Word: alienness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...human beings fascinated by alien life? The primary answer (human curiosity in the face of mystery) is obvious enough. "All men by nature desire knowledge," Aristotle said...
...that should prove to be true, the actual encounter with alien life might mark a higher stage in earthly progress, a liberation. Then theology, history, astronomy--all the strands of human thought and striving--would converge in a fusing shock of understanding that would also be a planetary self-transcendence...
While some astronomers searched for planets, others tried to detect intelligent alien life directly. In 1960, astronomer Frank Drake started Project Ozma, an attempt to look seriously for radio signals from alien civilizations. It was the first in what became a series of experiments in seti, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Several are still going on, but so far without success...
...antiseptic, sealed-window office, there is a great urge to backpack in the woods and build a fire. Call it recreational primitivism. But the mind needs its rest too. So we go intellectual backpacking: We dabble in potions and auras; we give rapt attention to bearers of tales of alien abduction and Satanism in schools. "I can stand brute force," wrote Oscar Wilde, "but brute reason is quite unbearable." Ah, the relief...
Prodded by large companies fed up with rising medical costs, the new medicine's entrepreneurs have turned health care into a corporate battlefield increasingly governed by the promise of stock market wealth, incentives that reward minimal care and a brand of aggressive competition alien to front-line doctors for whom dressing for success still means wearing khakis and a lab coat...