Word: present
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Carl Friedrich, professor of Government followed Mason's address with a talk on the situation in Germany. The problem in Germany is not nationalism, he claimed, but to channel nationalistic sentiments along reconstructive lines. "Under the present set-up, international authority is not endangered by the Germans, but by the French," Friedrich stated. "If certain negative possibilities materialize, France with a hostile government can do a lot of damage...
Radio repair crows are at present working on now lines in Eliot, Kirkland, Winthrop, and Adams B entry so that they can improve the somewhat spotty reception these places have been getting...
Next term the schedule will present really severe competition. But the key players will be back form Stillman. Captain Dusty Burke, whose broken collar bone is mending, will put on his uniform in a few weeks, while wingman Lynch has already been cleared by the Hygiene Department...
Practical calculating machines, explains Dr. Ashby, merely take orders and act upon them, in complicated but predetermined ways. His machine, which he calls a "homeostat," is different. The present model is pretty simple, but it really thinks, he says-at least in the sense that it takes action on its own, according to any change in situation affecting it. So, for that matter, does a seesaw, compass needle, or a sunflower. Dr. Ashby contends that his machine acts in a more complicated way, adjusts itself to a greater variety of circumstances. That, he holds, constitutes thinking...
With no more adventure ahead, it would be a dull world for physicists. But Dr. Gamow voices a small hope that they need not give up to boredom. Perhaps, he speculates, bigger & better telescopes "will show us sights that will cause a complete turnover of present ideas concerning the universe." Or perhaps electrons and protons will turn out to be not "elementary particles" but small, intricate worlds jam-packed with new and fascinating problems...