Homemade security 'bum bot' turns up on the Colbert Report

Oh bum bot. We remember when you were fresh out of the hands of creator Rufus Terrill. Now look at you -- featured on the Colbert Report. You may have seen photos of this vagrant-deterring robot before, but you haven't lived till you've seen the hard-hitting, in-depth coverage that Stephen Colbert delivers on it. Take a look at the video after the break to see a defender of America (and bot) on the front lines of battle.

[Thanks, Tony S.]

[Peter F @ Apr 25th 2008 2:09PM]

Looks like it has the base of an old 'timer mover'

[BB @ Apr 25th 2008 2:09PM]

Would seem more like enema bot

[Adrian Williams @ Apr 25th 2008 2:12PM]

He should add a high powered strobe light and a higher powered water cannon

[Ghen @ Apr 25th 2008 2:11PM]

nice =)

[crho85 @ Apr 25th 2008 2:13PM]

Maybe they should use bumbot in rough school districts:

Please present hall pass, you have ten seconds to comply.

[Ryan Trevisol @ Apr 25th 2008 2:15PM]

My principal would order 10.

[WorldCTZen @ Apr 25th 2008 2:15PM]

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!!

[ishism @ Apr 25th 2008 7:10PM]

Skid Row, Beware!!

[masternave @ Apr 25th 2008 2:14PM]

Yikes! The daleks are coming!

[Craig @ Apr 25th 2008 2:18PM]

Black lady is hilarious. She really, really likes the idea of having "two or three" robots. A-HAA HAA HAAAA!

[Warhorse @ Apr 25th 2008 2:18PM]

Just when you thought it wasn't safe to go out after dark....

Thank You Bum Bot!

[kilgary @ Apr 25th 2008 2:33PM]

Cold water on a cold night could lead to giving a homeless person frostbite or worse. This could really be an effective deterrent. It's just sad that our nation is so poorly equipped to handle our citizens with mental disorders that we instead focus on shooing them away like rats.

[Will @ Apr 25th 2008 2:39PM]

Bleep Blorp my friend, Bleep Blorp.

[o29 @ Apr 25th 2008 2:53PM]

Because we all know that every homeless person has a mental disorder...

[burke @ Apr 25th 2008 3:25PM]

I studied homeless people in the seventh grade, and unless there's been a huge change in the "demographic," the stereotype that homeless people have mental disorders is inaccurate. The majority of homeless people in fact have jobs, but homes and apartments are expensive and they cannot afford them.

One of the problem's with the homeless is that they prey on a person's guilt, because when you actually give homeless people change, it gives them no reason to alter their behavior, and they continue to beg on the streets. I know it's not ubiquitous, but look up the instances of "dateline" or "60 minutes" type shows that have followed some of these "homeless." They watch as they walk up to BMW's and Mercedes and drive off to expensive homes.

The problem is lack of motivation. There are shelters and soup kitchens and programs that help the homeless. (In DC there is the homeless newspaper, StreetSense)

I personally have seen homeless tooling around in powered wheelchairs, and asking for change. Where are they plugging those things in? Who bought them the chair in the first place?

Vagrancy can be a terrible affliction, but it can also be a choice. Instead of loitering and asking for spare change, there are more lucrative activities they could be doing.

[Will @ Apr 25th 2008 3:55PM]

Burke,

If you want people to take you seriously, do not preface your argument with "I studied (said topic) in seventh grade."

[mrpoo @ Apr 25th 2008 5:09PM]

I shoot rats with a .22. Bums get liquid fury!

[Moo2 @ Apr 25th 2008 8:27PM]

there are such things as homeless shelters. there was something in the news that some bums in baltimore were "professional" hobos. basically, theyd dress like crap, travel to the stadiums, and bum for money. some of these people had 6-figure incomes

john stossel (with the moustache) did a thing on hobos. he offered them $40 for them to cut his lawn and gave them bus tokens to get there. not a single one showed up.

if the bums dont want to be sprayed with water, they should go to a shelter and try to get a job. not trying is whats keeping them on the streets

[Andir3.0 @ Apr 25th 2008 10:09PM]

There are "bums" that work downtown Chicago pretending to be bums. If you follow some of them when the sun comes up, you'll see them get in their Mercedes Benz and drive home to their nice suburban home. There was a news report about it a few years back. Not all bums are homeless.

