Asimov's Books Year by year: 1950

Asimov's first science fiction novel, Pebble in the Sky, was published in 1950 by Doubleday.

His first short story anthology was also published in this year, by Gnome Press: I, Robot.

Although Pebble in the Sky is out of print, it is available at Amazon and B&N. Amazon.com also has a downloadable version - a Dimension X radio program for only 95 cents.


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Ottawa Citizen, April 3, 1958

Isaac Asimov's name appeared in the newspapers beginning in about 1954, with reviews of each of his books as it appeared.

Unfortunately, I can't share any of these with you because they are all "Pay per view" and the newspapers concerned want $3.95 for each article. I think not.

But the Ottawa Citizen (a Canadian newspaper, obviously) makes its archives freely available, and Asimov is mentioned in an article from this newspaper's weekend insert, WEEKEND Magazine, on April 3, 1958.

The headline?
"Here is what we learned about RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT." The title runs over the two page spread of the article, with an additional few paragraphs on another page (in which Asimov's name is mentioned.)

It starts out in this way:

More than 100 nuclear bombs have been tested by the U.S., Russia and Britain since man first unleashed the terrifying destructive power of the atom 13 years ago. Each new test now sends a shudder of doubt and anxiety around the world.

Eminent scientists warn us that we are contaminating the earth with an unseen mantle of deadly radioactivity. Other scientists, apparently equally eminent, contradict them.

What is the layman to make of it all? Is radioactive fallout making the world unsafe not only for ourselves, but for generations yet to be born? Just how much radioactivity have the bomb tests showered us with, anyway?

To try to answer this question, WEEKEND Magazine asked one of Canada's most distinguished physicists, Dr. J.S. Foster, to travel across the country taking samples of the radioactivity in eight widely-separated cities.

His verdict: "Every part of Canada shows some trace of bomb fallout, but the amount is only a fraction of the natural radioactivity that has surrounded man throughout his history-radioactivty that is given off all the time by elements in the earth, in water and in the air.

But Foster is a phsyicist. And biologists disagreed with him.

Asimov's name is mentioned in the back part of the article.

In 1954, 10,000 people died of leukemia in the United States. Dr. Edward Lewis, of the California Institute of Technoloyg, has established that about 1,000 of these cases were caused by natural radioactivity. Basing his calculations on this estimate, Dr. Isaac Asimov, associate professor of biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine, has suggested that the strontium-90 so far absorbed into our bodies from bomb tests may have caused one per cent of these deaths, 10 people a year.

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BOOK REVIEW: 'Science for the Concerned Citizen: What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You': Science Demystified for Lay People

From HuntingtonNews.net: BOOK REVIEW: 'Science for the Concerned Citizen: What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You': Science Demystified for Lay People

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. -- George Bernard Shaw, preface to "Pygmalion"

Insert "scientific" in front of "language" in this quotation from the Irish playwright whose "Pygmalion" formed the basis for the hit musical "My Fair Lady," and you'll begin to understand why Philip A. Yaffe wrote "Science for the Concerned Citizen: What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You" (Kindle eBook, Amazon Digital Services, ASIN: B005G0JH2G, 210kb, $3.80).

If you're looking for specific information on physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry or any other branch of science, Yaffe's book is not for you. If you wonder why some people seem to be proud of their ignorance of science -- or just as bad, fear science -- it's a must read.
UCLA mathematics graduate Yaffe writes that "science simply means trying to understand how the world we live in works...." A theme throughout the book's essays is that words mean different things to scientists and nonscientists, especially the word "theory." To borrow another turn of phrase from Shaw. scientists and nonscientists are like people from America and England: "two people separated by a common language."


"Theory" to a scientist means something that has been determined to be a fact, a basis for building on. To many nonscientists, Yaffe writes, it means something that hasn't been proven, that is more or less one scientist's opinion. For instance, to believers of "intelligent design" Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is one man's opinion. Or to a believer in traditional physics who says that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is not true. There are more of the former than of the latter, since Einstein has been vindicated time after time.


