Popular Science is running an article 
The Man Who Mistook his Girlfriend for a Robot which describes an interesting function: Mori's Uncanny Valley
if you plot similarity to humans on the x-axis against emotional reaction on the y, [...] the curve rises steadily [...] But at a certain point, just shy of true verisimilitude, the curve plunges down, through the floor of neutrality and into real revulsion, before rising again to a second peak of acceptance that corresponds with 100 percent human-like. This chasm—Mori's Uncanny Valley—represents the notion that something that's like a human but slightly off will make people recoil.
The article claims that the effect is "just a theory", meaning it doesn't really exist. (I don't think that word means what they think it does.)
It would be fun to develop a model that produces the effect. Maybe I'll have my students build a model that does that this fall. In the past, we've done modelling using Netlogo, but this year we may try using Squeak. I saw a demo at BioQUEST which suggested squeak can do everything netlogo can do plus a lot more. I downloaded squeak this morning and have been playing with it.
I got my copy of Nami today! Our local haiku society, the Haiku Poets Society of Western Massachusetts, published a 10th anniversary chapbook this year and there are five of my haiku in it. I'm so pleased! Often chapbooks are just folded over and stapled, but not this one. Several people worked very hard and it really shows -- the production qualities are very high: good paper, attractive layout, nice typesetting, and professional binding. Its fun to see my own haiku, of course, but I'm also glad to have the haiku from the rest of the society. It's priced at $12 and is available by mail from
Pine Island Books
PO Box 317
West Springfield, MA 01090