Posts by Duncan

Simon, I think this is the test that says that you ought to regard a machine as if it's alive if you cannot distingush its answers to your questions from those a real human being might give.

In which case "Artificial Intelligence" is entirely the wrong way to go.

They should be spending their money developing "Artificial Stupidity"

Duncan.

24

Hockey Night at the Kingdom Hall

by Scully in

jw
friends

when i was little, i can remember certain brothers?

who would hide small transistor radios in their suit jackets and listen to nhl playoff games via a small earphone instead of paying attention at the meetings.

these weren't teenagers or young guys... some were elders and/or ministerial servants... yet none of them ever seemed to get counselled for this kind of disrespectful behaviour.. did anyone else ever do things like this, when significant sporting events fell on meeting nights??.

Duncan

Hi Scully

I remember back in 1966, England were in the (Soccer) World Cup, and their crucial semi-final against Portugal was a midweek fixture. It clashed with the bookstudy.

The bookstudy was held in the home of this couple - the wife was in and baptised, the husband just studying (he went on to be an elder, in time). Clearly, missing this important match was a huge test of his fledgling faith.

He needn't have worried really. They lived in a terraced house with the proverbial paper-thin walls. When England scored we heard the neighbours cheering from both sides.

As soon as the closing prayer was over the TV came on, not even a second's delay. It really was: "...InJesusnameAmen"*click!*

So we got to see most of the second half. England won, and went on to win the Final, too. The only time they ever did.

Duncan.

5

Ever Played "Arsenal" Darts?

by Englishman in

jw
friends

.

not a double or treble in sight!.

englishman.

Duncan

excellent Mike

D'you reckon you're safe now?

22

Astronomy: Three Dates: A Young Witness

by Duncan in

jw
friends

so, taking those title elements in reverse order: the young witness is me ?

this story goes back to the early sixties.

the three dates are: february 1986, august 11th 1999, and june 8th 2004. it's the fact that the last of those dates is , after all these years, finally nearly here that made me think of writing this post.

Duncan

Dear all

Thanks for your replies.

City Fan - enjoy the eclipse in 2006.

Hillary - maybe some time in the next 50 we'll actually get to meet up again. Take care.

Running Man - yes, Witnesses do have a remarkably short memory. As kids we would say to our mum - "we don't want to go to the meeting - we wanna see Top of the Pops!" and she'd say - always - "Top of the Pops won't get you into the New World!"

or - "we don't want to go in field service, Doctor Who's on the telly" and it would be: "Doctor Who won't get you into the New World!"

It became such a catchphrase that even today at family get-togethers we joke about it.

Yet, my mum can''t remember ever saying it.

What can you say to that?

Duncan.

22

Astronomy: Three Dates: A Young Witness

by Duncan in

jw
friends

so, taking those title elements in reverse order: the young witness is me ?

this story goes back to the early sixties.

the three dates are: february 1986, august 11th 1999, and june 8th 2004. it's the fact that the last of those dates is , after all these years, finally nearly here that made me think of writing this post.

Duncan

So, taking those title elements in reverse order: The young Witness is me ? this story goes back to the early sixties. The three dates are: February 1986, August 11th 1999, and June 8th 2004. It's the fact that the last of those dates is , after all these years, finally nearly here that made me think of writing this post.

I?ll start this story with my tenth birthday A bit of background: for a period of time between when my mum was door-stepped/studied/baptised and when my dad came along, seven years in fact, we still had birthdays in our house. Christmas went straight away ? an early victory for mum, but birthdays persisted, albeit in a modified form: no cards, no parties, but you were allowed a present. Just the one, from mum and dad, no others, and it could not be a surprise, and it could not be wrapped. I guess this was the best deal my mum could strike over the issue.

It might suggest to you something of the kind of child I was that for this birthday I was offered a choice: a bike or a telescope. Your suspicions about me will be confirmed when I tell you that I went for the telescope. At ten years old I was pretty much a speccy-four-eyes swot. I was the kind of kid you describe as ?very studious?, I loved reading and science in general but was particularly passionate about astronomy. Given half a chance I would launch into a speech about the phases of the moon; I would bore the pants off anyone prepared to let me tell them about the moons of Jupiter or the rings of Saturn.

But I can?t say that spouting off about astronomy ever really caused me a problem in the congregation. Sure, there was that type of Witness, by nature anti-intellectual, who regarded science with suspicion, and would disapprove and dole out counsel ? ?man?s learning is foolishness in the eyes of Jehovah!? We even had one chap in our study group who took particular delight (it seems to me) in telling me that in the New Order Jehovah would, in the process of restoring the Paradise Earth, reconstruct the Noah?s Flood water-canopy. ?There?ll be no stars to see then, will there? Ha! ? I couldn?t think of anything more awful.

