Dr. Finkelstein and the killer but mainly vegetarian robots

Finkelstein; there is a man, a Doctor of Robotics, called Finkelstein working for the USA military, to develop battlefield robots which will harvest ‘material’ to use as energy…. It sounds like the plot from bad sci-fi movie, but then reality is stranger than fiction.

Apparently this is old news, it first appeared some six months ago, but I caught it on Radio 4 yesterday, there was a preview in the morning, then the main show last night…. In it Dr. Finkelstein described his creation as being ‘mainly vegetarian’ – what the f*ck does that mean? Seems to me to mean that the option of not being vegetarian is very definitely on the menu; when pressed about the concept of this thing eating dead soldiers, Dr. Finkelstein replied that it was illegal for a robot to use dead bodies as an energy source, desecration of the dead is a war crime under article 15 of the Geneva Contentions… He then went on to say that if it was not on the menu, the robot wouldn’t eat it. This implies that the menu can be changed such that what ever was available could be used. And since when did morals and ethics get in the way of the military (especially the USA military) and people making money? At no point dead he say categorically that his robot would not consume the dead (or badly injured).

He was then further pressed on who would be held accountable if one of his battlefield robots did accidentally commit an atrocity, it’s not like you can punish the robot; and rather worryingly he couldn’t actually give a straight answer to that; instead we got flim flam, weasel words and vagueness the like of which would be worthy of any politician. Put this man in the same room as Sarah Palin and we are all as good as dead

And we gave up on 24 last night… 10 minutes into episode 3.

There were some niggles in episodes 1 & 2 – primarily the new boss of CTU is an overbearing prick who couldn’t find his arse with both hands and a diagram to help: Completely ridiculous to have what is supposed to be such an important department in charge of national security controlled by a man of such low mental agility.

And he really did let Jack take a gun (and ammo) from the armoury – what don’t you have to fill in some paper work to get that kind of hardware? Not even sign for it?

Then Jack goes to a house and finds a policeman and his wife shot dead… plot credibility was stretched to breaking point when after Jack was tasered: The cop whom he’d told he was working for CTU investigating a plot to assassinate a world leader did not say to his partner whom had just used the taser, no wait, he’s working for a Govt Agency, he’s on our side… we shouldn’t take him back inside the house cause you think he’s a cop killer…. he’s a secret service agent or something! No he just helped carry Jack back inside. I’m sure the people of Washington are re-assured to know they have such a dumb-fuck working on their police force.

Then the blond woman who works in CTU – which I assume is a fairly high powered, stressful position, a key position in a department responsible for nation security, handed her door key over to the psycho ex boyfriend telling him, you can have a key but you must be out tomorrow – that was just piss poor plot line, just terrible.

What she would have said is… sod off or I will kick your ass, then my hubby-to-be who is some sort of elite commando squad leader will kill you and bury the body were it will never be found: Or had him framed as a terrorist and whisked off to some black ops CIA prison for ever and day.

Instead we plumbed for the deliberately emotive, dire, emotionally tortuous plot twist of doing something completely irrational and illogical when you have alternatives available… crock of shit.

Soon as she handed the key over, we turned over…

Why do the writers of these shows seem to think it’s ok to place people in such high-powered positions then expect to keep any credibility when the characters behave like village idiots? It’s the same with our national obsession with soaps – the way the characters behave is completely removed from real life – people would not do, the things they do… they only reason such events unfold is to make the story line deliberately emotive, highly charged and contrived. A bit more respect for the intelligence of the viewing audience wouldn’t go amiss.

So we voted with the off button – 24 sucks.

S’no Joke

It normally takes me approx 30 -35 minutes to drive to work. Yesterday (in the worst snow storm for 30 years) I gave up after 3 hours. It took me 1 hour 30 mins to get even near to the nearest town, something which would normally take about 6 or 7 mins. I then encountered a HGV going sideways in front of me up a hill, it finally came to a rest blocking the road and then couldn’t get any grip to move.

After watching this truck driver try and manoeuvre off the ice for 10 minutes, I set off on an alternate route. As I got near the motorway the snow was approx 8 inches deep, it was passed the centre hub of my wheels, I was literally ploughing a furrow through it and would have struggled to open the car doors without hitting snow. I pulled over in a garage forecourt to phone my son who was with my wife in her car to see how they were doing and suggest that driving through 8 inches of snow was perhaps unwise and we should all turn around and meet back home.

