Robot Gets Worst Robot Job In The World

“And Court Street, where it passed through Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, was the only Brooklyn, really — north was Brooklyn Heights, south was the harbor, and the rest, everything east of the Gowanus Canal (the only body of water in the world, Minna would crack each and every time we drove over it, that was 90 percent guns) apart from small outposts of civilization in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, was an unspeakable barbarian tumult.”
 — Last week, a team of eager scientists at the NYU’s Polytechnic Institute launched a solar-powered remote-control robot equipped with underwater cameras and sensors to measure the water’s chemical make-up. Photos and data will be uploaded to website everyone can look at, and they’re hoping to crowd-source observation and analysis. But, really, all they had to do was ask Jonathan Lethem. He knows what’s in the canal.