Word: absorb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Quartzsite is subject to the same forces that control the vast flocks of migratory birds that traverse the continent twice a year. In winter the town swells to absorb 200,000 people. They are refugees from the frozen North, most of them retirees making their seasonal escape in RVs. Then, usually in April, when the temperature begins to rise and the lure of the North is greater, the huge encampment with its bustling activity rolls away, evaporating like runoff from a desert cloudburst...
There's no mayor, no water system, not even a stoplight. But each winter, tiny Quartzsite, Ariz., grows to absorb 200,000 people, only to shrink again come spring. What attracts the snowbirds...
...around each valuable monument. "Sites in Egypt are not protected at all," he says. "We need to take away all mechanical activity for at least two to three miles around them." Tawfik proposes eventually planting trees around all outdoor monuments to protect them from winds as well as to absorb moisture. Within monuments, he wants to install clear plastic shields to prevent tourists from touching paintings and inscriptions and air-cleaning systems to remove moisture and dust...
...late Will Durant, the Book-of-the-Month Club's ubiquitous historian, once observed that "no man who is in a hurry is quite civilized." Time bestows value because objects reflect the hours they absorb: the hand-carved table, the handwritten letter, every piece of fine craftsmanship, every grace note. But now we have reached the stage at which not only are the luxuries of time disappearing -- for reading meaty novels, baking from scratch, learning fugues, traveling by sea rather than air, or by foot rather than wheel -- but the necessities of time are also out of reach. Family time...
...pace of change and the explosion of information mean that professionals are swamped with too many new facts to absorb. Meanwhile, the drill-press operator discovers that the drill comes with a computer attached to it. Workers find that it takes all the energy they have just to remain qualified for their jobs, much less have time to acquire new skills that might allow for promotion. "There is no question that the half-life of most job skills is dropping all the time," says Edward Lawler, University of Southern California professor of management. "People are falling by the wayside, just...