Word: straightforwardness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...remedy is equally straightforward: aristocracy. By that I do not mean a government of dukes and barons, but an aristocracy of intelligent and interested voters...
...Roger Lewin; both authors formerly wrote for the journal Science. Like James Gleick's wildly successful 1987 book Chaos, each volume attempts to convey to lay readers the basics of the science as well as the excitement it is generating among its practitioners. (Mini-review: Waldrop's book, a straightforward, detailed account, succeeds admirably; Lewin's, a chatty personal memoir, does...
...Guide to the New Edge (HarperCollins; $20). Its cover touts alphabetic entries on everything from virtual reality and wetware to designer aphrodisiacs and TECHNO-EROTIC PAGANISM, promising to make cyberpunk's rarefied perspective immediately accessible. Inside, in an innovative hypertext format (which is echoed in this article), relatively straightforward updates on computer graphics, multimedia and fiber optics accompany wild screeds on such recondite subjects as SYNESTHESIA and TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONES...
...about the basic strategy: detect the threatening object and dispatch a warhead-tipped rocket to intercept it and explode, nudging it into a new orbit that would carry it safely past Earth. For a small asteroid detected years and many orbits before its destined collision, the solution would be straightforward. "You apply some modest impulse to it at its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, using conventional explosives," explains Gregory Canavan, a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The slight deflection that results will amplify during each orbit, ensuring that the asteroid misses Earth by a wide margin...
...interpretation is wonderfully imaginative and hysterically funny. But for all its surreal humor, it never loses sight of the drama. The Revenger's Tragedy is a morality play, showing a society ruin itself through its own appetite for destruction. Had he tried to portray that moral void in a straightforward manner, Ross would have failed. The bloodthirstiness of the story is too much for the modern audience. Instead, somewhere in the final scene--with the chandelier spinning, Luxurioso gorging himself on peas and dancers in surgical robes gyrating to the tune of "Supermodel"--Ross's grisly humor gels to express...