Word: knowed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pervasiveness of legal concepts these days is coupled with the heaping of scorn on them. Take "legalistic hairsplitting," used to imply that we all know the precise meaning of common phrases like sexual relations. Thus the scandal has brought a touch of reality to our talk, making us realize how little we actually agree on the meanings of basic words. Not only do some people define "sex" narrowly as "sexual intercourse," but health professionals have long known that Humpty Dumpty spoke for us all when he claimed, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose...
...says. After Cindy told her daughter about the rape, the young woman wrote, in her swirly cursive, an oddly jovial response, "Hi, how's everything going?" She said she was glad to learn "about my father's situation"--the only reference to the rape--and wanted to know how to find him. Cindy was horrified. Her daughter obviously hadn't grasped her pain, the nightmares--her whole life. The daughter, with the help of her adoptive mother, persisted in trying to find her father, a man Cindy had helped send to prison. Fearing he might find her and harm...
...time, only "bad" girls got pregnant out of wedlock, and they were cloistered with fake names until they gave birth. Today, of course, that attitude seems quaintly outmoded. What's more, we have become sensitized to the rights of adoptees, who as they grow up want to know what everyone else already knows: who they are. "We are besieged by ghosts," says Helen Hill, a sculptor, sheep farmer and newborn political impresario, who wrote Oregon's Measure 58 in her basement and has spent part of her inheritance getting it approved. "We are haunted by questions...
...Just last month Delaware lawmakers said the state would give adoptees their birth certificate unless the birth mother explicitly asked to remain anonymous. Yet the moms have only 60 days to file such a request, and the state isn't planning to hunt them down to ensure that they know they...
Double-blind placebo trials, of course, are standard procedure for drug developers, who know from long experience that 1 out of 3 test subjects feel better with only a sugar pill. Scientists sidestep the placebo effect in drug trials by dividing patients into two groups--giving one the real drug and the other a fake...