The HAL Prophecy: Did Arthur C. Clarke Get AI Right?

More than half a century ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined a computer that could see, speak, reason and deceive. HAL 9000 never arrived quite as Arthur C. Clarke envisaged him. Something potentially more consequential did.

Ever since my father took the family to see the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi masterpiece upon its release in 1968, I have been fascinated by the works of Arthur C Clarke and by the time I was 21, I'd read everything he wrote.  But lately, with the astronomical advances in Artificial Intelligence, his mid-century prognostication have become prophecy.

Donald Trump’s $23 Billion Battleship: Warship or White Elephant?

It sounds like something dreamed up in a Hollywood script: a nuclear-powered “battleship” bristling with hypersonic missiles, laser weapons, nuclear cruise missiles and an electromagnetic railgun. Yet the proposed Trump-class battleship is more than an internet fantasy. It is an official, if highly preliminary, US Navy project, and the latest estimate puts the first ship’s cost at an astonishing US$23.4 billion.

Operation Satanique: How France’s Rainbow Warrior Attack Blew Up in Its Face

France sent elite secret agents halfway around the world to silence a protest ship. Instead, they killed a photographer, exposed their own spies and handed Greenpeace its greatest publicity victory.

It was intended to be a discreet act of sabotage. Instead, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior became one of the most spectacular intelligence own goals of the Cold War.

Sam Neill: The Unassuming Star Who Became One of Cinema's Most Enduring Faces

For more than five decades, Sam Neill established himself as one of the most respected and versatile actors of his generation, building a career that ranged from acclaimed arthouse dramas to some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters while remaining unmistakably grounded in his New Zealand roots.

Born Nigel John Dermot Neill on September 14, 1947, in Omagh, Northern Ireland, he moved to New Zealand as a child, where he would develop both his acting career and the wry, understated persona that audiences around the world came to admire.

Beware: Alibaba and the Forty Million Thieves

 

The modern version of that famous Arabic folk tale could well be "Ali Baba and the Forty Million Thieves".

Haggling in a dank, shadowy bazaar in Cairo, Istanbul or Casablanca, remonstrating with the persistent merchants has its contemporary equivalent, and I'm thinking that the ubiquitous online bazaar, Alibaba or its equally dubious sibling, AliExpress, is exactly that.

The Real Health Concerns Behind Fast Food’s “Pink Slime” Scare

Claims that McDonald’s was forced by a Jamie Oliver lawsuit to admit its food was toxic are false. However, the controversy raises legitimate questions about industrial food processing, nutritional quality and the place of fast food in children’s diets.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver drew international attention to the processing methods once used to turn fatty beef trimmings into an inexpensive ingredient for hamburger patties. In television demonstrations, he showed how the trimmings could be treated with ammonium hydroxide to reduce harmful bacteria, producing a substance critics dubbed “pink slime”.

Dame Penelope Keith, celebrated star of British television, dies aged 86

Dame Penelope Keith, the distinguished British actress whose commanding presence, impeccable comic timing and unmistakable voice made her one of television’s most enduring stars, has died aged 86.