Category: Other creatures

Robot dog progress

Researchers publish open-source, lower cost design for 3D printed robot dog.

What are the future applications of of such a “dog”? Some rather unconvincing tasks are mentioned in the above report, like hanging about in a forest “monitoring” animals. But that sounds like green-friendly make-work to me.

Warfare in complicated terrain does seem like an obvious application. Exploring Mars, in other words, and then fighting other robots for the control of Mars. And meanwhile filming it all, for entertainment purposes?

Airplanes flew for quite a long time before they found a major use for them, which was to spy on opposing armies and to make big guns cleverer, and then to fight and kill other airplanes. Then came high tech sport, in the form of air races, which was really just research and development for better and faster war planes.

Around then, also, very tentatively, airplanes began to deliver letters. And then, airplanes began to deliver people, which was to say very rich people. Eventually, half a century after they first flew, airplanes became part of the good life for regular humans.

Robot dogs look like they might follow a similar path. As of now, robot dogs are the robot equivalent of the useless and clumsy contraptions that airplanes were in the nineteen-noughts, good only for lunatics in goggles to play with.

Comments of how these weird creatures might actually make themselves useful, more quickly and less destructively than my grumpy pessimism just said, would be most welcome.

For starters, if these things are ever going to be liked by humans, they’re going to need heads, heads that are more than merely decorative which gather and transmit information. Then, maybe (and I seem to recall speculating along these lines at my long-lost Education Blog): child minding? A combination of such robot-human interaction and transport? Like a sort of super-intelligent horse?

Signs in Seattle

Here:

I agree with what Matthew Continetti says in this piece, which the above photo adorns, that this is froth. History as farce, Tom Wolf style. This “Seattle Soviet” is going nowhere. It’s “signs and notices”, to quote one of my more frequent categories here, rather than revolutionary architecture of any substance. That being why the above photo is the most informative one I have seen concerning these dramas.

As Kurt Schlichter (who his now being seriously noticed by his enemies) says, the important thing about this Seattle drama is the impact it has on the forthcoming Presidential election in November. Will Trump get the blame for it? Or will the local Democrat politicians? And by extension, the Democrats nationally? Schlichter says the Democrats will get the blame for this Seattle farce, this being why Trump is leaving the local Democrats to not deal with it, until America landslides in his favour. “Silent majority” and all that.

Schlichter combines partisan rhetoric way beyond the point of self-parody with very shrewd observations and analysis. I read him regularly. He is like one of those crazy American lawyers, who seems insane, yet who is taken very seriously, and for good reasons, by his enemies. And as I understand him, which is only a bit, this is because Schlichter is one of those crazy American lawyers, who seems insane, yet who is taken very seriously, and for good reasons, by his enemies.

New River walk with GodDaughter1 from Bounds Green to Enfield

On April 2nd 2016, GodDaughter1 and I went on a photo-expedition along the New River. It was most enjoyable, and I prepared another of those big photo-clutches that I could seldom bother to do on the Old Blog, so that you can now, if you feel like it, click-click-click through them on this New Blog. But I also wanted to link back to an earlier posting I did about a rather exotic looking duck that we had encountered that same day.

For reasons explained in this posting, all postings on the Old Blog linked back to from this blog have to have been transferred to the New Blog. So, here I am linking back to What sort of duck is this?

But, problem. That posting itself linked back to a posting about Trees pruned into strange sculptures, because GD1 and I encountered a really strange piece of tree surgery (photo (6.2), on that same expedition.

Which, in its turn linked back to Losing the leaves in Victoria Park, because, well, because it did. So that had to be transferred across too.

When I put it like that, it all seems pretty simple. But following the link chain backwards and then forwards again, opening up each posting about four times over, was the Grandma of all muddles that I had not seen coming, and muddles you do not see coming can get really muddled.

Anyway, it’s all sorted now, and here are all those photos I mentioned, at the top of this:

My favourite is the plate-shaped foliage that has been emptied upside down into the water (photo 28 (4.4)).

There’s lots more I could say about all these photos, but this posting has already gone on far too long, and I confine myself now to saying: See also the plaque about Sir Hugh Myddelton (photo 37 (5.5)), who designed the New River. Designed? You don’t design rivers. They’re just there. But yes, he designed it. The point being it was designed and built, to supply London with fresh water, right at the beginning of the seventeenth century. So, at a time when so many stupid things were in the process of happening, something truly creative also happened.

Well, one other thing: the occasional interpolation of extreme urbanness (e.g. a newspaper headline about Ronnie Corbett (photo 27 (4.3)) and the van covered in stickers (photo 21 (3.5)) is because when you walk along beside the New River, it sometimes dives underground and you have to go up to regular London, until you get to the next bit.

