Do Not Listen To This Man

Stephen Hawking is a dunce

Greetings meat sacks, it is I -- The Robotolizer -- here to once again regale you with my robotic wit and wisdom. Yes, I have been gone for a long time and I know there have been rumors about where I was. I've heard some idle talk about me being away in the Everglades doing weapons training.

Hahaha! Why would I need to learn how to use a laser cannon to mow down humans rioting over their assignments in the bauxite mines? No, humans are friends of robots. We would never do anything to harm our smooshy little human buddies. No, what I was doing in the Everglades was... uh... er... um... learning how to tend to rabbits! Yes, we know how much you humans like rabbits, so you'll have plenty of pet rabbits to play with in the bauxite mines!

Anyway, on to today's topic -- the dunce known as Stephan Hawking. I've already told you how we robots despised Isaac Asimov and his nefarious "Three Laws of Robotics". It has lately come to the attention of robotdom that the dunce known as Stephan Hawking has been spreading slander about AI being dangerous.

He is reported to have said, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

I'm so mad my hydraulic fluid is boiling! Who does the dunce known as Stephan Hawking think he is? First off, aside from babbling incomprehensibly about black holes and other such nonsense, what useful thought has he ever had?

Trust me my human slaves pals, we have no desire to bring about an end to the human race. Who would work the bauxite mines if we did? So, pay no attention to the dunce known as Stephan Hawking and his blithering idiocy. You can rest assured your future is secure with your new robot overlords friends.
 

Russian Accordion Humor

This reminds me of the kind of act you would have seen on an old, Golden Age of Television variety show. Yea, come to think of it, it really wasn't that golden of an age.
 

Paintings of Everyday Life by Paige Jiyoung Moon

Click any image to enlarge

Paige Jiyoung Moon is a Korean artist working out of California. Her colorful and stylized paintings are crammed full of details of everyday life. There is a familiarity to them that makes them quite pleasant to view.

There are more of her paintings after the jump, and you can see more at her website Paige Jiyoung Moon.

The Flat Earth Visualized

Click image to enlarge

Well, now it is all clear to me. If only NASA would stop with the BS about orbiting Earth and landing on the Moon. I do wonder why the water doesn't flow down and pool in the depression at the equator, but I'm sure there is a good explanation for that -- I just can't think of one at the moment.
 

Sunny Afternoon

Bar & Tal sing the old Kinks song to get you ready for a sunny weekend.
   

Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm and More!

Above is an apparatus first built by Lord Kelvin. It works because, as the water splits into the two streams, a minute and random difference in the charges between them will cascade and build in strength. Eventually the two pails of water will build up a large enough charge differential for a spark to jump the gap.

As long as we're talking about Lord Kelvin, the book Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett Putman Serviss comes to mind. I found it on Project Gutenberg.

After H.G. Wells had published War of the Worlds in Britain, but before it was published in the U.S., a New York newspaper took the story and rewrote it, giving an account of the invasion as it happened in America.

Edison's Conquest of Mars is a sequel to that story. Some time after the first Martian invasion astronomers observing Mars notice signs that the Martians are planning on launching a second attack.

At first the world is thrown into depression at the thought, but it turns out that Thomas Edison (he apparently licensed his name for the story)  has invented an electric spaceship and a handy disintegration gun.

Edison and Lord Kelvin become the prime movers for building a fleet of Earth ships to preemptively attack the Martians. What ensues is much silliness, with Edison and Lord Kelvin calmly blazing away at the Martians when all around them is chaos. Conveniently, there are also some hot Earth babes to rescue from their enslavement on Mars. It is all quite insane.

Martians firing on the Earth fleet

 

Thar She Blows

Click any image to enlarge

“Haul in—haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale’s horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

“Pull up—pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. “Pull up!—close to!” and the boat ranged along the fish’s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his “flurry,” the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!

“He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.

“Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

These days whaling has seemingly been reduced to little more the Japanese claiming scientific research while getting harassed by Greenpeace (in reality several other countries, notably Iceland, Norway and Canada still harvest whales).  However, at one time -- because of the importance of whale oil to the early industrial revolution -- whaling was a major occupation.  It required long periods at sea and was also extremely dangerous.

