Sex robots and AI brothels are here – but has anyone thought this through?
Here's a question – do sex robots have any place in society? For those unable to have sex with another human for whatever reason, are they helpful? Or should they be banned outright, as the author of a new book suggests?
Pygmalion's ivory statue – the one which magically came to life, created by a sculptor who hated women – was a prototype sex robot embedded in ancient Greek mythology. More recently, sex robots have been the stuff of sci-fi movies – from 1975's The Stepford Wives to 2014's Ex Machina via 2007's Lars And The Real Girl – where life-sized, sexualised, mechanised representations of women were presented as viable 'partners' for men.
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Irish Independent
4 days ago
- Irish Independent
Sex robots and AI brothels are here – but has anyone thought this through?
There is an argument that AI programmed sex dolls could help reduce harm to humans, but experts are sceptical with some calling for an outright ban. We look at the issue and the potential consequences Here's a question – do sex robots have any place in society? For those unable to have sex with another human for whatever reason, are they helpful? Or should they be banned outright, as the author of a new book suggests? Pygmalion's ivory statue – the one which magically came to life, created by a sculptor who hated women – was a prototype sex robot embedded in ancient Greek mythology. More recently, sex robots have been the stuff of sci-fi movies – from 1975's The Stepford Wives to 2014's Ex Machina via 2007's Lars And The Real Girl – where life-sized, sexualised, mechanised representations of women were presented as viable 'partners' for men.
The Irish Sun
24-07-2025
- The Irish Sun
Mystery over 2,000-year-old shipwreck with ‘world's oldest computer' that inspired Indiana Jones as boat finally raised
THE mystery deepens around the famous shipwreck that held the 2,000-year-old relic dubbed the "world's first computer". The Antikythera wreck sank in the first century BC off the Greek island that gave it its name, carrying a trove of treasure. 7 A diver explores the second wreck site just off the Greek island of Antikythera for the first time in 2,000 years Credit: Credit: ESAG/UNIGE via Pen News 7 A drawing of an ancient ship with a skiff in tow from the House of the Ship Europa in Pompeii Credit: Credit: Pen News 7 The Antikythera Mechanism is believed to date back to around 80 BC in Ancient Greece Credit: Credit: Logg Tandy via Pen News 7 Among the precious artefacts was the Antikythera Mechanism - an unusual device whose purpose long been debated and which even inspired "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ". But researchers studying the shipwreck are now facing a new mystery after part of the wreck was recovered for the first time since 1976. The newly recovered timbers do not match those found in the 1970s - they differ in both size and construction. This has led scientists to consider the possibility that the Antikythera site may actually contain the remains of two separate shipwrecks - not just one. Read more world news Lorenz Baumer of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who directed this year's expedition, said: 'The measures are different. 'The thickness of the planks found by Cousteau is around 10 centimetres, the ones we have measure around five - that's quite a difference. 'Now we have to find an explanation – is it another part of the ship? It's possible that they've been using thinner planks in upper parts, but that's pure speculation for now. 'Or is it – and for me this could be a possibility – a skiff. Most read in The US Sun 'You see many of those merchant ships had smaller boats with them.' The Antikythera wreck was discovered in 1900 by Captain Dimitrios Kondos and his crew of sponge divers from the island of Symi. 7 The newly recovered timbers do not match those found in the 1970s, prompting scientists to question if there were two shipwrecks Credit: Credit: ESAG/UNIGE via Pen News Greek island offers to pay thousands to move there & you'll even get land Shortly after, over 300 other artefacts, including the Antikythera Mechanism, statues, coins and pieces of jewellery, were retrieved. For over a century, the mysterious device has left scientists scratching their heads. The conventional theory is that it was an ancient analogue device used to track the cycles of the Moon, Sun and planets and predict solar and lunar eclipses. Author Jo Marchant, who has written a book about the device, said it was 'probably the most exciting artefact that we have from the ancient world'. 7 A poster for 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' (2023), starring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones Credit: ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. 