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RE: Sir Arthur C. Clarke



Hi all-
It's cocktail time in Hinsdale, and I just read Merlin's
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Asimov once discussed harnessing, in the orbit of the earth, a miniture
black hole. Then by feeding it matter, mostly our waste, and capturing the
energy on the manifold we could power a hundred worlds! I dare you to call
Asimov an idiot. Asimov was one of the greatest minds this world has ever
known. Yet, if you asked Isaac what the real value of this most bizarre idea
was he might affirm that though it may never be possible, to stop imagining,
to stop trying, to stop dreaming is to stop being a scientist and to start
being a technician.

Merlin
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Wow! Sounds like someone just spit on his altar!
Sorry, Merlin, but if you spend time considering every screwball's idea,
then you won't have time to deal with the important ones. That is why, when someone
proposes a perpetual motiion device (the universe ain't closed, as we recently pointed
out, so why not?) we put the burden on the proponent to show that the idea is
reasonable. Clarke obviously hasn't carried any kind of burden, so wasting time
on ifs and maybe's is just that, a waste of time.
Asimov's suggestion was an obvious spoof. Similar spoofs are run every week
in NATURE, I'll leave it as a simple exercise for you to find the column.
Regards,
Jack





"I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
to wit, how the milk gets into the cow. Both of us
had marveled over that mystery a long time. We had
followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
that color."
Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
Autobiography