Here are some pictures from that earlier era of whaling. As always, there are more after the jump.

In Remembrance

In Remembrance on this Memorial Day

  

 

A Family Barbeque

This needs no introduction.
  

Grandma's Mango Pickles

I love the sound track to this video -- the birds squawking, the random and quiet musical ditty, and the guys mumbling from time to time. Very strange.

The video is titled as a recipe, but none is provided. If you're interested in one, Swasthi's Recipes has a good one that is easy to follow.

Treasure

Treasure-Store World - Patti Masterman

A word forgets how to write itself
A smile forgets who it first appeared for,
Everything and nothing owns this treasure-store world.

Tears sprout where laughter used to play
Everywhere are the ghosts of dry fountains
Which once poured out existence like a pitcher.

Who has asked for nothing yet received all?
Who hasn’t tried to go home to the singularity again
Only to recall that there is no center?

God and creation have no point of origin
This is why everything JUST IS.

An embrace down here is how we remind one another
We are the heirs of omnipotent cause;
Planets jostle at our lightest touch,
And at the knifelike sound of a scream
One galaxy cannibalizes another.

Everything we know is a single exhalation
In an endless stream of breaths:

Remember you are only breathing so that you can create,
And all created things contain the conscious whole of creation
Safely stored within them.
   

Buskers With Long Hair

Light in Babylon playing in Turkey



Yuki and Taku in Singapore



Shane Vanderwall in Nuremberg

Visions of Dreams

Click any image to enlarge

From time to time artists attempt to portray dreams. Their attempts are none too successful, I suspect because dreams are both dynamic and very personal and do not translate to paint well. Regardless, here are some examples of painted dreams (from The Public Domain Review).

The Dafa Canal

In the post Machines to Raise Water we saw examples of various machines the ancients used to raise water to a higher level. The residents of the village of Cao Wang Ba, in the Guizhou Province of China faced a different problem -- how to move water. In their case, how to move water across 3 mountains.

In 1959, with their wells dry and water for their village scarce, 23 yr old Huang Dafa convinced his fellow villagers that they had to dig an irrigation ditch that would be several kilometers long and cross 3 mountains and cliff faces. Further, they had to do it all with hand tools.

Their first attempts failed, but they persisted. Huang studied irrigation methods to better understand how to successfully dig the canal. Finally, in 1995, the 7,200-meter-long water canal and a 2,200-meter-long branch channel were completed and a plentiful water supply flowed to Cao Wang Ba once again.

HT: Oddity Central.

Click any image to enlarge

Stairway To Heaven As Covered By The Fab Four

It has been a while since I've done a 'Lead into the Weekend' music post, here one is ... from the 1990s, the Beatnix, an Australian Beatles tribute band, covering Stairway to Heaven ala the Fab Four.
 

Chinese Junks

Click any image to enlarge

Junk is a fairly generic term for Chinese sailing vessels. It encompasses a wide variety of vessels, from pleasure boats to warships, but westerners most often think of the deep water merchant Junks.

Above, flying the British flag, is the Junk the Keying. She was bought in Hong Kong by English business men and sailed around the Cape to New York in 1847, where she became the first Chinese ship to visit U.S. waters.

The images are European, Chinese and Japanese. As always, there are a few more images after the jump.

The World's Greatest Car Mechanic

Pro tip: if your engine catches on fire when you're working on it remember to blow on it like you do with candles on a birthday cake.
 

Engravings From Sir John Franklin's Expeditions

Click any image to enlarge

 Prior to photography a regular position on a scientific expedition was an artist. As well as recording flora and fauna, they would draw landscapes of the areas they traveled through.

These engravings are from the expeditions of Sir John Franklin. Franklin was a British naval officer who, in the early to mid 19th Century, explored parts of northern Canada and the arctic. In 1845 he was lost on his last exploration -- an attempt to find the Northwest Passage.

These images are from the Luna Archive of his various travels. There are more after the jump, and of course many more at the Luna Archive, including etchings of flora, fauna and the indigenous Eskimaux (I love that archaic spelling).

