Word: set
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...technology shows no signs of slowing down, which means that even dramatic changes in the natural world won't necessarily have evolutionary consequences. Argues Wolpoff: "We're not going to [adapt to] the next ice age by changing our physical form. We'll set off an atom bomb or set up a space mirror or whatever [to control climate]." Manipulation of the human genome, meanwhile, will eventually let us change the basic characteristics of our species to order. Evolution by natural selection could be replaced, perhaps chillingly, with evolution by human intervention...
...game away. "The listening is the message," he said. What matters, in other words, isn't the listening. What matters is that people see you as you pretend to listen. This is not the good-faith tactic of a candidate in a democracy. In an illuminating coincidence, Hillary Clinton set off on her "listening tour" the same week that Queen Elizabeth decided to embark on a "meet the people" tour of her own. Like Mrs. Clinton, the Queen sipped tea with ordinary folk as her motorcade hummed outside, waiting to return her to her life of splendid isolation. Like...
...there is a national longing to return to the good old days when political news was more about issues and policies, and less about private lives. Could there be a set of guidelines governing both press coverage and the terms of political engagement? How about a statute of limitations for past misdeeds? Maybe any act committed before the age of majority should be off limits. Or could misbehavior that violates no laws and harms no other person be declared out of bounds for scrutiny...
Late 20th century entrepreneurs have invented high-adrenaline sports--hang-gliding, say, or canyoning. But the riskiest adventure is still to set forth upon open water and take a chance when, as the great single-handed sailor Joshua Slocum wrote a century ago, "the sea is in its grandest mood...
...this: in middle age Chaplin, a journalist, and Susan Atkinson, a nurse married to Chaplin's college roommate, embark upon "an illicit, dangerous romance." In 1989, after years of landlocked child-rearing (four daughters between them), they leave their marriages and decide, like the owl and the pussycat, to set off to sea in the 36-ft. double-ended motor-sailor Lord Jim. Throughout the chronicle blow dark gusts of both families' anger and disapproval--bad emotional weather that is the underlying motif of Chaplin's memoir, even when tropical sun shines on the romantic fugitives...