To boldly blow...

In yet another reason that Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk, Sir Patrick Stewart is now using his considerable nerd-clout to save the whales, you know, before they go extinct and someone has to travel back in time to the 1980's to kidnap some more before that alien probe thingy comes along and kills us all.

No really, that was the plot of Star Trek IV.

Snotbot: getting sneezed on
by whales, so you don't have to.

Let's say you're a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of whales and the ocean and you've just come up with a new way to collect valuable research without freaking out your favorite marine creatures. Now let's further suppose that your idea is called a Snotbot and it's a drone that hovers over the blowholes of whales and collects mucus whenever they...blow. Awesome, right? Well, no, it's actually pretty gross and can't possibly be an easy sell to investors. After all, most of us go to great lengths to avoid mucus.

Sir Patrick Stewart, acting
the shit out of this scene.

Enter Sir Patrick and quite possibly the greatest Kickstarter video ever. Behold! No, you're supposed to click on the link, I'll wait. Back? Great. That's Sir Patrick Stewart, member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, star of Star Trek and X-Men, getting shot at with a nerf gun, for science. He's a goddamn hero that man. Anyway, the drone is an alternative to more invasive collection techniques that freak out the whales with airhorns and needles and it will revolutionize the field of marine biology. And that's all great, but I would advise some caution.

I'm not saying that whale research isn't an incredibly worthy cause, it is, it's just that someday robots are going to be smart enough to figure out that we've been sending them in to do some really unpleasant jobs so that we don't have to and well, let's just hope they don't have long memories...

"That was for Snotbot!"

-ED-209, not entirely unjustified