7 A reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism on display at the exhibition of Ancient Greek Technology in Athens shows how sophisticated the device was Credit: AFP A fictional version of the device, renamed the Archimedes Dial, drives the plot in Harrison Ford's hit film, where Indiana Jones is shown diving at the Antikythera wreck. Dr Baumer said: 'It's total nonsense, but I was very well entertained I have to say.' But the theory that the ship carrying the mechanism was accompanied by a second ship has historical precedent. A technical drawing of two vessels - one towing the other - was found in Pompeii, inside the House of the Ship Europa, Dr Baumer said. He said: 'It's very detailed and very precise, so this drawing has been done by somebody who knows ships and also the technical parts. 'You see on the back of the Europa is hanging a smaller second ship.' He also mentioned the Biblical tale - when Paul the Apostle was shipwrecked off Malta, a lifeboat was launched from the main vessel. 'We have two wreck sites,' he said. 'Close to 200 meters southwards there is a huge field – it is all covered with amphorae. 'Chronologically the two sites go together so maybe these ships have been sailing together.' He added: 'We cannot tell if they sank one after the other, or if there was a couple of years, weeks, or days between them. 'But we see we are in about the same period.' The newly-recovered timbers have also revealed that the Antikythera wreck was already old when it sank. Analysis of the wood, which is elm and oak, dates it back to around 235 BC, whereas the ship didn't sink until around 80 BC. This year's expedition also uncovered a fragment of a sculpture depicting a nude male. Some believe the ship was doomed by the weight of the sculptures it carried. Dr Baumer said: 'It sunk very, very quickly because it was, in my opinion , totally overloaded. 'Whenever there's a storm in Antikythera, you're happy that you're not on board a ship, even a modern one. 'It is a very rocky coast, it's impossible to land, and you simply get broken up. There's no chance. 'Even now when the waves are too heavy, the ferry boats do not land on Antikythera – it's too dangerous.' What is the Antikythera Mechanism? The Antikythera Mechanism is a 2,000-year-old Greek device, often called the world's first analogue computer. Discovered in a shipwreck in 1901, the object is thought to have been used to predict astronomical events, like eclipses, moon phases and possibly the movements of planets. It consists of at least 29 gears of various sizes that were made to move simultaneously via a handle. Key parts: Front dial: shows the Sun and Moon moving through the zodiac and tracks dates using a 365-day calendar Back upper dial: tracks the 19-year Metonic cycle to sync solar and lunar calendars Back lower dial: predicts eclipses using the 223-month Saros cycle Lunar mechanism: models the Moon's phases and orbit Gears: the interlocking, bronze gears power everything
Irish Examiner
21-06-2025
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: The ‘prowling pilot' who became Ireland's first female flight instructor
When I was in my early 20s, I wanted to grow up to be like Dr Daphne Pochin Mould. She was, among other things, a geologist, a photographer, a writer, a 'prowling pilot' and Ireland's first female flight instructor who, it was said, regularly took her hands off the controls to lean out the window and take aerial shots of the landscape below. For a long time, I thought that story apocryphal but to my great delight I see it verified in a spirit-enriching piece by the late Matt Murphy in Sherkin Comment, a Sherkin Island Marine Station publication. Here's the thrilling proof from the mouth of one of her students Simon O'Flynn: 'To take photographs… she would open her side window of the Cessna 150 single-engine plane and with two hands on her camera shoot away.' Simon, for his part, sat beside her white-knuckled, holding his breath. Now, as a much older woman, I still aspire to be like Dr Daphne, as I like to call her, and testimony such as that just sharpens the desire. What I wouldn't give to have accompanied her on one of those unnerving flights. In a sense, though, we can join her in the skies because she left behind an immense body of writing (25 books), which includes this bird's eye vision of the country: 'If anyone asked me to show them Ireland in all her beauty, colour, variety, I'd take them flying in a light plane. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Islands and cliffs, strands and mountains, lakes, rivers, canals, ancient monuments and modern developments, ring fort and turf-burning power station, all are there in an ever changing pattern of colour and form. In another piece, she described flying over Killarney, leaving its wild jungle of arbutus, rhododendron and oak behind as the high mountains of the MacGillycuddy Reeks, boiling and smoking with rain clouds and swirling mists, came into view. It is not surprising to find that Dr Daphne Desiree Charlotte Pochin Mould, to give her her full name, always wanted to write: 'I remember composing stories and poems before I learned to write, and dictating them to members of the family who wrote them down for me. "None of these early efforts, which so far as I remember were often about fantastic animals have, fortunately for me, survived!' What a shame for us, though, as I would love to have read the words of the very young girl who once tried to