Word: coding
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nothing about Grammatron is stable. At its center, if there is one, is Abe Golam, the inventor of Nanoscript, a quasi-mystical computer code that some unmystical corporations are itching to acquire. For much of the story, Abe wanders through Prague-23, a virtual "city" in cyberspace where visitors indulge in fantasy encounters and virtual sex, which can get fairly graphic. The reader wanders too, because most of Grammatron's 1,000-plus text screens contain several passages in hypertext. To reach the next screen, just double-click. But each of those hypertexts is a trapdoor that can plunge...
...question of nature vs. nurture. It could also lead to the cloning of special rescue dogs and endangered canids like the Ethiopian wolf and African wild dog. At the A&M labs, a picture of Missy's cheerful mug hangs over the micromanipulator, where technicians inject her genetic code into eggs from donors whose own DNA is of no particular interest to anyone. The biggest problem is getting eggs. Because dogs randomly go into heat only every six months to a year, there's a lot of waiting for one of the lab's 50 dogs to enter estrus. Last...
...fast ticket home. Targeted cuts don't resonate with people who fill out their own tax returns either. Breaks that phase out as you go up the income ladder or are linked to the type of child care you choose, or whatever, complicate a code already so confusing that the IRS estimates it takes a record 13 hours, on average, to complete a 1040. So why do we have targeted tax breaks at all? Politics, of course...
...Honor the taxman, people. Throw a couple of hundred billion his way. Upgrade his computers. Staff his enforcement arm. And simplify the tax code, so paying is easier and cheating easier to spot. Face it: We need these guys. Taxpaying is the foundation of civil society, and an effective taxman is the government institution on which all others are built...
Today, the women's lacrosse team, like many other teams, uses a "48-hour rule" honor code system where athletes promise not to drink two days before a game...