Cry, robot: the android dental patient at the cutting edge

· Machines filling gaps in shrinking workforce
· Japanese market to grow to £26bn a year by 2025

The days of a guaranteed pain-free visit to the dentist may not be far off thanks to a petite Japanese woman in a pink sweater who goes by the name of Simroid. She has a limited vocabulary and a strange complexion, but the 160cm-tall humanoid robot is happy to feel your pain.

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Illusion and the sacred

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.

Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity