Robot capable of giving two finger salute
If you make unwelcome advances
BOFFINS IN JAPAN have designed a robot which can learn human gestures and respond in kind.
A report on Japanese wire nikkei.net said the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NIICT), designed the robot which is 85 kilos obese and 155 centimetres tall.
It's already capable of finger pointing and bowing so that if you try and snog it, it can point you to the door. And wave you off.
And it can probably show you the very English two finger gesture - said to have developed when longbow archers fought the French. The French are alleged to have been so spooked that they cut off archers' fingers if they were captured in battle.
There's more here. µ
Comments
Almost right...
"The French are alleged to have been so spooked that they cut off archers' fingers if they were captured in battle."The french weren't spooked by the two finger salute.
The English long bowmen were greatly feared due to the power and range of the weapon. If the French ever captured any longbowmen they cut of the index and middle fingers of both hands therefore rendering the archer useless.
In retaliation to such brutality the English archers used to stick two fingers up at the French to show them they still had their fingers.
Thats where the two fingered salute comes from. It was not meant to "spook" the French, it was meant to anger them.
Cheers
Chris
Other way around
I believe the order of your historical recollection is incorrect.As legend has it, captured archers would have their index and middle fingers removed by their captors to prevent them from ever being able to use a bow again.
Archers on the field of impending battle who still had their fingers would wave them at the enemy in a show of defiance, and so the two-finger gesture was born.
Yeah, but do they know...
That's all very well and good, but if they are to find a market in the States, they need to learn the ONE finger salute, along with appropriate references to your mother.Charles Greene
Ah
I was wondering why they were doing a backwards peace sign so often in Hot Fuzz.on the longbow...
The only problem with the "long bow" talk is that there was never a short bow to start with. In medieval times all over Europe the only type of bow used was the "long" bow. Only the Muslims used a shorter bow, composite.Probably the reason why the english "longbowman" were feared was simply that the english made more extensive use of them (and also used them at least once to kill captured french knights in a very "unknightly" way).
lets not forget...
...Winston Churchill's "V" for victory in a more recent eraLongbow
Peter -The term "Longbow" was merely to distinguish the weapon from the crossbow, favoured on the continent but with nothing like the range or fire-rate of the English archers, who could draw a bow of up to 100lbs weight, and pierce armour at up to 500 yards. Interesting that during the time of the Plantagenets, every English yeoman was required to practice at the butts for one hour every day, which is what made them so formidable a force when their services were called upon.