Yaffe writes that "we all live in a world which, if not dominated by science, is certainly strongly influenced by it. Yet most people seem have only a vague, and often erroneous, understanding of what science is all about. This is both sad and dangerous. If we depend on science but don’t really understand it, we are likely to make uninformed decisions with disastrous consequences."
That's one reason why Yaffe organized the book to be as readable and approachable as possible; if you make it palatable enough, even English majors (and the present reviewer is one) will be able to comprehend it!


The key chapter of the book, Yaffe told me, is “Science in a Nutshell” at the end, which brings together all the fundamental principles of science and how science works in one place. Its headings include such apparently contradictory topics as “Science is faith” and “Science is lack of faith”; “Science is open-minded” and “Science is skeptical”; and “Science is precision” and “Science is probability.” It also examines topics such as “science is counter-intuitive,” “science is simplicity,” “science is cumulative,” “science is history,” and “science is human.”

“Readers who feel themselves already rather comfortable with science may wish to read this chapter first, then read the essays, quotes and jokes to see how these fundamental principles play out in practice. Readers who are somewhat queasy about science may wish to read the essays, quotes and jokes first, then read ‘Science in a Nutshell’ as a kind of summary,” Yaffe explained. “However you choose to approach the book, when you finish you will surely have a better understanding of science and how it affects our daily lives than you did before you started,” he concludes.


Instead of chapters about specific sciences, "... everything you really need to know about physics, everything you really need to know about chemistry, everything you really need to know about astronomy, etc." Yaffe has fashioned the book in the form of easy-to-read essays, "some of which are based on speeches given to lay audiences, some of which have already been published elsewhere, and some of which are being published here for the first time. Each essay is self-contained, so they can be read. You don’t have to read the first essay first in order to understand the second one, and so on."
Here are some of Yaffe's essays:

· “Science, reason, and robots” calls on short stories by the celebrated writers Isaac Asimov and H.G. Wells to demonstrate the uses and abuses of scientific reasoning.

· “How to stop blowing scientific research out of proportion” uses a case history to show how once a false idea escapes from the laboratory, it is almost impossible to recapture it

· “Common misconceptions: things we know that just aren’t so” speaks for itself.

At the very beginning of the book, Yaffe tells us about his three personal heroes. Most of us will recognize the first two, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Isaac Azimov (1920-1992) a professor of biochemistry at Boston University, who is much more famous as the author of "I, Robot" and the "Foundation Series."


His third hero is Joseph Kaplan (1902-1991) who taught physics at UCLA when Yaffe attended the school in the 1960s. As a top member of the department, Kaplan could easily have avoided teaching nonscience majors Physics 101, AKA "bonehead physics." Instead, Yaffe writes, Kaplan relished his opportunities to show how a scientist could be as passionate about his field as, say, an English major would be about a Shakespeare sonnet, or a history major about the French Revolution.


To be a scientist is to experience humility. As Isaac Newton wrote, "If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." This is only one of many quotations in "Science for the Concerned Citizen." In addition to the essays, Yaffe presents a wide variety of quotations about science from well-known scientists such as Einstein and Newton, lesser known scientists, as well as authors, philosophers, poets, etc. Like the essays, each quotation is self-contained and are not categorized into specific sub-headings. Where necessary, a quotation will be commented on to make certain that Is references and allusions can be easily understood.


And that brings up Yaffe's selection of science jokes. Believe it or not, some people find science to be fun; scientists like to laugh at themselves. His book concludes with several pages of jokes. Again, where necessary, a joke will be commented on to make certain that its references and allusions can be easily understood.


As I read Yaffe's book, I was reminded of one of my favorite writers, C.P. Snow (1905-1980). At one period in my reading life I devoured everything written by Charles Percy Snow, an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as "Strangers and Brothers", and for "The Two Cultures", a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals"

In 1959, Snow delivered an influential Rede Lecture called "The Two Cultures", which provoked "widespread and heated debate". Published as "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution", the lecture argued that the breakdown of communication between the "two cultures" of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. In particular, Snow argues that the quality of education in the world is on the decline. For example, many scientists have never read Charles Dickens, but artistic intellectuals are equally non-conversant with science.
Snow wrote:

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'

"I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, 'Can you read?' — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had."