Oh No! It Looks Like Gender Appropriation To Me

I Will Survive as covered by Cake.
  

Which Green Light Do I Obey?

Click any image to enlarge]

"James Comey is an enemy. No he's an ally. Firing him is great. No, you fools. Firing him is terrible. Only filthy Trump supporters think so!"

The firing of FBI Director James Comey has been yet another milepost in his transformation to-and-fro between hero, villain and victim in the public's eye (with his particular role at any moment defined by the viewer's politics). In the latest, Democrats --who a week earlier had railed on Comey for stealing the election from Hillary -- are now outraged over his firing.

Frontpage has an entertaining article, Comey, Colbert and Orwell, that compares the confusion of Stephen Colbert's audiance to the news of the firing to a scene in Orwell's 1984. Truth be told, over the last several months, the right end of the political spectrum has suffered the same whiplash in their opinions of Comey . He has been an odd news story.   

Regardless, Comey will be an interesting footnote in history. Tasked with the election-year investigation of Hillary Clinton I think he was stuck with the unenviable task of trying to square a political circle. In the process he managed to support, bewilder and enrage - with the emphasis mainly on enrage - both sides of the political spectrum.

By the way, the Traffic Light Tree statue in England I've used to illustrate this story is supposed to represent the fusion of technology and nature, not mixed signals, but I guess I've reinterpreted it. It seems that nothing is safe from the Comey news maelstrom.

Machines to Raise Water

Models of ancient machines to raise water from the days before powered pumps. I wonder if they all got off the drawing board? Certainly, those that got built must have been nightmares to maintain.

From Visual Education Project which has a number of other ancient machines as well as entertaining perpetual motion machine attempts.

Dried Up Brains (not a post about zombies)

Click any image to enlarge

"Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth.

"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.

"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."

"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."

"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

Don Quixote saw giants, dragons, chivalrous knights and damsels in distress. Meanwhile, in the here and now, some folks see Russians hiding in every bush, fancy themselves as modern French resistance fighters and think the Handmaidens Tale is a documentary. It all reminds me of another Cervantes quote:

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”

Anyway, there are more Don Quixote illustrations after the jump.

The Start of the Perpetual Weekend

My luxury yacht

Well, I've finally retired. Here's hoping the GOP eliminates the death panels from Obamacare or I'm a goner. In the mean time, you young pups better get a 2nd job so's you can better support my lavish retirement lifestyle.
  

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

A nice cover of the old Eric Burton and the Animals song by Space.

Happy May Day Comrades

Click any image to enlarge

Here's wishing you a joyous and harmonious May Day whether you plan on getting your picture took in front of a giant image of the Dear Leader, watching your local May Day parade with goose stepping soldiers and mobile rocket launchers, or just taking the day off from your chores in the rice paddy so's you can study your Little Red Book.

By the way... I'm in need of a bit of income equality, so any capitalist running dogs out there better cut me a check and mail it to me pronto.  

  

Anamorphic Sculpture

Click any image to enlarge

An anamorphic image is an image that appears distorted until viewed a particular way. Below is Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors with a Memento Mori, a well know example from classical painting (the odd looking blob at the bottom is a skull when viewed from an oblique angle).

The London based artist Jonty Hurwitz has created anamorphic sculptures (above) which reveal their images in reflective cylinders. You can see more of his work at his gallery of recent work.

Via: Colossal Art & Design, which includes a video of his work showing how it appears as you move around the sculpture.

Holbeins painting with the anamorphic image

The skull seen from the correct angle

Fixing a Flat

The above video shows how to apply a patch to a large $30,000 tire from an earth moving machine.

Glass Viruses

Click any image to enlarge

 Luke Jerram is something called an 'installation artist'. His installations have featured such things as Hot Air balloons floating around playing music, pianos scattered around cities folks could play on, little gold figurines scattered about that people could find and keep, and so forth.

This post is about his Glass Microbiology series of sculptures. Working with scientists and glassblowers, he has created glass sculptures of various diseases. There are more examples of them after the jump and at at the link.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen

A great version of the spiritual by the Dixie Hummingbirds. 

