We live in an era of giant statues, errors and robots

People still get fired for incompetence in this country, right? I mean, it’s difficult for me to believe that given some of these developments:

• This week the U.S. Postal Service released a new “Forever” stamp bearing poet Maya Angelou’s likeness and a quotation that actually comes from someone else.

• In the fall of 2014, Indiana University’s Media School erected a bronze statue of the famous World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle that somehow misspells the word “correspondent.”

• A new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial goes up in Washington DC that misquotes one of King’s speeches.

What wasn’t a mistake was Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek’s recent construction of a giant robot statue in the middle of his city, apparently because he’s an authoritarian and wanted one. Ordinarily I’d use this as an opportunity to call on Washington, DC to put a similar statue of Day the Earth Stood Still‘s Gort in the Washington Mall, but they’d probably end up casting the words “From the hit TV series Lost in Space” in its leg.

Photo of Gort at the Robot Hall of Fame: RobotJunkie/Wikimedia Commons