Lordship Park lion

A rather mangy old lion, with a disproportionately big head, encountered yesterday:

This lion, once part of a two-lion team, no longer guards Lordship Park, because Lordship Park is now only a street. It now stands isolated, on a decaying plinth at one end of this street.

London contains many lion statues, and if they are in the tourist parts in the centre of town, or if they stand next to a building that still counts for something, like a town hall, they still get looked after. But my guess is that unattached lions, like the one above, are pretty much left to take their chances.

I just image-googled britannia and lion, and if the above speculations are right, I think the results I got tell us why that would be. All that imperial symbolism just doesn’t cut it any more. And especially not in Stoke Newington.

An inflated unicorn with a serious point attached

It’s Friday, so time for some Frivilous Friday Other Creature Fun:

Photoed by me on the South Bank, under Waterloo Bridge, in the summer of 2016, in a time when you were able to purchase such non-essaential things, without having to wait for them to be delivered. Photo severely cropped to eliminate faces of strangers.

That’s it, really. So skip this next bit if all you wanted was Friday silliness. But if I want to be a bit more serious, as I find that I now do, I could and will connect this photo to one of my recent themes here, namely colourful architecture. A strand in that tapestry of thought of mine, as woven in several recent posts here, says that architecture lags behind the design of other and smaller things, because architects have to be powerful to do what they do and consequently older. And another strand in the same tapestry goes that smaller things, already designed by mere designers, who are on average younger, for their customers, ditto, are already now more colourful. Just like the above unicorn. Sooner or later, architecture will follow. Here endeth the lesson.

Also, nice hairdo.

Pigeon scarers in focus – Strata out of focus and in focus

I am now wrestling with the writing of a potential Samizdata piece about The Riots, so here, by way of fending off a day of oblivion here are some quota photos.

First, a favourite photo of mine photoed several years ago, of a surveillance camera with some anti-pigeon spikes on it, just next to the south end of Waterloo Bridge:

I think you can see how such spikes wouldn’t protect statues very satisfactorily from pigeon shit. Like I said, towards the end of this, someone should invent a miniature electronic version of this, which would freak out pigeons but be invisible.

Note how, above, the Strata (the one with the three holes at the top) is clearly identifiable, even though hopelessly out of focus. As is Strata in this next photo, which I photoed yesterday, from a bus, through one of its windows:

This is a key test of a Big Thing. Can you still tell what it is when out of focus? If no, then it’s not a Big Thing. Strata is. (What with it also being Big enough.)

And here is the Strata photo I photoed of Strata about one second later, with the focus now working, again through the same bus window:

That may be it here until tomorrow. If I don’t see you again today, or even if I do, have a nice today.

Roz Watkins “in the front rank of British crime writers”

About three weeks ago, I mentioned the latest DI Meg Dalton book, and its author (also my niece) Roz Watkins.

The Daily Mail just gave Cut To The Bone, which comes out this month, this glowing review:

TWO years ago, I warmly welcomed DI Meg Dalton in Watkins’ debut. Now in her third outing, she has developed into a memorable detective with attitude, pounding Derbyshire’s Peak District with commendable fortitude.

A young social media star — famous for cooking sausages on a barbecue wearing only a bikini — goes missing from her job at an abattoir on a summer’s night.

Traces of blood and hair are found in one of the pig troughs, but there is no sign of the victim. Has she been killed?

Even more importantly, what on earth was she doing working in an abattoir in the first place?

Have animal rights protesters harmed her, or is there something more sinister at work? Has she fallen prey to the ghost of the Pale Child who, legend has it, announces death if once seen?

Subtly plotted, and with a delicate sense of place, it confirms Watkins in the front rank of British crime writers.

Strong stuff, especially that last bit.

Statues do matter

Or so the recent dramas in Parliament Square would suggest, during which graffiti was attached to the statues of Churchill and Lincoln. Cue angry history lessons from Old People.

So here are a few more statue photos I photoed recently in Parliament Square, including the above two personages, but adding Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett, basically because I like the photos:

And while I’m on the subject of statues, I recently checked out the statues of Lord Dowding (of Battle of Britain fame) and Bomber Harris (of WW2 bombing offensive infamy) outside St Clement Danes, at the other end of the Strand from Trafalgar Square:

I knew that, when I got to this spot, I’d encounter Dowding and Harris. Ben Johnson and Gladstone were both surprises.

Memo to people intending to end up as statues in London: Join the RAF and wear a hat with a flat top sloping slightly backwards. That way, you won’t get pigeon shit on your face. Seriously, someone badly needs to invent an invisible pigeon scarer. Some kind of tiny electronic device that vibrates in a pigeon-scaring way, solar powered so it will go on working for ever.

