Word: sitter
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Dear Abby: Our 19-year-old daughter Caroline has started going with a guy named Angelo. He never takes her anyplace. He just comes over every night to watch television and wear out our sofa ... What should I do? Kitchen Sitter...
...romantic tradition that robots are inherently diabolic creatures that will rebel against human control, there is an equally romantic tradition that machines are inherently benign, symbols of progress and perfectability. Isaac Asimov epitomized that view in a famous story titled Robbie, in which a much mistrusted robot baby sitter of that name rescues its ward from a speeding tractor. Asimov then went on to formulate, in Runaround (1942), what he decreed to be, in the world of science fiction at least, the Three Laws of Robotics: "1) A robot may not injure a human being, 2) A robot must obey...
...tree shouted something that made the crowd in Birmingham, Mich., laugh. A puzzled Reagan announced into an open microphone: "I didn't hear." Like a jack-in-the-box, Bush popped up to cup his hand around Reagan's ear and whisper what the tree sitter had said about Jimmy Carter: "He's a jerk." Reagan chuckled, and Bush sat down smiling, glad to have been of service...
Complainers lace their speech with "always" and "never," and usually insist on sitting down before detailing their gripes-the fellow who complains standing up wants action, but the sitter wants to whine in comfort. It is a serious mistake either to agree or disagree with complainers. Instead, says Bramson, paraphrase the whiners' complaints back to them with "limiting concrete statements that let them know you understand." Noncommittal but encouraging "urns" and "ahs" are helpful...
...houses of the exclusive Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys. Their most prized features were bathtubs. The lowly had to rough it in barracks-like apartments on "Gold Street" or in the clanging metal "Denver steels" hastily built with shower stalls only. Bachelor Klaus Fuchs was the favorite baby sitter. The Fermis won everyone's heart by living down with the showers. That did not keep the bathtub from becoming a status symbol and houses from being assigned by prestige points. To this day, "Bathtub Row" is to Los Alamos what Sutton Place is to Manhattan or Nob Hill...