I think Yaffe's eBook will rekindle (no pun intended, I use an Android tablet) the interest in "The Two Cultures" at a time when education -- including STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) seems to be at an historically low point. Like the farmers and the cowhands in the 1943 hit musical "Oklahoma!" humanities majors and scientists can be friends and learn from each other's passion.


I'll end this review by quoting Yaffe's recasting the famous opening lines of "Star Trek":


These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Yaffe's version:
These are the voyages of the human spirit. Their never-ending mission, to explore strange new phenomena, to seek out new ideas and new insights, to boldly go where no human mind has gone before.

About the Author

Philip A. Yaffe was born in Boston in 1942 and grew up in Los Angeles. In 1965 he graduated in mathematics from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), where he was also editor-in-chief of the Daily Bruin, the daily student newspaper.
He is author of seven self-help books available in digital format. Yaffe has more than 40 years of experience in journalism and industrial marketing communication. At various points in his career, he has been a teacher of journalism, a reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal, an account executive with a major international press relations agency, European marketing communication director with two major international companies, and a founding partner of a marketing communication agency in Brussels, Belgium, where he has lived since 1974. Email: phil.yaffe@gmail.com,phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, For my review of two recent eBooks by Yaffe, click on: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/4851. For my review of his book The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking, click on http://www.huntingtonnews.net/638

Reviewer's note: I found this in a Google search: "The main reason students find it difficult to understand science is because of all the hard to write, spell and read words. Actually, scientific vocabulary is a hodge podge of little words that are linked together to have different meanings. If you learn the meanings of the little words, you'll find scientific vocabulary much easier to understand. link: http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/language.html

Asimov in the News: Tireless Robot Pack Haulers Deployed to Afghanistan

This article is actually from Aug 8, from Gizmodo: Tireless Robot Pack Haulers Deployed to Afghanistan
Robot buses at Heathrow. Robot haulers deployed to Afghanistan. Is the Isaac Asimov estate getting kickbacks for all the future that's happening this weekend or what?

This latest robo-development involves the U.S. Army's deployment of four Lockheed Martin Squad Mission Support Systems to war-torn Afganistan. As the largest robot transports ever deployed in Army history, these heavy haulers can carry a half ton of supplies for 125 miles before it's time to recharge. The vehicle can also serve as an evac unit for soldiers wounded in the field.

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Asimov in Media

From www.filmschoolprojects.com: 36 Things We Learned From the ‘Ghostbusters’ Commentary Trac
Ghostbusters (1984)

Commentators: Ivan Reitman (director, producer), Harold Ramis (writer, actor), Joe Medjuck (associate producer), lots and lots of slime

[There's only a brief mention of Asimov, about the third entry from the bottom. He apparently was not amused at the traffic tie up in his neighborhood during the making of the movie.]

* The opening couple of shots were actually shot at the New York Public Library. The crew could only film inside until 10AM for one day. All of the scenes in the backroom of the library were filmed at the Los Angeles Public Library.

* The books floating from shelf to shelf utilized the old-school method of hanging them from a wire. Harold Ramis jokes this effect cost $250,000. Likewise, to get the cards flying out of the drawers, a false wall was set up, crew members pushed the drawers out from behind, and blew through copper tubes to achieve the effect of the cards shooting out. “Lot of air blowing in this movie,” says Joe Medjuck.

* The experiment Peter Venkman is conducting with the cards and electric shock is based on a real experiment. The Milgram experiment had subjects giving other subjects electric shocks when asked to give a list of words. The experiment was really set up to test people’s willingness to give electric shocks to one another. Harold Ramis jokes this scene was a test to see how well the audience could accept a hero who gave unfair electric shocks to his test subjects. According to Reitman, Bill Murray loved this scene.

* According to Reitman, there was a lot of discussion in the writing sessions about the vibe between the three leads. Ramis was the brains of the group. Dan Aykroyd was the heart. Bill Murray was the mouth.

