September 8, 2017

"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."

"... and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide... Pesticides and other chemicals are traditionally applied blindly across a whole field or crop. Blue River’s systems are agricultural sharp shooters that direct chemicals only where they are needed. The startup’s robots are towed behind a regular tractor like conventional spraying equipment. But they have cameras on board that use machine-learning software to distinguish between crops and weeds, and automated sprayers to target unwanted plants." (Wired).

I think technology like this is great, but I don't know why the word "robot" is used... other than to try to make us like it more. It's just a machine. When is a machine a robot?

Here's an answer to that question at Quora:
  • Machine can be defined as an apparatus used to perform a particular task.
  • Most machines are not autonomous. Meaning they can't take decisions or they can't be left without inspecting or assisting them.
  • A Machine can be termed as a Robot, if it is autonomous and if it agrees with the three laws stated by Isaac Asimov - Father of Robotics
  • Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
  • Some machines are Robots.
For example an electric screw driver is a machine, it is not autonomous. If collaborated with a robotic arm, it may be autonomous and hence can be termed as a Robot.
Is the Blue River autonomous? It's an attachment that must dragged behind a tractor. But it does seem to be making decisions on its own.

I'd like to think that "robot" was limited to a machine that resembles a human being. Wikipedia briefly acknowledges my romanticism:
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer— capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to take on human form but most robots are machines designed to perform a task with no regard to how they look.
The Oxford English Dictionary separates the meanings, with one being "An intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal" (and restricted with "Chiefly Science Fiction") and the other "A machine capable of automatically carrying out a complex series of movements, esp. one which is programmable." Both meanings go back to the 1920s. There's also the figurative meaning, "A person who acts mechanically or without emotion," and that too goes back to the 20s, e.g., "Mr. G. Bernard Shaw defined Robots as persons all of whose activities were imposed on them" (1923).

It's interesting that today I think of the word "robot" as working to give us a friendly attitude toward a machine, but back then, the word was used to express negativity toward human beings.

Here's a line from a poem by D.H. Lawrence: "The mechanical impulse for money and motor-cars which rules the robot-classes and the robot-masses, now."

83 comments:

Todd said...

I read about a similar "machine" a few months back that instead of using chemicals, it "spiked" the weed with a high speed rod, driving it into the earth.

Original Mike said...

"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants... and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide..."

Next up, unwanted people.

Seriously, this seems pretty cool. I spot spray the weeds in my lawn. It's a tediuos job I'd love to hand over to a robot.

Deirdre Mundy said...

A humanoid-looking robot is called an android.

I learned this from reading this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4313289-it-could-still-be-a-robot

about 3 million times to young children.

CJinPA said...

I think technology like this is great, but I don't know why the word "robot" is used... other than to try to make us like it more. It's just a machine. When is a machine a robot?

If you picture the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz hanging off the back of a tractor shooting lasers at dandelions it's much more enjoyable.

Carter Wood said...

Today's Super-Fun-Pak Comix by Ruben Bolling is on point.

Christy said...

As someone who once got chased all over a field by Daddy with a hoe all because young corn looks just like Johnson Grass and I'd never been set to pulling weeds before, I like this robot.

Todd said...

Here is a story (with video) on the "weed wacker"...

Nonapod said...

Yeah, as Deidre Mundy said, humanoid robots are generally referred to as androids in SciFi. I tend to think of a robot as a machine capable of some level of autonomous behavior. A drone is a remotely human controlled device which may or may not have some limited autonomous functionality.

Bob Ellison said...

My autonomous lawn robot uses tiny tactical nuclear weapons on weeds. So cute, roaming around the meadow on its little legs, creating 3-inch mushroom clouds here and there.

Owen said...

Complex series of actions is not quite right. A mechanical watch performs a complex series of actions. An Italian race-car engine performs a complex series of actions. But nobody would call either one a robot.

