Word: programming
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Enter Bill Bennett, academician, Education Secretary in the Reagan Administration, ex-head of Bush's antidrug program. Like Bush, Bennett had stumped for Helms. In his first statements as the designated G.O.P. chairman, Bennett defended Helms' campaign strategy as "perfectly legitimate." He also criticized affirmative-action programs generally. After all, he had co- authored a 1979 book called Counting by Race, which argued, "Quite simply, numerical equality is an unworthy means for a people dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...
...name of this computer exercise is SimEarth -- The Living Planet, a new $69.95 disk for Macintosh computers that offers something no other program can. It not only shows how life may have evolved on earth, but it also let me do the one thing I've always wanted to do: play...
Things really get interesting when the creatures on my pet planet develop intelligence. The program is set up so that the beings that become smart are not necessarily human. They can as easily be dolphins or spiders. In one game I played, it was a lizard that discovered fire. Africa was soon littered with Stone Age reptile cities...
Scientists will point out that almost every one of the program's premises is subject to debate, from its assumption that life must be based on carbon (rather than, say, silicon) to its noticeable bias against nuclear energy. The program also assumes that technology always advances and that intelligence always confers an evolutionary advantage. "We may be flattering ourselves," says the program's designer, Will Wright...
Start with a lump of rock, add some flora and fauna and before you know it, your little planet's growing out of control. With a program called SimEarth, the whole world's in your hands...