* The story of how Ghostbusters got made is a very fast one in terms of chronology of the production. Aykroyd wrote a 40-page treatment over a number of years. He originally wrote it for himself and John Belushi, who sadly passed away before it could get made. The original story took place years in the future and featured several groups of Ghostbusters. The Marshmallow Man appeared on page 20 and was one of several large-scale monsters. Reitman says if they had made that film as written, it would have cost about $300 million in 1984. It was Reitman’s idea to focus on one group of Ghostbusters, a group who worked out of a station like firemen. It was Reitman and Ramis’s idea to show how the Ghostbusters got started rather than starting the film after the profession had been established.

* The slime used on the drawers in the opening library scene is actually methyl silos, a Chinese food starch. Still better than Twinkie filling.

* The first test screening on Ghostbusters was only three weeks after shooting was completed. Many of the special effects weren’t complete, but the ghost in the opening scene was. Reitman remembers when the film was screened for 200 people at Columbia Studios, they screamed and laughed at the same time. Reitman knew then they had successfully achieved the tone they were going for. Also at this screening, when Dana Barrett opens her refrigerator revealing the terror dog, only a title card saying “SCENE MISSING” was shown. The audience freaked out. Reitman jokes they should have left the crappy effects shot out and kept the “SCENE MISSING” card.

* When Aykroyd first saw the pole at the fire station set, which was actually an abandoned firehouse, he said they had to use it. “It wasn’t just a moment in the movie,” says Reitman.

* The gargoyle on the side of Dana Barrett’s apartment building is an optical effect, not a real gargoyle. Also the Gothic top of the building is an optic. The design of it was inspired by a building in St. Louis that has a replica of a temple build on top.

* As part of Sigourney Weaver’s audition for her part, she got up on a couch and auditioned as a dog. Reitman knew then she had to be in the film.


* Louis Tully was originally written for John Candy. Candy was called and told he had to be in the film, as many of the friends he had made Stripes with were involved. He didn’t understand the part and thought Tully should be played with a German accent. He also believed the character should own Rottweilers. He eventually passed on the role, and Rick Moranis who was waiting on the sidelines to play the part stepped in.

* Only one car was used for the Ecto 1. Medjuck jokes that no film would ever have only one of a car this old and beaten up to shoot with. The car used for the Ecto 1 finally broke down during the filming of Ghostbusters II. Not the only thing that broke down on that film, AMIRITE?

* When Bill Murray leaps over the railing to meet Dana, he almost doesn’t make it. His feet scuffing the top of the railing can be heard. “If he wouldn’t have made it, he’d be dead,” says Ramis. “He would have taken a few people with him,” says Reitman.

* “Sigourney always thought of herself as the Margaret Dumont of this story. She thought of the other Ghostbusters as the Marx Brothers and that her job was to keep the realistic center of the film and the story.” – Ivan Reitman

* When Dana is describing Venkman back to him, in the script the line was “You’re more like a car salesman.” Weaver ad-libbed “You’re more like a game show host.”

* Generally thought of as one of the quintessential New York City movies, only three weeks were spent filming in New York.

* Ramis points out that when the film is played in pan and scan, the shots of the three of them walking always cut him out.

* Dan Aykroyd always referred to Slimer as the ghost of John Belushi. “He’s just a party guy looking to have a good time,” says Reitman.

* The dream sequence/sex scene between Ray and a ghost was originally much longer and wasn’t meant to be a dream sequence. The scene involved the Ghostbusters spending the night at an old fort.

* Medjuck remarks that Ghostbusters shows its age by the amount of people who are seen smoking. He says all that had changed by the time Ghostbusters II came out, and no one smokes in that film. “We did ecstasy,” says Ramis.

* Medjuck presumes the violinist played by Timothy Carhart who is seen walking in Lincoln Center with Dana is who she would eventually marry and father Oscar.

