One example might be that spirits are said to be bound by arbitrary functions (bizarre ritual ingredients being a famous example). That they respond to and recognize cues.

Another aspect of spirit lore is that the more central or higher in the hierarchy, the less different "pointers" or cues may be required for evocation, and stronger expression of those fewer cues may result. The lower/more numerous spirits might require more specificity or larger seed.

Transformations at a minimum: by inducing a receptive trance state, then by self-suggestion.

Collaborative general purpose editors nowadays show one user's text selection to other users, so this is straightforward to implement.

It's been applied to surgery with 90-99% reductions in line infection rates. Head nurse calls the surgeon out on checklist violations.

This is basically how many closed source Bitcoin trading robots operate. They create giant waves of predictable trades because naive operators leave the default parameters for trading signals. Other traders just get in (and out) right before the robots.

How do you know that?

Trading with my own robots and by hand.

I found that automated triangular (and 4, 5...) arbitrage was possible in the past, mainly due to fee-raking exchanges providing superfluous instruments. Opportunities were usually small, counterparty risk and fees usually large.

There also seemed to usually be someone else's bots doing the same thing, although occasionally decent sized trades appeared in slow/extraneous markets. Exploiting these mechanically eventually results in humans looking for the source of the arbitrage, and even if there aren't competing bots running it won't last long.

Arbitrage based on first-moving markets and slower moving markets was pretty common, and some people seemed to have automated it.

And of course the market making robots run by the exchanges are the most fun to watch. Lots of times they trigger the crossover bot traders' algorithms on purpose.

Or, the makers of Pokemon Go were installing a system to easily obtain video footage of any urban location (less easily, other areas).

If the Fenn-treasure-seeker ground penetrating radar drone teams do materialize, they will almost certainly locate archeological sites, which is pretty cool. The algorithms ought to also pick up petroglyphs while searching for blazes.

Any central public library is fully stocked on Asimov.

It seems that this short story was originally published in an old science fiction magazine (that my local library doesn't stock). Was wondering if it also made its way into a compilation of some sort. Google hasn't turned up anything for me yet.

Is this the story? http://www.young-adult-books.com/read/buy-jupiter-and-other-... (link says "buy", but looks like the entire story is on that page)

Can you imagine if someone told Asimov that his story "Buy Jupiter" would be mistaken for a "link" to buy a copy of his work, by someone reading on an international network of computers that have access to all of the information in the world - and were so overrun with advertising that his own title was mistaken for one. Given "Buy Jupiter's" plot summary - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Jupiter [1] - this is extremely apropos!! Some things never change :)

[1] WHICH I'M LINKING ON A FREAKING ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA THAT CONTAINS IN EVERY LANGUAGE ALL OF THE GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD (WIKIPEDIA).

Thanks for the link! Apparently 'Buy Jupiter' it self is a story (so all the stories on the page are free)

Contained in "Buy Jupiter and Other Stories" Available on amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Jupiter-Other-Stories-Isaac-Asimov/dp...)

Sometimes because they are intentionally gatekeeping, as in Half Past Human's conversational delta analysis reports.

As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc.

The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.

> As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc.

"Budget."

(or, at least, this is what I imagine the answer is.)

> It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.

Apollo had some major issues with moon dust and such - maintaining a sterile environment is a different, if overlapping skillset with maintaining an environment within a vacuum.

That said, there's all the NBC preparedness of the military, and e.g. the medical response to outbreaks and quarantines - even if "don't enter the quarantined area" is rule 1.

But hey, maybe Robots could be an option at some point. Still - do you fund the expedition that requires expensive, custom, bespoke explorer-bots (because there hasn't been much of a market for those for mass production to drive down costs or standardize things) or do you fund the expedition where you can send a few students for school credit?

You'd die of heatstroke tromping around the jungle in an environmental suit.

I assume the answer is: cost. It's very expensive to fully isolate yourself from your surrounding environment both for the sake of exploring but also for camping. I would imagine there's not a lot of funding for this sort of research, if only because it doesn't seem to have much intrinsic value.

This is fascinating because it probably dates back to the times of medicinal uses of such.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-o...