Word: string
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...them as inspirational springboards or simply appropriate them verbatim as your own. Surprisingly, celebrities are the consummate resolution makers. Asked a simple yes or no question (e.g., Will you be watching this year's Super Bowl on television?) your typical actor/singer/model will prattle on interminably about the Bhagavad-Gita, string theory and film restoration. But ask a celeb for a New Year's resolution and out comes a pithy, succinctly worded and cogent personal mission statement...
...helped lead to the Reformation (by permitting people to own their own Bibles and religious tracts), the Renaissance (by permitting ideas to travel from village to village) and the rise of individual liberty (by allowing ordinary folks direct access to information). Likewise, the 20th century was transformed by a string of inventions that, building on the telegraph and telephone of the 19th century, led to a new information...
Already, in fact, theoretical physicists have succeeded in constructing a framework that offers the best hope yet of integrating gravity with nature's other fundamental forces. This framework is popularly known as string theory because it postulates that the smallest, indivisible components of the universe are not point-like particles but infinitesimal loops that resemble tiny vibrating strings. "String theory," pioneering theorist Edward Witten of Einstein's own Institute for Advanced Study has observed, "is a piece of 21st century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century...
...trouble is, neither Witten nor anyone else knows how many other pieces must fall into place before scientists succeed in solving this greatest of all puzzles. One major reason, observes Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, is that string theory developed backward. "In most theories, physicists first see an overarching idea and then put equations to it." In string theory, says Greene, "we're still trying to figure out the central nugget of truth...
...tough to see why 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart every week. The nation's top retailer sells everything from sweatpants to string beans, rakes to Ritalin. It keeps its prices low, its shelves stocked and its big, wide aisles peppered with blue-smocked clerks. The company will ring up about $160 billion in domestic sales by year's end, with profits on track to top $5 billion. With that kind of scratch--and a proven knack for giving people what they want--the House That Sam Built seems a shoo-in for success in cyberspace...