Riemann's Contribution to Flight and Laser Fusion

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LettersLousewort LamentsTo the Editor:Your "Lousewort Award" is appreciated(?), but a couple of questionsare in order.What kind of award do you deservefor grossly misquoting David Pimenteland me? Prof. Pimentel said that, ifAmericans were to reduce their annualprotein intake, as much as 75percent of the energy used to producefood could be saved. I said thatproduction, processing, and preparationof animal foods consumes 14 percentof the national energy budget.What is a Lousewort Award?Alex Hershaft, PhDMitre CorporationMcLean, Va.The Editor RepliesWe feel that Alex Hershaft andDavid Pimentel were correctly citedin the Lousewort Laurels award forMay. Basically, the Lousewort Awardgoes to persons or organizatons thatpropose retrogressive solutions to today'sproblems.To the Editor:I commend your choice of Elizabeth"Dottering" Gray for the JulyLousewort Laurels, but I was surprisedthat you cited a relatively minor andinsignificant contribution of Ms. Graywhile ignoring the body of her workin ethics. Her cited initiation of a"rights for the stupid" campaign isbut a minor aspect of her goal, whichis a campaign for the rites for all.Her primary concern, as I heard hershriek it at the April 14-15 meeting ofthe U.S. Association for the Club ofRome, is the total elimination of "thehierarchical ranking of the cosmos."She insists that the belief that any oneexisting thing—living, dead, organic,or inorganic—is morally superior toor has rights over any other thingmust be eliminated.She most emphatically campaignedfor the extermination of the Judeo-Christian system, which she equateswith Nazism because of the biblicalinjunction that man should rule nature.Stanley EzrolWashington, D.C.The Platonic ApproachTo EducationTo the Editor:You are to be commended for allyou are doing to help our nation findits way back to the road of progress.Your efforts to enlighten us to therich bounty available from fusion energyand space exploration is a greatsource of hope for civilization.In spite of all the excellent guidanceyou provide regarding the properthrust for our scientific research,there is one area of your "philosophy"I find very interesting and yetconfusing. I am referring to your philosophyregarding cognitive developmentin education.My questions are as follows:1. Do you place little or no valueTHE NOTEBOOKS OFLEONARDO DA VINCICompiled and edited fromthe Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter$15.90 Two VolumesLeonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the greatuniversal geniuses of Western civilization and theepitome of the Renaissance Man. He was a painter,scientist, sculptor, city planner, musician, architect,and we are extremely fortunate that he recordedeverything that came into his mind over the course ofsome 30 years, and that these observations —both written and illustrated — have been preserved inthese two volumes.An Unbelievable Wealth of Material for the PracticingArtist and Art HistorianIncluding not only his own insights, but also the artisticknowledge of his day, the material on art is a detaileddiscussion of: linear perspective, light andshade, perspective of disappearance, theory of colors,perspective of color and aerial perspective, onthe proportions and on the movements of the humanfigure, botany for painters and elements of landscapepainting, sculpture, writings on architecture, observationson anatomy and physiology, physicalgeography, topography, philosophy, plus humorouswritings, letters, personal records, and miscellaneousnotes.Among the prolific and beautiful illustrations aresuch magnificent works as the great self-portrait;seven studies for the Last Supper painting; eightstudies for the cartoon of the Battle ofAnghiari; thirteenstudies for the lost Sforza Monument (the onlyrecords we have of what this sculpture looked like);eighty-seven drawings, sketches and plans of famousbuildings, churches, villas, architectural details, etc.;five anatomical drawings; thirty-five drawingsrepresenting his famous investigations in the proportionsand movements of the human figure, and innumerablestudies of arms, legs, and otheranatomical details; and much more.Over 700 illustrations. Reference tables to thenumerical order of the chapters. Appendices. Totalof 866 pp. 7%x10%.Dover PublicationsDept. PMS180 Varick St.New York, N.Y. 10014Please send me sets of Leonardo's Notebooks,order numbers 22572-0, 22573-9 at $15.90 per set.(Add $1.25 to cover total shipping costs.)New York Residents add $1.27 sales tax per set.)Total enclosed $Name
