Word: columbus
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Fourteen years before Columbus sighted America-in 1478, to be precise -the first book cranked off the press of a printer named Theodoric Rood in Oxford, England. Its title was Expositio Sancti Hieronymi in Symbolum Apostulorum. Its subject was the Apostles' Creed, and it marked the birth of what would become the oldest and most venerable publishing house in the English-speaking world: the Oxford University Press...
...M.I.T. professor has seen the future and is making it work, so, appropriately, is the city of Columbus, Ohio. This New Atlantis since last December has become the prototype electronic village. The Columbian connection is called QUBE (pronounced cube). Described by its developers, Manhattan-based Warner Cable Corp., as the first large-scale use of "participatory TV," QUBE provides paying subscribers with 30 television channels (Columbus has only four regular TV stations) that include all-day, nonviolent programs for preschool children, educational films, first-run movies, live sports events, college credit courses and soft-core porn, all without censorship...
...month, the QUBE subscriber can voice his opinions in local political debates, conduct garage sales and bid for objets d'art in a charity auction. QUBE is the first major system in which the viewer can talk back to the tube. By pressing a button, Joe or Jane Columbus can quiz a politician, or turn electronic thumbs down or up on a local amateur talent program, à la Gong Show. QUBE supplies specialized programs for doctors and lawyers; the local newspaper asks viewers to evaluate its features; advertisers pretest commercials for audience reaction. Columbus' multifaceted QUBE also comparison-shops...
...emergency. Earlier in the week, he had proclaimed Snowmobile Week in the state, but the races at Traverse City had to be canceled: 20-ft. drifts covered the track. Other forms of transportation in the region did no better. Dozens of airports were closed, including those in Indianapolis, Columbus and Detroit. Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the world's busiest, shut down for only the fourth time in its 23-year history...
Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and caused some mighty cataclysms. Since Columbus did not know where he was going or where he had arrived when he got there, the winds truly deserve nearly as much credit as he for the discovery of America. Ugly westerlies helped turn the 1588 Spanish Armada away from England in a limping panic. Napoleon was done in twice by weather: once by the snow and cold that forced his fearful retreat from Moscow, later by the rain that bedeviled him at Waterloo and caused Victor Hugo to write...