I think the key determinant is choice. A machine operates in an environment. If the environment and the "work piece" (whatever it is we want the machine to do for us) are fully defined and controlled, the machine doesn't choose. Or its decision rule is trivially simple: if the block is aligned with the target pattern, drill, otherwise reject.

A complex environment with complex decision rules --possibly open-ended and adaptive based on experience-- is where the "robot" quality comes in. IMHO.

Would love some experts to chime in here.

Kevin said...

Can Lawnba be far behind?

Lyssa said...

I've always wondered that (when does a machine become a robot?). I recall reading something a while back that said that the robot that most of us are familiar with in our homes is a dishwasher, which I thought was odd. I'd never thought of a dishwasher as a robot before, but I guess it does do a somewhat complex series of activities, rather than just a single thing like an oven, and it does those things automatically.

I googled "is a dishwasher a robot" and found that there's a division of thought - some say yes, some say no.

Big Mike said...

Cars have been assembled -- mostly assembled -- by robots for some time now and they look nothing like humans. My favorite is a robot "snake" designed to crawl (slither!) through the debris of a collapsed building looking for survivors.

MayBee said...

Makes me think of the FBI's "mail robot" on The Americans.

tcrosse said...

Karel Čapek is credited with introducing the term 'robot' in his 1920 play R.U.R.
I always liked the term 'automaton'.

.

Ray - SoCal said...

By the founder of iRoomba, a solar powered weed killer.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602836/a-roomba-for-your-garden/

Perfect for the home garden. Basically kills weed sprouts.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Lysssa

A dishwasher (as far as I know) only does what you tell it to do, when you put in the information or push the buttons.

If it would decide... on its own and automatically.... when to start, add the dishwasher soap in the amount needed, what kind of cycle to use, whether to use gentle or pan wash, if it should sanitize or not...based on what you had put into the machine, I might consider it a robot. Otherwise it is a pretty nice convenience, a machine and not a robot.

Is there a dishwasher that can do those things?

Wince said...

I always look for the ability to scream "Warning!, Warning!" in reaction to any unforeseen threat, except when spending day after day alone with a prepubescent who is about to be molested by an antagonistic stowaway who has a penchant for drama.

Owen said...

Tcrosse: "Rossum's Universal Robots" by Čapek was a great read in an anthology I was given at about age 11. Also contained "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster. Our forebears were thinking hard about this stuff a century ago.

Odi said...

Ann, the term Android designates a robot with a human appearance. Btw, is it odd that I have to prove I'm not a robot to submit this post?

Ray - SoCal said...

Lots of automation coming to farming. CA will reach a $15 minimum wage soon, and changed the overtime rules, agriculture hit hard. Dealing with herbicides is high liability. This machine probably uses less herbicides and less labor. Plus it reduces the need for imported labor.

AllenS said...

They're talking about row crops. Corn, soybeans, and while weeds are a problem, your yields will be diminished more by grasses that suck up the water and fertilizer than your row crops.

That's why when they came out with Roundup Ready corn and soybeans, you could spray the field after the crops came up, and the weeds and grasses would die within 7 to 10 days, and there you were, with a field of crops instead of grasses and weeds.

John Nowak said...

The broadest definition I'm familiar with is a device incorporating a sensor to detect something about the environment, a computer to decide what to do about it, and an action to do work.

So that includes mousetraps and thermostats, but excludes dishwashers, except the type postulated by Dust Bunny Queen.

bagoh20 said...

A robot is always just a machine, but like the ones used to diffuse bombs or enter dangerous areas without making decisions, the robot is just a machine that resembles a human in form or action. Even a machine that makes complex decisions, which every cellphone is capable of, are not always considered robots. It's purely superficial whether we call it a robot or not, based on the influence of literature.

Kylos said...

John Deere is also creating autonomous tractors that can operate a field without a driver.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Combine self-driving cars with that concept, using software that can identify a Democrat, and we're really talking!

exhelodrvr1 said...

