Word: foolproof
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Many players have developed even simpler, if less foolproof systems of their own, based either on hunches or intuition. One nimble Nim player moves swiftly to reduce the rows of matches into either an odd number of rows each containing an unequal number of matches, or into an even number of rows each containing an equal number of matches. Says Bosley Crowther, Marienbad-applauding motion picture critic of the New York Times: "Once I get the other guy to make the first move, I remove even numbers of matches until he loses-almost always-unless he is playing the same...
...begin with," said Gordon, addressing a meeting of the National Safety Congress in Chicago, "it is completely unrealistic even to talk about a foolproof and crashproof car. An automobile must still be something that people will want to buy and use. Safety, in any environment from a bathtub to a bomb shelter, is a relative term, not an absolute. In the case of the automobile, we can only design into it the greatest degree of safety that is consistent with other essential functional characteristics. Beyond that, we must depend on intelligent...
After less than two months at work, the Administration's new policymakers are ready to admit that in foreign policy no rule is rigid, no solution is easy, no plan is foolproof, and no worthwhile policy is entirely devoid of risk. With the last point especially in mind, President Kennedy last week sent Nikita Khrushchev a straight-from-the-shoulder message through Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson Jr. The U.S.. said the President, views Laos as a test case of Soviet intentions (see FOREIGN NEWS), is willing to work toward a genuine settlement, or just as willing to throw...
...guard against accidental triggering of H-bomb war, the SACmen are schooled in a complicated, checks-and-balances, fail-safe system that is not only foolproof but "damnfool-proof." Before an alert plane would start toward its target, the coded string of electronic signals from the command post must be authenticated by two crewmen as well as by the pilot. When that is done, the crew begins the arduous process of arming the bombs. No one crew member can do it alone; for each man who arms the bomb, regulations require that another must be in attendance and watching closely...
...Teller and Dr. Bethe, both brilliant men, spend their time trying to devise foolproof bomb-testing methods which cannot be detected or in trying to devise foolproof methods of detecting bomb tests. But the problem lies elsewhere. If the U.S.S.R. or any other country does not wish to be policed, then no technical skills can be devised which will do so, and if the countries of the world do wish to accept policing, then it is now possible to prevent the manufacture of bombs and the means of delivery of such bombs, and this has been true ever since...