{"id":1868,"date":"2008-03-18T19:16:01","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T02:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2008-03-18T19:16:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T02:16:01","slug":"arthur-c-clarke-1917-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2008\/03\/18\/arthur-c-clarke-1917-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, predictor of the future, and inspirer of at least one little kid from rural Northern California, is <a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?URI=www-nc.nytimes.com\/2008\/03\/18\/books\/18cnd-clarke.html&amp;REFUSE_COOKIE_ERROR=SHOW_ERROR\">dead at age 90<\/a>.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAlthough I learned to cringe at some of Clarke&#8217;s writing as I grew older, I have very distinct and fond memories of reading &#8220;Childhood&#8217;s End&#8221; and &#8220;Rendezvous with Rama.&#8221;  (Like all such memories, I dread rereading these for fear of losing my even now foggy recollections of the joy these books brought me.)<br \/>\nAnd then, of course, there are Clarke&#8217;s Three Laws:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.<\/li>\n<li>The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.<\/li>\n<li>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first of these laws gives hope to heretics everywhere.  The second reminds me of what I should be thinking about in my research.  And the third used to be on the front page of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.magiqtech.com\/\">MagicQ<\/a> webpage.  Maybe now that they want to sell a product, comparing your product to magic isn&#8217;t as popular?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, predictor of the future, and inspirer of at least one little kid from rural Northern California, is dead at age 90.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-you-tweed"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}