Feng Shui Made Easy [antikvár]

Introduction During World War II, my father was a cryptoanalyst who never left Washington, D.C., where he and his army buddies labored over codes intercepted from the enemy. Univac computers as big as a house were still no match for the human brain. He adored puzzles, games of Twenty Questions, crosswords, codes of any kind, and challenging mathematical problems. Before I could count past ten, Dad showed me a way numbers could move in a special pattern. Sitting down with paper and pencil, he taught me how to construct a magic square. Tic-tac-toe got old fast, but with the "secret pattern," I could create magic squares all day. Every number in every square had to be placed following the pattern of movement we learned from Dad. He taught my sister and me the spatial arrangement of the whole—how each part related to all the others. When we filled in the magic square, the pattern began to emerge—columns and rows were in relationship; beginnings and endings were not accidental. Everything fit because of the "rules." We could tell at a glance if something was "off." When I was given coded messages, I had to consider the rules of probability. Common words like I or the were starting points, and a good understanding of sentence structure made breaking the codes much easier. We began passing notes in code; I was expected to respond using the code, which at first was not hard to break.