OnePeterFive is a US 501(c)(3) organization which relies on your tax-deductible contributions. Please help us to meet our expenses by donating today! Dagon (released in Spain as Dagon: La Secta Del Mar) is a 2001 Spanish horror film directed by Stuart Gordon and written by Dennis Paoli. Despite the title, the plot. This is War Movie 101: all fighting, nearly all the time. Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down pictured a similarly unrelenting siege (Somalia), as did, in a fantasy.

Blue Apron’s meal kit service has had worker safety problems. Just me or is anyone else suddenly nostalgic for that idyllic future of food automation (everything containerized, nothing blended) as suggested in a 1. I still get no straw for my fish container?

I don’t even know what that box on the top right is supposed to represent. Maybe 2. 00. 1 predicted chia seed health drinks. Watch Mi Casa, Su Casa Online Fandango here.

Speaking of cleaning, sewing and cooking with robots…someone must ask at some point why much of automation has focused on archetypal roles for women in American culture. Could driverless tech be targeting the “soccer- mom” concept along similar lines; could it arguably “liberate” women from a service desired from patriarchal roles? Hold that thought, because instead right now I hear more discussion about a threat from robots replacing men in the over- romanticized male- dominated group of long- haul truckers. Protip: women are now fast joining this industry)Whether measuring accidents, inspections or compliance issues, women drivers are outperforming males, according to Werner Enterprises Inc. Chief Operating Officer Derek Leathers. He expects women to make up about 1.

That’s almost twice the national average. The question is whether American daily drivers, of which many are professionals in trucks, face machines making them completely redundant just like vending machines eliminating bartenders. It is very, very tempting to peer inside any industry and make overarching forecasts of how jobs simply could be lost to robots. Driving a truck on the open roads, between straight lines, sounds so robotic already to those who don’t sit in the driver’s seat. Why has this not already been automated, is the question we should be answering rather than how soon will it happen. Only at face value does driving present a bar so low (pun not intended) machines easily could take it over today. Otto of the 1. 98.

Directed by Todd Verow. With Ivica Marc, Michael Vaccaro, Todd Verow, Josh Ubaldi.

Airplane” fame comes to mind for everyone I’m sure, sitting ready to be, um, “inflated” and take over any truck anywhere to deliver delicious TV dinners. Yet when scratching at barriers, maybe we find trucking is more complicated than this. Maybe there could be more to human processes, something really intelligent, than meets a non- industry specific robotic advocate’s eye? Systems that have to learn, true robots of the future, need to understand a totality of environment they will operate within. And this begs the question of “knowledge” about all tasks being replaced, not simply the ones we know of from watching Hollywood interpretations of the job.

A common mistake is to underestimate knowledge and predict its replacement with an incomplete checklist of tasks believed to point in the general direction of success. Once the environmental underestimation mistake is made another mistake is to forecast cost improvements by acceleration of checklists towards a goal of immediate decision capabilities. We have seen this with bank ATMs, which actually cost a lot of money to build and maintain and never achieved replacement of teller decision- trees; even more security risks and fraud were introduced that required humans to develop checklists and perform menial tasks to maintain ATMs, which still haven’t achieved full capability. This arguably means new role creation is the outcome we should expect, mixed with modest or even slow decline of jobs (less than 1. Automation struggles at eliminating humans completely because of the above two problems (need for common sense and foundations, need for immediate decision capabilities based on those foundations) and that’s before we even get to the need for memory and a need for feedback loops and strategic thinking. The latter two are essential for robots replacing human drivers. Translation to automation brings out nuances in knowledge that humans excel in as well as long- term thoughts both forwards and backwards.

Machines are supposed to move beyond limited data sets and be able to increase minimum viable objectives above human performance, yet this presupposes success at understanding context. Complex streets and dangerous traffic situations are a very high bar to achieve, so high they may never be reached without human principled oversight (e. Without deep knowledge of trucking in its most delicate moments the reality of driver replacement becomes augmentation at best.

Unless the “driver” definition changes, goal posts are moved and expectations for machines are measured far below full human capability and environmental possibility, we remain a long way from replacement. Take for example the amount of time it takes to figure out risk of killing someone in an urban street full of construction, school and loading zones. A human is not operating within a window 1. I’m not simply talking about control of the vehicle, incidentally (no pun intended), I also mean decisions about insurance policies and whether to stay and wait for law enforcement to show up. Any driver with rich experience behind the wheel could tell you this and yet some automation advocates still haven’t figured that out, as they emphasize sub- second speed of their machines is all they need/want for making decisions, with no intention to obey human imposed laws (hit- and- run incidents increased more than 4. Uber was introduced to London, causing 1. For those interested in history we’re revisiting many of the dilemmas posed the first time robotic idealism (automobiles) brought new threat models to our transit systems.

Read a 1. 0 Nov 1. The Inquest Jury found a verdict of man- slaughter against the driver,—a boy under fifteen years of age, and who appeared to have erred more from incapacity than evil design; and gave a deodand of 5. Young and inexperienced is exactly what even the best “learning” machines are today. Sadly for most of 1. Century London authorities showed remarkably little interest in shared ride driving ability.

Tests to protect the public from weak, incapacitated or illogical drivers of “public carriages” started only around 1. Finding balance between insider expertise based on experience and outsider novice learner views is the dialogue playing out behind the latest NHTSA automation scales meant to help regulate safety on our roads.

