SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Scotiabank Centre Halifax NS (December 07, 1996).
This is the 19th night of the 24 date Canadian Tour opening for The Tragically Hip on their Trouble At The Henhouse Tour.
The show starts with Dorothy introducing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and then she begins singing the song. After a verse, the acoustic guitar comes strumming in and Tim announces that “This one’s for Wilf Carter.” [Wilf Carter, known as Montana Slim in the United States, was a Canadian Country and Western singer, songwriter, guitarist, and yodeller. Widely acknowledged as the father of Canadian country music. He died on Dec 5].
It sounds great. the final strains of guitar lead into a beautiful “California Dreamline.” It’s followed by a “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson” that features a middle “dance” section, with Dave chanting: “Tuesday night at the discotheque, I can dance, what the heck. I’m an Uzbek. Wer’e all freakin’ Uzbeks.
The ending feedback segues into the introductory noises of “Motorino.” Martin says it comes from their new album. “It’s called The Blue Hysteria its about not having much money. Dave: “That’s the green hysteria, martin.” Tim: “Blue hysteria as about playing your stereo too loud and blowing it up.” That’s a sort of introduction to “Bad Time to be Poor.”
Dave says “It’s great to be in hockey rink, The Moosehead Dome. We played in the Devonshire Arena last night, a private affair. It was hockey though, not rock. We’re all a little sore, a little better off, a little stronger in character.
Up next is “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine,” during which Martin drops out of an entire verse–the music sounds great through. You hear someone asks “want to do it again?” but they press on and martin platys the noisy guitars that lead into RICH!
Then comes “two big songs back to back,” a ripping “Feed Yourself” followed by a full 8 minute “A Mid-Winter Night’s Dream.” It begins with a pretty, meandering guitar melody that Martin songs along to (in a high falsetto, la la l a)–its quite lovely. Then it segues into a roaring version of “Midwinter.” The band sounds great and the feedbacking noise martin generates before the end is just amazing.
This might be my favorite version of the song. It’s a show-stopper indeed.
[READ: March 20, 2019] Science Comics: Robots and Drones
I have enjoyed every Science Comic that has come out. Most of them seem almost too full of information. But this one was actually one of the less jam-packed books. And that was kind of nice.
After an introduction from Sabine Hauert, the co-founder of Robohub.org, we are taken to a prototype robot from 350 BCE (!). In Tarentum Italy, we see a “mechanical” bird created by Archytas. It flies (perhaps on a string) and crashes instantly. The bird snaps out of it and introduces himself –call him Pouli. Pouli was the first machine to ever fly and he will take us through the past and future of robots and drones.
Pouli tries to break our familiarity with what a robot is by showing a simple robot–the coffeemaker. It has as simple job. It’s a modern version of the automaton. Of course we have more sophisticated R/C cars and roombas now. Some day soon there will be self-driving cars.
Machines initially were simple–lever, pulley, screw. Then there was the evolution machines, primarily through toys–machines that moved when something happened–dropping a coin, lifting a weight.
An early complicated machine was the Jacquard Loom which could “read” cards to create a pattern. This card-reading was also used later in the ENIAC computers. In computers, Punch cards gave way to vacuum tubes, transistors and then circuits. We’ve now got robots in our home (there’s an amusing character who is afraid of all of the robot in the home–but she is soothed when she sees they mean no harm.
Pouli says to understand why we use robots we must understand what robots are good at–having a machine do a simple, often tedious, function, over and over. Or sometimes they travel to places that humans can’t go–deep under sea or into outer space.
There’s some talk about programming languages, like Assembler. For instance a robot keeps checking for a ball–if there is no ball it does nothing but if it senses a ball–it throws it!
It’s even easy to build and program your own robots (apparently).
Then we move onto Drones. Robots and drones aren’t born good or bad. It’s the humans building and controlling the robots who make those choices. And this is where they introduce a controversial topic. Military aerial drones. But that doesn’t make them inherently bad, because drones can drop bombs or they can douse fires with water. Or now even deliver packages (containing other drones!).
She mentions Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics
- First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
he later added
- Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
The book then turns to the humanity of machines–just when might they become sentient?
But then there’s the whole smart house idea–where “it might be a lot more efficient to live inside a robot than with one.”
The book ends with the hall of Awesome robots: 25 robots you should know and a little explanation of how drones work.
It’s a fun, light-hearted and forward-thinking science book about technology and the future.
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