Great News for Sabermetricians!

As someone who derives unusual joy from baseball statistics, I feel sanctioned in observing that this is a positive development for me and some of my fellow travelers:

The device looks like an ordinary box attached to a computer with a rotating straw. A closer look reveals otherwise. Students at Japan’s Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications have created a small device that uses motor rotations with the aim to simulate the feeling of a kiss over the Internet.

…

Upon closer inspection, we learn that the kissing device responds directly to a person’s tongue. On one end, a person rotates the “straw” in one direction and the “straw” on the other end will rotate in the same direction. The result is a powerful tactile response that feels like you’re giving or receiving a kiss.

And best of all!

With the ability to record kissing patterns, the device could be a one-solution-cure to loneliness.

Some observations, bullet-pointed for today’s business traveler …

It’s really a pity that the name “HotBot” is already taken.

Let’s be honest: who among us has not, perhaps beerily, dreamt of making out with the Internet? If you deny this, then know that the line of lying liars and their flaming pants forms on the right.

If Dan Shaughnessy runs across word of this device, he’ll use it to mock our ilk mercilessly … right after he purchases one to keep in his car, one to keep in his darkened utility closet, and one to keep in his “weeping room.”

I’m guessing that an unhealthy number of us, by force of rote and habit, often give Agent Scully a vigorous, ham-tongued and imagined imaginary Frenching while we coolly regard Pitch-FX scatterplots. If this describes you — and, lo, it does — then know that your life just got easier.

It’s hard to justify a bullet-point list with just four entries, so here’s a fifth.

Smooch!