Let’s get small

Published 9:13 pm Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Tasty tunes: Apple introduced its smallest-ever MP3 player Wednesday. The redesigned Shuffle will hold about 1,000 songs, can speak the title and artist of the song playing, and is about the size of a AA battery.

And should you accidentally swallow your iPod, you’ll still be able to listen to your music using a pair of Bluetooth-enabled headphones.

An Apple as a teacher? A Tokyo professor has developed a robot teacher that can take roll call and shout orders to students such as “Be quiet!” The robot’s humanlike face is capable of displaying six basic emotions: surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness.

Teachers needn’t worry yet about losing their jobs to a robot. The programmers haven’t been able to build a robot than can give that withering look your English teacher shot you when you handed in your report on “Beowulf” a day late.

“The Buzz” is already taken: Faux news pundit Stephen Colbert is imploring his fans to go to a NASA Web site and write in his name in a contest to name a new module for the international space station, skipping more lofty names such as Serenity and Legacy.

Considering that the module’s equipment recycles astronauts’ urine into drinking water, we suggest it be named “I’m Really Not That Thirsty.”