Word: recorditis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...churning out estimates of pi accurate to thousands and tens of thousands of decimal places. Then the French took the lead. With the emergence of Japan's supercomputer industry in the 1980s, pi has become an almost exclusive province of the Japanese. The last world record, 201 million digits, was set on a Japanese supercomputer...
...once again as American as apple pie. Or nearly so. Using U.S.-made supercomputers, two Columbia University mathematicians have established a new record: 480 million digits, a number that, if printed out linearly, would extend 600 miles. The feat was accomplished by David and Gregory Chudnovsky, Soviet emigre brothers who took jingoistic pride in beating the Japanese. "They may have faster supercomputers," says David Chudnovsky, "but they don't have our Yankee know...
...process is as simple as getting your snapshot taken in a dime-store photo booth. But instead of spitting out a strip of black-and-white pictures, the vending machines from Short Takes, a Minneapolis company, record an instant video greeting. Customers pay $10 for a blank cassette, which they insert in a slot in the machine. Then a camera in the booth records ten minutes of monologue, mugging or whatever message the customer wants to send. A mailing envelope is included...
Guns N' Roses put out an album called Appetite for Destruction, which has sold more than 6 million copies. The jacket cover, featuring a robot looming over a woman in torn clothing, was so repellent that some record stores refused to carry the album. Says Tipper Gore, co-founder of the Parents' Music Resource Center and a longtime critic of rock lyrics: "Music companies are cultural strip miners, profiting from the sex and violence and ignoring the scars...
...growing band of activists is lobbying TV, movie and record producers to reduce the level of sex and violence in entertainment. Terry Rakolta of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the mother of four children, has started a group called Americans for Responsible Television. She has suggested that networks devote the first two hours of evening programming to family shows and has also asked major advertisers to avoid sponsoring programs that the group finds objectionable. One of Rakolta's first targets was Married . . . With Children, a racy prime-time sitcom. Parents' Music Resource Center, meanwhile, has successfully pressured the Recording Industry Association...