Tag: spider robinson

Jeanne Robinson, XXXX – 2010.

I saw last night that Spider Robinson’s wife has passed. Spider was one of those authors whose work I devoured more or less in one shot; the Callahan novels particularly*.  I ended up later reading the entire Travis McGee saga (and a lot of Dortmunder) because of Spider Robinson, too.  He’s always been one of the hopeful ones.

So my good thoughts to him and his.

Moe Lane

*”If you’ve never been to Callahan’s place, God’s pity on you.”

There are elements of Thomas the Tank Engine…

…that are, bluntly, unnerving from a Artificial Intelligence viewpoint.  My wife can expound on this a lot more profoundly than I can – she’s the roboticist in the family; I’m the drunken poet – but even I can notice the matter-of-fact way that the engines in that universe seem almost indifferent sometimes to their impending demises.  I grant that (to paraphrase Spider Robinson) if we want AIs to have a survival reflex we’re going to have to program one into them… but it’s still kind of disturbing, or possibly even creepy.  Then again, what if the engines started reacting to their incredibly dangerous environment appropriately? – and it is dangerous.  The British authorities should have swept in and seized the railroad system as being a constant risk to life and limb, given the number of derailings, crashes, and accidents that happen more or less routinely.

(pause)

What?  I have kids.