I woke up and opened the first window of my Lego Advent Calendar. I had a little yellow bus… what was I supposed to say about that?
As I pondered I made toast and had a look at the Internet, Facebook was illuminating; whilst I was asleep apparently “er indoors TM” had been up most of the night with toothache. I said she should have called the dentist on Saturday… My cousin was posting about an episode that happened in Hastings last week. Not only had there been all sorts of nastiness about a vigil for drowned asylum seekers down there, but protestors had tried to stop a launch of the Hastings Lifeboat in case it was going to rescue more asylum seekers who were about to drown. What sort of person stops a lifeboat? Interestingly there was also a post from the Hastings Observer newspaper featuring various people from the area who have gone to prison this month. There’s an idea… Name and shame? There were several posts from people who have shaved off their moustaches now that Mo-Vember is over. Mo-Vember? Is that still a thing?
I also saw that I am running the Munzee clan this month. I was pleased about that - it gives me something to do (not that I have to do much).
I sent out birthday wishes and got ready for our morning’s adventure.
Bearing in mind the weekend’s rain I decided the woods would be too muddy, so I took the dogs out to Great Chart where the track is rather firmer. We did our usual walk from the cricket pavilion up to the river and back. As we walked Treacle cowered in terror from one little old lady, we barked at one dog and got barked at by two other dogs. Everyone was all laughs and smiles about the barking, and I saw that as something of a minor victory. If only Treacle wasn’t so timid...
As we drove home I caught part of the morning’s Reith lecture in which Stuart Russell (Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco) made endless speculation about something which is firmly in the realms of fiction. Artificial Intelligence. What is it? How can you tell if a machine (or a person!) is intelligent or self-aware? Will machines take over the world just because humans did exactly that?
Radio Four never fails to amaze me. They will look down their noses and laugh at science-fiction authors but suck up to professors making *exactly* the same groundless suppositions purely because one is a professor with letters after his name and the other is not. As far as I am concerned, all the time the robots end up like Daneel Olivaw or Marvin and not like HAL or George Ten we’ll be OK. (full marks if you know all four of those)
Seeing the dogs had grubby tummies I decided a quick hose-down wouldn’t hurt. As I opened the door I told them “into the bath” and both ran and jumped into the bath. They really do understand what is said to them. Which is what makes life so frustrating when they don’t do as they are told.
With tummies hosed down I spent five minutes raking up dead leaves in the garden. I would like to have spent longer, but my back started playing up so I gave up and came in. Pogo snuggled up to me and fell asleep, sucking on my trousers (yuk!) as I wrote up CPD. CPD is on the dull side, but like my Advent Calendar the CPD blog has a cult following with two hundred people having looked at it over the last week. I wonder if those two hundred people are other blood testers who are blagging my blog entries… I suppose I couldn’t really complain if they are; after all that is what I do when creating that blog in the first place.
Having had a sudden stroke of inspiration I posted up today’s instalment of the Advent Calendar adventure, and seeing the dogs were both asleep I set off to work. I don’t like leaving them, but I know from the experiences of the last six days (and the last few years) that (when at home) they spend all of the day time fast asleep.
During a break I got a message that a friend had died. A fellow hunter of Tupperware; one who was always letting me know about the best bed & breakfasts and places to stay for weekends away. We walked together a few times and would regularly swap hints and tips. She died suddenly and unexpectedly on Monday evening.
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