Word: cataloging
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first look, Charles M. Jobin '01 and Caton M. Burwell '99 might be mistaken for models in an Eddie Bauer or J. Crew catalog--not the kind of guys who carry a shotgun on the weekends...
...cause this transformation? Surely the emphasis our education places on achieving mastery of the unknown has something to do with it. In class we spend endless hours experimenting, developing models of analysis and working out complex equations, all in an effort to conquer the mysterious. In striving to catalog Shakespeare's sonnets, however, we soon forget to be stirred by them. I do not mean to suggest that we ought to cease our attempts at mastering the unknown, but I worry that our constant efforts to analyze and footnote may leave us numb to the beautiful and incapable of being...
...truth, Bakelite--whose more chemically formal name is polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride--was just a harbinger of the age of plastics. Since Bakelite's heyday, researchers have churned out a polysyllabic catalog of plastics: polymethylmethacrylate (Plexiglas), polyesters, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC, a.k.a. vinyl), polyhexamethylene adipamide (the original nylon polymer), polytetraperfluoroethylene (Teflon), polyurethane, poly- this, poly-that...
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...
...chemical operations essential for survival are carried out within every cell of living creatures (people included) is a task dominated by complexity. The Human Genome Project aims to specify the location and structure of all 100,000 or so genes in the human body. But that catalog, which will soon be completed, will be simply the springboard for understanding what all the genes do. Only when the network of their interactions with one another has been mapped will enduring benefits follow: in the surer design of drugs, in the growth of replacement organs, in the early detection and treatment...