Word: greeks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hakim's new science textbook is meant for kids, but even a well-read adult might learn a thing or two--for instance, that Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras was a fashion trailblazer who insisted on wearing trousers, then considered an Eastern style, while his countrymen were still in robes. Such are the details that pepper the narrative of Hakim's The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way (Smithsonian Books; 282 pages). Hakim's chatty style and character-driven stories have won her legions of fans. At age 11, Ethan Denny in Athens, Ga., wrote...
...pair of lab-mice studies roared in the world of reproductive biology. In the first, scientists created a mouse born by the fusion of two eggs. In the natural world this is known as parthenogenesis (from the Greek for "virgin birth"), a reproductive strategy used by some insects, invertebrates and the odd fish or reptile but unheard of in mammals. Given the technical difficulty, it's unlikely that you'll see this offered at the local IVF clinic anytime soon...
...keeping with his view of Joseph and Mary as year-round residents, Matthew has the Magi visit a "house." Luke introduces the manger as part of his view of them as involuntary short-timers. The English word manger, like the original Greek word phatne in Luke, is even more modest than our usual understanding of it. It means not a stable but simply a feeding trough or at best a stall. Either word would be consistent with the kind of rural poverty that has inspired poor people and their champions throughout the history of Christianity. Today's crèche scenes...
...before Luke. "He would have found it very odd, very goyish, perhaps even offensive," says the University of Texas' White. But that, he contends, is the point. Unlike Matthew, Luke is thought to have been a pagan rather than a Jewish convert to Christianity, writing in fine Greek for other non-Jews and so using references they would find familiar. His version's heraldic announcements, parallel pregnancies, angelic choirs and shepherd witnesses bear a tantalizing resemblance to another literary form, the reverential "lives" being written about pagan leaders in the same period. In such sagas, a hero...
...next year. Roadblocks remain: France and Austria insist the summit statement should spell out a "privileged partnership" or lesser union if Turkey fails to make adequate progress in legal and economic reforms. Tiny Cyprus threatened to veto the talks if Ankara failed to give de facto recognition to the Greek part of the island state. Turkey complains that the invitation is "discriminatory" because it makes demands not made of previous E.U. applicants. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Turkish TV last week: "If the E.U. countries don't want to see Turkey among them, we're not going...