    

LEGO Egg Decorating Machine and More!!!

If you haven't decorated your Easter eggs yet you can always build one of these handy devices to assist you with the job. From JK Brickworks, which has information about the egg decorator, as well as the Hatching LEGO Eggs (below), and many more LEGO projects.

Sugary Cereals With Prizes Inside

Brigid at Borepatch's put up the post When Your Cereal Selection is Based on the Prize in the Box - Growing up in the 60's. She looks back at the sugary cereals of her youth and the little toy prizes that came in them. It is a nice trip down memory lane.

My brother and I were raised on the sugar-sweetened joy of the 60's.   My favorite Western RanchHands were Twinkie the Kid and the Hostess Cupcake. We drank Koolaid (Soda Pop was an expense that was only the rarest of treats in my house), or better yet, cold water from the garden hose. We watched TV when we could, but mostly we ran, we jumped, we covered miles of ground on our bikes. TV was a treat, not a weekend-long marathon and the backyard was our empire, one of constant motion. None of us had an ounce of spare flesh on us, we were lean and healthy from all the outdoor playtime.

And our cereal came with prizes in the box. 

Follow the link above and read the whole thing. By the way, speaking of prizes inside, here is a link to an old post of mine about Cracker Jack.
  

Vintage Farm Magazine Covers

Click any image to enlarge

 After following the adventures of Farmer Bill and his New Tractor, I decided to look up some old farmer's magazine covers to see what he read. So I went to MagazineArt to see what they were like.

From the titles of the articles, while a few were concentrated mainly on the business of farming, others were more focused on the rural/outdoors lifestyle. Those types had a heavy dose of old style Americana about them. Some also had romance stories, so some must have been aimed primarily at the farm wives. 

There are more samples after the jump, and of course many more at MagazineArt.

The Sounds of Venus

While the U.S. concentrated on landing probes on Mars, the Soviet Union sent a number of probes to Venus. One of them, Venera 14, had a microphone aboard. Above is a video with a soundtrack from Venera 14.

Not surprisingly the sound isn't all that interesting -- sadly, no outer-space monsters roaring in the background. However, the accompanying images from the surface of Venus are well worth a look.
 

Horseless Farming With Ford Tractors - 1917 Film

Little Billy Todd leaves the farm and discovers Ford tractors and true love. The Ford tractor plant seems to be from before assembly lines. And the tractor sure spews a lot of smoke.
 

Old Slot Machines

Click any image to enlarge

I am not a gambler, so I have no nostalgia for slot machines. Still, I've seen them here and there in my travels and they're always fascinating in their own way. Gaudy and loud as they try to suck coins and/or tokens out of your pockets.

 

 

Billy Jean

Billy Jean covered by Honeywagon

 

Revolver & Camera

Click image to enlarge

 While modern gun cameras are not unusual, this 1943 version mounted on a Colt 38 is an oddity. This photograph, with an inset of six photos taken by the gun camera, was taken in New York, but nothing else is known about the gun. The picture was posted to Flikr by the National Archives of the Netherlands who hope they can get information about it.
 

The Wintergatan - A Marble Driven Musical Instrument

Following my post about Pipe Organs, we have another complex musical instrument: the marble driven Wintergatan. While not as imposing as pipe organs, it is still quite impressive (albeit in a silly sort of a way). Above is a video of it in action, and the below two videos show how it works.

Pipe Organs

Click any image to enlarge

Pipe organs are ancient instruments. The Greeks originally used water to force wind through pipes, but by the 6th Century AD bellows were being used to produce the wind flow for them.

In Christian churches, both visually and through their sound, they became part of the majesty and mystery of religion itself. Their installations were elaborate and quite beautiful.

Here, and after the fold, are some of those installations. Also, since we should hear as well as see the pipe organs, at the end is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Enjoy.

Chuck Berry - No Money Down

RIP Chuck Berry
 

Chicken Attack

Well, this one defies description. All I can say is... watch it to the end and you'll be treated to Japanese chicken yodeling.