Loved all his work. One of the best hard science fiction writers of the past century.

I’ve read more than just his science fiction. I always enjoyed his speculative writings on the future of space science and how it will change life. His writing on the medical advances linked to space was great.

And I don't just mean the content of his writing, which alone is pretty telling. I mean the fact that he was known to defend his behavior with "I get slapped a lot. I also get laid a lot."

You don't have to celebrate that, but you can't deny it happens a lot.

On edit: Robert Heinlein is another example.

"We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal...."

Really, Mr. Jefferson? Really? "All men", Mr. Jerfferson?

And yet, he also wrote my ALL time favorite quote on God. I even refer to it as 'Jefferson's Test of Reason':

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” —To Peter Carr, 1787

None is perfect, and aspirational goals have honor even from the mouths of imperfect men.

Unfortunately, a brilliant mind arouses people and some individuals can't resist the temptation to take advantage of that.

I mean, if he had to use that comeback often enough that it became widely known, he was offending people.

I've read variations on the quotation 'democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."' quite a few times since Turd took office. But, I did not know that it is attributed to Isaac Asimov.

In my youth, he was one of my favorite science fiction, and non-fiction authors. I learned how to use a slide rule from one of his books. (Yeah, I know, what's a slide rule?)

I know what an abacus is too! My father was an Engineer and his slide rule was always in his shirt pocket, and he used it a lot.

I wrote the last part of my previous post as I recently ran into some educated younger people who did not know what a slide rule is. I was in a place where the Simon & Garfunkel with James Taylor version of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" was playing on the radio. When I commented that not many young people today would know what a slide rule is, or what it's for, as per the lyric in the song, I quickly learned I was correct. There was only one person there, a lady who was closer to my own age, who knew anything about slide rules.

We weren’t allowed to use calculators in math class! I know what you mean. I first noticed the world was changing when my kid couldn’t tell time by looking at a clock! And, understandably he had no idea what a rotary telephone was.

Life has sure changed with the advent of electronics. I’ve always thought of it as the Internet Revolution, which has changed life just as much as the Industrial Revolution.

...to show some thirty-plus-year-olds what it was and how to work it. They were astonished that it could actually multiply and divide ANY two given numbers. To say nothing of solving triangles and all the other trig tricks it could do.

I remember reading somewhere that the highest tech available to the people working on the Manhattan Project was a few "coffee grinder-type" calculators. And, those had to be shared.

The rest of the work was done with pencil, paper, and slide rules.

calculations with a sliderule or longhand, and he always required that students round each calculated result to a specific number of significant digits beyond the decimal point. I had a very heavy course load, but I tried to learn how to use a sliderule from fellow students, my mind just blocked it out, so I had to do all calculations longhand. I will never forget how that professor cost me A's in two of his advanced first year chemistry courses.

My position on sliderules. I have thought about this a lot due to me experience in those Chemistry courses. I believe that exercises such as cursive writing and block letter formation helps a person develop an inate sense of space and continuity and due to that, are valuable to young minds. I believe that sliderule are simply archaic remnants of an earlier time, similar to cave people using stones or pieces of twigs to count, the sliderule adds nothing to the development of a young mind, either a person knows how to do a calculation and hence can just as easily use a calculator to perform it, or the person doesn't know how to do the calculation, and no tool used to perform it would change that reality.

I love slide rules. I remember when they were commonly available at Woolworth.

from my engineering school in the late '60's. It still works. I taught my son how to use it, and soon my 4 year old grandson will be learning to use it.

But it was already the Age of the Calculator. My Chemistry teacher was just old fashioned. I still have it around here somewhere. It was a nice one given to me by an engineer my dad knew. But I never touched it after high school. I used a calculator all through college and in my job, 95% of any math I need to do is done by an application.

He has his father's (electrical engineer) and I have my father's (mining engineer).

By the time I was fourteen I had read every Isaac Asimov book in the local public library and those in the school libraries - plus all of them that Mom could find at the thrift shops she went to.

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I think I paid somewhere around $ 5.00 for it. If I ever get my "Honey Do List" finished, I should frame it behind glass, and hang it on the wall with a little hammer and a label that says "Break Glass In Case of Emergency."

Right now they are packed away, but in a few months we will be sorting through everything I got from my parent's house and I will see what they are.

Dad's oldest was probably bought when he was at Michigan School of Mines getting his degree (or was it named something else - his Dad graduated from there, too, and the school changed names between times. Now it is Michigan Tech.) which he began in 1940 and finished after the war ended - his degree is dated 1946.

My cheapo "Post" got me through my freshman and sophomore years. Then, the affordable HP and TI calculators came out.

But, I still remember the really, really nerdy guys with their "two foot long log-log slide rules." They used to walk around campus with those things hanging from their belts like Wyatt Earp heeled with a shiny, new Colt Buntline Special. They were a sight to see, back in the day.

Anyway, if you're not going to keep those old slide rules as family heirlooms, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're worth some serious money on the Internet. I have a big pile of old, obsolete computer tech I was about to toss, when my wife surprised me by how much it was worth.

