Word: variants
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...flocks of honking, beeping clones. Microsoft's DOS was one of three official PC operating systems but quickly beat out the other two. DOS was clunky and primitive at a time when the well-dressed computer was wearing UNIX from Bell Labs or (if its tastes ran upscale) some variant of the revolutionary window-menu-mouse system that Xerox had pioneered in the 1970s. But despite (or maybe because of) its stodginess, DOS established itself as the school uniform of computing. It was homely, but everyone needed it. Once again, Gates had brokered a marriage between other people's ideas...
...most victims arthritis simply means pain and stiffness in the joints--sometimes moderate, sometimes severe, usually responsive to treatment with one of a number of drugs. Pain can be just the beginning, though, for the more than 2 million Americans who suffer from the variant of the disease known as rheumatoid arthritis. This unfortunate minority may experience not just discomfort but also joint deformities, fatigue, nodules of tissue under the skin and inside internal organs and, in rare cases, inflammation of the membranes surrounding the heart and lungs...
...male suffrage and "Help Wanted: Female" classifieds. Given the disabilities attached to womanhood in 1912, it was only fair and right that a new standard of gender equality not suddenly be proclaimed just as lifeboat seats were being handed out. That deference--a somewhat more urgent variant of giving up your seat on the bus to a woman--complemented and perhaps compensated for the legal and social constraints placed on women at the time...
...August 1918, the mild virus apparently reassorted into something positively deadly. Outbreaks caused by the new variant exploded almost simultaneously in three far-flung locations: France, Sierra Leone and Boston. The flu struck with a ferocity that shocked doctors, who feared this strange new pathogen might be an airborne version of the Black Death. Patients died awash in blood and gore, literally drowning as fluid filled their lungs...
...brave the Cambridge cobbled streets with sufficiently pneumatic tires may wonder. The retro-bike is a genre of used bike which is turning up with alarming frequency on campus. The most common strain--sorry, retro-bikers, it is becoming common--is the Raleigh frame in a rust-eaten variant of burnt umber, olive, electric blue or the ever-present black. The metallic frame comes over both the front and back wheels half-way and preferably, in the purest strains of retro-bike, has an irregularly shaped casing over the chain. Schwinns are also acceptable models...