They already have farm equipment that will self-drive down the field, keeping a straight line despite changes in slopes, dips, etc. I don't think they have automated the turns yet (at least for commercially available equipment), but that's not going to be very far in the future.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Todd - you may be thinking about this one:

YT: Tertill Kickstarter Video

Kickstarter: Tertill

It's by the guy who invented the Roomba, and basically distinguishes by height alone. I've seen some more sophisticated examples that use a camera (I did some research on urban gardening), but all of those worked on some kind of a track or line. The Tertill moves on wheels so you can set it up in a large bed and let it work the whole thing.

Kinda cool. Would Meade miss pulling weeds, though? We have been talking about idleness lately....

HoodlumDoodlum said...

(Ray - sorry, didn't see yours before posting mine.)

Big Mike said...

@Lyssa, a proper robot dishwasher would (1) bus the table for you; (2) clean off leftover bones, large pieces of food, and used napkins left on the plates; (3) decide the best way to load the dishes; (4) load them per its plan, adjusting as needed; (5) estimate the dirtiness of the dishes, silverware, pots, and pans and select the optimal temperature, number of cycles, and duration of each cycle; (6) load soap; (7) close the door; and (8) run itself per its plan developed as part of step (5).

Don't know about you, but my dishwasher can't do anything "autonomously" until step (8), and I have to select the plan per the buttons on front of the machine.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

The term is usually credited to Karel Čapek from his play "R.U.R" ("Rossum’s Universal Robots") though his robots were more like androids as they were more artifical people. (The confusion carried through into A.E. Van Vogt's stories where "robots" would often be flesh & blood beings). Asimov'e 3 laws were story telling devices designed to create interesting plot problems. He admitted there was no reason to suppose real robots would have anything similar (or that "positronic" brains would be any better than "electronic" -- it just sounded cool).

Left Bank of the Charles said...

So this automated weed sprayer is not a robot now but will become one if pulled behind a tractor that can drive itself?

There are a couple of problems with the formulation, "A Machine can be termed as a Robot, if it is autonomous and if it agrees with the three laws stated by Isaac Asimov."

Let's say that a machine is autonomous but does not agree with the three laws, or only agrees with two of the the three. Is it not a robot? And if the machine is programmed to follow the three laws (it doesn't agree to follow them but by its nature has to), how can it be said to be autonomous?

It is complexity of action not autonomy that makes a machine a robot.

Todd said...

Kylos said...
John Deere is also creating autonomous tractors that can operate a field without a driver.

9/8/17, 9:41 AM


With "real" self-driving cars right around the corner, self driving tractors can't be that far behind...

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Q: How did the farmer know his robot girlfriend had left him?

A: She wrote him a John Deere letter..

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Professor A - does the unlinkable OED give the origin as Czech or Russian? I'm seeing it claimed that the root is the Czech "robota" which meant forced labor, and that the modern word's origin was a 1920 Czech play ("R.U.R Rossum's Universal Robots" by Capek).

I also see robotnik: Peasants in the Czech lands (at the time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) who revolted against rich landowners in the late 19th century were called "robotniks," derived from the Czech words for "work" and "forced labor" and an older Slavic term for "slave." (that's from Wikipedia).

If the word comes from the idea of human slavery, how does that affect your understanding of whether the term was meant to give us a more or less friendly attitude towards machines?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Not super-related, but: Wiki: The Mechanical Turk

traditionalguy said...

One more tool. We already use GPS combines harvesting food within an inch to feed the billions of new people that the Catstrophists want to see dead. The new Nazis will need to use plagues and wars now, because the old standby famines are not doing the job.

There is a God after all.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'd say a dishwasher becomes a robot when it includes sensors for determining cycle variables on its own. Some have an auto-wash feature that estimates the level of filth on the dishes and adjusts the cycle accordingly.

