Word: bark
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ferragamo, necessity was the spur to invention. In the 1930s and '40s, metal and leather, the staples of shoemaking, were scarce in wartime Italy, so he experimented with what came to hand -- straw, raffia, bark, even fishskin. Another local material, cork, launched one of his greatest inventions, the wedge. The precursor of the familiar wedged heel was a shoe with four corks from local wine bottles sewn together to make a heel. Later in the 1940s, he made uppers of cellophane, after noticing how strong and durable the material was when he twisted a bunch of candy wrappers...
With ILM at the console, who needs reality? "We have conquered the physical properties of nature," Williams declares. "We can do tree bark; we can do grass blowing and water rippling. But we have only begun with computer- generated humans." At the moment, special-effects experts have trouble making the skin look authentic, and, as Williams notes, "hair is hard." Not to worry; just to wait. "A real human being -- I think we'll get it," he says. "Not much is impossible...
...largest computer-virus scare to date -- a week-long frenzy of hype and high-tech hand-holding that dramatized the vulnerability of the world's 137 million personal computers -- and the gullibility of their users. In the end, the bug's bark was worse than its bite. The National Computer Security Association in Washington reported that 15 computers had been struck in England, 12 in the Netherlands and five in Austria. There were disruptions in Japan, China and New Zealand. Several hundred computers used by South Africa's pharmacists were zapped. But except for a Southern Baptist church near Atlanta...
...grain quality -- if not the episodic fussiness -- of that earlier virtuoso of the dovetail and the lamination, the sculptor H.C. Westermann. It also has some of Westermann's laconic humor. Sanctuary, 1982, is one such piece: a cubical box of thick wood mounted on two raw branches with the bark still on them, which turn out to be "legs," pedaling a wooden wheel -- a sort of absurd unicycle, designed for flight...
...Bark like an Underdog...