

As if that’s not enough, my friend Dave has created his own apology robot.

Check out joedonatelli.com for all your latest robot coverage.

It says so right here. Thanks to Mr. Thomas for sending in the article, which details how humans and robots will begin having sex within five years and marrying within 50 years.

So many questions:

Is it cheating if it’s with a robot? How is that different than a woman’s “marital aid?”

Can two robots marry legally?

Can a man marry a male robot that looks exactly like him? Is that gay?

What will become of prostitutes?

Will the Roomba get jealous?

Who will build the first rape-able Hitler robot?

My head is going to explode.

(Above: Matt Kenseth pits at the 2008 Sprint All-Star race. Photo by Ford Racing/Flickr.)

NASCAR might be the one major sport with an all-star weekend that is actually enjoyable. The Pro Bowl, where defense is optional, is a joke. The interminable Major League Baseball All-Star game is so boring it once ended in a tie. The NBA All-Star game has less drama than a pickup game at the Y. (The NBA Draft is more exciting.) Only NASCAR gets it. It has created an all-star format both the drivers and fans enjoy.

ESPN.com reports that the Sprint All-Star race format has been tweaked to add a 10-lap shootout for $1 million. According to David Newton, “Instead of four 25-lap segments, there will be four segments run in increments of 50, 20, 20 and 10 laps to celebrate the event’s 25th anniversary May 16 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. A mandatory four-tire, green-flag pit stop will be held in the first segment after Lap 25. There will be an optional stop between the first and second segments, as well as between the third and fourth. A 10-minute break is scheduled between the third and fourth segments to allow teams to adjust the cars before the no-holds-barred, 10-lap shootout for $1 million.”

Imagine if the NBA All-Star game took a 10-minute break between the third and fourth quarter and the league told its players, “Each member of the winning team will receive $1 million. There will be no timeouts this quarter. Go play.” For ultra-competitive guys like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, it might not make a difference. For the guys who have been coasting on defense for three quarters, now they have incentive to ball.

NASCAR has tinkered with the race since 1985. It has made some mistakes, but it also has taken chances, something other leagues have failed to do in their quest to produce nap-worthy television.

As proof I give you the thrill, the majesty and the mystique of the NFL Pro Bowl Skills Challenge. Try to contain your excitement.

(Enjoy what you just read? To read about the role preparation plays in winning a NASCAR race, click here. To read about life in a small NASCAR shop, click here. To read about the pit row of the NASCAR universe - Mooresville, N.C. - click here. And to watch the cartoon about a stock-car-racing family that I wrote for, click here.)

I recently read an Associated Press story on how people are forming emotional attachments with their robots. The robot mentioned in the story was the Roomba, which is a vacuum cleaner developed by iRobot Corp.

Here is the lead from that story:

They give them nicknames, worry when they signal for help and sometimes even treat them like a trusted pet. A new study shows how deeply some Roomba owners become attached to the robotic vacuums, and suggests there’s a measure of public readiness to accept robots in the house – even flawed ones.

This story deals with human behavior, technology and love – a perfect topic for one of my columns. So I contacted iRobot and asked to speak with one of its spokespeople. I spent almost two weeks trying to make this happen. I even e-mailed my questions and asked a representative from the company to write me back.

All of my requests were rejected.

The media relations representative for iRobot wrote:

Hi Joe,

I received your questions and although this would make for a fun article, the iRobot team has declined to participate. I’ll be sure to keep you abreast of new product announcements and let you know if things change in the near future.

The first word that popped into my head when I read that was “cowards.” So many corporations are so spineless. It amazes me that people actually fear big business. But that’s a whole other column.

I wrote back:

I am sorry to hear that no one from iRobot will speak with me. This would have been a fun piece and I think it would have showed iRobot is hip and has a sense of humor. Clearly that is not the case. It appears to me that iRobot refuses to laugh. It refuses to enjoy existence. Almost like — a real robot. I can only conclude that the company is now run by a robot and that your spokesrobots are afraid I will expose them for what they are — humanoid beings with internal battery organs, blinking light eyes and monotone voices who lack the ability to enjoy life and want to punish humans for our irrational emotion-feelings by taking control the world.

Do NOT keep me abreast of new product announcements. Your incremental steps toward world domination need not flood my in-box.

May God have mercy on your souls.

Go Humans,
Joe

Below I have listed the questions that iRobot refused to answer. (The * indicates that the question was written by my brother Dan, who is a hilarious human writer.) Tell me this would not have been a fun interview.

Why do you think people have formed such personal attachments to their Roombas?

What are some of the ways that people have personalized their Roombas?

Do you have a Roomba? What is its name?

If you had to characterize your Roomba’s personality, would you say it’s “saucy?”

Isn’t iRobot’s Roomba just a low-tech rip-off of Rosie from The Jetsons? Have Hanna-Barbera’s lawyers contacted you yet?

Can the Roomba feel love?

* Do you have any tips for how NOT to fall in love with a Roomba?

Was the first Roomba constructed by a horribly disfigured scientist working alone in his abandoned castle?

How do you think robots 1,000 years from now will react when they discover they were descended from vacuum cleaners?

Do you think it’s possible that robots 1,000 years from now will lie and say they were descended from the military’s unmanned aerial vehicles, just so they don’t get their butts kicked by cyborg punks in high school?

Given that history has a way of repeating itself, do you think it is possible that the first human beings were vacuum cleaners of some type? That maybe we climbed out of the primordial ooze to clean up the shore and simply overstayed our welcome?

* Is there some sort of large, drone-bearing Mother Roomba that we need to be worried about?

* Can you feed your Roomba after midnight?

Have you ever had a Roomba turn against its human master like the first law enforcement robot from Robocop?

Just so we are clear, the settings on the Roomba do NOT include Human Extinction or Global Domination. Is that correct?

Could one order the Global Domination setting optional? Maybe I’m a military strongman and I’m building an army of robots. Would it be possible to launch a division of Roombas to vacuum my opponents while I hid three miles beneath the earth in my secret futuristic-looking lair?

Since no one at iRobot spoke with me, I can only speculate on the robot-human attachment. So here’s my take. Human beings form attachments with everything. I have a friend with a deep emotional attachment to Diet Coke. I have another friend who has an emotional attachment with the worst franchise in sports history, the Cincinnati Bengals. I myself had a deep emotional attachment with a 1991 Buick LeSabre.
(Above: A little part of me died when I sold that car. And that part, was my kidney.)

These are all healthy attachments because all of these things in some way bring joy into our lives. Especially that LeSabre. It was like a couch on wheels. I miss that car the way a fat kid misses shoving people out of the way to get cake.

So that’s my theory. People can love anything. Robots qualify as anything. Therefore people can love robots.

If you sense a little disappointment in my writing voice, iRobot, it is because I have the capacity to smile and laugh and love and hurt and cry. That is something you and your uber-rational sentinels will never comprehend. So go ahead. Enslave the human race. Send us down to work in your robot mines where we will dig for robot gold for your robot king. I will still pity you. Because you will never know what it is to feel joy or pain, you heartless, soulless bastards.

Go Humans.

To read Joe’s previous column “Deloitte & Touche & Women” click here.

I love stories like this one. We’re killing the ozone with our kindness.