He had various types from an old manual adding machine (one with a lever on the side), to all sorts from when they were first introduced. Some were just basic calculators, some fancy engineering ones. Many were still in the original box with the original manuals. I didn't jump fast enough and my sister tossed them.

I did save the manual for the Wang computer Dad leased for a job in the mid 1960s. I was fascinated by it, but since it was very, very expensive, Dad wouldn't let me touch it.

Dad bought Mom a TI-99 computer but she was not interested. It's still in the original box, so we may sell it eventually. And I have Dad's Commodore 64 with the floppy drives up in the attic next to the TI-99. Not sure what we'll do with it.

We'll keep the slide rules, but I'm not sure any of our nieces and nephews (or their kids) will be interested, so they may eventually be disposed of.

Know anyplace that would like to have this sort of thing?

My guess is that you can do online research and find some. One query would be to ask how much one of your pieces that is in the box is worth today, of course you would need to give the part name of that piece.

Interestingly, I have never been a collector of Tech, though I suspect there are a lot of people that do (I have seen it in people's offices). I came along when computers were changing every three-five years (now it's every few months), that dulls some my appreciation for some of the less advanced, but considerably more elegant Tech that preceded my era.

300.00 for the TI99 on Etsy. Of course that is the asking price.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/719972068/vintage-retro-80s-texas-instruments-ti?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_a-electronics_and_accessories-computers_and_peripherals-computers&utm_custom1=ec32ca67-eb3a-43e2-b522-27d4b6660da8&utm_content=go_1843970779_69216057785_346429258292_pla-353923937411_c__719972068&utm_custom2=1843970779&gclid=CjwKCAjwwYP2BRBGEiwAkoBpAl3zK5Lw0zrNm_d42fph8M_bDf0572KHlWBnu5i7r4d4hqHJFrGmJBoCQVMQAvD_BwE

Log-log decitrigs. I was 10. I paid 175 for my first calculater (sp). All it did was plus, minus, divide, multiply and a log. I was faster on my slide rule.

The HP and TI calculators came on the market while I was still in college, so I bought a good TI right away. I don't remember what I paid for it. Whatever the cost was back then, it was worth every penny.

Then, all one heard in school was how great the HPs were with their "reverse Polish notation" versus the "inferior" TIs. My answer was always, "I need(ed) to calculate inverse hyperbolic functions to pass my Heat Transfer class. Can your HP do that? What's that you say? No?! Well then, this argument is settled."

I do not really miss slide rules.

I ran it for ten years before the battery died for good. But I still kept my slide rule b/c I could solve triangles on it faster than I could with the TI.

Ah, the "good ol' days!"

I'm the proud owner of a 'vintage' HP-15C that I bought new at the UTK bookstore in 1980 with the original manuals. I've don't use it much any more but I'm pretty sure it would do inverse hyperbolic functions.

I've got an original HP-48SX with manuals as well. RPN rules. LOL... the things we humans take pride in sometimes.

but I assure you, the model(s) available then could not. The HP users in my Heat Transfer class had to use and plug in tabular data to solve the few problems we were given that required inverse hyperbolic functions to solve.

Even quite a few years later, my fellow engineers with their HPs could not do inverse hyperbolic functions. I do admit, however, that they may have still been using older model calculators.

Those old pocket calculators really were quite durable. I remember once seeing something bouncing down the highway behind my car after I had left home, and realized it was the calculator I had placed on top of the roof while I cleaned the windshield. To my delight, however, other than a little scratch on one of the corners, the calculator was undamaged. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I got well over ten (10) years use out of mine before the battery died and I bought something new.

When the engineers were desperately calculating trajectories and how much fuel was left minutes after the explosion, everybody in Houston pulled out their slide rule.

The entire theater cracked up laughing (ironically, the actual event was about two years before hand-held calculators became if not commonplace, at least normal).

a few weeks ago. It's so true - she and her family lived in Virginia for years.

after I read non fiction books about the Holocaust when Reagan was President. I realized his popularity was high because he ran his campaign on a Jingoistic and militaristic message all wrapped in the Uber patriotic flag. He woke up the same flag waving brutish rabble that we now recognize as MAGATs.

I remember telling my mother that Fascism could easily take root in this country. Nowadays I’m reminded of thinking that decades ago. I’m so sorry I was correct.

It's also why H.L. Mencken wrote so disparagingly of the American public's idiocy and penned the following:

"On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Assigned reading when I was in college in the late '60s was Richard Hofstader's book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. "Hofstadter argued that both anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism were consequences, in part, of the democratization of knowledge. Moreover, he saw these themes as historically embedded in America's national fabric, an outcome of its colonial European and evangelical Protestant heritage. He contended that American Protestantism's anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigour." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_Life

2009 a new research department was launched which was dedicated to the academic study of the Right Wing established movement. It’s name is The Center for Right Wing Studies. It came about when Sara Palin came in like the whirling devil dervish to give rise to the Tea Party, now known as MAGATs. I remember thinking how weird to do something like that when the Palinesque phenomena couldn’t possibly last. Boy was I wrong!

https://crws.berkeley.edu/about-us

back to the earliest times after Christianity had gained dominance over it's rivals. If a person thought outside the accepted "norms", that person got fitted for a set of thumbscrews. That brutality has influenced scientists, writers and politicians through time, it certainly weighed heavily with our country's Founders, several of the most prominent being Deists who were at odds with Christian thought, yet the Declaration of Independence and Constitution got written in a way that tilted toward the dogma of Christianity.