I'd say the John Deere thing qualifies as a robot because it is taking sensor input and determining whether or not to spray the herbicide. For it to not be a robot, a person would have to make the determination.

Bob Boyd said...

Killing weeds is nice, but I want a robot that can remove her bra without taking off her blouse.

Freeman Hunt said...

A robot is a machine that receives sensor input and does things based on that rather than being controlled by a set routine or a human. At least, that is how I understand it.

Ann Althouse said...

"Yeah, as Deidre Mundy said, humanoid robots are generally referred to as androids in SciFi."

Interestingly, "android" is a much older word. The OED traces it to the 18th century:

1728 E. Chambers Cycl. (at cited word) Albertus Magnus, is recorded as having made an Androides.

So why did "robot" arise in the first place? As those of us who do crossword puzzles know, it comes from a play, RUR, which was written in Czech. OED: "Etymology: < Czech robot (1920 in R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots, a play by Karel Čapek (1890–1938), Czech author) < robota forced labour, drudgery (see robot n.1)... According to Karel Čapek, the word was suggested to him by his brother Josef (1887–1945) as an alternative to his original intention of coining a word ultimately < classical Latin labor labour n. in this sense."

John Nowak said...

Agreed with Unknown about Asimov's Three Laws. They are to real life engineering what Poirot is to police work.

Some definitions include the ability to reprogram the device to perform different tasks, which drops mousetraps out of consideration.

Ralph L said...

The new Nazis will need to use plagues

But right now, they're using plaques.

Weed resistance to herbicides is becoming a factor, too, so Todd's contraption may be the future.

bagoh20 said...

"It is complexity of action not autonomy that makes a machine a robot."

Rube Goldberg did not make robots.

"A robot is a machine that receives sensor input and does things based on that rather than being controlled by a set routine or a human."

What it does with the input is a set routine.

No matter how complex or autonomous, it is still just a machine. It always does what the gears and levers are designed to do ahead of time. Computer programs are just a set of digital gears and levers. The machine is always 100% predictable at a high enough level of mathematical analysis, even if randomness is programmed in.

There is no real delineation between a machine and a robot. There may not even be a real line between humans and a machine in physical terms. We are complex, and somewhat autonomous, but how much really? When was the last time you did something contrary to your nature, your programming, your gears and levers?

Churchy LaFemme: said...

There is no real delineation between a machine and a robot. There may not even be a real line between humans and a machine in physical terms. We are complex, and somewhat autonomous, but how much really? When was the last time you did something contrary to your nature, your programming, your gears and levers?

You are Scott Adams and I claim my five pounds.

rhhardin said...

Radio Japan calls them robots with "rob" as in "rob."

The study of highly-proficient non-native English speakers is entertaining when they encounter a word that they've developed persistent wrong ideas about.

As for autonomous, it's an empty distinction. Computers don't make it autonomous.

Matter has no inwards. You remove one surface only to meet with another surface. (Shelling via Coleridge)

Ralph L said...

“Herbicides alone are not sustainable. Diversity is the only way forward,” Powles said at the Weed Science Society meeting.

The Social Justice Weeders are taking over agriculture!

rhhardin said...

The trick with convincing robots is developing signs of pain, getting its sudden onset and slow decay right, so that a wince can be convincing.

See Stanley Cavell The Claim of Reason for a long investigation about the inventor working on the problem, which is really an investigation of language. What would you call it if ...

The language has rules that shape thought.

rhhardin said...

Adams is wrong. People have an inwards and machines don't.

It's in the language.

Bob Boyd said...

Country songs of tomorrow:

She Thinks My Robot's Sexy

rhhardin said...

Eddington had the best explanation, the universe is made of mind-stuff.

Physics is limited to things that don't expose that. Everything conspires to prevent certain things from being discovered: lengths change, time slows and speeds up, in just such a way that you can't tell stuff you started out wanting to know. The equations are all designed to conceal stuff you can't discover.

