FTT Welcomes "Warm Meat" Steve Austin, Our New Robot Hybrid Uber-Athlete Overlord

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6425927.stm

(Summary for non-clickers: The South Korean government is drawing up an ethical code of conduct for human-robot relations.)

Seeing this in close proximity to yet another Bonds Update caused a mash-up in our little meat heads. To wit, when does a mechanically-enhanced human make the bigs, and how would it all play out?

You could make the argument that Lasix surgery already has breached this area, and prior to that, all kinds of surgeries. Many pitchers have reported getting a little more velocity on the fastball following the Tommy John procedure, not that the gain outweighs the risk.

So let's imagine, in the too-short time that technology is racing past us Bags O' Meat, an MLB player who loses an appendage, and has it replaced with something (gasp!) better than before. And for probably more than six million dollars, man.

If/when this happens, we predict the following:

1) To a certain percentage of the populace, it'll be fine, so long as he's white / non-Muslim / AMERICAN. U-S-A-B-O-R-G!

2) Warm Meat will get endorsement deals and Inspirational Story coverage from a media that's afraid of appearing insensitive to the prosthetically-enabled, regardless of whether Warm Meat is an ass or not. (Many war vets will love him.)

3) A scrappy David Eckstein-type teammate will get big press ups for daring to tease Warm Meat about his device, because, dammit, this is what Guys Do.

4) Several years later, other athletes will be outed as hybrids. (You're telling us Tiger Woods is 100% Meat? Excuse us while we laugh in menacing binary code. 00001111001010101010101010.)

5) Headline writers will rejoice, as years of hacky jokes will be at their fingertips. In the future, we will *all* hate Isaac Asimov.

6) Five years after Warm Meat is terminated due to product obsolescence, various Hall of Fame meat bags will refuse to put him on the first ballot, because of The Implant. They will die in mysterious household accidents before the next year of voting.

7) FTT's writing duties will be passed off to Snarker6, a formulaic writerbot who will inevitably write in hacky joke lists before going off to drink, alone.

Snarker6 does not need your pity.