Calculations

Fear breeds upon itself

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Fear breeds upon itself because it is a hermaphrodite capable of endless reproduction. Fear is a contagious disease, spreading from its first victim to others in the vicinity until it is powerful enough to take charge of a group, in which event it becomes panic. Fear is the afterbirth of reason and calculation. It takes … Read more

In an enterprise such

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In an enterprise such as the building of the atomic bomb the difference between ideas, hopes, suggestions and theoretical calculations, and solid numbers based on measurement, is paramount. All the committees, the politicking and the plans would have come to naught if a few unpredictable nuclear cross sections had been different from what they are … Read more

Having spent 200 hours

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Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours … Read more

Both [of my granddaughters]

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Both [of my granddaughters] Octavia and Lavinia have May birthdays. I’ve just been birthday shopping with them. But the shopping has a budget. I say, \”Okay, if you pick this out, then you’ll have how much left?\” I wait for them to do the calculation, and they’ll say, \”\$18.\” And we stand there and talk … Read more

But the conceit of

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But the conceit of one’s self and the conceit of one’s hobby are hardly more prolific of eccentricity than the conceit of one’s money. Avarice, the most hateful and wolfish of all the hard, cool, callous dispositions of selfishness, has its own peculiar caprices and crotchets. The ingenuities of its meanness defy all the calculations … Read more

Anyone who has had

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Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians’ calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books … Read more