Word: afar
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...well as modern man. Its arms gathered food, warded off foes and perhaps even made primitive tools. Yet the most remarkable thing about this tiny ape-man is its age. It lived some 4 million years ago, in what is now a forbidding corner of Africa called the Afar Triangle. If its discoverers are right, this ancient biped may be man's oldest direct ancestor, nearly half a million years more ancient than the previous claimant to that evolutionary honor...
...bones provide impressive new evidence for what was once a radical evolutionary idea: that our primitive ancestors learned to walk upright before they developed large brains. Though it could walk and probably even run on its hind legs, the Afar creature's cranial capacity was pitifully small, totaling no more than about 400 cc, barely a fourth of the size of the brain of Homo sapiens. The meager skeleton shows no noticeable anatomical variations from the remains of another ancestor, the famed 3.6 million-year-old "Lucy," who has been regarded until now as man's oldest direct...
...offset curbs, sinking streets and chipped cement steps in Hollister testify to the fault's ornery nature. To appreciate its sheer power, a trip to Almaden's Cienega Winery ten miles to the south is instructive. From afar, nothing seems amiss: manicured vines growing Cabernet, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes sweep to the base of the Gabilan Mountains. Up close, the scene is not so idyllic: the San Andreas splits the winery building like a conveyor belt. On the North American plate, employees are playing basketball. Across the road, on the Pacific plate, there is a seminar...
...like the Easter eggs she writes about, Freeman's tale is delicately and colorfully sketched. From afar, it is a bright and cheerful scene. Poor closely, however, and you begin to see the delicate flaws of the picture. Only then can you see the missed brush strokes and splotches splenty hidden in this pastoral scene...
...office of the brash young producer, who faces, in turn, a huge black tiger-tamer in safari costume; the awkwardly toupeed M.C. rehearsing the moment when he's supposed to crack the pressure of the event; the "lady"--an actress whom the contestant loved from afar when she lived near him as a boy--who doesn't want to go back to Mississippi with him "and cook okra and have everybody call me a whore;" and, finally, the contestant himself, an elongated, hick-Frankenstein monster scared shitless at the prospect of being torn to shreds. In between the producer virtually...