But equally, there were some kindly souls who would indulge my precocious behaviour and would even quote those scriptures that say what a fine thing it is to behold the heavens and gaze in wonder upon what God has created. So, it evened itself out.

What DID used to get me into trouble was the date-predicting.

I?ll explain.

The thing about astronomy as a hobby, it does give you really a very long-term perspective on things. At ten years old, back in 1965, I had memorised - and as I already explained - was enough of a show-off to bore anyone around with whatever ?fascinating? night-sky fact had currently taken my fancy. And sometimes that meant reciting upcoming dates of significant astronomical events.

?Hello, Brother Mature! Did you know that Halley?s comet last was seen in 1910 and will return in February 1986??

?Good Morning, Sister Remnant. I was just reading that the next total eclipse of the sun visible from England will happen on August 11th 1999 !?

You get the idea.

My favourite of all these dates was the one about the next transit of Venus. A transit is when a planet passes in front of the sun. Viewed with the right equipment it looks like a small round black dot slowly travelling across the face of the sun, and it takes an hour or two. The last transit of Venus was in 1882. The next one ? as I never tired of telling people - would be ?June the 8th A.D. 2004 ?; I always used to say that ? ?A.D. Two Thousand and Four? because it was such an absurdly, impossibly distant date. Just to say 2004 didn?t do it justice ? it had to have the ?A.D.?

This kind of talk did not go down at all well with witnesses of any disposition, and used to get me into trouble. I remember walking home from the bookstudy with my mum:

?Oh , Duncan! Why do you even say those things? You know as well as I do that there?s NEV ER GOING TO BE ANY 1986!?

And I knew she was right, and I felt ashamed. But weeks would pass and I?d forget myself and be drawn back to the astronomy. I would talk about this kind of stuff with likeminded friends at school, and sooner or later would again blurt out some ?inappropriate? date prediction to someone in the congregation.

I can?t pretend that this was a major problem, really. On the whole I was regarded as a pretty good little witness ? plenty of platform parts, even at the age of 10, so I must have been doing okay, theocracy-wise. Nonetheless, I do remember being counselled from time to time over talking about 1999 and ?A.D. 2004?.

***

Well, the years passed. The sixties came and went, and as the seventies started I was enrolled as a fine young pioneer. Tragically, though, by the end of that decade I had been lost to the World. Though, at this time, no longer an active in my starry hobby, I still took an interest in astronomy, and I never, in all my life, forgot any of those three dates.

And, do you know what? It turned out that there WAS such a thing as 1986, after all.

Halley?s comet ? after 76 years of waiting for it, and a spectacular showing the previous time out ? turned out to be a massive disappointment. It was, from what I recall, not really visible from the northern hemisphere, and even in the south wasn?t much to look at. The excitement centred mainly on the space probe they sent up to intercept it. I followed the coverage on T.V.

And you know what else? It turned out that there was such a thing as 1999, too!

The eclipse was fairly big news here in the back in the summer of 1999. Lots of coverage in the press and T.V. And me? If you can believe this, having known about it 35 years before everybody else (okay, not literally, but you know what I mean), I had organised things such that I was on holiday in Florida with my family. I remember saying to my wife as we were booking it the previous Christmas, ?you know this means we?ll miss the eclipse?? but I already knew that the eclipse was only total from the southern tip of England (Cornwall , Devon ) which would be packed out, traffic-jammed, with nowhere to stay. And we HAD promised the kids we?d take them to Disney in August ? so, what the hell. As it happens, it turned out cloudy that day, anyway, so it spoiled the viewing.

So, bringing it all up to date, it turned out there was such a thing?

And here we are, all of us, living in that wondrous, distant, impossibly far-off-in-the-future time ? A.D. 2004. I am now that fifty-year old man that I kind of knew I would be, but could never imagine back when I was 10.

And the transit is now less than two months away.

I still have a lot of my old astronomy books from when I was small, and something I remember in one of them about this transit made me go and dig it out.

It was one of my favourites ? ?The Young Astronomer? by E.A. Beet (Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1962) ? and I have it open in front of me as I type. It still has my handwritten notes in pencil and ballpoint in the margins from all those years ago. The bit I was interested in re-reading I found pretty quickly on page 2. Old E.A. is talking about the need a young astronomer has for patience and perseverance:

? He must be prepared to wait for months or even years for some event to occur; perhaps he wants to see a transit of Venus. There is one in A.D. 2004 - lucky fellow: the writer of this book will not live to see it, but he will??

