Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...course interception, batteries of ground-based rockets might be fired into the upper atmosphere. Each rocket would release a swarm of so- called smart rocks--vehicles powered by little thrusters and guided by tiny sensors--to hit warheads and decoys in space. An alternative is to fire the smart rocks out of devices called rail guns placed in orbit. The rail guns use a burst of electric current to accelerate the smart rocks along a rail. One problem is sheer numbers: immense swarms of smart rocks would be needed to hit warheads and decoys indiscriminately. The other option, picking...
...computer requirements are straight out of science fiction. Computers would have to keep track of tens of thousands of objects (warheads, decoys, smart rocks) moving at high speeds, analyze instantly billions of bits of information from sensors and weapons platforms, determine which weapons to fire, when to fire them and at what targets. Not only could no human write such a program unassisted, no human could check it for errors. That would have to be done by computer too. James Fletcher, who headed the Administration's original S.D.I. study, estimates the program might have to be put through 50 million...
...crucial question that seems never to have been settled. The effect is unsettling, between intervals of approximately human speech, the characters too often lapse into agonizingly contrived couplets to our dismay we encounter such rhymes as "gluttony/button, he." Nobler no, to notice; "it doesn't always pay to be smart," as one character acutely remarks...
...real tough time there the first year," Sweeney says. "But I think every child should have a chance to grow up with that kind of opportunity. A lot of kids are smart, and you get into a routine, a study habit--you have to allocate your time wisely, and that's what boarding school taught me most...
...Colonel Kearney's circus is "Lamarck's Educated Apes." This Monsieur Lamarck is a wife beater and a drunk; he also bears the name of the French naturalist whose theory of evolution through the transmission of acquired learning was overturned by Darwinism. So the new Lamarck's chimps get smart enough to dump him and demand a new, better contract. Before the possible significance of this liberating but unscientific development can be absorbed, other diverting calamities ensue...