Now I Know My Androids, Brothers, Colonies
You could do worse that consider Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn's comic book series Alex + Ada (the first ten issues anthologized in ISBN 9781632150066 and ISBN 9781632151957) published through Image Comics a twentysomething version of the movie A. I. Artificial Intelligence. In the near future -- an uneasy near future I find, being able to just think and turn on the lights in your house and check your mail, among other things -- androids are able to live and work besides you and even be live-in companions in your house.
But there has to be a visible sign to everybody that they ARE androids. The main character Alex (the twentysomething) wants nothing to do with an android in his house, especially on the heels of a bad breakup, so what does his grandmother get him for his birthday? An android. It gets more complicated as Alex at first feels like returning the android outright, but changes his mind.
Then he becomes curious and finding himself learning more about the Robot Rights Movement -- apparently there are many people who started out as the owners of androids who wonder how free their wills have the potential to be (which also harkens comparisons, for me anyway, to Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man), and there are as many if not more who fear such a revolution.
I'll have to read through this again before I return it to Minot Public Library, where I spent part of Saturday afternoon with Sarah and Jeffrey before Martha got off work and we checked out a few books. My kids are enthused about going to the library, I'll take that! Jeffrey in fact checked out a Where's Waldo? book on his library card and within ten, maybe twelve minutes, he and Sarah found EVERY ONE! (It was a new book for them, so no they didn't rehearse it.)
And while they were on the computers in the kids' section Saturday I was at a table next to them reading through Philippa-Alys Brown's A Gaggle of Geese (ISBN 0689807619) which gave you illustrations as well as names for twenty-seven different groups of animals. Exactly why so many people felt the need for different names regarding different groupings of animals eludes me ... though our kids know "gaggle" because they've heard us use it, and you see quite a few around Minot.
But a skulk of foxes? A knot of toads? A cluster of cats? A colony of squirrels? I mean, most of them come out as things you'd only need to know on Jeopardy! Still, it's pretty neat. I'll make this simple; last night after work I picked up the kids (where they had pancakes) at Grandma and Grandpa's and then I fixed turkey and gravy because we're still hungry, Martha got home and everybody but me tuned into last night's episode of Big Brother, which now brings to mind
... he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of "B-B! . . . B-B!" always filled him with horror.
It brings that passage from George Orwell's 1984 to mind because it's what Jeffrey calls the show now. But this morning he came over and checked out a video I was watching about Jesus coming back ... I have to admit, I usually don't watch those either due to their length or their, let's be blunt, preachiness. I liked sharing that as we were getting ready to go for the day. And watching it.
David
But there has to be a visible sign to everybody that they ARE androids. The main character Alex (the twentysomething) wants nothing to do with an android in his house, especially on the heels of a bad breakup, so what does his grandmother get him for his birthday? An android. It gets more complicated as Alex at first feels like returning the android outright, but changes his mind.
Then he becomes curious and finding himself learning more about the Robot Rights Movement -- apparently there are many people who started out as the owners of androids who wonder how free their wills have the potential to be (which also harkens comparisons, for me anyway, to Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man), and there are as many if not more who fear such a revolution.
I'll have to read through this again before I return it to Minot Public Library, where I spent part of Saturday afternoon with Sarah and Jeffrey before Martha got off work and we checked out a few books. My kids are enthused about going to the library, I'll take that! Jeffrey in fact checked out a Where's Waldo? book on his library card and within ten, maybe twelve minutes, he and Sarah found EVERY ONE! (It was a new book for them, so no they didn't rehearse it.)
And while they were on the computers in the kids' section Saturday I was at a table next to them reading through Philippa-Alys Brown's A Gaggle of Geese (ISBN 0689807619) which gave you illustrations as well as names for twenty-seven different groups of animals. Exactly why so many people felt the need for different names regarding different groupings of animals eludes me ... though our kids know "gaggle" because they've heard us use it, and you see quite a few around Minot.
But a skulk of foxes? A knot of toads? A cluster of cats? A colony of squirrels? I mean, most of them come out as things you'd only need to know on Jeopardy! Still, it's pretty neat. I'll make this simple; last night after work I picked up the kids (where they had pancakes) at Grandma and Grandpa's and then I fixed turkey and gravy because we're still hungry, Martha got home and everybody but me tuned into last night's episode of Big Brother, which now brings to mind
... he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of "B-B! . . . B-B!" always filled him with horror.
It brings that passage from George Orwell's 1984 to mind because it's what Jeffrey calls the show now. But this morning he came over and checked out a video I was watching about Jesus coming back ... I have to admit, I usually don't watch those either due to their length or their, let's be blunt, preachiness. I liked sharing that as we were getting ready to go for the day. And watching it.
David
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