climb on to the famous prehistoric structure at Stonehenge in Wiltshire only to be immediately hauled off by an irate official. She was clearly spirited and curious from the off. And a bit different. Born in Salsbury in November 1920, eyesight difficulties meant she was home-schooled by an aunt who turned to Homer's ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey, when her young charge was less than impressed by the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. She was brought up an Anglican but would later abandon it, thinking that religion and her quest for truth were incompatible. She wrote: Science for me meant the discovery of truth, reality, the nature of being, finding out what things were, what life was about. As a teenager, she went into the country to identify plants, trees and birds and to examine rocks, fossils and the nearby chalk pits. When she learned to drive, at 17, she borrowed a car and went further afield into Scotland which, with its rivers, glens and mountains, tempted her to move there in the late 1930s. She enrolled in Edinburgh University and began her degree 'with the wail of sirens and the crackle of machine gun fire as the first air raids took place on the Forth Bridge', as she later recalled. She graduated with a first-class honours in geology and later got a research fellowship to study a previously unmapped stretch of land – 100 square miles of it – beside Loch Ness. Her study earned her a PhD in 1946 and crystallised her plan for the future. She wanted to write 'something Highlandy' so moved to a dilapidated house in Fort Augustus. (It was 'also on Lough Ness but I never saw the Monster,' she wrote.) A neighbour Sandy Grant taught her to scythe, make hay and harness a horse to a cart. She also learned how to use a two-wheeled walking tractor and ploughed the three-acre paddock she had worked to reclaim. The same neighbour was a Catholic who attended mass at the nearby Benedictine monastery, an incidental fact that would later have a profound effect on Daphne. While writing a book on the Iona of St Columba, she undertook research which, she said, was designed to 'show up' the saints and the Church for what she thought they really were. Instead, while using the library kindly offered by Fr Augustine at the monastery, she discovered St Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic philosophy that combined reason and religion. 'After a year of struggle and argument', she was received into the Catholic Church in 1950. Life in Ireland Her interest in saints brought her to Ireland. She moved to Galway in 1951 with her parents and later to Aherla in Cork. She spent the rest of her life here and became so immersed in Irish culture that she said she 'passed readily enough for a born Irishwoman!' any time she returned to the UK. That was true even by 1957 when she wrote Irish Pilgrimage which opens with this evocative passage: 'There is a magic in the road, in the very fact of travel, in the track which leads out to the islands. Many indeed seek to travel for the sheer delight of it, for the changing scene and the sense that the delectable mountains are always beyond the next bend or the next city…' The dust jacket offers this charming vignette: 'Miss Mould… is in love with Ireland, with its antiquities, its traditions, its culture, and she imparts her devotion to the reader. She has not only lived with the people; she has joined them in their faith and gone on pilgrimages with them, the length and breadth of the country. She has climbed mountains in the predawn and rowed out to holy islands.' That love was reciprocated. Trawl the archives and you'll find several tributes to this true Renaissance woman who mastered several disciplines and broke new ground by learning to fly in the 1960s. She became Ireland's first female flight instructor and she was also a pioneer of aerial archaeology, recording and sometimes discovering archaeological features from the air. In the 1980s, the Cork Archaeological Survey commissioned her to take photographs for the five-volume series The archaeological inventory of County Cork (1992–2009). Her collection is now held by the Muckross House Trustees in Killarney. It's one that will, in time, come to be considered in the same way as the Lawrence Photography Collection, according to her friend Matt Murphy. Daphne Pochin Mould, a true Renaissance woman who instilled a sense of wonder. Picture: Richard Mills In his beautiful article, he wrote about her difficult final years when, due to failing health, she moved from guest house to hotel to nursing home. She felt like a 'caged lioness', he said, but she continued to write despite the arthritis in her hands and the lack of an archive. Her memory remained razor-sharp. Both Daphne and Matt are gone now. Matt Murphy, founder of the Sherkin Island Marine Research Station and passionate environmentalist, died earlier this year but, between them, they leave behind an invaluable legacy. Let's make sure we preserve it to inspire a new generation and instill a much-needed sense of wonder in this battered but still-beautiful world. Read More Clodagh Finn: How a true pioneer emerged from the shadows