I’m a huge fan of his. He fed my imagination when I was a teenager. It was such a great time for science fiction! I still have dreams of how the future will be. I’m also very aware that many things we take for granted now is stuff he used to write about.

By the way much more of a Arthur C. Clarke fan.

From high school on I was totally into their science fiction. I loved it then and it’s all still great today!

The date for that quote coincides with St.Ronnie Raygun's inauguration.

It was what he knew was coming.

I had a vague perception of it when Reagan was elected. I posted about it upthread on post #19

It was exactly one year to the day before the Reagan-thing was inaugurated. (He was elected in 1980.)

I have always looked up to Isaac Asimov. Love his books as well.

She said he was a dirty old man! That is my Isaac Asimov story

It's a pdf. I can't cut and paste it, but here's the full article.

He was very perceptive. The article you posted reminded me of Mark Twain a little.

Historical account (with some obvious fictionalized discussions) about John Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard back in the early days. Fascinating to get a glimpse of the actual people behind the stories, a real eye opener for me!

I too read Asimov extensively in high school, and then Heinlein immediately after college. Love all their works.

I was in High School wandering around the school library when I came across “Have Space Suit Will Travel”. It hooked me for life. That was almost 60 years ago!

I now own everything he ever published (at least in collections) and several things he didn’t, but which his widow Ginny, or the Heinlein Foundation published after his death.

Genius writer and stalwart liberal

Whereas a conspiracy theory bozo can have hundred of thousands to millions of followers and viewers. Quite literally a non-reality idiot is more popular than a real scientist.
I listen to real scientists on YouTube and find this phenomenon quite disturbing.
I consider my religion to be science and the scientific reasoning.
-Airplane

I get a broken link indicator.

With the following quote:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that Democracy means that “My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Isaac Asimov, 21 January 1980.

You can see the article which jim_ Posted in post #30.

in American society back in community college.

I endured a lot of it as well. Once, when I had contributed something in class, some girl piped up with, "Geez, do you watch Discovery channel all the time?" (or whatever was considered "brainy" television back then) I merely arched a brow, and declined from telling her that I had actually read the information in a book.

Oh, and for the record, I do not consider myself One of the Great Minds of Our Generation. I just like to read, and am genuinely curious about a number of subjects.

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time, and the teacher (6th grade) had asked the students (us) what caused the tides.

I was the only one that piped up and answered 'the Moon!'. All of the students laughed at what they thought was an absurd answer. Of course the answer was right, but still, as of today, I still marvel at how some go through life, w/o discovering the wonders of life and the universe. Sometimes I wonder how in the world did we ever get a man on the moon w/ people like this around.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the auto mechanics, etc. all out in their slices of life, doing what they know best (far better than I), but some of these people I suspect think that they can live without knowing anything. Boy, will they be proven wrong as the years go by...

what weighs more, an aluminum sheet laid out or a sheet wadded up into a ball. Everyone in the class spoke out and started arguing with each other but I sat there really thinking hard about it and got one of those “aha!” moments and shot my arm in the air. The teacher laughed and called on me and, of course, I got the answer right. I’ve since wondered if he knew my thinking would lead me to the right conclusion. I think he was watching the students’ reactions because it’s kind of a trick question. At that age we would have to think in order to get it.

an aura (maybe you did) from that experience later on in school, after all, you became the genius that knew that answer!

Now there’s a word I haven’t seen or heard in decades!

Although I was never belligerent I didn’t take shit from anyone and was also known to jump to the defense of anyone who got picked on. I remember some of the kids giving me dirty looks, but in retrospect I do remember other kids just assuming I knew the answers after that. This is the first time I thought of something like this. My overriding memory of the incident was that “Aha!” moment. It was that instant when you feel a jolt of instant flashing certainty.

because I could answer questions my teachers asked in class.

Of course, modern society has elevated the status of nerds, though I never thought myself anywhere near that smart.

First, let me state for the record that I am not, and do not ever intend to pretend that I am, the brightest bulb in the box.

The reason I enjoyed going to university even though I never earned a degree, was that it was such a head rush to be around so many people from whom I got nods of agreement rather than 'deer in the headlights' stares.

I have been told 'you think too much' several times, but the one that set my blood boiling was the psychologist(!) who said to me: "Your problem is you think too fast". My ability to think fast is my PROBLEM??? Needless to say that was the last time she had to worry about my 'problem'.

seeing friends here on DU), and other such sayings. There's a reason why these sayings are so memorialized and remembered, because they are true.

With both parties worshipping a giant Orange Anus.

I keep mine in the bathroom.

eventually, engineering, because of reading his explanations of the natural world around us. He was simply a brilliant writer and scientific mind, he made the very complex so understandable to a young and forming mind.

...faith, with an eff'ing capital 'F'.