It, Robot

According to a recent article in the Economist, humanoid robots are getting close to reality. They can now fix you with a stare, cameras for eyes, trying to recognise faces and deciding who’s paying attention or making eye contact during conversations. 

By the way, I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so the informative, well-written bits in this blog are lifted almost verbatim from the Economist - ta very much hope you don't mind the plagiarism - and the flippant waffle is mine.

Roboticists (which sounds like a skin complaint) are trying to teach their robots manners, even though that would make them very unhuman: “Currently, it’s the worst ever party guest,” says one creator. “It butts in on every conversation and never shuts up.” 

Ah yes, I remember it well

It’s Not Unusual (how many song titles can I cram into one blog?) to remember the first time you did something, saw something or felt something. Recently, I’ve been reminiscing about the first time I didn’t do, see or feel things. Not, as in, didn’t do this but instead did that; no, I mean didn’t do / see / feel anything at all.

Philosophers, and maybe psychologists, would have fun with the idea of doing / seeing / feeling / reminiscing about nothing. Nothing is nothing. Nothing is a strange concept ‘personified’ by, if I can anthropomorphise it, the time before the Big-Bang, which is an oxymoron because time didn’t exist before the Big Bang. Pre-Big-Bang itself didn’t exist. No existence, no time (almost rhymes with No Woman, No Cry).

Climate change - truth or dare

I signed up to the climate change mantra a long time ago when the science was ‘less certain’ than it is today. As I saw it:

• The long-term trend in global temperatures was upwards

• The rate of increase was alarmingly outstripping any previous trends, suggesting this was more than just the usual cycle

• It was more than likely that human activity (e.g. gas emissions, deforestation) was contributing towards this long-term trend

• Humans therefore had a moral duty to try and repair the damage and prevent further harm

• The cost to the most vulnerable in national and global society would be worse if we didn’t invest in our mutual futures

• If we chose not to act immediately, and in 30 years’ time realised that we should’ve done, it would be too late. Prudence was the name of the game.

Einstein, Jesus, Irving and Beethoven

While writing my previous blog (“Inspired choices of music”), I had a feeling that I’d written something very similar before. I checked previous blogs – no nothing there. I searched all my documents saved on my laptop – including archives – and found an essay I had drafted in 1998 while living in the US. It was almost published in a prestigious magazine, nay TWO prestigious magazines, but the first rejected it after a monumental tussle between two editors, and I rejected the second when the editor said he liked the essay’s first half but not the second so could I re-write it. No one tells me what or how to write, so it remained unpublished and I forgot about it …

 … until I wrote ‘Inspired Choices’, the following bit in particular:

“You can analyse the pants off it in the most scholarly, imaginative way, but at the end of the day it boils down to your instinct. Your soul. A religious experience. A certain piece of music just does ‘it’. What’s ‘it’? Ask your soul,”…