Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Post a Comment

Robots at reception: S.African hotel turns to machines to beat pandemic By Reuters• 15 February 2021

-

 

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Staff at Hotel Sky in Johannesburg's wealthy Sandton district adhere to strict COVID-19 protocols, wearing masks and physically distancing from guests as much as possible; all, that is, except Lexi, Micah and Ariel.

By Kirthana Pillay

For the three concierges couldn’t breathe germs on you even if they wanted to: they’re robots.

Robot hospitality is not new – Japanese hotels have been deploying them for years and in 2015 Tokyo’s Henn’na, or ‘Strange’, hotel became the first to be fully staffed by machines.

Several robot-staffed Tokyo hotels are now using them to serve guests with mild COVID-19 symptoms.

But Hotel Sky, which launched this year, is the first in Africa to use automated attendants, a concept that could cause a stir in a country with one of the world’s worst jobless rates.

Unemployment is at 30.8%, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address last Thursday.

“It’ll never replace people, but it is going to change the space,” Paul Kelley, Hotel Sky Managing Director, told Reuters.

“I think that it is the future,” he said, adding that they planned to launch an offshoot in Cape Town next month.

Lexi, Micah and Ariel deliver room service, provide travel information and can drag up to 300kg of luggage from the marble-floored lobby to the rooms.

If the hotel receives a guest with COVID-19 symptoms, the robots could be deployed instead of people as a precaution.

Otherwise, “guests can choose whether they want to interact with staff members or make use of the self service, which is all controlled by their phone,” Herman Brits, the hotel’s general manager, said.

Steve Pinto, CEO of CTRL Robotics, which supplies the droids, said they could also scan customers’ facial expressions to determine how happy they were.

“It helps management to understand how customers are experiencing the facilities at the hotel,” he said, after getting a robot painted in a riotous orange and white pattern to take a selfie.

Reaction to the robots has been mixed. Even highly intelligent robots don’t always “get” what you want.

“I think the world is moving towards this digital space, but we are not used to it,” hotel guest Ernest Mulenga said. “The human touch is still something that is appealing to me.” (Editing by Tim Cocks and Mike Collett-White)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion

-
Image
  LIFESTYLE HOME GARDEN HOME Bill Gates and Melinda’s 27-year-old marriage has come to an end. Picture: Anthony Bolante/Reuters Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion By Staff Reporter   May 11, 2021 Questions have been asked as to who is likely to get Bill and Melinda Gates’ 6 100² lakeside mansion in Washington State once their divorce is settled. But it would seem Melinda doesn’t really want it. In a profile in Fortune magazine published in 2008, she said when she arrived in Gates’ life the house caused her to have “a mini sort of personal crisis”. It was partly built when she married Gates in 1994. She described it as “a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare… with enough software and hi-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game”. So with the help of interior designer Thierry Despont – who has worked on the Palm Court of New York’s Plaza Hotel, and the Ritz in Paris – she helped create a home
Read more

Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Read more

Are there any planets outside of our solar system?

-
Image
  Academic rigour, journalistic flair COVID-19 Arts  +  Culture Business  +  Economy Education Environment  +  Energy Health  +  Medicine Politics Science  +  Technology In French Artist illustration of an exoplanet.  dottedhippo/iStock via Getty Images Are there any planets outside of our solar system? July 19, 2021 2.06pm SAST Author Jean-Luc Margot Professor of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles Disclosure statement Jean-Luc Margot receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and philanthropists. Partners University of California  provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the
Read more