Well, we’re doomed.

Cyberdine NEC has released a hoard of ravenous, meat-hungry robots, which will surely spell the end for modern humanity as we know it. These vile fiends have tasted human flesh, and they like it.

Mocking us, the robot tells one man he tastes like bacon, and you can almost see the cold, dead cyborg lick his breathless lips. He tells another man he tastes like a delectable Italian cured meat, and you can imagine him sharpening his chef’s knife as it protracts from his rigid, pulseless left arm. The robot finishes us off with a hearty glass of Merlot and selects the sweetest apple from a bushel picked by the robot’s slave humans, who are harvesting fruits and fermenting grapes to feed and nurture the growing machine army. It is a systematic nightmare.

Okay, so maybe it hasn’t quite gotten that far yet.

NEC’s research has, however, developed a personal robot that can identify wine by type, taste and brand as well as identify different types of foods and determine their taste using infrared technology. The robot was able to determine the sweetest tasting of three apples in one example, while pointing out the other two were slightly sour.

It does all this by analyzing the chemical composition of the items placed before its IR spectrometer-equipped left hand.

So it’s right hand must be where the chain gun goes.

The two-year effort has led to a seemingly harmless looking robot, but when one reporter took things too far and put his own hand up to the robot, he was identified as prosciutto, a tasty Italian salted/cured meat. A cameraman gave it a try and came up bacon.

The technology represents a remarkable breakthrough in food and wine identification. Priceless bottles of wine can now be identified as legitimate or counterfeit without the need for opening the bottle. Food could possibly be identified as spoiled without anyone having to get sick in the testing process. The story was picked up in a Wired blog. While there are no plans to market the product just yet, a South Coast Today article shows that the car-priced robot could be brought down to as little as $1,000, making it another toy for those with the liquid capital to budget to such an expense.

And all it’s going to cost us is our freedom to live in a society that’s free of maniacal robot rule.

It’s called anthocyanin. It makes for purple tomatoes, and it’s good for you.

These antioxidant pigments, the same type found in red wine, are making their way into a once rare type of tomato. Researchers at Oregon State University have figured out how to naturally produce these grape-colored fruit without any “unnatural” means. The tomatoes are crossbred with variety that grows naturally. By crossing the different types of tomatoes, researchers learned that a single dominant gene is responsible for producing the pigment, much like eye or hair color in animals.

This discovery first surfaced in 2004, when the university announced the findings of Jim Myers, a vegetable breeding professor at OSU.

“The medical, the nutritional and the food research industries all are keenly interested in the health benefits of phytochemicals in all sorts of fruits and vegetables,” said Myers. “We are happy to find out we can accomplish this in tomatoes using traditional, classical plant breeding techniques.”

The purples have generated their own buzz lately as CNN picked up the story in an article today. The article speculated that the tomatoes might not be the next revolution in food but could find their ways into American dishes shortly.

Tomatoes are the second most consumed vegetable in world, behind potatoes, said Myers.

“Per capita use in the U.S. in 2003 was 89 pounds of tomatoes per person. If we could boost the nutritional value of tomatoes, a large part of the population would benefit.”

That’s over 200 pounds of food consumed per person per year in tomatoes and potatoes alone. Makes you wonder about all that ketchup and french fries.

It’s in every garage, tool shed and project room. Every grandfather keeps it handy when the old chainsaw or snow blower needs to be cleaned. It’s been around for over 50 years, has over 2000 uses and over 100,000 members in its own fan club.

WD-40. Chemically, it is a mixture of aliphatic petroleum distillates and petroleum base oil in aerosol. It is a highly flammable material, but that may be the worst determined feature of this veritable wonder product. It should not be breathed in or consumed, but it generally causes no serious exposure side effects. It might dry your skin or cause redness or discomfort in the eyes if exposed.

It will help remove a stuck bolt or lug nut, take tomato stains out of clothing, remove tar from a truck chassis, stop a whole host of squeaks and noises, remove stickers and tape from many places and lubricate almost everything.

Best of all, and this is what really floored the PR guy, it is 100% non carcinogenic. None of WD-40’s ingredients have been determined to cause cancer. According to its Material Safety Data Sheet:

The components in this mixture have been found to be noncarcinogenic (sic) by NTP, IARC and OSHA

Diet Coke has ingredients that could be cancer causing. WD-40, an industrial solvent, doesn’t.

I had a chance to talk with Bill Trumpfheller, the president of Nuffer Smith Tucker Public Relations which handles PR for the WD-40 company. He pointed me to the history of WD (which stands for Water Displacement, by the way) 40.

In 1953, a group of chemists, under the name “Rocket Chemical Company” wanted to create a rust-preventing solvent for industrial use. After 39 failed attempts, they came up with a winner. And what a winner it was, because the original formula used in the 1953 remains unchanged 53 years later.

Currently, WD-40 is promoting their new No-Mess Pen, portable WD-40 that goes anywhere and is marketed with over 300 uses including removal of crayon marks on household surfaces, lubrication of ski bindings and padlocks and prevention of caught zippers.

So, why bring all this up now? Besides being a complete feel-good story, your PR guy was working on a small home improvement project this week.

Looking at the picture to the right, you can surely imagine what this table originally looked like: brown, grainy wood with an elaborate but tarnished bronze drawer handle; very rustic; very old. The table was in really bad condition, and one of the wings had broken off. Instead of throwing it out, I decided I could use an end table and I refinished it with two coats of paint and three coats of lacquer. I also took off the old drawer handle and replaced it with something a little more modern.

But when all was said, done and lacquered, the drawer wouldn’t slide back into the slot. The metal was already rusty and some paint and lacquer had slipped on there making the problem worse.

Not being one for simple fixes usually, I had toyed with building a new frame or slide for the drawer and even removing the drawer feature and putting the cover back on for decoration; both stupid and needless ideas.

Then common sense flashed before my eyes: spray some WD-40 and see if that does the job.

It did.