.
An Iraqi displaced boy wears a mask depicting Korean pop star Park Jae-sang as
he stands with a friend at Jadaa refugees camp near Qayyarah city: photo by
Ahmed Jalil/EPA, 17 November 2016
#Mosul Sergeant Majid holds a rocket propelled grenade as his Humvee approaches the neighborhood of Tahrir and Zahara. By @sam7tarling: image via Photojournalism @photojournalism, 17 November 2016
#Mosul Sergeant Majid holds a rocket propelled grenade as his Humvee approaches the neighborhood of Tahrir and Zahara. By @sam7tarling: image via Photojournalism @photojournalism, 17 November 2016
IRAQ - A man with light shrapnel wounds to his leg is helped off an Iraqi Special Forces at open air field clinic in Mosul. By @odd_andersen: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 17 November 2016
Residents hold their children after being treated for shrapnel injuries at open air field clinic in Mosul. By @odd_andersen: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 17 November 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama is welcomed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel upon his arrival at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany: photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters, 17 November 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama is welcomed by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel upon his arrival at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany: photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters, 17 November 2016
Robot inventor Wu Yulu sits on a rickshaw driven by a robot which he invented in his village in rural Beijing’s Tongzhou district, China. The 54-year-old Chinese farmer has invented 63 robots in the past 30 years.: photo by Wu Hong/EPA, 17 November 2016
Robot inventor Wu Yulu sits on a rickshaw driven by a robot which he invented in his village in rural Beijing’s Tongzhou district, China. The 54-year-old Chinese farmer has invented 63 robots in the past 30 years.: photo by Wu Hong/EPA, 17 November 2016
Three Palestinian women sit on a beachfront as a wave comes rushing by in Gaza City: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP, 17 November 2016
Three Palestinian women sit on a beachfront as a wave comes rushing by in Gaza City: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP, 17 November 2016
GAZA CITY - Three Palestinian women sit on a beachfront as a wave comes rushing by in Gaza City by @mohmdbed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 17 November 2016
Al-Omeri mosque in Lod, Israel, a city of Arabs and Jews. A proposal backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would authorize the government to ban the use of loudspeakers by mosques and other houses of worship across the country.: photo by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times, 17 November 2016
.Al-Omeri mosque in Lod, Israel, a city of Arabs and Jews. A proposal backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would authorize the government to ban the use of loudspeakers by mosques and other houses of worship across the country.: photo by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times, 17 November 2016
Jared Kushner, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law, at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Sunday. Mr. Kushner has spoken with a lawyer about joining the new administration.: photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times, 17 November 2016
Jared Kushner, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law, at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Sunday. Mr. Kushner has spoken with a lawyer about joining the new administration.: photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times, 17 November 2016
A girl stands next to a monument inside the Athens’ Polytechnic school, on the 43rd anniversary of a 1973 student uprising against the then military ruling junta in Athens, Greece: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 17 November 2016
A girl stands next to a monument inside the Athens’ Polytechnic school, on the 43rd anniversary of a 1973 student uprising against the then military ruling junta in Athens, Greece: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 17 November 2016
Riot police on fire during clashes with protesters in #athens following a demo to commemorate the students uprising against the junta: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 17 November 2016 Attiki, Greece
Rescuers and civilians remove rubble from a destroyed building in a Syrian village near the northwestern city of Idlib, after strikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes on Wednesday: photo by Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse, 17 November 2016
Rescuers and civilians remove rubble from a destroyed building in a Syrian village near the northwestern city of Idlib, after strikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes on Wednesday: photo by Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse, 17 November 2016
A damaged ambulance after an airstrike on a rebel-held town near Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday: photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters, 17 November 2016
A damaged ambulance after an airstrike on a rebel-held town near Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday: photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters, 17 November 2016
Rudolph W. Giuliani at Trump Tower in New York City on Wednesday: photo by Hilary Swift for The New York Times, 17 November 2016
Rudolph W. Giuliani at Trump Tower in New York City on Wednesday: photo by Hilary Swift for The New York Times, 17 November 2016
November of the Plague Year
Silos No. 2 (Argorama) [West Berkeley, Berkeley, California]: photo by efo, November 2016
Silos No. 2 (Argorama) [West Berkeley, Berkeley, California]: photo by efo, November 2016
Silos No. 2 (Argorama) [West Berkeley, Berkeley, California]: photo by efo, November 2016
Unwilling to turn and glimpse the blind exorcist’s face,
Unconditional suspenders of disbelief,
Back-to-Normals shop to live, drive to shop
So a busy world spins by my window again
Till buying hour stops, and night noise
Falls through the white rain and hangs there.
