Showing posts with label bees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bees. Show all posts

Friday, January 26, 2024

To retire, or not to retire...

Sound of bees…

Charles: Your garden looks even more vibrant than I ever remember. What’s that song the bees are singing?

Richard: Ha! Yes, too slow for the flight of the bumblebee, that’s for sure. Soothing, it is. But, did I hear you’ve taken a JOB?

Charles: Yes. I must confess, after a few years of retirement, I found myself longing for the intellectual stimulation of teaching. So, I took up a part-time lecturing position.

Richard: Teaching again, Charles? After all those years of counting down the days until retirement?

Charles: I know, I know. But there's something about passing on knowledge and engaging with eager minds that I missed. It's not a full-time gig, just enough to keep me intellectually active.

Richard: You did say once that you missed being able to say you were associated with an institution.

Charles: Ah yes. The affiliation. I must admit that also drew me in.

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Voice-over

Some seek peace in retirement, others are drawn back to the stimulating buzz of the hive.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Bee drone to military drone to surveillance drone

 A buzzing sound above…

Veronica: Is it a bird?

Ethan: No, it’s an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Veronica: Pedant. Isn’t it a drone?

Ethan: Well, yes.

Veronica: Why do they call them that? Where did the name drone come from?

Ethan: Some say it was the noise of a bee, droning. It’s also said that there were unmanned airplanes developed to carry bombs and were guided by cameras and radio waves to crash into enemy ships. Like bee drones, they fly out to mate with a queen bee, then die.

Veronica: A short but happy life.

Ethan: Another thing about bee drones is that they have bigger eyes than other bees.

Veronica: All the better to find the queen with?

Ethan: They need good eyes to find the target. Bee drones, and war drones, are single use only. Drones for aerial camera work take pictures of everything. They can be reused.

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Voice-over

Drones are much smaller, more sophisticated and more reliable than early military drones deployed on a small scale in World War II in the Solomon Islands.