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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy | ||
| Futuristic children's game. |
This reminds me of a playground device that I've seen for the last fifteen years or so (not when I was a kid). It is a three foot-wide funnel set at the top of a pole; the funnel lets out into four chutes that point in four directions. You throw the ball into the funnel (an easy 'basket'), and then you have to guess which direction it will come out; lots of fun for groups of kids.
| The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught. |
| From Brave New World,
by Aldous Huxley. Published by Unknown in 1932 Additional resources -
|
I'm not sure when the first use of centrifugal force was made in games. People have specifically studied centrifugal force since the mid-seventeenth century, when "whirling tables" were made to illustrate effects.
Thanks to Alex Mair for contributing this item.
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