Unconditional suspenders of disbelief,
Back-to-Normals shop to live, drive to shop
So a busy world spins by my window again
Till buying hour stops, and night noise
Falls through the white rain and hangs there.
November 2001
Tiles, Abandoned restaurant, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 10 June 2013
Tiles, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 7 March 2014
Tiles, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 12 November 2016
False Awakening. French River, PEI: photo by Jim Rohan, 7 November 2016
False Awakening. French River, PEI: photo by Jim Rohan, 7 November 2016
[Utah]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 10 November 2016
5 comments:
Bomberos Official Video by Bang Data Directed by Babylons Train (17 November 2016)
I'd love to see one of those robots negotiate the traffic in Lahore!
:-)
Well yes, I do see the humour in that.
Here on the freeway feeder Farmer Wu's robot vehicles would suffer immediate marginalization.
Still -- credit where due.
The much publicized Elon Musk self driving car is projected to be very good at identifying competing traffic, not so good at identifying pedestrians.
As a damaged pedestrian, that makes me a bit anxious.
Farmer Wu's robots, slower, more ungainly perhaps, still so much less threatening to ambient life.
And Farmer Wu didn't just jump in late on the technology.
He started fashioning his early prototypes at age 11. His teachers were no good when he was school-aged, he has said, so he stopped going to school. He learned to make robots by making mistakes.
In a way, that puts him in a category with the rest of us, though we may be less quick to admit it.
In the late 1970s, he got a job at a farm machinery factory. The small income helped him turn old sewing machine parts and some bits of disused steel wire into his first robot. "Until now, I don't know the theory of physics, but I knew that electricity can drive motors and power can be transferred to the robot's hands and legs with levers and wires."
His first robot turned out to have growth problems and became "disabled," but the undaunted farmer/inventor continued to experiment,
In 1982, his first movable robot, Wu Laoda (the first son of the Wu), was born.
The robots' given names indicate the order of their creation, and they are all given his own family name (Wu). His most famous robot is named Wu. He has built robots capable of climbing walls, serving water, lighting cigarettes, playing musical instruments and writing calligraphic script.
"I can invent robots able to carry a sedan chair, and next I will make robots of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. There are so many good things in life, and they become the basis for my robots".
Wu Yulu Robots
Farmer Wu's Robot Dreamwork
No, Tom, I liked farmer Wu's robot..I wish I had one! There's still something human about it (cute, charming etc). What I meant was: he'd never survive in the monstrous traffic here. When it comes to cars and much else I think there's something frightening (as well as ugly) about a mechanical civilisation.
After thousands of years of civilisation Man's best hope is now in robots or finding a place to live on another planet?
Well, a bit noisy, though. The large mechanical steps.
Of course a civilisation powered by nothing more advanced than Farmer Wu's robots would be a lovely alternative to Now.
A great deal less of the pollution for one thing.
In narration accompanying one of the several videos we've looked at, it was bruited that Farmer Wu's wife had at some point grown a bit impatient with the whole great clanking industry of it all.
Taking the old potting shed hobby a bit far, you know.
My wife supported her point.
She seems to understand these things.
You know how they are.
Still, b, finally about the best I can say concerning farmer Wu and His Amazing Exploding Circus -- and this no small thing mind you, at present -- is that, in spending these hours considering him/it, one at least enjoys the limited consolation of entertaining, in at least one furtive corner of the mind, something other than the mushrooming horror of the drumpfsreich.
(I did say limited.)
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