Word: playing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...social fallout hangs heavy in the mountain air. A rock group came to play at the high school a few years back and was threatened with nonpayment if its members dared live up to their reputation for dropping acid. Yet even the performers were aghast at the drugs being passed around by the local students. The usual tales of suburban wife swapping, alcoholism, mental illness, divorce and suicide seem intensified by isolation. Laura Fermi, widow of Physicist Enrico Fermi, once described the genesis of the town's problems: "We were too many of a kind, too close...
...West Germans, the Morgan Guaranty action was an unnecessary power play that, because of the court action, threatened to propel West Germany directly into the U.S.-Iranian conflict. Said a finance ministry official in Bonn: "It was a damned stupid thing to do. This is endangering not only our business interests, but the lives of 1,500 West Germans still in Iran...
This desperate foraging for batteries will symbolize the fact that the era of small, clever (and usually battery-powered) computer- toys has arrived in full beep. But beeps are not the extent of the commotion; in a couple of astonishing cases, the new gadgets will play games with their owners while announcing the moves and commenting on the play in understandable spoken English, or in one of several other languages that the purchaser may choose. Some of the toys are musical, and some are rolling, programmable robot vehicles...
...even more interesting than prospective riches for the toy companies, however, is the feet that many of the computer gadgets are both toys and teaching machines. As teachers they can form bonds of a sort-friendships?-with their pupils. And though two or more human beings can sometimes play against each other in computer games, it is clear to anyone who has tried the machines that the most fascinating interaction is between one person and one computer. Computer gaming, and learning, are solitary activities that do not seem solitary. The computer toys are starting to teach their owners not only...
Voice Chess Challenger is a gabby and much smarter version of the computer chess player turned out by Fidelity Electronics nearly three years ago. Back then it seemed remarkable that a tiny computer could play chess at all, even though its play was less than brilliant. Now the chess ability of the reprogrammed chip is high enough to make any parlor wood-pusher loosen his collar and roll up his sleeves, and it is the machine's distinctly machine-like speech that is the dazzling gimmick. Turn the doodad on, and it says, dropping each word like a cinder...