Cavell says in effect that the body particularizes that, but there's not much language around to talk about it in detail.

Quaestor said...

"The mechanical impulse for money and motor-cars which rules the robot-classes and the robot-masses, now."

And When D.H. Lawrence lived and wrote the word meant a laborer without skill or pride in accomplishment, as in someone whose only job is to turn a bolt again and again and again for little pay and little rest. These are robots.

The line fairly drips with contempt for the wage-earning Briton, which is ironic given Lawrence's Victorian coal mining origins. By becoming a man of letters Lawrence entered a world dominated by the gentleman sons of gentleman fathers where the "impulse for money" was rarely evident. I think it was "Boysie" Douglas, an aristocrat from an aristocratic line going back to the 13th century, who in a hectoring letter to his lover, Oscar Wilde, wrote "a gentleman doesn't know his bank balance" or words to that effect.

Fernandinande said...

A robot may not write poetry or, through inaction, allow a human being to come into contact with poetry.

bagoh20 said...
When was the last time you did something contrary to your nature, your programming, your gears and levers?


After I unconsciously do that I have the subjective perception that the action was decided consciously and voluntarily.

rhhardin said...

A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a robot.

bagoh20 said...

What is something a human can do that a machine cannot theoretically be designed to do? We could even design a machine to fear other machines, hate them or love them, or to even hate itself, be jealous, be horny, shy, or deplorable. We can program a machine to be stupid, impulsive, arrogant, or self-doubting. It would be extremely challenging, but we could make them worse versions of ourselves for the self-esteem it could provide us. Imagine androids you could mock all day, exclude from your cliques, make fun of and bully. It would sure take the pressure off of my family.

bleh said...

It doesn't make me like it more. Robot sounds more sinister to me. A machine sounds like a tool or implement, whereas a robot sounds like a sentient being that might turn around and spray me with herbicide.

rehajm said...

In South Africa a robot is a traffic light.

Todd said...

bagoh20 said...

We could even design a machine to fear other machines, hate them or love them, or to even hate itself, be jealous, be horny, shy, or deplorable. We can program a machine to be stupid, impulsive, arrogant, or self-doubting.

9/8/17, 10:51 AM


We can design machines to "simulate" those emotions but not actually have those emotions.

Owen said...

rhhardin: wonderful comments, thanks.

"Matter has no inwards." There is a reason that physics bleeds into metaphysics. Which is a kind of poetry.

But instead of (or together with) the denial to matter of "inwardness," can we not get some useful work out of the idea of "emergent behavior"? Where the machine responds to inputs by doing more than consulting a list of predefined actions (however elaborate), but instead goes up a level or six to "abstract" key features of the input signal and create a new action that adheres to that general rule? That is a version of the process we all constantly do, developing and testing hypotheses and acting on those which best serve some general value or plan.

The robot/android quality lies in that ability to generalize, abstract, move outside the list and fashion new decision rules.

Again, and always, IMHO.

rehajm said...

If I might endorse a very entertaining plant identification app I've recently downloaded called PlantSnap. It's the Shazaam for plants!

Plants it has correctly identified: Coleus, Boxwood, Sabal Palm, Confederate Jasmine. It has misidentified linden and Ann's Queen Anne's Lace...

(No financial interest in this product. Not compensated for this endorsement)

bagoh20 said...

"We can design machines to "simulate" those emotions but not actually have those emotions."

What's the difference? Ours are a set of chemical gears and levers. They can be created from thin air with the right compounds or electrical stimulation to the brain. We can mess with our own gears and levers now, and good writers have been doing it forever.

Ray - SoCal said...

HoodlumDoodlum - No problem.

I am glad you have a live link! Neat machine. I looked at it for my in-laws that love to garden. The challenge with the machine IMHO, is you need to design your garden for it.

Ray - SoCal said...

At this time, there is nothing that qualifies as a Robot using Asimov's Three Laws. All we have are machines.