I happened upon someone at the garage who informed me that the nearby motorway was closed due to snow on the carriage way… So I set off across country to find the A59 into Liverpool, on route I stopped to let an ambulance pass coming the other way and watched in horror as the ambulance got to within 100m of me, a car shot out of the a side road and smashed into the side of the ambulance. Nobody was hurt, the front of the car was mangled, and the body panels of the ambulance were bent onto the back wheel, such that it took quite some time for them to move out of the way so I could get by. I took the worst snow in living memory, the sliding HGV’s, the t-boned ambulance, oh and going across the Moss crab-like at a weird angle but still retaining forward motion as signs from God to turn around and go home.

I then got a phone call from my wife that she had gone off-piste in the car, nothing damaged nobody hurt, and some nice men who had just dragged the previous car out of the shrubbery at the same spot, dragged her out as well: Decisions made, everyone home. So I made it to the A-road, the traffic heading into Liverpool was stationary, but I didn’t care, after 3 hours, numerous near misses and the wife scooting ditchward, I was going in the opposite direction. The traffic was stationary heading to Liverpool for approximately 8 miles.

Once home I found my wife at the bottom of the road unable to get her car up to our house; finally managed to get everyone back home safe and unhurt – though a little stressed.

Today I would normally get up at 06:30 but we left in the same car at that time, blankets, flasks, food & shovel in the boot. It took us 2hour 30 mins to get to work, it too my wife another 45 mins from dropping me off to get to her work. So this morning my commute was 2 hours longer that it should have been. But we made the effort, we sucked it up, stepped up to the line, risked our lives to get to work. To find that my manager has taken a days leave off me for not making it to work yesterday; Investors in People, Improved Working Lives, Staff Charter, Valuing People, our staff are our most valuable asset, nope I think the policy you are looking for is ‘our staff are a piece of sh1t’ and ‘f4ck you and the horse you rode in on.’ Not even a thank you, how was your journey, kiss my rse or nothing.

Sending Failed, (+447973100610) Unknown Recipient

Another delightful customer experience from Orange; they keep sending me promotional text messages at un-godly hours. I’ve been to the Orange shop before to complain about this, but they didn’t know what to do about it – excellent.

The final straw came on my last day off of the Christmas holidays, my last lie in and I got 2 texts at 08:00 off Orange informing me that I could add new numbers to some list of numbers that I don’t currently use anyway; and the b4st4rds woke me up to tell me this. So I phoned 150… the Orange contact number… eventually after ignoring several automated requests for the 7th letter of my password – I don’t even know what my password is, let alone what the 7th letter is; I got through to some bloke that sounded like he was speaking Welsh with a jumper in his mouth. I’ve nothing against Welsh as a language, it’s just that I don’t speak it, and I find it fairly essential in any business or help desk scenario that both parties can communicate effectively; I may have mentioned this before.

‘Hello, yes I want to stop the promotional texts that Orange keep sending me.’

He asks me what my mobile number was; I’ve no idea, and if I try to look up the address book on my phone to see what it is, I’ll probably cut him off, and it had taken me an inordinate amount of time to get this far.

‘Can’t you find me from my name and address?’

‘Yes what’s your surname?’

I give him my name, ‘Smith, John Smith’

‘Smithjohnsmith’ he replies… clearly this is my fault as I should have followed his instructions implicitly – but ffs!

‘No,’ I replied, ‘It’s just Smith’.

‘How do you spell that?’

‘S M I T H’

‘And date of birth’

I gave him my date of birth.

‘I’m sorry I can’t find you.’

‘Do you know your post code?’

‘Ok, L40…’

‘OKL…’

‘No it’s just L40…’

‘No sorry I still can’t find you on the system.’

Curious, given they send me a bill every month (despite repeated requests not to send a paper one).

‘Hold on I’ll go and find my wife she can look up my number on her phone.’

Finally he manages to find me on their system. Makes you think what sort of f4cked up IT system they’ve got when they can’t find customers from their name and address?

Anyway he then goes on to say… ‘So you want to increase the number of texts you get a month?’

There’s a pause; I’m beginning to think he is taking the p1ss.

‘No I want to stop the promotional texts from Orange, you keep sending them to me in the middle of the night.’

‘Oh all you need to do is reply to the texts with ‘stop all’, just reply to the number that they were sent from and this will stop the texts.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes, is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘No thank you’.

‘Have a nice day.’

End…

So I tried this ‘stop all’ magic trick. And it does f4ck all, except to say ‘Sending Failed, (+447973100610) Unknown Recipient’

Which all goes to show what an incompetent bunch of f4ck wits Orange really are.

