Word: bores
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That, as seems to be said more and more these days, was then. I believe that I am now the only wood-stove bore still active on my mile of dirt road. My neighbors have concluded that full-time wood heating is dirty, dangerous (chain saws are worse tempered than alligators), economically foolish, a champion time waster and brutishly hard work. In this they are correct...
...longer true, alas, that the wood-stove bore can warm himself twice, once by bragging about the money he is saving and again by preening at the perfection of his environmental posture. Heating oil, for the moment, costs less per gallon than bottled no-lead spring water. Never mind economy, however. There are congested localities such as Aspen, Colo., and Missoula, Mont., where wood burning is immoral, toxically wasteful and severely curtailed. The sweet-smelling, picturesque blue-gray smoke rising from Grandma's condo on a crisp December morning simply loads the air with too much additional junk...
Thus the wood-stove bore is without defenses, except to say that his obsession is unlikely to melt down New England and that it adds no net CO2 to the atmospheric greenhouse (a fallen tree gives off the same amount of carbon and oxygen whether it rots or burns, and a new tree that spreads in its place takes CO2 out of the air as it grows...
...universe -- even to a spot billions of light-years away. The name wormhole comes about by analogy: imagine a fly on an apple. The only way the fly can reach the apple's other side is the long way, over the fruit's surface. But a worm could bore a tunnel through the apple, shortening the trip considerably. A wormhole in space is the same sort of tunnel; it is a shortcut from one part of the universe to another that reduces the travel time to just about zero...
After three steady years at Harvard, the cancer returned in the summer before his senior year. Yet Tom's single-minded quest to lead an uncompromised life bore on. Despite continual pain and debilitating chemotherapy every other weekend, Tom gained a second remission and stayed in school, taking two classes in the fall and a full courseload in the spring and participating in intramural sports. He earned his degree at Harvard Summer School, finishing his last exam on August 19. The next day, while on vacation in Colorado, he relapsed one final time...