A Warning From The Future

Nov 25, 2022

Another blow to Turkeykind!
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving. 
Lastly, vegetarians, please forgive my post. 

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The Ferryman’s End

Nov 18, 2022

A haunting quote from a Greek lyric written over 2500 years ago speaks of those on the ferry “set free from sickness and eld and toils, having fled from the deeply sounding ferry of Akheron (Acheron)." In the tales of the day, Charon was the name of the ferryman who transports the souls of the dead across the swamps of Acheron, called the river Styx in Roman mythology, to Hades known later as Hell.

This image evokes a strange feeling of sorrow. One can imagine that the sculpture depicts Charon, at his own end, trying to make it across Acheron one last time before he is lost in its murky waters. He struggles to drag his boat along, determined to make the journey even though the ferry is already submerged. I enjoy artists who inspire a myriad of emotional responses in those that view their works. Those works fuel our imaginations and are responsible for the creation of countless tales.

For more information visit
adventures-in-middle-aged-travel.com/victors-way-indian-sculpture-park-ireland-road-trip/
Image courtesy of www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ozlgbc/the_ferrymans_end_statue_victors_way_sculpture/

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Look But Don’t Touch

Nov 12, 2022

Imagine an aged alchemist concocting a deadly brew to protect his book of secrets from
being read by prying eyes. Now imagine centuries later an unwary librarian finding such a book in a special collections section. Wouldn’t that make a great concept for a fantasy book? But, is it a complete fantasy?

Only recently, a rare book laced with a deadly poison was found by senior librarian Rhian Isaac of the Leeds Central Library. It was not an alchemist’s tome but a seemingly innocuous copy of My Own Garden: The Young Gardener’s Yearbook, published in 1855. What makes this book deadly is the fact that the cover had been dyed with arsenic to create a vivid emerald-green hue. 

It was not with deadly intent but common practice in the Victorian era to cover many books with a cloth colored with a pigment known as “Paris green” composed of arsenic. Many believe that the practice protected the paper from insect activity. Still, this could make a great mystery book as well, perhaps entitled “The Case of the Deadly Emerald Book” or “Look But Don’t Touch”. 
Artby NinjArt.

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Robots, Androids, and Cyborgs, Oh My!

Nov 4, 2022

What famous robots, androids, or cyborgs have you read about in your literary travels? I have read a lot of discussions about the differences between robots, androids, and cyborgs and thought I would take the time to express my views.

Here is the definition of a robot verses a machine by a top roboticist Rodney Brooks, Founder and CTO of Rethink Robotics. “A robot is an autonomous machine capable of sensing its environment, carrying out computations to make decisions, and performing actions in the real world outside of its own body.” Using this definition, he further explains that a dishwasher is a machine while a Roomba can be considered a robot.

What is the difference between a robot and an android? A robot may not look like a human at all whereas an android is designed to look and function like a human. The word android comes from the Greek Andros, meaning man and was first used in a story in 1886 by French author Villiers de I’isle-Abam about an android named Hadaly. Data, from the series Star Trek TNG, is an android, and a very sophisticated and sentient one at that.

A Cyborg is considered a biological being that has been augmented through the use of machine or computer components to enable them to perform functions they normally could not perform. Manfred Clynes, an Austrian neuroscientist, coined the term in a paper on space exploration coauthored with Nathan Kline at a 1960 Nassau conference. It comes from a blend of the terms cybernetic and organism. 
The later Terminator from the movies looks human and is covered in human skin, it is still a robot in human form, hence an android. Even though there is some debate about this, by the definition of a Cyborg, the entity has to be an organism first that has parts applied to it, not a robot that is augmented.

Art is titled “Robot in Love” by Rudy Faber  

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