NCIS

Los Angeles…

So whilst I’m having a bitch about tv programs we watch, and yes I am fully aware of where the off button is or even how to change channel thank you; I though I’d just pass comment about this latest version of NCIS. We never watched the previous incarnations of this show, but thought we’d give this one ago, it having Batman’s sidekick in.

But it was all a bit flat and formulaic to be honest. Firstly LL Cool J seems to spend most of his time stamping around telling everyone who will listen that he’s a Special Forces SEAL! I’ve known a few SF chaps, most of them elderly gentleman now, and being British obviously of a much higher quality and calibre than anything that’s going to come out of the USA. But they don’t go around telling everyone that they are Special Forces, that just not what they do. They were all mild mannered, incredibly laid back and affable blokes till they need to be otherwise. And they weren’t big muscle bound chaps either, tending to be around 5ft 8″ and slight to stocky of build. This concept that SF blokes are all muscle bound monsters is crap. And then there’s his car, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big and loud, not very subtle really is it for a stakeout and such like? Anyone seeing a hint of Miami Vice here?

The noob character played by Adam Craig is totally unbelievable. This is supposed to be a crack unit of investigators, this guy looks like he’s going to wet himself, and appears to have had no training what so ever, so how come he got the job?

Rocky Carrol looks like he should be some sort Alexander O’Neal  tribute act, and in no way gives off any vibe of being in charge or in fact believable.

And at no point did Chris O’Donnell don his Robin outfit, which my wife found most disappointing.

To be fair the story line was ok, and dialogue was ok… if a little trite. Was hoping for more. Meanwhile, part 2 of Modern Family is on tonight, cried laughing at episode so am hoping for more of the same from this.

Bones

Bones: I want to like it, mainly cause my wife enjoys it and watches it all the time, I think it used to be quite good, but just recently they seem to have become really bad caricatures of themselves; I mean that Bones woman, good grief, who rude can she get?

And then there’s the plot lines, let’s take the last one we watched: Firstly it involves a rotting corpse being eaten by a herd of feral cats. Cats won’t eat rotten meat, they’ll eat some pretty heinous things but rotten meat is not one of them. Then said ’scientists’ collect feral cats into cat boxes to take them back to the lab so they can examine their poo. Wait whilst I stop laughing. Anybody who has ever owned a cat, knows that for 90% of them, trying to get them into a carry box is akin to undertaking the Tet Offensive. I’d pay money to watch someone trying to get a feral cat in one. You’d need full body armour, a tranquilliser team and some medics. So the concept of just scooping them up and wandering off with them is quite frankly arse. I mean you can’t even get near a feral cat, let alone pick them up. It didn’t go onto explain what happened back at the lab when they got there. Or what they did with them one they’d finished the poo collection.

And then there’s the idea that a bright silver Aston Martin DB9 with it’s windows shot out, sitting in plain view on a side street in down town Washington DC would not go unnoticed for any length of time…

And did I mention how week on week that Bones woman gets increasingly rude with people, I mean how many people get to be verbally abused each week before one of them ends up going; “Oi you freak show, slap!”

What’s more bemusing, apart from the fact that people watch it, oh no, I guess that’s it, people write it like that, cause people watch it. Sigh, I’ll get my coat.

Saturday

Junior: “Anybody want to play wii tennis?”

D: “I’ve just spent the whole day cleaning every room in the house, the bathrooms, the bedrooms, changed the beds, polished every surface, bleached the work surfaces, cleaned the living room, the kitchen, sorted out clothes, washing and I’ve even washed the god damn skirting boards. And now I’ve got to go shopping.” Pause for breath…

Junior: “You could have just said no.”

.

Dargnammit.

Walking Day

It was Walking Day in the village yesterday and then the fete last night in a marquee on the cricket pitch – all sounds very middle England, and to be fair, it probably is.

We caught the tail end of the procession, some men in white frocks who look suspiciously like Druids, with their white hair, white robes and tall staffs, striding down the High Street from one end of the village to another, looking very serious and very (self) important. They were followed by children of various youth organisations, brass bands, Morris Men, Morris Woman, tractors decorated with flowers pulling carts filled with more flowers and small children waving at grandparents and neighbours: All very civilised. Oh and there was a whole cloud of parents buzzing around the procession. It was a perfect day, blue skies and high fluffy white cloud

We didn’t got to the fete, we didn’t fancy paying the £15:00 each or £60:00 for all of us to go sit in a big smelly tent at the other end of the village eating posh bacon butties, listening to some wedding band murder what were once barely acceptable records. Besides we could sit in the comfort of our own living room, open the windows and listen to them as it was. And it wouldn’t have cost us £60:00 for the privilege. And this is what we did, and has been the case for every village fete since we have lived here, the heavens opened; the rain was biblical. It was really nice sitting here listening to it hammer down. It was that loud that it very nearly drowned out the noise of the fete. I bet it was really loud in the marquee.

