Word: channell
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...only a part of the story or, more accurately, stories. In a culture--ours--in which the national sport is channel surfing, Wallace dares out-of-shape readers to keep up with dozens of oddballs and intermingling plots. One is the tale of the upscale Incandenza clan, a family of high achievers. Mother Avril is a professor of language structure, and father James made a fortune inventing optical instruments, retiring to produce avant-garde films with cheeky titles such as The American Century as Seen Through a Brick, Dial C. for Concupiscence and Infinite Jest, a feature described as "lethally...
...REST OF THE WORLD AS CONCERNED about sex and violence on TV as America? Channel surf elsewhere and U.S. television begins to seem as though it were run by so many Roman Catholic schoolgirls. In Japan--where TV programming is virtually unregulated and concerns about media amorality are scant--prime-time TV is a mixed menu of soft-core porn, bloodletting drama and violent animation. Log some viewing time in Brazil, and you will find erotic soaps and specials featuring naked women dancing the samba in heels and sparkling body paint. This kind of spectacle could just as easily turn...
...Riverdale, California, is for Dole. For now. To be honest, she says, she is not thinking much about the election. "With a five-year-old and a three-year-old, you don't get to watch the politics on TV. It's usually the Cartoon Network or the Disney Channel." Voters like her will soon start switching to the campaign news. Judging by how quickly voters moved to Forbes, and by the weak commitment of many to their candidates of the moment, the race is going to be a lively...
There is, however, a contrary view--one that is gaining strength and directly challenges orthodox biology. It is that complexity can emerge spontaneously through a process of self-organization. If matter and energy have an inbuilt tendency to amplify and channel organized complexity, the odds against the formation of life and the subsequent evolution of intelligence could be drastically shortened...
Each day, as the Earth turns, the BETA (for Billion-channel Extra-Terrestrial Assay) telescope sweeps a circular swath through the heavens, elevated at a slightly different fixed angle from the horizon with each successive turn. During each circuit it captures radio waves reaching Earth at frequencies between 1400 and 1720 megahertz--a broad but relatively "quiet" region of the radio spectrum. "In the 1960s we were looking in a few niches and hoping the extraterrestrials had put their jewels there," says astronomer Frank Drake, who launched the first SETI project in 1960. "They didn't. Now we are doing...