Word: braved
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Ronald Reagan knew how to win a reluctant bride. He told Americans how beautiful they were, how generous and strong and brave, and even if everyone knew that some of this was blarney, it was still lovely to be loved and to try to live up to the image. So it is a little sad and strange to listen to conservative leaders--who still honor Reagan as the greatest modern President--as they file for divorce from the people he cherished so deeply...
...well as a barrage of criticism. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious groups denounced it as playing God, and even scientists like James Watson, unraveler of DNA, were worried about tinkering with a process as sacrosanct as procreation. But the debate faded as it became clear that the brave new world of babymaking that Steptoe had ushered in was providing a desperately sought service...
...year's end, Audubon and National Parks Magazine had published additional excerpts from the book, and all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness. Silent Spring became a runaway best seller, with international reverberations. Nearly 40 years later, it is still regarded as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. Carson was not a born crusader but an intelligent and dedicated woman who rose heroically to the occasion...
When science fiction gets over its trite romance with the parts catalog, it can achieve unnerving power. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are the classic exemplars of that small, elite class of science-fiction writers who frighten and annoy science-fiction devotees. Huxley's Brave New World (1932) bursts with prescient speculation: "feelie" multimedia, Prozac-like "soma" tranquilizers, test-tube babies. Late in life Huxley became a psychedelics guru, seduced by the potent allure of brain chemistry...
...vacuum tube became the transistor; the transistor led to the microchip; the microchip married the phone and gave birth to the modem. Soon enough, sounds, photos, movies and conversations would be ground down into the smallest components of all: 1s and 0s. Was the digital revolution inevitable? In our brave new wired world, it certainly seems that...