Word: fear
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...just physicists whose work provokes strong and often irrational fear, according to Robin Williams, director of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh. He points out that the millennial anxiety about scientific and technological breakthroughs predates particle physics. When the locomotive was first conceived, for example, even some engineers predicted catastrophe resulting from the human body's inability to withstand the strains of high-speed travel. The word vaccine comes from the Latin word for cow, vacca - and the first vaccinations, against smallpox, used bovine ingredients, leading to widespread fear that...
...Williams also believes that the flip side of such fear is faith in the redemptive potential of science (there are equally irrational websites about CERN, for example, that predict the LHC will create wormholes to distant corners of the universe, where humanity can escape to other inhabitable planets). Williams wrote in an e-mail: "I have come to see that in their early days, new technology and scientific breakthroughs often serve as Rorschach tests - a phenomenon about which we have little concrete understanding, onto which contemporary social anxieties (and dreams) can readily be projected. As a result we find (often...
...fear Russia as much as the next guy, but I have a good memory. What would the U.S. do if Russia suddenly started alliances with Cuba and other Latin American states and began setting up missiles there? Fortunately, we have an answer. President Kennedy faced the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis. Why should the Russians be the ones to blame for the current crisis? We ought to look in the mirror and at the Texas cowboy in the White House. Albert Reingewirtz, Havertown...
...city as soon as today to begin preparing for returning evacuees. Among the essential details that must be dealt with: replenishing meat and vegetable supplies at supermarkets, as well as fuel at the region's gasoline stations. Gustav prompted the largest evacuation in the state's history. Now, many fear a repeat of the headache-inducing "contra flow" - the technocratic term that refers to both lanes of roads and highways being used to direct traffic in the same direction...
...electricity. Watts pointed to yet another band of protection: two New Orleans police officers sitting at the tip of the bar, drawn partly by the free meals that the Avenue offers law-enforcement officials. "It keeps them close," she says. Their presence certainly deters would-be looters. Indeed, fear of looting remains a concern. Many parishes imposed aggressive dusk-till-dawn curfews. As for the fear of levee breaches, nothing significant occurred. "So far so good," said FEMA spokesman Ed Conley...