Word: randomness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mongolian race, for example, can also be distinguished by the epicanthic fold that gives some Asian peoples, among them the Japanese and the Chinese, a slant-eyed look. Evolutionary hypothesis has traced this feature to its probable source. The predominant theory is that it developed from a mutation-a random change in the elaborate chemistry of human chromosomes, which govern man's biological evolution. For arctic and desert-dwelling people, subjected to blinding blizzards of snow or sand, the eye fold had definite survival value: it increased the eyes' protection against such hazards. Thus the trait endured...
...concerning the system and order of induction. Congress permitted the President to reverse the current "oldest first" order of induction and to call 19-year olds before older men (for obvious career and family reasons); but at the same time it prohibited the President's authority to institute a random selection system (a draft lottery) which would ensure that all registrants within this age group stood an equal chance of induction...
Rosenthal took a random sampling of first-and-second-grade children at a South San Francisco elementary school, and told teachers that these students would make dramatic gains in school work. His randomly chosen group made those gains, while the rest of the student body did not. Only the teachers--not the pupils or parents--had been told of the predictions...
...Sinai, Israel's underbelly is now bounded by open water, save for the 107-mile stretch facing the Suez Canal. Israel's classic military victory on the Golan Heights of Syria has driven the Syrians well out of shelling reach of the Galilee villages that suffered random Arab bombardment for 19 years. And with the seizure of Nasser's airbases in the Sinai, the closest Egyptian jet field is now Cairo...
...race riots of 1967. In the sunny, sullen ghetto on Los Angeles' southeast side, all the elements of racial violence were present: rat-ridden housing, usurious white shopkeepers, broken black families, humiliating welfare-office routines, tough cops, kids with a yen to loot and lash out, and the random spark of a clumsy arrest. In this meticulously researched reconstruction, Robert Conot, 38, a Los Angeles newspaperman and novelist, shows how all those elements combined to produce six days of madness...