Payment in kind

While I'm not entirely sure I'd want to eat at Tanya Gold's former employer, her account of their tipping practices made me laugh:

Was I a good waitress? Well, it depended on my mood. Every Saturday morning, a nice man called John would come in and give me an ecstasy tablet. I was sometimes even tipped in pills. (I am now, I would like to mention, comprehensively clean – I am on gum.) So, on Saturdays, I was a very happy waitress. "Whitebait?" I would simper ecstatically, as my mad, drugged eyes took in the table of four. For some reason, they always looked slightly afraid.

Huggable robots?

Via BoingBoing, a deeply unsettling video of an "emotional robot":

Um, don't people normally get cats if they feel slightly blue and want something that reacts to them but which doesn't make emotional demands? (Oh, come on! Cats don't really do emotions. You know as well as I do that if cats ever develop opposable thumbs, the human race will be wiped out over night...)