Word: method
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Before the Karmarkar method, linear equations could be solved only in a cumbersome fashion, ironically known as the simplex method, devised by Mathematician George Dantzig in 1947. Problems are conceived of as giant geodesic domes with thousands of sides. Each corner of a facet on the dome represents a possible solution to the equation. Using the simplex method, the computer scours the surface of the dome millions of times to pinpoint the corner with the most likely solution. But the method is slow, and it works only when there are merely a few thousand variables to sort through. Says Karmarkar...
...talk, the Pontiff declared that sex "ceases to be an act of love" whenever artificial birth control is used. That idea appeared hi a book that he wrote in 1960, when he was a bishop, but is new to papal teaching. John Paul also stresses that acceptable natural methods of birth control can be an "abuse" if practiced for "unworthy reasons." Pope Pius XII, in a 1951 speech, said that Catholic couples could use the natural, or rhythm, method for serious "medical, eugenic, economic and social" reasons. John Paul shows little enthusiasm for promoting even these methods...
...Pope's position is strongly endorsed by bishops in the developing nations, where population growth is most unchecked. Those Third World bishops who worry about the population problem promote only natural methods. In such nations as the Philippines and Kenya, Cardinals have publicly decried government population programs. For workaday Catholics in impoverished nations, however, it is often not bishops who define what is sinful but parish priests. On that level, the Pope faces increased individualism among priests in the Third World. Typical of many in overcrowded urban slums, Dominican Father Miguel Concha of Mexico City remarks, "If I know...
...Waste Land may owe less to the decline of the West than to domestic problems of the Eliots. But Ackroyd suggests that in many ways Vivien was a good wife, supporting her husband in his dark moods and offering solicited judgments on his manuscripts. Eliot's method of divorcing her shimmers with the indecisiveness of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: he went off for a stint of teaching in the U.S., told his lawyers to handle matters in his absence and hid from her when he returned to England. She died in a mental institution...
...political satire, part informal history, part rumination on the Depression, part love story between the rich boy poor in spirit and the poor girl rich in perception. Von Hoffman's elemental themes are deftly woven into the episodic narrative: among men of power, there may be differences of method but not of motive; between brains and privilege, choose brains, because money and position may prove fleeting, while intelligence endures...