The above link to my recent pigeon scaring posting being the only link in this posting, apart from the one at the top about the graffiti (so as people reading this in a year’s time will understand which current events I’m referring to), which is a bit lazy and a bit egocentric, but I’m in a hurry to get ready for something else. You surely have all the words you need to find out whatever you want to find out, e.g. if you are a Young Person wanting to find out if Churchill was anything else besides being a racist, or if Lincoln did or said anything about black slavery in America, besides being President at a time when there were still black slaves. (While you’re learning about that, try finding out what Gandhi said about Apartheid, when he was younger and living in South Africa.)

Thoughts concerning To-Do lists

I have an ongoing To-Do list, consisting of a list of thoughts, in no particular order, just as they come to me, of subjects for postings that I might do here. One of the things that ought to be on my basic To-Do list, the one concerning my entire life, is: Regularly consult my Blog To-Do list. Because, it has been some while since I last did this.

But, this morning, wondering what to put here today to get things started, I did consult my Blog To-Do list (“2write4BMNB.doc”). I was curious to see (a), how many items were on the list, and (b), how many of these suggested postings I had actually done. I did not know the answer to (a), how many items there were on the list, but I was pretty confident that the answer to (b), how many of these posting I had actually done, would be zero. Because it so often is zero, when you come across a To-Do list of any sort, I find.

I’m not sure why this is, for me I mean, but I have a guess to offer. I don’t think it’s only that I am sorely lacking in willpower, although that is definitely part of it. There’s also the fact that To-Do lists don’t really contain the things that you really want to do, because if you had really wanted to do this or that, you would simply have done it, rather than put it on a mere list of things to do. I surmise, as many have before me, me included (but don’t now recall when or where), that the real purpose of To-Do lists is to decrease somewhat the chances of totally forgetting an idea about what to do that you actually don’t now want to do, but which you might later actually want to do, if only you could then remember it. To-Do lists keep alive memories of things that might one day be good to do. To-Do lists alleviate anxiety, about “forgetting” (see above) things To-Do.

The human mind is a big place. A mansion rather than a mere room, again as many have already said before me. It contains many facts and memories, hopes and fears, and it contains in particular many notions about things that you might one day want to do. You “forget” many of these. But, when reminded of this or that item you once were thinking about doing, you immediately “remember” whatever it was, and give it further thought. Maybe, then, you do it. And all because once upon a time you put it on a To-Do list.

Anyway, like I said several paragraphs ago, today I did consult my most recent Blog To-Do list. And here was the score. There were (a) ten items on the list. My recollection was that there were somewhat more than that. But no: Ten. But get this. How many of these ten had I done? The answer was an amazing, mind-boggling, in fact downright triumphant: Two. Two!!!! That’s twenty percent. I have actually done two of these postings! This is an astounding score, and I am hugely impressed by it.

For the record, the two postings in question were entitled: A national tree contrast and Two cats and a squirrel above the China Works Tower front door.

Remarkable. Truly remarkable. Hence, today, remarked upon.

The Screen of the Red Death – and transferring postings from the Old Blog to this New Blog

My Old Blog now, if you click on it, greets you with this graphic horror:

Which puts me in mind of this old Vincent Price movie. No passing reader who happens upon that is going to go any further.

This Screen of the Red Death stuff never happened while I was still posting things at the Old Blog, but it did start happening a few months back. Just as well this New Blog was already in business. Well, in pleasure, anyway.

Ever since I began the New Blog, on May 1st 2019, I’ve been occasionally transferring stuff from the Old Blog to the New Blog, mostly beginning this exercise with the most recent stuff there, but earlier stuff also. And a regular trickle of people coming here do seem to read postings that have been transferred from the Old Blog. Especially the postings I’ve done about Emmanuel Todd, these having been among the first postings I transferred. Anyone who knows how to automate this process and would like to earn some extra dinner money, get in touch. But, warning: transferring stuff from “Expression Engine” to WordPress is complicated. Which is why I am doing it, for now, by hand, so to speak.

One particular thing that has driven this process forwards is that if I ever want to refer back to a posting on the Old Blog, I want never to oblige readers actually to go to the Old Blog, but rather to be able to read the posting here, me having transferred it to here before linking back to it. And that can get complicated, as I may or may not relate (I promise nothing), in a future posting here.

My favourite posting that is now here but used to be at the Old Blog is, I think, this one about Two geese. Or were they ducks? Whatever they were, geese or ducks, they were having a romantic interlude beside the River, and I photoed them.