* Reitman recalls running into William Atherton, who plays Walter Peck, about a year after Ghostbusters came out. Instead of warmly greeting Reitman, Atherton was genuinely pissed off telling the director he couldn’t even go into a bar without people wanting to pick a fight with him. People would also scream at him in public. Likewise, Ramis recalls Atherton telling him about a time when he was walking in downtown New York and a bus of tourists yelled “dickless” at him.

* The shot of lights coming through Dana’s kitchen door was inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “If Spielberg can do those lights, I can do those lights, and we’ll do them in kind of a different way,” says Reitman. Also, Ramis says this scene when the arms come out of the chair to grab Dana is the scariest one for kids. I can tell him first-hand he’s abso-damn-lutely right. I still have nightmares, man.

* The tall woman dancing with Louis at his party was played by Jean Kasem, Casey Kasem’s wife.

* Reitman had done the musical Merlin on Broadway with illusionist Doug Henning. Henning included a 360 degree turn with someone in mid-air in the show, an effect Reitman carried over into Ghostbusters. The shot of Dana levitating and rotating 360 degrees was all done on set. No post-production optical effects were utilized. This scene is one of Reitman’s favorites, and the director provided the guttural voice that comes out of Dana. He also did the voice for Slimer.

* Ramis mentions the digital revolution occurred between Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. He says Richard Edlund who did visual effects on this first movie expected the optical-to-digital switch in the industry to be a “slow dissolve.” Instead, it was a “hard cut.”

* Reitman mentions he sees the Ghostbusters as hobbyists who had to make their own equipment from items they had laying around. If you look closely during the scene where Egon is testing Louis, Louis is wearing a colander on his head with lots of wiring coming out of it.

* Harold Ramis got married after Ghostbusters II. His hair at the time was still formed like Egon’s, lifted high on his forehead. He recollects as he was walking down the aisle, Bill Murray yelled out, “Your hair is perfect.”

* The scene with the Ghostbusters in jail was filmed at an actual abandoned jail. Aykroyd, ever the supernatural nut, claimed the jail was haunted. Medjuck remembers the film getting scratched during filming, the only evidence that something was really going on.

* When filming the third act scene outside Dana’s apartment building, production halted traffic on 65th and Central Park West, major through streets and connecting streets in New York City. This resulted in traffic being backed up to Times Square and all the way to the river. At one point, the production was told they had shut down about 60% of the traffic in Manhattan. Ramis recalls taking a break with Aykroyd one day while shooting on Central Park West, and Aykroyd noticed Isaac Asimov who lived in the area at the time. Aykroyd, a fan of Asimov’s, was excited and called out to the science fiction writer. Asimov asked, “Are you the ones responsible for this?” meaning the traffic. Aykroyd said, “Yes,” and Asimov responded, “It’s disgusting.” before walking away. Also, whenever someone in the area would ask Medjuck what was going on that was stopping all the traffic, he would respond it was due to Francis Ford Coppola filming The Cotton Club.

* To film certain scenes in front of Dana’s apartment building by Central Park West, the street and first three floors of the building were recreated on a set. This allowed them to shoot the earthquake scene among others. There are certain shots where Reitman, Ramis, and Medjuck can’t tell what is actually New York City and what is the recreated set.

* Slavitza Jovan who plays Gozar was always harnessed during the climactic scenes enabling her to flip around on set at will. Also the red contact lenses caused her immense pain. She would go on to have a bit part in 1999′s House on Haunted Hill remake, so she owes a lot to this movie. Also I remember her being in Ghostbusters more than the two minutes she actually gets. The flattop must have made an impression on me.

* The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man scene is in the final film exactly as it was written in Dan Aykroyd’s original treatment. Reitman was frightened at the step audiences had to take in how believable the creature was. This was his biggest concern at that first screening at Columbia Studios. At that time, they only had one shot of the Marshmallow Man, the one between the building of the monster’s head. It was enough to make the audience go crazy with laughter.

* While filming the final scene, the ending wasn’t completely worked out. Reitman recollects the “crossing the streams” idea had come up elsewhere in the screenplay prior to this, but using that to kill the Marshmallow Man came through working out the scene on set.