Flying in an Air Force Thunderbirds' F- 1. Story highlights. Journalist describes ride aboard F- 1. The flight was with the Air Force Thunderbirds, which perform about 3. Some turns made it feel like 8. Daytona Beach, Florida (CNN)Upside down, a couple of miles above the Kennedy Space Center, the pale green Florida landscape fills the crystal- clear canopy of the F- 1. To the east, a ribbon of sand and a reach of ocean stretch to the horizon.

The Air Force jet rolls 4. Now we are upright and about midway through my demonstration flight with the Thunderbirds, the precision team that represents the Air Force at 3. We are right side up, level flight," Maj. Michael Fisher says from the pilot's seat. A former F- 1. 6 instructor, he has also flown hundreds of combat hours over Iraq. As a member of the elite Thunderbirds, Major Fisher now narrates air shows and takes journalists and select celebrities on demonstration rides. Loops, rolls, and inverted flight show off the extraordinary capability of the pilot and of the plane, a two- seater version of the fighter jet Air Force aviators fly on the front lines of aerial warfare around the world.

In the back seat, my ability to sit there and do nothing is put to a different test: Turns jostle my stomach, a spinning horizon disrupts my sense of balance, sharp acceleration weighs down my body. It turns out that the biggest physical challenge I face doing acrobatics in a fighter jet is not when the wings are perpendicular to the horizon or when I am upside down. It's when the plane accelerates into a turn and extra force multiplies the tug of gravity on my body. I can barely move.

It takes the utmost concentration to breathe. In the same way that a fast lift in an elevator can press you into the floor, a fast acceleration or turn in a fighter jet can press you into your seat. At rest, the force of gravity you feel is measured as 1. G. A rising elevator might equal 1. Orange Is The New Black Watch Online Season 2. G, a sports car in a turn could be 2.

Gs. After 3. Gs, breathing is difficult. After 5. Gs, you can lose your peripheral vision. The next step as your brain starts to shut down is called a gray out. Then a black out. I endured 4. Gs early in the flight.

Three hours of safety briefings prepared me as well as any civilian. A 2. 4- year- old Air Force staff sergeant, Madeline Conley, fitted me with a jump suit and an extra garment, something like ski pants, but with inflatable bladders over the abdomen and each upper and lower leg. Sgt. Conley is also in charge of packing the parachute attached to the ejection seat.) That G- suit provides extra protection when it is hooked up to a special air supply in the cockpit. At high G- forces, the bladders inflate, tightening around my muscles, forcing blood to my brain. During the pre- flight briefing, I sat in an office chair and practiced: clench my feet, tighten my stomach and leg muscles, inhale and exhale with carefully timed, sharp breaths.

While the extra force of the high- G turn pulls blood from the brain, this activity is intended to push it back, to equalize the air pressure in my head and to allow me to continue to function. On the ground it all made sense. Now, however, I am up in the air, a few feet behind Maj. Fisher, with the airspace above the Space Center our aerial playpen. We are wearing oxygen masks and helmets, fitted with microphones and earpieces. He hears my labored breaths and fitful questions.

I hear his even narration as we begin each maneuver: "Here .. G." After a few 4- G turns and a 6- G maneuver, Maj.

Fisher asks if I am ready for what he says will be a high- G turn. He reminds me: "Breathe every time that I breathe." Then I listen for the "Kff" sound of the major's breaths during his G- force strain, my signal to puff along at his carefully measured pace. Rolling left. "Kff" My head is buffeting, my arms, which were resting on my thighs, are suddenly too heavy to lift. I tense every muscle. Somehow, an elephant has climbed into the cockpit and is sitting on my lap.

But in the time it takes you to read this paragraph, about 1. That was an 8. 2- G turn. What do you think?" the major's chipper voice asks over the headset. I'm breathing normally again, if normal means how I would breathe after a round with a heavyweight boxer. That was intense," I reply. That's 8. 2 times your body weight, he says. That's the force that you're feeling, crushing you down in your chair there."It's a good time to remember that this is Maj.

Fisher's normal workday. Welcome to my office," he told me right after takeoff from the airport in Daytona Beach, Florida, when we reached our cruise altitude for the short flight to the practice area. He explains that high- G turns can be useful to get away from a dicey situation, but said it's more likely that he would use the accelerated tight turn in a dogfight, to stay behind an enemy so he can fire a clear shot. Imagine doing that high- G strain while keeping a visual on your adversary," the major says. The Thunderbirds were in Daytona Beach for the every- other- year Wings and Waves Air Show, which attracts about 1. It's sponsored by Embry- Riddle Aeronautical University, which means that for three Thunderbird pilots and a fourth officer, it's also a reunion. Each of the four officers has a degree from Embry- Riddle, which offers highly regarded aviation and engineering programs.

After budget battles grounded the team last year, every member of the Thunderbirds seemed particularly enthusiastic about this show season, which has a grand finale on November 8- 9 at the Thunderbird home airfield, Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The entire group of 1. March, traveling as a group to support the eight F- 1. United States Air Force. The group's spokesman, Maj.

Darrick Lee, told me that the group operates on a budget of about $3. That's roughly the marketing budget for one Hollywood movie. It's an investment that brings the Air Force significant recruiting benefits.

As we head back to the Daytona Beach airport, I manage to pull my phone out of a zippered jumpsuit pocket and shoot a photo. A few puffs of cloud laze over the shoreline.

As a journalist, I've flown in a jet trainer, a military cargo plane and on Air Force One. A Thunderbird F- 1.