Новости за 19.04.2016

What will it be like to have a robot as your carer, when you grow old? Better than having no carer, for sure. The robot will be able to fetch and carry, and probably make conversation. Will you come to see it as a companion, a friend? Probably yes. We accept animals as companions, and come to love and trust them. It’s not so hard to imagine a robots fulfilling a similar role, perhaps especially for the demented

Professor at the Marine Corps War College reports “amazing” results from using war-games to teach the Peloponnesian Wars and World War I. Not only are the students spellbound; they almost always find themselves drawn into the same traps that brought disaster on their historical predecessors. The Athenians attack Syracuse, the Great Powers stumble into World War. “It has never taken longer than four hours for the armies to march”

“If cities are sexed, then Cork is a male place. Low-sized, disputatious, stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type. He has a haughty demeanour that’s perhaps not entirely earned but he can also, in a kinder light, seem princely. He is certainly melancholic. He is given to surreal flights and to an antic humour and he is blessed with pleasingly musical speech patterns. He is usually quite relaxed, and head over heels in love with himself”

A retired American mobster reminisces: “In 1933, I was approached by someone respectable, a Jew not involved in any criminal activity, and asked for my help. He wanted me to contact some of my underworld pals in a plan to kill Hitler … That summer of 1933, we learned that just about everybody and his brother thought about taking a whack at the Fuhrer. When you got to Germany, you had to take a ticket and get in line for your shot”

Every trait supposed unique to humans is found in some other animal when we look hard enough for it. How about high intelligence? We allow that animals can think, but we assume their intelligence to be a failed or very limited version of our own. “A better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problem”

He was born on Saturn. But where on Earth did he buy his clothes? Opera companies were a useful source, especially after an Aida. “In his spangled capes and violet cloaks, his painted third eye, his mesh caps and pyramid hats and pharaoh’s headdresses and solar antennae, Sun Ra ushered in an utter sense of liberation, mystery, and free expression. He was not a man, he patiently explained to all who asked, but an angel”

Don’t go to Panama to set up your dodgy company. Do it in the middle of London. Much better optics. One townhouse at 29 Harley Street “operates as a large, ornate and prestigiously located postbox and answerphone” for 2,159 shell companies. Anonymity guaranteed. “It is simply easier to commit fraud if you can do it anonymously, unobtrusively, and behind the protective cover of a prestigious London address”

Interesting if true. A secretive start-up called Magic Leap has mastered virtual reality. Everything in work and play is about to change. “With these magical goggles I saw human-sized robots walk through the walls of the room. I watched miniature humans wrestle each other on a real tabletop, almost like a Star Wars holographic chess game.” The Internet will have to be made over. “This is what disruption on a vast scale looks like”