Word: specimen
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Even if Elaine Stritch had not set a new standard for the one-woman stage memoir, Arthur's look back at her career would be a lame specimen of the genre. Instead of a freestyle skate, Arthur settles for the compulsory short program: a once-over-lightly reprise of her hits from stage (Fiddler on the Roof, Mame) and TV (Maude, The Golden Girls); a funny anecdote about each of the famous people she's worked with (Lotte Lenya, Tallulah Bankhead); and stilted "extemporaneous" banter with her pianist, Billy Goldenberg. The audience leaves to the accompaniment of the theme song...
...medical screening and personal interviews, on average only about 4% of willing donors are accepted into programs, where they typically stay for one to two years. Most are between 18 and 40; more than half are students. And their reasons for staying go well beyond the average $75 per specimen...
...years later, the same benign neglect greeted his next book, Strong Motion, about toxic subterfuges carried out by a Boston chemical firm. "Sixty reviews in a vacuum," as he later put it. Franzen began to wonder if literary fiction were going the way of the lyric poem, a deluxe specimen of cultural product enjoyed only by the happy few. When, he asked himself, was the last time an ambitious novel achieved the name recognition of Portnoy's Complaint, to say nothing of Catch...
...capture an embryonic stem cell, scientists must find an embryo, or blastocyst (from umbilical cord tissue, a frozen sample from a fertility clinic, an aborted fetus, or, most controversially, from a cloned specimen) ideally a few days after fertilization. Researchers then extract stem cells from the blastocyst, and, they hope, use those blank slates to create new, potentially curative, cells...
...Under the menace of this decision, French doctors, whenever the slightest shadow turns up on the sonogram, will advise: Abort. Perfect children are mandated by law. Parents will be considered irresponsible if they bring forth a specimen less than perfect. Think of the charming effect this decision would have if it were applied in those many countries around the world where a fetus that turns up with a vagina rather than a penis is considered to be defective...