a well regulated militia

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by jaguar
News to me. Maybe it was, I’m not sure. The books to me certainly suggest that it was. The key point in the books certainly seems to me to be the use of intelligence instead of violence to resolve problems. I'd have to reread now...

Can't imagine why you'd need to reread it, since you referred to it (as a misquote, admittedly) claiming you'd "never heartd a truer sentence". You wouln't make that claim about something without actually knowing what it <b>meant</b>, would you?

What exactly was he working on?

As far as I have been able to tell, his work was classified and he never discussed it, even after the war.

Heinlien was <b>famous</b> for his obstinacy in not disclosing the nature of the work he did there. It has been conjectured by some to have had to do with aiming antiaircraft fire from radar signals, and some of his writing indicates that he'd thought about that problem extensively. I don't even know for sure that he, Asimov, and deCamp were all working on the same project, but we do know that they became close friends.

Asimov was indeed interested in the idea of solving political problems without violence, but unfortunately he failed to pass on to us Salvor Hardin's mathematical models that would have enabled us to predict social outcomes with the precision and reliablity of problems from physics. Without them, I suppose we may all look "incompetant" next to Hardin. We're left only to console ourselves with the fact that he is a <b>fictional</b> character, and thus perhaps not the best source for ethical guidance.

Asimov also died without revealing a synthesys or structure for the remarkable compond "thiotimoline". His paper "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" described a chemical so incredibly water-soluable that it would dissolve <b>before</b> being added to water. A telegraph system that consisted of a battery of thiotimoline cells would have obvious application in finance (by transmitting pricing information from the future) and significant military applications by allowing early-warning of a future attack with any desired lead time. This would certainly have revolutionized the concept of "preemptive strike".

I do know that Asimov was highly disconcerted when, as the final question during his doctoral orals, he was asked to speak on the subject of thiotimoline's endochronitic properties. I guess he didn't realize anybody on the senior faculty read <i>Amazing Science Fiction</i>.