Word: tinker
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bravest New Surgery Medical science, which can do remarkable things to repair the human body, took a giant step by daring to tinker with the original blueprint. In the first authorized use of gene therapy, a four-year-old girl with a rare and deadly enzyme deficiency received genetically engineered cells that could control her illness. So far, she is doing well, and scientists hope eventually to treat other illnesses the same...
...college-football tackle with a boombox voice and a down-home manner. Until his ascension to GM president three years ago, he was often seen driving a motorcycle near his home in the sedate suburb of Bloomfield Hills, where he keeps a fleet of old cars he likes to tinker with. His engineering feats have become part of the company lore. In his early career he designed the front-wheel-drive transmission on the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado, and in the 1970s he was the leader in one of GM's biggest breakthroughs: the catalytic converter, a revolutionary antipollution device. Stempel...
...team leader rather than an autocrat. He promises that the changes he makes will be humane. "We are not going to take GM apart and put it back together again," he said on the day he took over. But he will have trouble resisting the urge to tinker with GM until it roars like the racing machines he loves...
...with so many roasts and desserts that, when asked what Andrews produced, one White House official replied, "expanded waistlines." When Bush gave his nationwide speech, the budget took a backseat to the gulf. Repeating his call for a cut in the capital-gains tax, the President promised not to tinker with tax rates. Bush made no concessions, but did call on Congress to sweeten the budget deal with $30 billion in tax breaks over five years...
...Others tinker more creatively with the familiar noir premise of treachery getting its just deserts. In Backfire (Showtime) the wife of a disturbed Vietnam vet plots to drive him crazy so he'll attempt suicide. He obliges only to the extent of lapsing (darn the luck) into a catatonic state, which is only the beginning of the wife's comeuppance. In Buried Alive (USA) another scheming housewife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) conspires with her doctor lover to bump off her husband with poison. Again the plan goes awry: she gives him too small a dose, and the authorities only think...