Life lesson #7583: Never doubt your wife...

If you've ever noticed when talking with my wife, she'll occassionally mix up details of a story or two. This usually occurs with song lyrics (some of her new words to a few Coldplay songs are quite amusing), but also tend to happen when she's either not listening carefully or when she's about to doze off. My favorite example of this happened a few years ago, after she tried to stay up to watch some PBS special about migrant workers from Mexico late one night. During a conversation at lunch the following day, she talked about the relevant points of the documentary highlighting the problems of illegal immigration, the labor force in California, and the reliance of American agriculture on migrant workers. Everything seemed to make sense until she tried to recall what they talked about at the end of the show as she fell asleep in the wee hours of the early morning.

"Something about Mexican farmers and orange-picking robots," she said. "I think the Mexican workers stay across the border in Mexico and control the robots in California using remote controls to pick the fruit. That way, it's all legal, and they still get paid."

Of course, this sounded totally bizarre to me. Orange-picking robots controlled by Mexicans? What?! I have since ridiculed her in fun multiple times about this story. Every so often, I'll even Google the internet looking for Mexican orange-picking robots to make sure I'm not the one who needs to check my facts, and come up with nothing. Remote controlled orange-picking robots. Sheesh. Where does she come up with these things?

Well, today, I eat crow. Wired magazine today has an article about Vision Robotics, a company based in San Diego that makes [drum roll]...ORANGE-PICKING ROBOTS!

No mention about remote controls in Mexico, though.