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Friday, November 3, 2017

Science Fiction Now


US Fighter Jets Launch Drone Swarm of Hundreds of Micro Drones: Perdix Micro-UAV Drone Swarm Test
US fighter jets launch a swarm of 100 of micro drones during a Perdix micro-UAV test. The last part of the video shows a drone swarm of Loctus drones during another test. - paraphrased from the YouTube blurb.
Polular Mechanics has the story.

Reminds of nothing so much as the scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still (the remake) when the micro-bugs devour Gort.


The Day the Earth Stood Still: Robot Attack Scene Clip HD

So who was this Perdix guy that the drone was named after?
Perdix was a nephew and student of Daedalus in Greek mythology. Daedalus had a sister who placed her son, Perdix, under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and showed striking evidence of ingenuity. While walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish, or a serpent's jaw. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, thus inventing the saw.  - paraphrased from Wikipedia
Watching Ertugrul can be intellectually challenging, if you want to work at it. First of all there are the badly mangled subtitles. Then there is the character's habits of speaking in poorly translated metaphors and / or proverbs. That can be entertaining. But there is also a lot of day-to-day activity going on in the background, like a couple of guys sawing a log. Did they even have saws back then? Wikipedia says saws have been around for at least four thousand years, which puts it back in the ancient era, which means that, yeah, for sure, Perdix invented the saw.

Update August 2018 replaced missing video. This one includes Spanish subtitles. 
Update June 2019 replaced missing video.

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