Word: formalization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Watson had sketched out how four chemical bases paired to create a self-copying code at the core of the double-helix-shaped DNA molecule. In the more formal announcement of their discovery, a one-page paper in the journal Nature, they noted the significance in a famously understated sentence: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." But they were less restrained when persuading Watson's sister to type up the paper for them. "We told her," Watson wrote in The Double Helix, "that...
Edison's tireless work habits took shape during his childhood in Port Huron, Mich. His formal education, according to most accounts, lasted only three months; he quit school after a teacher pronounced him "addled." His mother, herself a former teacher, educated him for a while at home, but the boy's growing fascination with chemistry soon led him into a rigorous course of independent study. To pay for the materials needed for his experiments, Edison at age 12 got a job as a candy and newspaper salesman on the Grand Trunk Railway. By the time...
...western calendar was concocted out of thin air by Dionysius Exiguus, a sixth-century Scythian monk, whose love of Jesus was eclipsed only by his inability to count accurately. Dionysius tried to estimate the date of his Savior's birth, and then tried to construct, on that foundation, a formal system of measuring time. Let's just say that mistakes were made...
...gays' and lesbians' housing, employment and civil rights, TIME writer John Cloud says, "this ruling is more of a defeat than a victory." The court, rather than make what Cloud calls "a truly groundbreaking ruling," stopped short of deciding whether same-sex couples' rights would be established through a formal marriage or a statewide system of domestic partnerships, leaving that decision for the state legislature's 2000 session...
...first formal training was classical piano. I was also in a progressive hardcore band with Shawn and Jon called This is My Rifle. And I've been experimenting with electronic music--sequencing, MIDI, a K-2000 sampler...