Word: idea
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...They support each other in a strange sort of way: One goes through the same stages--you get an idea, and you use your education or your experience to test it," he notes. Both good science and good writing demand imagination, McMahon says, but "the ideas come for nothing, or as a gift." The work comes in testing the ideas: "The ideas themselves aren't worth anything, until they are proved true or false. Just as experiments or theories test scientific ideas, a fictional idea can be proved workable or useless by trying...
Thomas's crities claim that he is overly optimistic--overawed by natural harmony. Thomas clearly believes in some grand design: he repeatedly suggests that complex systems, if left alone, will run smoothly. He carries this idea of non-intervention to extremes, however. We should cure disease, he says, because germs are "meddlers," interrupting the body's natural harmony. Thomas, in his enthusiasm for simplification, has mistaken the environmental position of these organisms. Disease-producing bacteria should certainly be eliminated but they are as intricate a part of the natural world as the body they attack...
ONCE UPON A TIME, Harvard had a brilliant idea. Forecasting increases in energy prices and decreases in supply, the University decided to build the Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP). MATEP, designed to provide energy to the medical schools and Harvard's affiliated teaching hospitals, would be the largest co-generation plant in America. On paper, it looked great--steam chilled water and heat all from the same diesel engines, and $2 million in annual savings...
...completely surprised," Glashow said yesterday, and added. "One always hopes; but I didn't have any solid idea. That's the mystery of the Swedish Academy...
Dick Jr. downplays the idea, saying, "That never really put pressure...