Tiny Drone.

Herself excused herself from the second half of the shopping today with a sore back; having got the tee-shirt myself, I don’t complain about such behaviour. While I completed the task, she sat in the cafe nursing a cup of coffee, some pain-killers and a newspaper. This so-say better class section of the media went a bit off course on this item when it claimed that “scientists have created a prototype for a tiny bee” (I deliberately avoid the pun on the word drone), that’s not what scientists do. Scientists devise theories and hypotheses, though I admit that I am not clear on the difference between the two, and then try to prove (or, more commonly, disprove) them. It’s engineers that design things and I don’t think that there is a word for all the highly skilled people that make and assemble the prototypes.
 
The idea that a machine based on current technology could autonomously pollinate flowers is a wee bit far fetched. We’re not far off having a driverless car which relies on  being told a specific destination, as opposed to a bee which needs to be given the much more nebulous task of travelling around an area ensuring that the stigma of each flower is anointed with the pollen collected from the stamen of another flower of the same species. New Scientist ran a similar article but included the comment that the logistics of pollinating a single almond tree’s 50,000 flowers, let alone the blossom in an orchard with an area measured in square miles, made solving the problem by improving the lot of bees a more reasonable approach.
 
I actually welcome the prospect of the introduction of autonomous cars for two reasons: the vast majority of road traffic accidents are caused by the most unreliable component – the driver and, in tests, such cars have caused traffic chaos by obeying the rules of the road – including sticking to the speed limits, stopping at halt signs and traffic lights and, dare I say it, being respectful of one another.