Word: widget
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...which I'm in fifth grade playing dodge ball--naked. At my kid's school, we parents wait our turn in the hallway, drinking decaf and trying to hide our anxiety behind our briefcases. When I'm ushered into the classroom, I wedge myself into a Lilliputian desk. Mrs. Widget smiles down with practiced patience. She begins. Nine minutes later, it's all over, and we're shaking hands. By the time I make it to the car, I have near complete amnesia about the experience...
...sought, in the name of "modernism," to free human beings from traditional attachments to church and family. In the centennial encyclical, Pope John Paul reiterated his frequent admonitions. The worker or manager who reports to duty at the shop every morning inflamed by the desire to make a better widget and sell more of it is one thing; quite another if he or she goes home listlessly unconcerned with human life and human attachments having to do with respect for the elderly, a love for one's family, the capacity to take joy from Christian perspectives. Papal prose is turgid...
...first experiment is, by itself, something of a reproductive coup. Stem cells are to sperm what a widget factory is to widgets. Being able to keep the cells on ice is thus a lot more useful than the already common practice of freezing sperm itself; sperm lasts only so long, but a sperm factory can, in theory, go on forever. That could be enormously comforting to men about to undergo, say, radiation treatment or chemotherapy, which can destroy stem cells and render patients permanently infertile. These men could sidestep the problem by having their stem cells removed, frozen and reimplanted...
Congress, of course, realizes that the public is enraged that the likes of the American Widget Association has a lot better chance of getting heard than the unorganized masses who buy widgets but are unable to produce a pair of Super Bowl tickets. And so last week the Senate voted 95-4 for tough gift restrictions -- no more trips to luxury resorts, no more gifts worth more than $20. During the debate, members couched their feelings about the pending deprivation in high-minded terms. However, Bennett Johnston of Louisiana couldn't help whining that he wouldn't even be able...