Killer Robots That DRINK TEA!

Er - Not Literally
I mean, that would be both bizarre and kind of awesome.  You can imagine it, twenty-ton combat jaegers sitting in their reload and repair facility, pouring Earl Grey from a fifty-gallon teapot and asking each other if they wanted a slice of lemon with that?
     Before we continue to navigate further into the dank recesses of your humble scribe's mental hinterland, I would like to explain why, yesteryon, you only ended up with a page of links to old material from previous Decembers.
     No!  Not laziness.  Social schedules.  You see, it was my day off, since I will be working Saturday, and also, coincidentally but handily, Darling Daughter's birthday.  Art?

I don't need to tell you who is who, do I?

     24 years old!  You may have noticed that Tom has been shorn of his chin doormat, as in his new occupation it was a fire risk.  Yes, really.  Travelling to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, picking up the clan, travelling to Northenden, popping along to the Gardener's Arms and returning home to The Mansion all meant no time for blogging.
     Sorry about that.
     Okay, that was a nice short Intro, for a change.  Let us progress to throwing the motley into a swimming pool full of molten gold! *

What Thoroughly Splendid Service
As you ought to know by now, Conrad loves his books, and his comic books, and his nitromethane cocktails, but especially his books.  Just last week I ordered the second trade paperback of "Marshall Law", 'Blood, Sweat And Fears".  Art?

CAUTION!  Not full of bunnies and flowers

     Okay, the vendors are R & R Books, from Stroud, and they included the following compliment slip with the (very well-packaged) volume.  Art?

     How wonderfully polite is that?  Give these people 10/10 for prompt, efficient and personable customer service!
     The thing is, 'Marshall Law' is shockingly violent, rude, crude, pervy, offensive and sweary, so R & R may not have actually realised quite what they'd sent me ...

"Yes, that's all very well," I hear you say.  "And the killer robots?"

The Killer Robots
There's probably a band with this name - in fact, let me just check -

Yup.  I was right.

     Anyway, that's nothing to do with this.  If you recall, of late I have been yarking on about various armoured vehicles that pre-dated TANK, and some remote-controlled vehicles on the outskirts of TANK.  Today we approach the semi-fledged modern war robot, which lazy journalists and editors ALWAYS depict as being a Terminator.

     Not so!  Art?

      Note lack of humanoid combat chassis.  I dare say you want to know that they're not cheating, so take a look at the control console set-up for the above.  

     Yes, you might have noticed that these images are coming from the BBC website, as they seem to have got it into their heads that an existential crisis exists around the corner about these killer robots, which are British, hence the tea-drinking.  I know what they're thinking (no need for DARPA helmet): "We need to take steps now to avoid Skynet taking over in a dozen years, because if we don't then James Cameron will have won and the ending to "Titanic" was a cop-out."
     Well yes, except nobody's yet put these things to the acid test.  They may indeed perform prodigies, as do today's current remotely-controlled drones, which have umpteen kinds of camera and missiles mounted and which have been very bad news for the bad guys; or they may end up like the M247 Sergeant York, which would need a couple of blog posts all of it's own.  Art?

     Of course, the real issue here is what happens if (or WHEN!) these robots are allowed to run on their own.  Not remotely-controlled by a human operator, n but allowed to run autonomously as a consequence of their Artificial Intelligence, with strictly limited human oversight.  Yes, you could install an auto-destruct mechanism, except that you'd need to ensure the enemy couldn't trigger it deliberately, and there's also the worry what an autonomous killer robot might think about a big fat bomb that it can't defuse sitting in it's innards.  Who's to say it wouldn't roll into a garage and order the technicians to remove said device at gunpoint?
 - and other horrid scenarios!

Conrad - made up of 90% horrid, 5% whimsy, 3% spelling and 1% decency.

Almost On The Same Theme
Yesterday your humble scribe went on, as is his wont, about the Fountains of Wayne and their horribly catchy song "I Want An Alien For Christmas".
     Almost as horribly catchy is their song "Survival Car" and because I'm typing this at work I can't legitimately add in a Youtube link.  I can quote the first line of the lyrics:

 

Would you like a ride in my survival car?

     To which my uneasy answer would be

 

That depends.  What, exactly, is a 'survival car'?

     Shall we find out?**

Hmmm.  Lo-tec

     Also -

Again, hmmmm.  Slightly higher but still not hi-tec

     The ethos here appears to be 1)  Civilisation is going to collapse, we're all doomed &  2)  As long as I can get petrol I don't care, because I've seen all the "Mad Max" films.

     EXCEPT NOT, FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE! 

     This is a common misconception.  Petrol does not keep indefinitely and will not work in an internal-combustion engine after a year, at most.  The bandits and outlaws in "Mad Max" would, in fact, have ended up like the bandits and outlaws in "Turbo Kid" - travelling by bicycle.  Of course this is not very cinematic:  a duel to the death on a BMX versus a tricycle is - less than compelling.  Hence the fudging of realism.

No, Art, damn your eyes!

Finally -
Just been re-watching "Mackennas Gold" and was impressed by the landscapes they used for location filming.  If I can just prod Art into sentience -

Note the stone towers

     This is Canyon De Chelly in a National Park in Arizona, which the film-makers pretend (I HOPE it's pretend) to destroy at the film's end.  Here's a picture of the real thing (which we HOPE is still standing):

     I was rather impressed with the miniatures they used in what might be called "Earthquake Porn" at the film's climax - unless of course they really dynamited a canyon into rubble.  But no - that would be too cynical.***




*  A very small swimming pool.  The motley's not worth much.
**  Rhetorical question.  You are going to find out.
***  Or - would it?