Word: proto
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...proto-form of the motorcycle was simply a velocipede with a steam-engine jammed in it, made in France in 1868. The first true serial production bike, with which the Guggenheim show begins, was made in 1894 by the German firm of Hildebrand & Wolfmuller; its enormous engine--1,489 cc, the biggest that would be fitted to a production machine until the 1980s--chugged it along at 30 m.p.h. Motorcycle technology advanced so quickly under the spell of the fin-de-siecle obsession with heroic speed that only 13 years later, in 1907, the future aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss...
Puppets have been around for thousands of years, but the proto-Muppets that began to appear on Sam and Friends were different. Kermit was there, looking and sounding much as he would later (until his death Henson always animated Kermit and provided his voice). Typical hand puppets have solid heads, but Kermit's face was soft and mobile, and he could move his mouth in synchronization with his speech; he could also gesticulate more facilely than a marionette, with rods moving his arms. For television, Henson realized, it was necessary to invent puppets that had "life and sensitivity." (Henson sometimes...
...with that, a roomful of pols break into applause. It is a perfect Bradley moment, because his Zen-like musings on the power of no power are delivered at a proto-campaign stop in Greensboro, N.C., where 100 local activists, officials and campaign operatives have come to meet a not-quite-candidate who looks like he wants the real kind of power back. It is Jan. 21; the Lewinsky scandal has engulfed Washington this very day, and the news is racing through the crowd. "This could be good for Bradley," says an old friend of his, "but he'll wait...
...hundreds of courses in Kabbalah and related Jewish mysticism in places as diverse as Sudbury, Mass., and Boca Raton, Fla. Academic involvement in the discipline has multiplied, as have tangential pop artifacts like the best-selling Bible Code and an X-Files episode about a golem, the Jewish proto-Frankenstein monster. Publishers are turning out dozens of titles on subjects ranging from arcana to kids' Kabbalah. Most intriguing, mysticism is increasingly viewed as the answer to what United Jewish Appeal officer Alan Bayer calls "a hungry, thirsty, bottle-of-water-in-the-desert need for connection with transcendent meanings" among...
...that smarmy first-year in your section who always does the reading and asks if he or she can hand his or her paper in early. After this adolescent phase (often marked by the growth of a large, tumor-like "thesis"), spawning begins, and we find colonies of proto-TFs developing in warm, dark places such as Loker and the Gato Rojo Cafe. Thriving on response papers and underused undergraduate brain cells, TFs have become one of the most populous species at the University...