Word: acidizing
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...Short for LAEvo-mandelo-niTRILE-β-glucuronic acid...
Covering rock music during its acid-hard past used to be something of an athletic contest for correspondents, who had to dodge all manner of bodyguards and groupies to talk to the stars. This week's cover subject, Paul McCartney, the Beatle who came back as a Wing, is not short of fans or muscle-a burly ex-football player guards his door. But Correspondent James Willwerth found that his main obstacle on this assignment was, of all things for a rock hero, McCartney's keen devotion to family life. "Paul was far more interested in being with...
GROWTH REGULATION. Growth regulators, those hormone-like substances that control the growth patterns of plants and tell them when to ripen, drop their fruit or prepare for the onset of winter, also have potential for increasing production. Thompson seedless grapes are routinely sprayed with a substance called gibberellic acid, which promotes cell growth and helps produce plumper fruit. A Monsanto product called Polaris is being used experimentally to increase sugar production: sprayed on fields, the chemical enhances the ripening of sugar canes. This, it is believed, boosts their sucrose content and may raise their yield of raw sugar...
...diplomats through a series of incongruous situations, most of which end up with them walking down a long country road to nowhere. The guiding theme seems to be none too funny comedy masquerading under the claim "isn't this surrealistic." Bunuel's new surrealism has none of the acid critical touch that characterized his earlier films like Viridiana or Belle de Jour. The same obsessive themes appear--bizarre sexual fetishes, anti-clericalism, absurdly stiff social rituals--without being integrated into any larger perspective. Phantom of Liberty is even worse. When we are shown aunt-nephew incest side by side with...
Benchley doles out this tale in the standard measures of escapist fiction: ever escalating shocks at predictable intervals. Early on, the effect can be ludicrous: Will David get stuck in an elevator? Will his wife accidentally drink a glass of hydrochloric acid? What is the meaning of her mysterious nosebleed? Later the blood flows everywhere and the sea is awash with gore: "The moray struck, needle teeth fastening on the man's neck, throat convulsing as it pulled back toward the hole. Blood billowed out of the sides of the moray's mouth." That moray eel, which figures...