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These two separate stories about General Motor’s new robot and the Pentagon breeding immortal “synthetic organisms” with a molecular kill switch have nothing to do with one another, per say, but it’s just more evidence to the contrary that the inevitable robot take over is going to happen sooner, rather than later.

“As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating ‘the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.’ The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to ‘produce the intended biological effect.’ Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can ‘ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.’”

That plus limber robots plus artificial intelligence equals a scary notion. No, just kidding.  I honestly am looking forward to the day when all of these things fall into place.

Fortune looks at the ten largest company bankruptcies of all-time.

Among the are Lehman’s, Washington Mutual, WorldCom, General Motors, Chrysler, Enron, Conseco, Texaco, Pacific General & Electric, and Thornburg.

In case you were wondering, nine of them occurred this decade.  Texaco happened in 1987.  The other nine all happened under George W. Bush’s watch.  Think about that for a moment.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  As Chrysler, Thornburg, and General Motors all filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009 under Obama’s watch.  However, it’s not a stretch to say that the policies of Dubya led to their imminent collapse.  I would hardly blame Obama for their demise.

The rebranding has already begun now that GM has filed for Chapter 11 and 60% of the company is owned by the US Government.  The automaker unveiled this commercial, in the hopes that you would buy their pledge to change.  GM has also set up an entire website dedicated to educating consumers about the road to recovery; visit GM Reinvention for more info.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t fall for this.  It all seems a little bit like apologizing for getting caught doing something wrong.  Like they’re not sorry for doing the bad deed, they’re just sorry everyone is upset with them.  Maybe if they had looked at their business plan ten years ago, heck, fifteen, and began to reinvent themselves then, they wouldn’t find themselves in this position.

According to Megan McCardle at The Atlantic it’s only a matter of time before the Detroit automaker goes asunder. 

After today’s annual report, I don’t think there’s any question of GM’s staying out of bankruptcy.  The company’s revenue fell from $180 billion in 2007 to $149 billion in 2008, with the worst crash in the fourth quarter.  Car sales have continued to plunge into the new year.  The company’s current asset position continues to deteriorate by about $2 billion a quarter even with massive Federal injections of cash.  With cash & equivalents now down to just over $14 billion, they can’t go on this way for much longer.  Though no one knows exactly how much working capital the company needs on hand at any time, the estimates tend to fall around $10 billion.  Dip below that, and they’ll rapidly be catapulted into insolvency.