Word: absorb
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...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...
...into powder and sent to Asia, where they are sold for as much as $540 an oz. for "medicinal" purposes. Men who take a tiny pinch of the powder are convinced that it enhances their libido. They believe that if you devour parts of a powerful animal, you will absorb its sexual vitality. And if bear gallbladder fails, they will contrive potions and lotions from the hump of the camel, the penis of the tiger or the horn of the rhinoceros...
...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...
...with state-run projects. The primary goal of his proposal, which in many respects echoed Lenin's quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy of 1921, was to inject vitality into the U.S.S.R.'s laggard consumer goods and services industries. In addition, the new co-ops would pay taxes and presumably absorb some of the 15 million workers who might lose their jobs in a much needed pruning of the bureaucracy...