Word: takings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...infused with deeper meaning. What could be more transparent (even to the mathematically challenged) than the fact that 4-4=0? Zero is the definite answer to countless other such equations. Zero, though, can also be a tease, something that is sought after but always just beyond reach. Take the physicist's concept of absolute zero, the absurdly chilly -459.67[degrees]F. This would be the temperature of an object so still that even its subatomic particles ceased to jiggle. But modern physics teaches that the subatomic jiggling never stops, and so absolute zero can never be attained...
...brothers had many happy memories of playing tabletop arcade machines like Frogger and Centipede in their father's garage. Now they wanted to take the new 3-D environment pioneered in the shooting game Doom and use it for something a little more cerebral, something set in the tombs and catacombs of Egypt. The protagonist was to be a little different too. Says Smith: "As soon as you give a male character guns, he becomes a stereotype. We always knew we wanted a female...
...tolerance approach ends the guesswork. In the early '90s, schools began adopting one-strike-and-you're-out policies for kids who secreted weapons or drugs on campus. The President gave zero tolerance a big push when he signed a 1994 law requiring one-year suspension for students who take guns to school. But by definition, zero tolerance erases distinctions among student offenses. Hence the national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer. Since 1996, schools in four states have suspended at least 20 children for possession of the fizzy medicine...
...Just take the great martial powers of modern times: the U.S., the Soviet Union, Germany, Britain, Japan, China and Israel. The age of America's expansion in the 19th century was marked by the low-tech coffeepot that was left on the fire until the brew inside had thickened into a blackish acid just right for tanning buffalo hides...
Nonetheless, Caltech's Gharib is drafting plans to assemble a full-scale, 15-ft.-wide kite for use with a pulley system capable of lifting blocks as heavy as the pyramid stones. The initial tests will take place in California's Mojave Desert--once someone secures the $100,000 required to fund the research. To that end, Clemmons persuaded several companies to collaborate on a new perfume dubbed Ala (Latin for "wing"), which goes on sale in pyramid-shaped bottles in December, with all profits donated to the kite-research project...