The term Robot in common usage, means a machine that does a task depending on the input. What is the difference between a dish washer and a robotic paint sprayer for the sake of the definition. The newer dish washers have sensors inside, that do different things depending on the conditions. Same with the newer washer machines. The term robotic seems to be more of a marketing term, for a high degree of automation.

Todd said...

Ray said...

The term robotic seems to be more of a marketing term, for a high degree of automation.

9/8/17, 11:08 AM


Watered down and twisted by "marketing" types just like their use of 3D, 4D, etc...

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

My mundane point would be that when I worked in an office that dealt with self-driving vehicles, we were told that "autonomous" is a misnomer for these vehicles: they do not decide on their destination, they don't even decide whether to get going or not (although they might "decide" to stop given a certain kind of obstacle). They do what they are programmed to do. They have more ability than we do to consider many optional routes to the same destination, time required, etc., but it will be difficult to make them able to decide between hitting a pedestrian and hitting a tree. I guess they differ from dishwashers in the complexity of what they can do automatically.
My less mundane point is that the movie Blade Runner has always fascinated me. The replicants do what they are programmed to do up to a point, then they become more human. Instead of just dying, they crave more life; they even crave answers as to the meaning of this ephemeral life. It's even possible that some of them, at least, were programmed never to kill a human, a la Asimov; but some of them, at least, certainly do so or make a serious attempt to do so in the movie.

Todd said...

Lloyd W. Robertson said...
My mundane point would be that when I worked in an office that dealt with self-driving vehicles, we were told that "autonomous" is a misnomer for these vehicles: they do not decide on their destination, they don't even decide whether to get going or not (although they might "decide" to stop given a certain kind of obstacle). They do what they are programmed to do. They have more ability than we do to consider many optional routes to the same destination, time required, etc., but it will be difficult to make them able to decide between hitting a pedestrian and hitting a tree. I guess they differ from dishwashers in the complexity of what they can do automatically.
My less mundane point is that the movie Blade Runner has always fascinated me. The replicants do what they are programmed to do up to a point, then they become more human. Instead of just dying, they crave more life; they even crave answers as to the meaning of this ephemeral life. It's even possible that some of them, at least, were programmed never to kill a human, a la Asimov; but some of them, at least, certainly do so or make a serious attempt to do so in the movie.

9/8/17, 11:37 AM


The difference [I believe] is that the "replicants" were based on humans. Manipulated DNA, etc. They were "alive" and had conciseness. Androids or robots are more like the "love doll" in FireFly (that the signal nerd married). They are machines that are designed to look/act like humans but they were not organic. They simulated (to varying degrees) conciseness and free will / free thought.

And to a prior comment, the difference between conciseness and not is the difference between reacting to stimulation (pain, hunger, horny) versus reacting/having emotions as well as the ability to question one's own existence. Actually questioning it versus being programs to question it (simulation again versus actuality). IMHO...

chuck said...

New horizons for hacking: $1,000,000 or the crop gets it.

mockturtle said...

Thank you for the D.H. Lawrence poem. I'm very fond of his writing and had never seen it before. Most apropos.

Drago said...

"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."

Tim Kaine is counting his blessings that this technology did not come along sooner....

Freeman Hunt said...

"What it does with the input is a set routine."

I know. The difference is taking the input.

rhhardin said...

AI dismisser.

Anything a machine does with input can be done by coding explicitly exactly those doings for each possible explicit input.

Coding it differently though algorithms and procedures is just an efficiency measure to save typing stuff in, not changing the facts of the situation at all.

Sigivald said...

Quora.

Just ... no.

Quora answers are worse than not asking the question, typically.

(I mean, "the Three Laws"? Does that person realize they're 100% fictional and actually deal with AI, not mere robotics?)

rhhardin said...

Yhr Cavell exploration of the forces of language on robots starts here, unfortunately running through some omitted pages; back up a couple pages too for a nice exploration of dolls and statues.