* “So let’s talk about this marshmallow,” says Reitman before explaining it was actually shaving cream. Huge laundry bags full of it were dropped on the people on set. Before the big drop on William Atherton, the actor asked Reitman if it was going to hurt. Reitman simply said he didn’t know. Evidently, menthol shaving cream was used resulting in at least one case of someone having an allergic reaction to it.

* Reitman states that people had more of a problem with the limited amount of marshmallow on Bill Murray than they had with the fact that the Ghostbusters survived or the Marshmallow Man in the first place. Of course, the idea of Venkman being covered much less than the other Ghostbusters was Murray’s idea. On the opposite end, Aykroyd loved the shaving cream and kept asking for more to be applied to him.

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Asimov short stories: The Callistan Menace

"The Callistan Menace" first appeared in the April 1940 issue of Astonishing Stories and was reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov. It was the second story written by Asimov, and the oldest story of his still in existence.

Asimov came up with the idea for astory, which he called "Stowaway", after his first meeting with John W. Campbell on 21 June 1938.

When his story, "Cosmic Corkscrew," was rejected by Campbell on the 23rd, Asimov started writing "Stowaway". He finished the first draft on the 28th, and the final draft on 10 July. He submitted "Stowaway" to Campbell in person during another visit on the 18th. Suspecting that Campbell would reject it, Asimov spent the subway ride home coming up with the plot for a third story, "Marooned Off Vesta".

Campbell did indeed reject "Stowaway". On 3 August Asimov submitted the story to Thrilling Wonder Stories.

When Thrilling Wonder rejected it, Asimov mailed it to Amazing Stories in Chicago, which also rejected it.

In the summer of 1939, following the sale of some later stories, Asimov revised "Stowaway", retitled it "Magnetic Death", and again submitted it to both Thrilling Wonder and Amazing, and again it was rejected.

Later that year, Asimov's friend Frederik Pohl became editor of two new magazines, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. He accepted "Magnetic Death" on 16 November 1939, and it at last appeared in the April 1940 issue of Astonishing under the title "The Callistan Menace". (Asimov once described Pohl as "an inveterate title-changer".)

The Plot
The scoutship Ceres has been assigned to explore the Jovian moon Callisto, outermost of the four Galilean moons. Seven previous ships had landed there over a 25-year period, and never been heard from again. Two crewmen discover a stowaway in the supply room, a thirteen-year-old boy named Stanley Fields (after Asimov's brother Stanley). The crew adopts the stowaway as a mascot, even fixing him up with an antiquated rubber space suit.

When the Ceres lands on Callisto, the crew find a previous scoutship, the Phobos, still intact. An inspection of the Phobos reveals it to be covered with dried slime, and the skeletal bodies of its crew are discovered inside.

Soon, the Callistan menace begins to threaten the Phobos.

Asimov's father part 3

Asimov's father was one of six children who survived infancy, he being the oldest.

He had three brothers whose name Asimov knew - Ephraim, SAmuel and the youngest, Abraham Ber. Abraham had "something wrong with his legs."

Asimov's grandfather was "apparently," quite well-to-do by the standards of Petrovichi. He dealt in all kinds of grain, particularly buckwheat, and owned a mill that was in constant operation. He also owned horses and cows and "passed for a rich man."

Not long after Asimov's father started Hebrew school (at the age of 5) he began to be given little jobs to do in connection with the family business.

According to Asimov, this was why his father set him to work so early in the family candy store. " However, it was not something I planned to inherit, and I never really thre myself into it wholeheartedly."

Asimov's father never raised a hand to his children (just as Asimov's dad's father father had never done to his children).

"Hoever," continued Asimov, "...my mother, who was a terrible-tempered woman, ...raised her hand" to Asimov "any time she felt she needed a little exercise and then she reasoned with me, in addition, and at the top of her voice, for hours at a time."

"In doing so, she made use of an extensive Yiddish vocabulary of deragatory terms, which were coloful and expressive and, for the most part, imcomprensible to me." However, he liked the sounds, which were "full of Russian gutturals and sibilants,."

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