Now, to say this passage haunted me down the years would be a wild overstatement, but it is true that I never forgot it. And it?s obvious now where I got the ?A.D.? from.

So, thinking about this, I decided to find out whether he did make it or not. With the internet these days it?s a simple matter to get information about people ? especially published authors. It only took me a few minutes.

It turns out, after all these years of not knowing, that E.A. was Ernest Agar, he was born in 1904 (so, a fair bet that he wouldn?t live to 2004) and he wrote many books on maths and astronomy from the forties through to the seventies. He was President of the Sheffield Astronomical Society in the sixties. And, sadly, he died in 1997 ? at the grand old age of ninety three. So he didn?t miss the transit by much, but he did turn out to be right in his book, after all.

I still have a telescope ? a five inch reflector, and me and my two boys get it out from time to time and look at stars and planets. But I doubt that we?ll be observing the transit. You need specialist filters and projecting equipment and so on. (All JWD readers know that it?s insane to look directly at the sun with a telescope, right?)

But there?s bound to be a bit of coverage in the press, and articles in Scientific American and so on, so I?ll follow along in those, and see the pictures.

And that?ll be the third of my Big Dates, come and gone. Looking back, I would say that I?ve done rather better at this date-business than the Watchtower. What do you think?

***

The next appearance of Halley?s comet will be in 2062. The next total eclipse of the sun visible from the U.K. will be in 2090. Transits of Venus come in 8-year pairs. After the 2012 showing the next one will be in 2117.

I feel like ending with : ?The writer of this post will not live to see it.? But it sounds so gloomy doesn?t it?

Never mind.

Regards to all,

Duncan.

p.s.

Something I was reminded of in the course of writing this: If, by any chance, any of you JWD readers has a speccy-four-eyes 10-year old son, and he has an older, definitely NOT studious, football-mad brother, and you get the younger lad telescope - just try to give him a measure of protection, okay?

Let me tell you, when you?re out in the garden, with tripod and telescope, looking at some star, and it?s just taken minutes of patient work to line it up right, and your older brother turns up, yanks the thing out of your hand, points it level at the houses across the street and says: ? phwooooar! I just saw a nude lady in that window!?

- well, it?s every bit as funny the hundredth time he does it as it was the ninety-ninth.

19

At the Filling Station

by Duncan in

jw
friends

there is absolutely no witness angle to this ?

it?s just something that happened to me the other day, and i thought i?d write about it.

- so, that?s me told.. i go back and wait in the car.

Duncan

Dear all,

Thanks for all the replies.

On the whole, yes I agree with you all, and, looking back, I was far too nice.

But I was talking about this to one or two of the girls at work, told them the whole story, and one of them said that it was quite likely that White Coat Lady hadn't understood about the only-one-deisel-pump thing. WCL was there filling up with her normal unleaded, and probably had no idea that the only pump dispensing deisel was her one.

As I said, during the course of the half-hour there were several times when there was no one else at the filling station. From her point of view she must have been looking accross, seeing all these other perfectly usable pumps free for me to go to, and yet, there was me, that RUDE MAN, still pig-headedly waiting behind her car, obviously only doing it to annoy/harrass/bully her.

She probably went home and told her husband all about this aggressive lunatic who had so upset her. "Oh my God! He probably took a note of my number plate, Now he'll trace where I live and probably start stalking me!! He'll probably murder us all in our beds!!"

And White Coat Man probably has to calm her down. Or something. I dunno.

But I must admit I hadn't thought of things that way.

Anyway,

- Hilary, curiously enough, last night I had dinner with Tim Griffiths (remember him? became Head Boy, the year after you left). He stills sees Stephen Hancock from time to time, we talked about him, WCL, and Radio 4 comedy in general .

- Attila, not many places do pay-at-pump yet in the UK, there are some Tesco outlets have just started, but it's not common.

- E-man, friendly fizzog? Nah, mate! I'm a scary bloke. Really. They're all terrified of me here at work!

Duncan.

19

At the Filling Station

by Duncan in

jw
friends

there is absolutely no witness angle to this ?

it?s just something that happened to me the other day, and i thought i?d write about it.

- so, that?s me told.. i go back and wait in the car.

Duncan

There is absolutely no Witness angle to this ? it?s just something that happened to me the other day, and I thought I?d write about it.

I?m just about to drive home from work ? about a 30 mile drive ? and I notice I?m low on fuel. So I drive into the petrol (gas) station to fill up my car. It so happens that I drive a diesel car, and this particular filling-station near my office only has six pumps, of which only 2 dispense diesel. And, on this day, one of those is out of order.