Gospace said...

I want the robot that identifies mosquitoes and zaps them with a laser aimed with deadly accuracy. And ground wasps. Got stung today by one while mowing, nasty creatures.

John henry said...

I write about robots mainly in packaging digest but also other venues.

I've asked time and again experts and upper level players in robotics what the definition.

Basically it comes down to the classic definition of porn I can't define it but know it when i see it.

This is just a very clever application of machine vision which can do amazing things on the cheap. Think wii or microsofts interactive gadgets.

Yaskawa robots incorporates the ms into industrial palletizers. They buy the components in Walmart because it's easier than buying through ms.

Lots of really cool stuff out there. Most of it is not "robots" as most people in the field thinkof them

John Henry

Freeman Hunt said...

"Anything a machine does with input can be done by coding explicitly exactly those doings for each possible explicit input.

Coding it differently though algorithms and procedures is just an efficiency measure to save typing stuff in, not changing the facts of the situation at all."

Yes.

I think of "robot" as category of machine that is not much different from a non-robot. Maybe like this...

Non-robot running set routine:
When turned on, does routine A.

Non-robot controlled by user:
Person selects when routines A, B, and C are run.

Robot:
Sensor supplies variable x.
If x >= y, does routine A.
If z < x < y, does routine B.
If x <= z, does routine C.

Not much difference but maybe something worth being able to describe with a word.

MacMacConnell said...

Kate Millett, have criticised, indeed ridiculed Lawrence’s sexual politics, Millett claiming that he uses his female characters as mouthpieces to promote his creed of male supremacy, and that his story The Woman Who Rode Away showed Lawrence as a pornographic sadist with its portrayal of “human sacrifice performed upon the woman to the greater glory and potency of the male.”

mockturtle said...

Kate Millett, have criticised, indeed ridiculed Lawrence’s sexual politics, Millett claiming that he uses his female characters as mouthpieces to promote his creed of male supremacy, and that his story The Woman Who Rode Away showed Lawrence as a pornographic sadist with its portrayal of “human sacrifice performed upon the woman to the greater glory and potency of the male.”

Lawrence was, I believe, gay, so I'm not sure how she arrived at her analysis. He portrayed women as mercurial and difficult [compared to men] but that's hardly unusual for male writers. His female characters were not just props or adjuncts to the male protagonists but complex personalities.

Even as a feminist in the early 70's, I never appreciated Millett's notions of 'sexual politics'. Like so many feminists, she politicized everything and believed that men were consciously repressing women with every subtle or overt word or action. Tedious.

MacMacConnell said...

I don't think Lawrence was gay, maybe bi-curious.

gadfly said...

"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants, and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide."

That seems like a lot of money to eliminate competitors. Without spending a dime, Allis Chalmers is down to a single plant in West Allis, which only repairs tractors and the former farm equipment manufacturer is out-of-business. Case IH is the remnant of three tractor makers, Case, International Harvester and New Holland. Massey Ferguson went the way of Allis Chalmers, selling to AGCO which has a tractor plant in Jackson, MN that makes tractors branded Massey-Ferguson but are really AGCO sales.

So now we know why John Deere is a tractor giant. Nothing else runs like a Deere and smells like a John.

Rusty said...


"This is just a very clever application of machine vision which can do amazing things on the cheap."
We use this as real time QA on the production line. Part of my humble job is to figure out ways of removing rejected parts off the line without interrupting the flow.

urbane legend said...

Owen said...
An Italian race-car engine performs a complex series of actions.

And quite well. But German race-car engines still do better. We could ask Sebastian Vettel, who can give us an expert opinion.

EMyrt said...

tcrosse, Owen, Hoodlum, Ann
I highly recommend The Online Etymology Dictionary

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot

As often, they provide additional linguistic context.
In this case, the cognate with OHG arbeit.
In the case of robots, arbeit most certainly will not macht frei.