i find it very, very surprising that so many boingboing readers - who i consider a fairly progressive bunch - aren't expressing outrage over how sexist this is. This comment:

"what is this the 1950's? i am sick to death of these all-compliant, all-serving female metaphors. i am appalled that the seemingly intelligent people involved in this project didn't stop and think about this: women are not here on this earth to serve you.
get over it."

is dead on. cory, i urge you to use your power on their advisory board to correct this. how? i'm not sure, but you could start by changing the graphics. our society has not come far enough that retroing images of stay-at-home i-love-lucy-moms is somehow now ok.

what's next? a Mexican "personal assistant" program that helps you empty your recycling bin and keep your computer hard drive clean?

"Something that might help me wrap my head around this would be to discover what the carbon footprint of common gadgetry might be."

I can help answer this. It depends, of course, on the source of your power (varying by state / region / whether or not you pay a "green power premium" or comparable), but here are some rough numbers I ran over the summer for New York:

Approximate upstate CO2 emissions from power generated for NY statewide mix, per kWh: 0.89 pounds.

Therefore, let's say you have a 200W computer (incl monitor), the carbon footprint would be approximately 0.18 pounds per hour, or, if you never turn it off, 0.89 pounds CO2 / kWh * 24 h / day * 0.200 kW / hour * 365 days / year = just over 1500 pounds per year.

Hope this helps.