USC Professor’s Unusual New Invention Could Be a Blueprint for Disaster

The Daily Trojan reports that an engineering professor at USC has invented a robot that will “be able to construct whole houses.” The machine “takes instructions from a computer and then uses a concrete pump to construct blueprints it is given.” I hate to be a skeptic, but ... a construction worker who actually follows the blueprints? That would be a novel development.

The story left several questions unanswered: Would the hard-hat gizmo start hammering at 7 a.m. on weekends? Ignore planning codes? Leave Coke cans littering the construction site?

I guess if it had good references I might give it a chance at my house.

But only if it’s a union robot.

Guide to Adventurous Dining: The items du jour (see accompanying) were spotted on menus in Macedonia by Joel Chusid of Pasadena:

* A piece of meat that apparently also can be used by someone with a bad knee.

* An amphibian better known to diners for its legs.

* And an insect often found in restaurants.

Come to think of it, if health inspectors did find a roach in that last restaurant’s kitchen, the owner could say, “Hey, that’s the main course tonight!”

More food for thought: Andrew Hagler of Glendale chanced upon a buffet for commuters (see photo). No backing up in line!

Workplace etiquette: The San Diego Padres are playing in a new ballpark this year, and it’s so pristine that manager Bruce Bochy told the Union-Tribune’s Tim Sullivan: “I swear, guys have said that they feel guilty spitting in the dugout.”

You know, that’s the same way I felt about The Times’ city room when it was redesigned several years ago.

Legal landmarks: The state Supreme Court refused to hear the challenge of a Santa Monica resident who protested what he termed the city’s unfair treatment of his construction plans. Nothing unusual about such a dispute in that glitzy city, the L.A. Daily Journal pointed out, except that this was over the construction of a child’s playhouse. An $11,000 playhouse.

Mondegreen of the Day: “When I was little,” said Lorraine Stewart of Panorama City, “I sang myself awake in the mornings with a popular hit by Nat King Cole: ‘Laugh and turn blue, laugh and turn green/If I were king, dilly, dilly, you’d be my queen.’ ”

And when she learned that the lyric was actually “lavender blue, lavender green” she turned only slightly red.

miscelLAny: “Just got back from San Francisco where I saw the most incredible thing: a guy walking down Market St. wearing an L.A. Clippers jersey,” wrote David Chan. “That kind of thing would never happen in Los Angeles.”

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083; by fax at (213) 237-4712; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012; and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.