Word: bites
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...home in on faint electricity generated by another fish's movement, gill action or even heartbeat. Indeed, Holland's team in Hawaii routinely tricks baby hammerheads at Coconut Island into striking at electrodes dangling in the water. Adult sharks, apparently drawn by the same process, have been known to bite through undersea cables. Holland is planning to investigate what sorts of electric signal might repel rather than attract sharks--protecting not just hardware but people as well...
...facts are clear. Lyme disease is caused by one of a group of corkscrew-shaped bacteria called spirochetes. It is spread when infected deer ticks, or other members of the genus Ixodes, bite their potential hosts, which include field mice, wood rats and suburbanites. Lyme has become endemic in the Northeastern U.S. It has also been found in Canada, Europe and Australia. The initial infection is usually accompanied by an expanding red rash, which generally, but not always, resembles a bull's-eye. Caught early enough, the Lyme infection can be completely cleared by taking oral antibiotics...
...Vigorous writing is concise," writes William Strunk in his classic Elements of Style. "This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short...but that every word tell." The sound bite is the ultimate in making every word tell. It is the very soul of compactness. Brevity is not enough. You need weight. Hence some sound bites qualify for greatness: F.D.R.'s "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" or Reagan's "Tear down this wall." Others--"a bridge to the 21st century"--are just short and gaseous...
...course the Lincoln-Douglas debates were great. But their time has passed. Modern political debates are a travesty of the form. Indeed, their main purpose is to produce the one sound bite--"I knew John Kennedy, Senator..."--that will register on the evening news. Sound bites are what we do best. Let's give them honor...
...even the good old days could tire of loquaciousness and appreciate the fine bite. Stephen Douglas, after all, made it into the Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations with "Sit down, Lincoln, your time...