Word: recoil
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...being developed at M.I.T.'s artificial-intelligence lab with input from Dennett (see following story). Cog will someday have "skin"--a synthetic membrane sensitive to contact. Upon touching an object, the skin will send a data packet to the "brain." The brain may then instruct the robot to recoil from the object, depending on whether the object could damage the robot. When human beings recoil from things, they too are under the influence of data packets. If you touch something that's dangerously hot, the appropriate electrical impulses go from hand to brain, which then sends impulses instructing the hand...
...calls it "conservatism of the heart," an ideological recoil from the wreckage left by an unfettered free market. "What is conservatism all about?" he asks. "Reagan used to talk about family, faith, work, neighborhood, community. Communities are being torn apart. Families are under tremendous economic pressure. Conservatives are going to have to ask themselves, What is it we want to conserve...
This is a singular confession for any artist to make, and it helps explain why this show is such a poignant experience. Its humility masks a bizarre pride. What other artist could recoil from nature because its order exceeds that of his own art? How could he expect to rival nature? Did Mondrian envy God? Or perhaps he meant something less Luciferian: that nature, to the artist, is like carnal desire to the saint. It is a trap, a lower substitute for higher ecstasy, an occasion of sin. He knows it is beautiful, but he must still banish it from...
...fish sometimes, and garlic, garlic, garlic. It was to French or Italian cooking what the crabby-looking servant girl grinding aioli in Diego Velazquez's Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary was to the sumptuous nudes of Titian or Veronese. A modern palate would recoil at the eggs slowly frying, or rather poaching, in oil on top of a clay stove in Velazquez's An Old Woman Cooking Eggs. But what an amazing act of skill the picture itself is, done in 1618 by a 19-year-old boy who wanted to display his total...
Despite the dismal polling numbers, the President's advisers point out that a majority of the public supports his goal of universal coverage, even though many of the same people recoil when asked whether they endorse the Clinton plan. In the TIME/CNN poll, 61% say the government should guarantee health care for all Americans. Support for universal coverage has remained fairly consistent, even as interest groups opposed to the Clinton plan have spent millions of dollars campaigning against it. Says Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman on health care: "People don't realize it's the Clinton plan they like...