on development of deductive reasoningabilities?2. If you regard logic as essential tomathematics and science, how do yousuggest one develop logical, analyticalabilities?3. When you advocate developmentof creativity do you considerlearning of problem solving heuristics(strategies) as useful? How would yourecommend they be learned/developed?4. Do you know of any books orprograms that would be helpful indeveloping logical analytical skills andproblem solving strategy development?Rick SilversFayetteville, N.C.To the Editor:As a math and science teacher, Ifind myself in accord with your ideasrelative to education, government,and so on. My question is what bookscould you recommend covering thephilosophy and approach to teachingscience and math that best gets awayfrom the present trend that's killingthe intellect of our young people?J. MulhollandAnchorage, AlaskaTo the Editor:Children do not have the resourceof experience to think like adults.Why does it take so many words tosay "learn by rote first"? The theoryof math's construction can be learnedlater after we have more resourcesand then, at that, many may neverneed learn it.We certainly don't learn to drive acar by first taking it apart bolt by boltto see what makes it work.I hope after four generations ofexperimenting the educators will finallyrealize they had better get backto teaching a basic fundamental educationfirst or we may have to reinventthe wheel.Not "New Math," but "BackwardsMath"!John C. CarlsonOrangevale, Calif.To the Editor:I recently received the May issue ofFusion. I was very disappointed. Onpage 37 there is a discussion of Chomskyand Piaget. The author states,"Chomsky also divorces languagefrom mind." Yet the entire contributionof Chomsky to linguistics hasbeen to explore those ways in whichlanguage adumbrates the structure ofmind.In his book Language and Mind,Chomsky states: ". . . it is fair to supposethat the major contribution ofthe study of language will lie in theunderstanding it can provide as to thecharacter of mental process and thestructures they form and manipulate."I received my PhD in linguisticsfrom Ohio State, with a dissertation inthe theory of transformational syntax.Since I know that linguistics has beenseriously misrepresented in yourmagazine, how can I trust your articleson math and physics?Dr. Ronald L. NeeldNew Orleans, La.The Editor RepliesThere is a better kind of mathematicsthan either the antimath of the"New Math" or the rote memorizationadvocated by the "back tobasics" movement. For several thousandsof years, a Platonic current inscience—represented by Plato himself,Archimedes (but not Euclid),Leibniz (but not Newton), and Riemann(but not Maxwell)—has notonly taught mathematics using thismethod but has been responsible forall the major advances in mathematicalscience.The Platonic approach to education(sometimes called the Socraticmethod) starts from the realizationthat the subject of education is theprocess of concept formation. That is,a true teacher does not teach information,but rather, the self-knowledgerequired for a student to recreatethose ideas for himself. Ateacher must teach what Plato calledthe "hypothesis of the higher hypothesis"—themethod of self-consciouslygenerating quantitatively new knowledge.Contributions to the FEFare tax deductible!There are many useful tools in theteacher's armamentarium, includingalgorithmic methods and deductivelogic, but these are not the subject ofeducation. They are tertiary aspects ofsome disciplines, instead. When these"logical" topics are turned into thesubject of education, as is the essenceof Piaget, Chomsky, and linguisticsgenerally, not only is education destroyed,but also the capabilities forcreative thought in the student aredemolished.Plato's dialogues remain the bestsource of education in this method—especially the Timaeus, the Sophist,and the Parmenides. There have alsobeen inspired applications of goodteaching in many other books, andthe FEF is preparing a curriculum forscience and mathematics based onthese historical materials as part of itseducation campaign.October-November 1981FUSION 9
Page 4 and 5: FeaturesCourtesy of Adolf BusemannS
Page 6 and 7: The Current Strategic DebateThe deb
Page 8: Lightning RodContinued from page 5t
Page 13 and 14: IQ of 145 andCan't Remember?In just
Page 15 and 16: spent fuel specified in the 1963 ac
Page 17 and 18: Special ReportRestoring Scientific
Page 19 and 20: Fusion Reporttional reforms institu
Page 21 and 22: quantity of thermonuclear energy, "
Page 23 and 24: DOE Stalls on FED;Bouquard Reconven
Page 25 and 26: Shiva laser target chamber. A needl
Page 27 and 28: The Shiva-Nova laser at LawrenceLiv
Page 29 and 30: It is not hard to show, on the othe
Page 31 and 32: Figure 2COMPUTER SIMULATION OF ISEN
Page 33 and 34: sion schemes by noting, as pointed
Page 35 and 36: An Interview withAdolfBusemannBriti
Page 37 and 38: Courtesy of Adolf BusemannThe semin
Page 39 and 40: I had the Busemann biplane. The ide
Page 41 and 42: The similar solution was, I had no
Page 43 and 44: Question: In some of the research I
Page 45 and 46: SecretA firsthand account of the 19
Page 47 and 48: Fusion has argued that the real iss
Page 49 and 50: InternationalLaunch of Ariane Rocke
Page 51 and 52: A (our group sponsored by the CCT t
Page 53 and 54: Inside EnergyNatural Gas:Our Barely
Page 55 and 56: ter, spring water runoff, and manyo
Page 57 and 58: or even to the outer limit of the s
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public has achieved importance in t
Page 61 and 62:
Houston Spaceweek Conf.Refutes 'Lim
Page 63 and 64:
ommends continuing the small Europe
Page 65 and 66:
How can we assurethat there will be
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What would you give to learn a seco
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Riemann's Contribution to Flight and Laser Fusion

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