Asimov Story on Computation

■ N 1958, American science fiction legend Isaac Asimov wrote a very short story called "The Feeling of Power." In it, lowly technician MyI ron Aub discovers that he is capable of duplicating the work of his computer by multiplying two numbers together on a piece of paper. Amazing! This miraculous discovery makes its way up the chain of command, where the generals and politicians are stunned by Aub's black magic. The top general is intrigued by the possibility that human calculations could g...

 Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasp...

 Money Allows for Easy Conversions

Money is thus a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. Brawn gets converted to brain when a discharged soldier

 Flatland

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views...

 Protecting the Environment as Protecting the Future

If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it. You grown ups say you love us. Please, take action. And for me,it is absolutely my responsibility to do whatever it takes to protect my child. When the haze gets serious, there is at least one thing we can do. That is to protect yourself and your loved ones. When I drew this little bear on paper, I was reminded of, when my daughter got sick, all my fear of losing her and all my hope of protecting her. I wish that all other mothers in...

 Role-Playing Game Manifesto

These rules are written on paper, not etched in stone tablets. Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts. If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can. There are no official answers, only official opinions. When dice conflict with the story, the story always wins. Min/Maxing and Munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the player. The game master has full discretionary power over the game. The game master always works with, not against, the p...

 'Yo' as a Gender-Neutral Pronoun

Margaret Troyer, a former Baltimore-area teacher, published the first paper showing that "yo" is being used to replace "he" and "she." Troyer first noticed it while she was teaching middle-school kids in the area. "Some examples would be 'yo wearing a jacket,' " Troyer says, referring to her research. "Another example from the paper is, 'Yo threw a thumbtack at me,' which is a typical middle school example." So Troyer began to study her students. She gave them blank cartoons and asked them ...

 Tom Hanks on Typewriters

What I really, truly miss is the physical trail that typing usually gives you. Typing on an actual typewriter on paper is only a softer version of chiseling words into stone.

 Understanding Factors Through Divisibility

This is appropriate for 4th or 5th graders and involves finding the smallest number divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10. Directions: Teach the students how to tell if a number is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, & 10. Give groups ofu00a0two tou00a0four students the divisibility rules on a sheet of paper, and challenge them to find the smallest number divisible by all of the numbers listed above. Eventually the students, with or without help from the teacher, will come to reali...

 Climate Forecasts vs Projections

"Projections are essential for giving us information on long-term trends, but the timescale is beyond what many policy makers (and the public) consider to be relevant to their decision-making processes. Climate forecasts seek to address this issue by providing information on a shorter term (decadal) that can be used directly to inform policy," he said. "As climate forecasts improve, they will become more and more important in providing reliable information on what is likely to happen to the c...