[Waveblade @ Apr 25th 2008 2:28PM]

Wouldn't it be better to give a comedy central link until inevitably that youtube is taken down for copyright infringement?

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/index.jhtml

[Waveblade @ Apr 25th 2008 2:29PM]

Oops wrong link!

But then again they do show ads on their website so :S

[Bum Master @ Apr 25th 2008 2:42PM]

Should have used because instead. OOPS

[Mat @ Apr 25th 2008 2:44PM]

It's got a speaker on it, so should play the "piss on you" song from the David Shappel Show. Pull the trigger and plays the song as you hose somebody.--The piss on you bot

[Brian @ Apr 25th 2008 2:46PM]

From a local Atlanta radio station, this was funnier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4mRJY6NEwI

[Adrian Williams @ Apr 25th 2008 3:14PM]

and from CNN with the black woman from the first one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeUkgM-liSs&NR=1

[Blaktornado @ Apr 25th 2008 3:10PM]

There's a difference between making a satirical joke and just blatantly mocking someone's efforts. This was not funny.

But what is funny is the British meanings of "Bum" if it were to be used in this context.

[derspiess42 @ Apr 25th 2008 3:48PM]

That thing rules.

[Ken @ Apr 25th 2008 3:56PM]

It looks like someone tried to make the "Death Mobile" from Animal House out of a Lark!

[John Stracke @ Apr 25th 2008 4:44PM]

For those who were confused about this, as I was (making a deathmobile out of a bird?): it was a car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Lark

[John Stracke @ Apr 25th 2008 4:42PM]

Lydia Meredith: "This place is not like it looks now when the sun goes down."

Um, yeah? *Most* places don't look the same when the sun goes down. That's why we call it *night*.

[Gaz @ Apr 26th 2008 12:52PM]

Not literally you idiot!!!

[Shadowfox952 @ Apr 25th 2008 11:34PM]

it splurges water over hobos

...sweet

[Martha Bridegam @ Apr 27th 2008 4:03PM]

I don't know what kind of people think it's funny to shoot cold water at their fellow citizens for the crime of being poor.

[Ramifications @ Apr 26th 2008 9:23PM]

It's not a crime to be poor....it's a crime to trespass. That's why he is chasing them off his property. Please stop your bum-huggin and get some sense.

[Martha Bridegam @ Apr 27th 2008 12:14AM]

Americans give themselves permission to hate only one group overtly: homeless people. All the suppressed private bigotry that they're afraid to express publicly toward members of ethnic and religious groups spills onto people without money.

You would not call someone a [N-word]-lover but you cheerfully use a term that tells a double lie: it not only pretends there's something wrong with being poor, it pretends there's even something wrong with defending poor people. All the time-tested religious and philosophical systems treat empathy for the poor as a duty, not a sin. It's only modern-day middle-class Americans who try to prop up their own teetering social status by pretending visibly poor people are subhuman.

The reasons given for reviling and abusing the homeless always have to do with the pretense that homelessness is a voluntary status. That's only possible to believe through faith-based denial of basic economic facts. Our economy is a game of musical chairs. Somebody will be left without a chair. If that somebody wasn't as greedy or fast as the others who got chairs, it doesn't mean the one without a chair is a bad person. The haters' further pretense, then, is that poverty may not be a crime but that there's something voluntary in the acts compelled by poverty -- such as spending time doing nothing on public property or in shop doorways. Which is complete crap.

Very poor people have survived in the same ways during every period of extreme inequality. We are in such a period now. The big bad recession is coming to get members of the middle class whether they admit it or not. Blaming homeless destitute people for living their lives in public spaces is a form of hysterical economic denial -- denial that extreme poverty is a function of our economy, not of individual character defects -- denial that Third World street scenes are an inevitable product of Third World levels of inequality. Homeless-hatred is a pathology most prevalent among people who are scared about their own economic futures, just as gay-bashing is most prevalent among people who are secretly afraid of sexual ambivalence. It is a pathology and should be recognized as such.

[Josh @ Apr 27th 2008 3:50AM]

Well put.

[aqs @ Apr 27th 2008 5:57PM]

way to miss the point of colberts bit. also theres a difference between discriminating against people without money and drug dealers