I finally got to go somewhere besides southeastern New Mexico, and I was without a camera, when I saw a terrific exhibit by artist Michael Salter while visiting Rice University in Houston. He had made a 25-foot robot out of styrofoam packing materials that was too cool. Then I remembered I had a camera on my Blackberry, so I did what I could to capture this sculpture. It really is quite remarkable. Here is a brief exerpt from an article by Leo B. Carter in Rice's online version of its campus newspaper, "The Rice Thresher," that describes a bit of the work that went into Salter's sculpture: " . . . the behemoth Styrofoam robot [is] slumped in one corner, which, if standing, would surpass 25 feet in height. Salter said this is his largest robot yet and said he wanted to make the robot's head bowed to make it appear exhausted or overwhelmed. "One foot alone contains 50 different sculpted and carefully fitted pieces, and Salter guessed that thousands of such pieces are contained within the body of the beast. The intricate circuit board of the chest is ironically devoid of computer parts. What remains is only the Styrofoam casts of the world of manufacture." Simply awesome to see. Enjoy.