Word: acidated
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
High-technology entrepreneurs like to boast that their business is nonpolluting and environmentally sound. But every industry carries environmental risks, and electronics is no exception. The manufacture of computer chips, for example, requires acid baths (to etch microscopic circuits onto tiny ceramic wafers) and vats of industrial cleaning fluids (to wash away extraneous specks). And where there are powerful chemicals, waste-storage difficulties are not far behind...
...puckish caller once asked Interior Secretary James Watt during a radio talk show whether his baldness was caused by acid rain. Watt laughed off the wisecrack, as well he might. In spite of rising concern in the Northeast and Canada, Administration spokesmen have repeatedly insisted that nothing could really be done about acid rain and the industry-produced sulfur emissions allegedly behind them until all the scientific facts were in. Suddenly last week, however, facts came raining down like a summer squall, in effect making further scientific debate on what mainly causes the problem all but irrelevant...
Precipitating the downpour was a study commissioned by Presidential Science Adviser George Keyworth II. The White House panel bluntly called for remedial action even if some technical questions about acid rain were still unanswered. "If we take the conservative point of view that we must wait until the scientific knowledge is definitive," said the panel, "the accumulated deposition [of acid rain] and damaged environment may reach the point of 'irreversibility...
...western part of the state by the Cascade Mountains, much as Alsace is protected by the Vosges. During the growing season, the Washington vineyards enjoy cool nights and in June, 17 hours or more of not-too-intense sunlight daily, allowing the grapes to ripen with good sugar-acid balance. The fruit tends to be tarter and crisper than California's, with a more intense flavor and aroma and a more pronounced varietal character...
When it departs from form, the wedding becomes a psychodrama and what the counterculture called a happening. Its symbolism grows promiscuous. Sometimes the emphasis is political rather than romantic. Earnest couples are known to billboard their environmental interests in the vows so that, say, vigilance against dioxin and acid rain may become part of the conjugal agenda. Such messages turn the wedding into a paid political message or else something like a professional tennis player's shirt, pasted here and there with the logos of products he is paid to advertise...