Word: thingness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cite an example of this fallacy, in 1996 scientists reported the discovery of a gene for novelty-seeking behavior--generally regarded as a good thing. In 1997 another study saw a linkage between the same gene and a propensity for heroin addiction. Did the "good" gene for enhanced exploration become the "bad" gene for addictive tendencies? Biochemistry may be the same, but context and background matter...
...need for body rituals that aren't provided for in our society," says Musafar. Yet Armando Favazza, a University of Missouri psychiatry professor and author of Bodies Under Siege, thinks it's rare when people find deep meanings in branding: "It's a faddish sort of thing, meant to shock or provide a sexual turn-on." In a few cases it may be therapeutic: Favazza says abused children may later undergo alterations "to reclaim control over their bodies" and forge "a mark of distinction to raise self-esteem...
...schoolteacher (she now runs a day-care center). Rock was bused from his black neighborhood in Bed-Stuy to a white high school in Bensonhurst. He says the students there were "worse than white trash--they were white toxic waste," and would beat him up regularly. Funny thing was, even though he was a misfit in Bensonhurst, after a while he didn't fit in back in Bed-Stuy either. And nobody in either place took him seriously. It was then Rock first realized he was a comic, not a fighter. "I just remember that whenever I got really...
...when I was in fifth grade.") Lately he's taken to calling up his answering machine and leaving messages for himself. His comic ideas begin as cumulus clouds of general observation before coalescing into the thunder and lightning of his stand-up. "I had something the other day--this thing about men, that no matter what they're doing at their job, if some beautiful woman walks by, you try to do it cool," says Rock. "So I'm trying to figure out how you unload a garbage truck cool--or whatever. Notes like that are what I leave...
...guilty. When word got out last week that Bill and Hillary Clinton had settled on a house just up the street from me in Chappaqua, N.Y., the first thing I did was hop in my car and do a drive-by. How can I deny it? Half the village was there. With the stroke of a pen (and imminent transfer of $1.7 million), the First Couple have managed to turn a quiet suburban cul-de-sac into the surest spot in town to be seen...