Word: alpha
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Legend of the Bridge: Many years ago, in the 1960s, a Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity party turned into an argument over developing new systems of measurement. So they kidnapped one of their pledges--Mr. Smoot--and tied him to two-by-fours. They took him to the Harvard Bridge and measured the bridge in Smoots...
...troops stationed at the Army's Camp Desert Rock in Nevada in the early 1950s, it must have seemed like an innocent joke. After being required to witness explosions of atomic weapons, some of the men were given commemorative diplomas certifying their successful completion of courses in "alpha ray education, beta ray orientation, gamma ray examination and nuclear radiation." As an added fillip, the mock documents declared them to be "perfect physical wrecks...
...professor of television and psychology at Hampshire College, have attached electrodes to the heads of children and adults as they watched TV. Mulholland thought that kids watching exciting shows would show high attention. To his surprise, the reverse proved true. While viewing TV, the subjects' output of alpha waves increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as if they were "just sitting quietly in the dark." The implication: TV may be a training course in the art of inattention...
...carnival nights at least, girls are warned not to go near Theta Delta Chi House, locally known as Boom-Boom Lodge, without taking a solidly protective date. Theta, like Alpha Delta, provided most of the raw material used by Chris Miller, Dartmouth '63, when he wrote Animal House. Surely here, a visitor thinks, will be found just the bunch of "animals" to make every dream, or nightmare, of collegiate debauchery come true...
Even upstairs, diffidence rather than debauchery seems rampant. In the darkened Alpha Delta TV room, for instance, a girl with piled-up blond hair seems absorbed in the 11 o'clock news. A frat brother approaches her. "If I don't see the news I feel out of touch," she explains, rather breathlessly. "But if you want to change it to Saturday Night Live, it's O.K. with me." He does, and they sit together watching. In quiet darkness, or boozy haze, most of the conversation seems as timeless and fraudulent as ever. "You got a date...