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"It's also important to vary your stimuli. I always look for new things to shock the system. Just as you make muscles grow by shocking them, you make the mind grow by shocking it."
- Bart Kosko
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| Flexible Stem | ||
| A long flexible tube that can expand and contract its length quickly. |
| "At one of the religious festivals, a platform supported by a long flexible stem raises a priestess dressed in flower petals. Another similar platform raises a table supporting certain symbolic objects...The priestess performs rites while the stems twine about each other. I learned that the stems are built up of several dozen smaller tubes, each containing a magnetic slurry: iron powder in a viscous liquid. Reacting to fields from internal windings, these tubes selectively contract with great force. By proper circuitry any contortion of the tubes is posible. It seems to me that this system might be applied to the legs of the walking fort." |
| Technovelgy from The Killing Machine,
by Jack Vance. Published by Fantastic Fiction (?) in 1964 Additional resources -
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Thanks to R. Probert for contributing this item.
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| DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available |
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