Back at the end of 2007, my tech prediction was that 2008 would be the year of the sexbot. This seemed a sure thing based on two developments: highly realistic sex dolls like those from RealDoll, and a cute little dinobot called Pleo capable of responding to human interaction and its environment. Cross Pleo with RealDoll, and what do you get? The first basic sexbot, of course.

2008 passed with no developments and likewise 2009. But at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas at the beginning of this year, Roxxxy, the world’s first sexbot allegedly, was unveiled.

I don’t know if the following vid will play for you if you’re not a member of youtube and logged in. When I tried while not logged in it gave me a warning saying that it wasn’t appropriate for everyone. This may be because at one point in the demo, Roxxxy has one of her between-the-legs “inputs” touched.

If you can’t see the vid, the summary is that Douglas Hines of TrueCompanion.com mentions all the right things in his speech, such as servos, AI, stimulus/response, and even user chosen multiple personalities. However, all you actually see is a talking doll.

Here is a reallybadradio.com video interview with Douglas Hines, in which he makes Roxxxy sound great, but, again, Roxxxy herself just sits there making middle aged, balding, bespectacled Hines himself look sexier by comparison. It’s not a good sign when a heterosexual male finds himself thinking he would rather do Roxxxy’s creator than Roxxxy.

One can google Roxxxy and get back a lot hits about the debut, but no reviews. The TrueCompanion.com web site is very weak on content and strong on contact forms. This is unsettling, since the timing for a scam that looks like this is just about perfect. By my estimate, the official announcement is overdue, so it’s easy to imagine someone going to a sex industry trade show, dressing up a mannequin in lingerie, and having a female assistant watching from behind the curtain make utterances appropriate to where the mannequin is being touched. Collect hundreds of advance orders for between seven and nine thousand dollars each, and k-ching, easy money. I’m not saying that’s the case, but Douglas Hines needs to do a much better job of selling this thing if it’s for real and as good as he says.

The following dark parody vid from somethingawful.com is kind of fun, if you can get past the youtube block and are familiar with the 9/11 reference on the TrueCompanion.com Who We Are page (at least that’s how things stand as I write this; at some point in the future better sense might lead to it being expunged). Apparently the whole process leading to Roxxxy began with speculation on how one could replace dead friends with robots, including a fellow who died in the attack on the World Trade Center. The actual parody of Roxxxy’s various personalities occurs at about 1:24 if you want to skip the Douglas Hines material they tacked on at the beginning.

Roxxxy appears to be more of a bad joke than even a basic sexbot. But the year is still young. Perhaps the real deal will debut at an actual tech show, since it would constitute a genuine technical achievement. It could even have the potential to steal the focus from the much buzzed about Apple Tablet. That could be a tough choice for a geek with only so many thousand to spend!

Alright, to save time we’re going to go ahead and take a head-count. If you have slept with Tiger Woods, I’m going to need you to go ahead and raise your hand. Yes, the young lady in the pink, I see that hand. Yes, ma’am, you and your daughter, check. Yes, in the back there . . . Nana, is that you?

By now the number of women not claiming to have shared a bed with the golf mogul is foundering under the weight of those who have. At the time of writing, 11 women have claimed that dubious prize and another handful are likely to report in by the end of the week. It has gotten to the point where news sources have to tack stories about Woods’ mother-in-law’s recent collapse onto the end of yet another story about yet another lady-pal because they can’t spare the (metaphorical) ink. I mean, the woman may be gravely ill, but TIGER HAS BEEN FORNICATING!!! AGAIN AND STILL!!!

But where are they all coming from? Rachel Uchitel was the first Tigress to be unearthed, but she was dragged from anonymity and through the mud by the National Enquirer. To date she is still all, Naw dude, those panties ain’t mine. This seems to have opened the floodgates, however, for every opportunistic young cocktail waitress or swimsuit model (or former Trashy Girls Lingerie employee or porn star [former or otherwise]) to claw their way into the spotlight. It’s like a 15-minute free-for-all.

Because Tiger doesn’t seem to be denying any of them. He was pretty well damned after the first few, and sorting through which ones he has and hasn’t actually slept with is only going to lend an air of lurid accounting to what is already a feeding frenzy. The sheer number of women scuttling out of the woodwork makes me doubt them, unless Tiger has wicked organizational skills — few of the women seem to have been aware of the others, and all of them seem oddly pissed. The did-she-or-didn’t-she is sort of moot, though. Even if the final tally ends up being scaled back to one or two, it’s unlikely that Tiger’s fans (and sponsors) will forgive him for having looked so damned good on paper, and for not actually being that shining beacon of hope.

So if you’re in the need for some quick celebrity, you can go ahead and chalk your name to the list. Or you can join the rest of the Oh-Noes-Brigade and ponder the likelihood of your own marriage surviving if this handsome young all-American and his hot wife can’t make it. Or you can refuse to believe any of it, or you can swallow all of it, or you can help Tiger escape his angry wife by guiding his Escalade through obstacles. I won’t lie, I’m hella good at that last one.

Call me a cynic, but I’m pretty sure most if-not-all women are missing the anatomy required for wearing condoms.

Why is it that women are always handed the responsibility to police sex? The article in question is a case in point: it discusses current sex education programs and their failure to encourage students — specifically female students — to practice safe sex. It goes on to claim that many women believe oral contraceptives (the pill, for example) protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

But while I’m all for encouraging safe sex, and yes, women should insist their partners wear condoms, shouldn’t this article be addressed to young men? The condom goes on their equipment, so why not stress the importance of condoms to them?

First of all, I don’t know a single woman who believes oral contraceptives protect against STDs. From experience, I know that when you go to the doctor to get or renew a prescription for birth control, the doctor reminds you that condoms are required for protection against STDs. My first time on birth control, the doctor said something along the lines of: “These stop you from getting pregnant. That’s it. You can still contract STDs. These are baby stoppers — that’s why they are called birth control pills.” And, in case you forget, reminders that oral contraceptives do not protect against STDs are printed several times on birth control packaging.

Second, I’ve heard this song before. Growing up, I received the “rape” lecture several times and from several different people in my life. The first time was in junior-high. Segregated from the boys, we learned how to prevent ourselves from becoming victims, and what to do if we became a victim. But did the boys learn about rape? No. No one told them no means no, sex by force is wrong, and all the other things women get told about rape.

No wonder a lot of them haven’t figured it out.

The article concludes by mentioning a rape case in which one of the suspects, a male, was quoted as saying “They pass out condoms, teach sex education and pregnancy-this and pregnancy-that. But they don’t teach us any rules.” Too true. The boys aren’t the ones getting taught the rules, regulations, and consequences of sex — the girls are. We get it from sex educators, parents, girlfriends, and doctors. The onus lies on us to keep sex safe, and disease- and baby-free.

It infuriates me. We need fewer studies and surveys implicating women, and more telling men to wear condoms and men to practice safe sex and men to avoid casual sex.

Perhaps the reason sex education is not producing the safest results is because it’s all aimed at one side of the mattress.