> The following story, excerpted in a publishing newsletter to
> which I subscribe, allegedly appeared in last weekend's _Birmingham
> Sunday Mercury_ (West Midlands Brit-pos: can you confirm?) and has
> given rise to the predictable jokes within publishing circles about
> the trade's traditional slowness.
>
>
Well Candice I dunno whether it appeared in last weekend's Sunday Mercury or
not as the only reason for ever getting that is if you've suddenly become
overwhelmed with nostalgia for court case reports from the life of the
Birmingham suburbs but I was told the deadman on overtime story some two and
a half or so weeks ago in a bar in Leicester.

david


----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 12:54 AM
Subject: But can it write or be a poem? [Was: Re: Henry's prosody]


> Agreeing with those who consider the "analogy of poem/body" to be
> "pretty stupid stuff," I found Mark's point re the body's asymmetry
> particularly compelling and one that counters the analogists' claim
> to the body's (and by extension, the poem's) lack of obscurity. It
> is only due to the body's ineluctable obscurity, it seems to me, that
> this analogy of the poem can gain even a toehold (pardon me), whether
> on the grounds of an inexplicable corporeal or formal asymmetry or,
> more metaphorically, the poem as somehow and somewhat reflecting such
> bodily obscurity as pain at the shoulder tips signifying a ruptured
> spleen. I'll buy the poem as a site of referred pain, in other words,
> but that's as far as I'll buy into the analogy.
>
> Herewith a couple of news items that were circulating online over the
> past few days, each of which in its own way goes to the core of why
> the poem/body analogy really cannot hold--death. --Candice
>
>
> >> :...a computer made of meat?  how can this be?
> >>
> >> By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble
>
> >> It is time to start building machines which can learn and be raised in
the
> >> same way as humans, the authors of an article in the journal Science
say.
> >>
> >> Building an intelligent machine is no small feat and so previous
efforts have
> >> centred on designing a machine to carry out specific tasks.
> >>
> >> But computer scientist Professor Juyang Weng, of Michigan State
University,
> >> US, says it is time to work on systems which "live" autonomously, have
bodies
> >> suited to their working environment and learn in a general sense.
> >>
> >> "According to this paradigm, robots should be designed to go through a
long
> >> period of autonomous mental development, from 'infancy' to 'adulthood'.
> >>
> >> "The essence of mental development is to enable robots to autonomously
live
> >> in the world and to become smart on their own, with some supervision by
> >> humans," he writes.
> >>
> >>
> >> Underlying principles
> >>
> >> Making computers copy the way humans learn should not be as difficult
as it
> >> sounds if scientists can uncover the underlying principles of mental
> >> development.
> >>
> >>
> >> Developmental robots will learn to perform dull and repetitive tasks
that
> >> humans do not like to do
> >>
> >> Professor Juyang Weng
> >>
> >> Experiments using animals have shown that similar processes are at work
for
> >> different senses, such as sight and hearing.
> >>
> >> A living brain does not take in every single aspect of an image it is
seeing,
> >> but makes general observations about shape, colour and motion.
> >>
> >> Experimenting with robots will also improve the chances of answering
> >> questions such as how the human brain develops a sense of the world
around
> >> it, Professor Weng says.
> >>
> >> And developmental robots will learn to do jobs which humans shun, such
as
> >> working underwater and in space, or cleaning up nuclear waste, he says.
> >>
> >>
> >> Good and bad
> >>
> >> Professor Weng and his colleagues have already built a prototype
> >> developmental robot, called Sail.
> >>
> >> Sail is allowed to explore the real world for itself, but a supervising
human
> >> shows it toys and reinforces behaviour patterns by pressing a "good"
button
> >> and a "bad" button.
> >>
> >> More money needs to be spent on understanding the way humans and
animals
> >> learn, he says.
> >>
> >> "Biologically motivated mental development methods for robots and
> >> computational modelling of animal mental development should be
especially
> >> encouraged."
> >>
> >>
> >> Life stages of intelligent robot:
> >>
> >> Design body to suit environment
> >> Design developmental programme
> >> Birth: Robot starts to run programme
> >> Robot 'raised' by human interaction
> __________________________________________________________
> The following story, excerpted in a publishing newsletter to
> which I subscribe, allegedly appeared in last weekend's _Birmingham
> Sunday Mercury_ (West Midlands Brit-pos: can you confirm?) and has
> given rise to the predictable jokes within publishing circles about
> the trade's traditional slowness.
>
>
> Worker Dead at Desk for 5 Days
>
> Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one
> noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his
> desk for FIVE DAYS before anyone asked if he was feeling okay.
> George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader
> at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-
> plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed
> away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning, when
> an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the
> weekend.
>
> His boss, Elliot Wachiaski, said: "George was always the first
> guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one
> found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time
> and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and
> kept much to himself."
>
> A postmortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five
> days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, Turklebaum was proof-
> reading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died.