Expensive Pager

So my new Orange mobile would at least whilst I am at home, be nothing more than an expensive pager. For whilst there is enough signal for people to phone me, there isn’t enough signal for me to either hear them or actually speak to them. So it seems I get to phone them back on the land line. Cosmic.

Mainly Apples

Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

It’s known amongst family and friends that I can’t stand beer in any of its forms (stout, ale, bitter, mild, larger etc). I think it’s the taste. For starters I’ve got a relatively sweet tooth, so by definition anything called bitter is not going to appeal to me. I have tried, but after a couple of mouthfuls I just know that the impending mess from the projectile vomit is not worth the effort when there are plenty of other reality altering fluids available. I can drink vodka till it comes out my nose and frequently do, but that’s another story.

Despite my dislike of such things I do go to our local beer festival, which is not as weird as it first sounds. There’s a ‘normal’ bar there, so I can stand and sip my vodka and mixer of choice whilst watching my friends crumble into incoherence as the last pint of Bishop’s Nobbrot or Whapweasel slams through their shuddering synapses. This year though, the bar was closed: Calamity; no vodka. No nothing, other than what was in the gloomy looking barrels piled up behind the make shift bench across the back of the church hall.

There was an entrance fee, for the life of my I can’t remember what it was, but you got a pint pot with the date and event printed on the side, so you can look back fondly on the event, reminiscing about the huge blankness where your memory used to be. And you got to purchase some tickets which you traded for beer at the back. Oh and a program listing all the beers, which you could tick off as you worked your way through them: All very civilised, all very English.

But what was I going to drink? I stood there pondering for some time, long enough for my friends to return with various coloured inebriants, which they held up to the light and eyed warily. They were shared around, everybody had a sip of everybody elses. I found they either made my toes curl or one eye go into spasm and my saliva glands slam shut. On flicking through the program once more I spied a small suspicious section labelled ‘ciders’. Crivens, I’d not drunk cider since I was about 14, and even then I think it was mixed with lemonade. These were manly, organic, 7%+ ciders. Was that good or bad? My friends all pulled a face at the idea, but something made from apples had to be sweeter than the oaty, barley, hoppy bitter things they were all standing around chewing.

You got to use own glass all night, the one they’d given you as you walked in and it had been established early on, that if you went for a pint and you had a pint pot, then you got a pint. This is not only stating the bleeding obvious but could also lumber you with a whole pint of something that sounded glorious in the even program but actually tasted like Satan’s Piss. Better to get a half, (and half price) and go back for more if you really liked it. And because these were hand poured from the barrels, you usually ended up with 2/3 or 3/4 of a pint, so you got more bang for your buck. In these credit crunch times, it made perfect sense. It all seemed like a win-win situation: Till your legs fell off.

I tried each of the ciders. The first one was surprisingly refreshing, slightly cloudy, tasted like tin and smelt of pickled onions. And to be honest the others didn’t get any better, one was akin to licking a battery. Having tried them all I settled on the 8% organic one, as by that time I didn’t care. It was a surprisingly clear, golden liquid, the colour of mead or some Norse Goddess’s pubic hair. It’s taste was hard to describe, it didn’t taste like mead for sure. It had cleansing, acrid, napalm like affect. It seemed to dilute the light in the room but that could have been the fumes coming off it. It wasn’t long before I realised that my lower jaw and eyes had somehow become slightly dislocated and were inhabiting a small but subtly different space time continuum to the rest of me. It was a bit like an out of body experience with all the fun taken out. I felt like I had to grip the floor with my toes so I didn’t fall off.

All of this was being compounded by the thumping beat and wailing brass section of a band playing 1920’s 1930’s jazz. Nice. What was nice was the blessed silence that erupted when we staggered outside. The biting, bone gouging wind was now merely fresh as we had donned our invisible yet surprisingly warm alcfrl coats. It was time to leave, one of my friends was quite concerned and wanted to confirm that his legs still worked, the others mute with glee as they had reached double figures: Enough for any mortal. So we ambled back into town and slumped in a corner of a student bar, to sip on something refreshing, sweet, mass produced and non-confrontational.