On the Weekend

As always, Saturday and Sunday are too short to cram all the gardening and familial activities into without feeling rushed.  The early part of the weekend was devoted to planting.  Onions, potatoes, herbs and second plantings of carrots and beets went in.  Weeding is now underway as the continued cool conditions favor opportunistic weeds over veg seedlings.  Sunday was a celebration of motherhood and we gathered to honor the Divine Mrs. M, our daughters and their forays into maternity.  We also received a minor, but beneficial rainfall which should keep the garden moist as we head into a few dry days.  Near frost this morning, but nothing to damage the hardy seedlings and plants in the cold frames.  Meanwhile, in outside news, I happened on two articles in the local paper which fed my obsession with automation and robots.  In one story, new, surgical machines were able to stitch up patients in an operating room which human surgeons looked on to "supervise".  In another, the US Navy unveiled a 132 foot completely automated drone ship which is designed for anti-submarine warfare.  The infatuation of the military with drones and other opportunities for automated warfare has been evident for some time.  Let's face it, humans are a war planners nightmare.  They operate independently and unpredictably.  We get closer to a Terminator scenario with each development of more autonomous war machines.  The development of robot surgeons may be even more troubling in the long run.  The displacement of doctors would be proof that virtually any human endeavor can be replicated by machines.   Outside of speculative fiction, there seems to be very little debate over the implications of these developments.  What do we do with billions of people who have no reason for being besides producing more humans.  We need to think about what the next generation is brought up to believe about human potential.  Either that or cede our relevance to our machine overlords.