The only working diesel pump already has a car already next to it, so I drive up behind and wait. I?m listening to the BBC, and the Greenwich pips tell me that it?s six o clock. I notice with a smile that my dashboard clock is EXACTLY right ? to the second. The driver of the car in front is nowhere to be seen, so guess that he or she must be in the shop paying. I look across and see that there is a queue of people 5 or 6 long, so I?ll just have to be patient.

I wait. The queue gets shorter, but nobody leaving the shop comes out over to this car in front of me. Typical, I think ? it?ll be the very last person. Eventually, the last person pays up, and walks out of the shop.

And walks over to another car and drives away.

Now, what?s going on here? There?s now no one in the shop, no other car on the forecourt except mine and this one in front of me. I get out and walk into the shop.

?Excuse me?? I say

?Sah!? a big toothy smile from the Asian cashier, all cheery helpfulness.

?Do you know where the driver of that car is??

He confers for a moment with his colleague and they both agree that it was ?a lady in the white coat?

?Well, do you know where she?s gone??

Grinning boy is stumped, but the other guy suddenly says ?Look ? she?s there!?

And sure enough, on the other side of the road, there?s a parked car ? a Range Rover or something - with a woman leaning against it talking to another woman who?s wearing a white coat.

I walk out the shop over to her.

?Excuse me?? I say (again)

?Look!? she starts up, surprising me with her aggression, ?I AM going to pay you know, I mean, it?s not like I?ve run off or anything, is it? I?m just talking to my friend, I haven?t seen her in years. I won?t be long, you WILL get your bloody money, don?t worry!? She shares a significant look with her friend ? a kind of ?how-do-you-like-these-people? look.

So, my guess is that with me in my business suit, she?s taken me for the manager who?s come out of the shop to chase her for payment on the fuel she?s just filled up, and now she?s annoyed at the unwarranted pushiness on the part of the filling station.

And now I?m annoyed.

?Listen, missus, I don?t give a bollocks about the money ? I NEED TO USE THE PUMP!?

Now, she realises what the situation is, but seemingly is no less annoyed.

?Oh. Well. I won?t be long.?

She carries on talking to her friend ? ?So anyway, Eileen, I said to him?.?

I wait nearby. And she is not happy with me waiting nearby.

She stops talking for a moment, turns to me and says:

?I - WON?T - BE - LONG! ? - so, that?s me told.

I go back and wait in the car. And she just keeps on talking. And talking.

The minutes go by. People come and people go out of the shop. She?s happily talking to her friend, and I?m just waiting, listening to the news. Eventually White Coat Lady and Eileen say goodbye, kissy-kissy, and Eileen gets back in her car drives off. At last!

Of course, now there?s a big long queue again in the shop, WCL comes across the road, avoiding looking at me, enters the shop and joins the end of the queue.

I watch her get closer and closer to the cashier. Good! Now she?s only second-in-line. Just before she gets there, though, she decides that what she needs to do is to have a good look through the magazine rack at the back of the shop. So she leaves the queue. She takes a quick look up at me at this point, just to let me know she?s doing this on purpose. She?ll teach me to try and hurry her along!

Having closely examined half-a-dozen magazines without choosing one, she rejoins the queue, at this point 6 or 7 people long again. All I can do is wait.

She eventually pays up, leaves the shop, comes over to her car. As she?s unlocking the drivers door, she shouts over:

?I think you?re a VERY RUDE MAN!? ? but I?m close enough to see that she?s got tears in her eyes, and is clearly very upset about the whole thing, so shouting anything back seems a bit pointless. She drives off.

I fill up, queue up, and pay up. As I?m driving off the forecourt, the man on the BBC announces the next program (?Just a Minute? with Nicholas Parsons) which means it?s exactly half an hour since I drove in.

All this for a fill up of fuel that should have taken 4 or 5 minutes.

I don?t really understand why she was so horrible about it, or, if it was such an upsetting experience for her, why she dragged it out so long. I?ll admit I was annoyed and spoke harshly to her. But she did start the whole thing, and she showed incredible selfishness.

Anyway that?s it. I could tell you that I was driving home that night to watch my daughter in the school play, and White Coat Lady made me miss it. But in fact, I was in plenty of time, and we saw the play okay.

So, no punch line, really. But, what a strange woman, though.

Duncan

7

I Got Rhythm..Who Could Ask For Anything More

by Englishman in

jw
friends

many thanks to everyone who sent me such kind wishes whilst i spent a few days in wsm general hospital.

i'm feeling fine and went back to work yesterday.

the last few weeks have made me realise that i had been walking around with a vaguely irregular heart-beat for years.

Duncan

Pompey's just coming up to the most nerve-wracking part of the season!

quite sure you can take it?

Duncan