Word: label
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wipers, 1903 Hugh Moore Paper cup, 1908 Jacques Brandenberger Cellophane, 1908 Arthur Wynne Crossword puzzle, 1913 Joseph Block Whistling kettle, 1921 Andrew Olsen Pop-up tissue box, 1921 George Squier Muzak, 1922 Garrett A. Morgan Traffic light, 1923 Francis W. Davis Power steering, 1926 R. Stanton Avery Self-adhesive label, 1935 Edwin L. Peterson Answering machine, 1945 Earl John Hilton Credit card, 1950 Clinton Riggs Yield sign, 1950 Chavannes & Fielding Bubble wrap, 1957 Luther Simjian ATM, 1960 Herb Peterson Egg McMuffin...
...tempting to view these triumphs as the consequence of irresistible historical forces. But inevitability is merely an illusory label we impose on that which has already happened. It does not tell us what might have happened. For that, we need to view events through the eyes of those who lived them. Looked at that way, we understand that twice in mid-century, capitalism and democracy were in the gravest peril, rescued by the enormous efforts of countless people summoned to struggle by their peerless leader--Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
Lately, this view, "cultural evolutionism," has been revived and given a new vocabulary. "Meme"--a word chosen to stress the parallel with "gene"--is the label for packets of cultural information: technologies, songs, beliefs and so on. Just as those genes most conducive to their own replication are the ones that prevail, those memes best at getting themselves transmitted from human to human are the ones that come to form the human environment...
...diagnosis. Some critics dismiss it as a category so broad as to be useless. "It's used for everyone from the person who cheats on his income taxes to Attila the Hun," says Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins medical school. "It's a label masquerading as an explanation." Others wonder whether the term is simply a catchall psychological description for people who are habitual criminals. Yet proponents argue that the disorder's core ingredients--a lifelong pattern of behavior, a willingness to break rules and hurt others, a lack of empathy or guilt--set certain criminals...
...since CDs arrived has the music world been in such a tizzy over technology. Mpeg-3, a longtime standard for digital music on the Net, entered the spotlight this year when MP3.com issued its IPO and MP3 players were declared legal. Now you don't need a recording label to make it big--and industry execs are playing catch...