Word: airtight
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...trees and their stalactites of dried resin fell, some of them ending up buried in soft sediments at the bottom of still and shallow bodies of water. There, over millions of years, the molecules of resin gradually amalgamated into long, durable chains, creating a material remarkably like plastic: airtight, watertight, chemically inert...
...parties two choices: 1) They all three give one another ironclad commitments to a full and permanent cease-fire, a very wide zone of separation between combatants and a build-down of forces, with every detail of every map and timetable firmly and finally agreed on--an agreement so airtight (here's the rub) that it is self-enforcing, without need for outside "implementers"; or 2) we declare the parties insufficiently committed to peace, walk away and wash our hands...
STARDOM CAN OFFER AIRTIGHT INsulation from reality. From the fact that he is famous, a celebrity too often creates the fiction that he is revered. O.J. Simpson, for instance, translated an acquittal verdict by 12 jurors into the claim that most Americans really believe he's innocent. And Woody Allen, who three years ago was show biz's most notorious middle-age male, keeps making movies whose plots reflect, excuse and promote his lustlorn escapades. Both guys are fallen idols who have trouble understanding what all the fuss was about. They want America to take an amnesia pill so they...
...plastic-packaging company based in Hickory, North Carolina. The EPA regulates his factory because one of its by-products is methyl alcohol, which can contribute to ozone pollution. To control methyl alcohol releases, Ballenger had to build a catalytic converter for $600,000 and spend $500,000 to make airtight the room where he prints labels on the packaging. Running the pollution-control devices cost him $180,000 a year. After all that, he says, when he got a seventh printing press,the EPA told him to shut it down. He says he must now build a new plant...
...distinguished family, successfully married, light-skinned in a city (Washington) where--a source of ideological discomfort--light skin proclaims the black elite. He was educated in the Ivy League, has climbed high in his profession. But precisely the reasons for which he should feel self-respect, airtight reasons for a white man, raise confusing interior questions about his identity as a black man. Or so I surmise. Hence the anger. Ellis Cose wrote a book called The Rage of a Privileged Class about black executives and law partners who earn half a million dollars or more a year and feel...