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The Torch Magazine.
The Journal and Magazine of the
International Association of Torch Clubs
for 95 Years
A Peer-Reviewed,
Quality-Controlled
Publication
ISSN Print 0040-9440
ISSN Online 2330-9261
Fall
2020
Volume 94, Issue 1
Articles for the Fall
2020 Issue
- The Rapid Adoption
of Artificial Intelligence: How AI
is Changing Society and Culture: The
Paxton Award Winner 2020
by Eric
Davis
The capability of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) is exploding.
Machines are becoming smarter,
faster, and better than humans
at a rapidly growing number of
tasks. The rapidity at which
this new industrial revolution
is occurring across the entirety
of human society is resulting in
skewed wealth accumulation and
lasting consequences to national
security and democracy. A
visual presentation of the
Paxton paper can be found
here.
- The Multitudes
of "What-if"
by Anthony Anderson
Gene Roddenberry
sold Star Trek: The Original
Series to NBC by painting the show
as "a western in space." But
the show really had nothing to do
with outer space. What was
shown in episode after episode was
a future with advanced sensibility
and the commmon goal to work for
the good of all.
- Book
Censorship and its Effects on
Schools
by Daniel Thomas
Disputes
between censors and free
speech advocates are
always personal.
This {article} is one
teacher's observations of
what was taught and
challenged in a high
school English department,
and what, according to the
surrounding community,
should have been taught.
- The Story of
Akron's Rubber Plantations
by Joseph C. Huber,
Jr.
The
key material in
the physics most
familiar to all,
the material
most critical to
modern life, is
rubber. The
expression
"rubber meeting
the road" is our
shorthand for
getting down to
any task of real
work, even if we
don’t think
about the actual
physics of
rubber and roads
till tires skid.
Crude or tree
rubber for
pneumatic tires
made possible
the automotive
era and life
today. Over a
century of
unparalleled
improvements in
human living
conditions were
built on crude
rubber, which
continues to
provide
essential
transportation
and other vital
elements.
The author
describes his
family's
involvement in
the history of
rubber
panations.
- The Trail of Tears
by Danny J. Krebs
The author
introduces his family's experience
of the Indian removals in the
southwest as follows: When I was
eleven, my grandmother Krebs asked
me who my favorite President was.
Since I had recently heard Johnny
Horton's song about the Battle of
New Orleans, I answered Andrew
Jackson. To my grandmother, who
had loved and married a
quarter-blood Choctaw Indian, this
was absolutely the wrong answer.
This paper will attempt to present
the facts of the Indian removals
of the southeastern tribes to
present-day Oklahoma and concludes
with information about the lives
of my mixed-blood ancestors.
- The Worm in the
Apple: Or Was It a Pear?
by Larry M. Doerr,
M.Div
Sin is not a
popular notion or subject today,
at least in the corridors of
mostly liberal and secular
society where the author walks
most of the time. The church and
denomination the author and family
attend find the idea much too
gloomy and negative - it doesn't
help people "feel good" - it is
lacking in positive
thinking. But sin is more
than an act, or the accumulation
of acts. It is rather a
description of the human
condition, the condition which we
experience and ask of it how can
it be better? This is an
on-line bonus article from 1997
and elaborates the concept of sin
as discussed by Moy, below.
- The Circumvented
Endowment by our Creator: Evil
by Roland F. Moy
The currently
popular highly negative
expectations about the usefulness
of government policy are matched
with highly optimistic views about
human nature in the marketplace.
As a basis of policy, this logic
circumvents the endowment we
received from our Creator
concurrently with the liberty or
right to make choices in the
private sector: our unlimited
capacity for evil. Such dogmatic
circumventing assertions, along
with the conservative ideological
language about expanding
restraints on government, provide
a conceptual framework that ill
serves the need, first, to
understand and explain our shared
reality, and second, to develop
rational strategies to move
towards a sustainable and just
American future.
An EBSCO Publication
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