Word: planet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...planet inhabited by the anti-affirmative action activists, the only form of discrimination left is the kind that operates against white males. There, in the name of redressing ancient wrongs, white men are routinely shoved aside to make room for less qualified women and minorities. These favored ones have no problems at all-except for that niggling worry that their colleagues see them as underqualified "affirmative-action babies.'' Maybe there was once an evil called racism in this charmed place-30 or 300 years ago, that is-but it's been replaced by affirmative action...
...Arts desk. She had an incurable desire for Camel trinkets: the t-shirts, Zippos and fishing lures. In the process of cashing in her Camel Bucks she unwittingly signed herself up for a host of freebies from the National Smokers' Rights Alliance and every toxic chemical company on the planet. It's cultural studies--when art meets commerce, advertising happens--and it merits a review...
Proponents of the "Gaia" theory, introduced in1972 by James Lovelock, believe the Earth can beviewed as a single harmonious organism. "Gaia"refers to a unified geologically and biologicallybalanced planet whose components comprise aself-regulating system optimized for sustaininglife...
...observe dark matter directly have searched for objects both large and subatomic. On the theory that the dark stuff is made of some as yet undiscovered particle, they have built all manner of sensitive detectors. On the chance that it is composed of very dim stars or large planet-like objects (known collectively as MACHOS, or massive compact halo objects), they have studied stars for telltale flickers that might indicate a MACHO has passed...
...telling historical anecdote in an address to colleagues at the American Astronomical Society's January meeting in Tucson, Arizona. In the 19th century, it dawned on astronomers that the orbits of Uranus and Mercury weren't exactly what theory predicted. So they proposed the existence of as-yet-undiscovered planets whose gravity was causing the anomalies-sort of the Cold Dark Matter of the time. Sure enough, Neptune finally appeared in their telescopes. But the other planet, Vulcan, never did materialize. In the end, said Spergel, it took the theory of general relativity to explain Mercury's odd behavior...