Terminators: Wordplays for Ideas & Insights
Asylum by the Sea
Asilomar is famous to biotechnologists as the site of a conference in 1975
initiated by researchers to resolve issues of the safety of experiments using
recombinant DNA techniques. "Asilomar" is a word coined about 90 years ago in
a contest to name the conference center, then a YWCA facility. The Spanish
word 'asilo' is officially translated as "refuge" and 'mar' as "sea." Thus
Asilomar is "refuge by the sea." It's interesting to note that 'asilo' is
translated as "refuge" rather than as its cognate "asylum." Asylum has the
bad connotation of "insane asylum" although "political asylum" is usually
viewed as a good thing.
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