Two things of sociological import happened this weekend: 1) Vanderbilt DE Caleb Azubike successfully riled up the group of troglodytic mouth breathers (though, oddly enough, not mouth drinkers) that makes up the Tennessee Volunteers football fan base, and 2) HitchBOT, the delightful dreamer of an R2D2 clone designed by Canadian scientists to test whether or not robots can trust humans, was smashed into a jelly upon arrival in Philadelphia.
I'll begin this column with the latter. HitchBOT, a "Flat Stanley" for the 21st century of sorts, was an immobile low functioning robot designed as a fun, low stakes reversal on the sci-fi ultimate dystopian question, "Can man trust technology?