arship, cites several examples of what we
all know intuitively. “The books on the
shelves carry plenty of information lost
in the process of digitization, no matter
how lovingly a particular copy is ren-
dered on the screen,” he writes. “There
are vitally significant variations in the
stacks: editions, printings, issues, bind-
ings, illustrations, paper type, size, mar-
ginalia, advertisements, and other cus-
tomizations in apparently identical cop-
ies.” Without these details, discernible
only in physical copies, we are unable to
understand a book’s total impact. Are we
so easily seduced by the aluminum bat
that we toss all wooden ones from the
bat bag?
LET’S ALSO ACKNOWLEDGE that our gadgets eventually pro- gram us. History teaches us that technologies often numb
the very human capacities they amplify;
in its most advanced forms, this is tanta-
mount to auto-amputation. As weavers
lost manual dexterity with their use of
increasingly mechanized looms dur-
ing the Industrial Revolution, so we
can only imagine what effect GPS will
have on the innate and learned ability
of New York City cabbies to find their
way around the five boroughs. Yet we
practice auto-amputation at our own
peril. We dare not abandon wooden bats
for aluminum for those endeavors that
demand prolonged attention, reflec-
tion, and the analysis and synthesis that
sometimes lead to wisdom, the best re-
sult of those decidedly human endeavors
that no gadget can exercise.
History teaches us
that technologies
often numb the very
human capacities
they amplify.
THE CHRONICLE CROSSWORD
Thinking Inside the Box By CALEB RASMUSSEN | Edited by PATRICK BERRY
ACROSS
1 “Why standest thou ___ off,
O Lord?”: Psalms
5 Iditarod Trail runner
10 Exhibited extreme fear
14 2009 Grammy winner Al
15 Wolfpack member
16 Site of Nevada’s National
Automobile Museum
17 Large percentage of one’s
grade, perhaps
18 Where you might find
parallel bars
19 “High Voltage” band
20 Item in a sealed box, in a
famous thought experiment
by Erwin Schrödinger
23 Team with fewer rooters
24 Barely worth mentioning
26 Adler admired
by Sherlock Holmes
27 Titration tool
29 Discontinues
31 Moving machine part
32 Liberal-arts college
in Portland
33 Item in Schrödinger’s box
(and in this puzzle) that
exists in two different
states simultaneously
36 Kindergarten learning
40 Attachment
41 Ethiopian king slain
by Achilles
46 “The language of the devil”:
Carlyle
48 Fencer’s success
49 Ship back?
50 Wonky
53 Item in Schrödinger’s box
that detects if a radioactive
particle decays, thus
triggering a hammer
to shatter 20 Across
56 Notre Dame football legend
George
57 Moving machine part
58 “There is an ___ pleasure
. . .”: Emily Dickinson
60 Get ready
61 Inappropriately
62 Highway division
63 Some cameras, for short
64 Malicious desire
65 Raw side
2 Eerie glow in the woods
3 Lake that was formerly one
of the world’s largest
4 Archaeological find
5 Young chap
6 Loathe
7 Gets nothing done
8 2008 bailout letters
9 Aviation pioneer Lilienthal
10 Cheers spinoff
11 French tennis champ Henri
12 Citation at the back
13 Medico
21 Knight’s trusty thing
22 Little devil
23 London’s Old ___
25 Like some penalty cards
27 Campaign fund-raising org.
28 Prayer leader
30 Rests
31 What follows the second
letter of the alphabet
34 It helps one accomplish a
goal
35 Wyoming’s Grand ___
National Park
36 The Golden ___
(Apuleius work)
37 Librarian Barbara Gordon’s
alter ego
38 Ivy is one
39 National Spelling Bee
organizer
42 Their time is limited
43 Necessity in many
passwords
44 Egg-shaped musical
instrument
45 Senators’ org.
47 Taking Woodstock
director Lee
50 When Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are introduced
51 Give a leg up
52 Worker in white
54 Elizabethan and Victorian,
for two
55 Play boisterously
56 Trip guide, for short
59 Web beautifier
Comments? Write to
crosswords@chronicle.com
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1 Calculation from tree rings
