'Unit 01 Self Portrait' by Adam Szymczak

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We humans love robots. We fear them. We fantasize about them.

At least I do.

Some 70 artists around Boston set out to reveal their “inner robots” for a new show opening Friday in the South End. Recently I went to check out their illustrations, paintings and sculptures, the beautiful and bizarre. That’s where I met Skunk.

Skunk deals in junk. He shows me his trio of adorable, scrap-metal creations — three-foot machines called “Astrobots.” They’re made of used bicycle parts and all kinds of rusty old gears and sprockets.

'Benno' by Skunk

“I try to look at myself as a modern-day prospector living off the land,” Skunk says. “You know, in my urban environment, there’s ton of steel being chucked and oscillating fan parts and just all kinds of really charismatic and sexy, oily bits.”

Boot me up, baby.

“There’s happy ones, there’s sad ones, there’s funky ones, there’s childlike ones. There’s dirty ones,” Bennitt says. “They’re people-esque. But, not.”

Ami Bennitt is the curator of this show, called “I… You… We… ROBOT.” After calling on artists at large for submissions, she received hundreds.

Artist Derrek Coss doesn’t build robots, he paints them — in people-esque settings, with people-esque needs.

“I try to look at some concerns that we as humans are already concerned with. Health care and insurance, workers unions and things of that sort,” Coss says.

(I wonder if robots are more likely than Congress to pass health care reform.)

Coss tells me the same thing I hear from a lot of the artists here: It’s fun to play God.

“I think there’s something neat about things that can be humanlike that aren’t human at all. And we can put any kind of human aspect onto these robots, and they’re still robots,” he says.

His images reveal powers and abilities we might wish we had. Like the ability to scale a skyscraper with suction-cup feet.

See, that’s the perennial trap for us dumb humans. The robots we create wind up surpassing us. To be honest, most of the creations in this show are way cooler than their creators.

That’s why I wish I could be a robot.

In a place of worship no bigger than the room of a funeral parlor, the sweet chorus of 200 Haitian-Americans sing “I have a song in my heart” with enough grief to make the walls shake.

On River Street in Mattapan, in the heart of Boston’s Haitian community, sits the Haitian Church of the Nazarene. The converted former health clinic also serves as headquarters for the faith-based Greater Boston Nazarene Compassionate Center.

Photographs by Andrew Phelps. Sound by David Boeri.

The American Repertory Theater is staging an experiment in Cambridge called “Gatz,” an unedited performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s entire famous novel. Word-for-word, cover-to-cover, the production clocks in at six-and-a-half hours.

Produced for WBUR.

A Boston woman who has worked to bring health care to millions of Haitians is now working to save their lives.

Ophelia Dahl is executive director of the nonprofit medical group Partners In Health, whose medical facilities in Haiti were established in 1985. Now that the nation’s main hospitals are destroyed, Dahl’s army of doctors and nurses on the ground is mobilizing to help people in Port-au-Prince.

“Haiti has been decapitated,” Dahl said. “Its capital city and major institutions, including relief organizations like the United Nations, whose job it would be to mobilize at a time like this, are in a state of terrible chaos.”

As part of the relief effort, Partners has been inundated with appeals from medical workers and local Haitian-Americans looking to volunteer.

“There will be and there is already enormous interest in going and helping,” Dahl said, “(including) obviously Haitians themselves in this very supportive community that is Boston.”

Produced by Andrew Phelps for WBUR.

Technologist David Weinberger says Google’s commitment to “not being evil” may no longer be possible in China. The search superpower says it is considering pulling out of China after its Gmail servers were hacked — and that Chinese human rights activists were the targets.

“Google could, I suppose, stay in at the risk of being hacked and provide search results that are censored, in an environment where even instant messages are censored,” says Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

“But there’s not a lot of room for them to do good of the Western sort that we all like, given the control that the Chinese government has over the very architecture of the Internet.”

Produced and edited for WBUR.

Menino is sworn in with his wife, Angela, and his grandchildren. (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

BOSTON — On Day One of his unprecedented fifth term, Mayor Thomas M. Menino promised an era of renewal and innovation and sought to mollify critics who say 20 years in office is too long.

“We’re going to take risks and experiment,” Menino said at his inauguration Monday before hundreds at Fanueil Hall.

“The old way of saying ‘no’ doesn’t exist anymore,” he said, promising to take another hard look at old problems.

The mayor identified four goals for his next term: to reform education; revitalize development and economic growth; improve the delivery of basic city services; and make government more inclusive.

Menino said he plans to cut or consolidate 24 programs and find six more to expand. He did not say what those programs would be.

On education, Menino was most specific. He said he is seeking authority to create in-district charter schools and the flexibility to reassign teachers to schools where they’re most needed.

“Make no mistake: It’s not pro-union to maintain under-performing schools for their own children,” Menino said. “It’s certainly not right to put adult interests before kids’ needs.”

The 13 members of the Boston City Council also were sworn in for their new terms, including the two newcomers, Felix Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley, the council’s first black woman. The City Council will elect a new president in its first meeting Monday afternoon.

Menino was jovial throughout the ceremony, cracking jokes and making faces while reciting the lengthy oaths of office. He hobbled to the lectern with a cane, two months after having knee surgery and fading from public view.

“This time allowed me to speak with many of you,” he said. “We all understand the national economic crisis touched every family.”

Menino promised to create new jobs in biotech, health care and the high-tech and creative industries, focusing on thousands of undeveloped acres of Boston’s long-stalled waterfront. He said he would experiment with “alternative housing models” that allow people to live closer to work.

The mayor also pledged to complete development projects at Downtown Crossing, where a Filene’s building once stood, and Roxbury’s Dudley Square.

Turning to his third priority, to improve basic services, Menino promised to turn every citizen into an “Urban Mechanic” — a nickname he acquired over the years for his hyperlocal attention to neighborhood problems.

During his re-election campaign, and under fire from critics who derided Menino as old school, the administration released an iPhone app that allows Bostonians to report graffiti, potholes and broken streetlights.

Menino took pains to invoke the renewal theme throughout the speech; the word “new” appeared 25 times in his prepared remarks.

Voters gave Menino a resounding victory again in November, silencing challenger Michael Flaherty, but Menino enjoyed his smallest margin of victory to date, and he spent more money on this campaign than ever before.

Photo credit unknown

My grandfather died today. He was a tireless advocate for medicine. He discovered the Rh factor. He made the world’s best chicken sandwiches. He was my best friend growing up. He was 93 and still young. Merry Christmas, Grampy.
He still cut quite a figure at 89. I blogged about my impromptu interview with him on his 90th. And I grabbed a picture with him at 91.

Location: Coffey Street Pier, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York

I am completely in love with the people who clean my apartment twice per month, Liza and Josh. Here is their latest correspondence, this time in the form of a note left on the table before they left. (FYI, they adore my cats.)