Word: brood
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Flash forward. Cosby is the father now, presiding over a brood of five children on TV's top-rated series. When he arrives home in one episode, three of his daughters begin fawning over him. "What's blown up or on fire?" asks Dad skeptically. The youngest, it turns out, has cut photographs out of some of his favorite books to make a report for school. But Dad neither explodes nor affixes blame, just leafs resignedly through her handiwork. "Very good report," he comments. "Very expensive...
...parts lifted by the Washington Post, then was withdrawn from circulation -- all without ever being published. Such was the fate of the 80-page book proposal by Washington Hostess Joan Braden, wife of Syndicated Columnist Tom Braden, frequent companion of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and mother of the brood on which the TV sitcom Eight Is Enough was based...
Compared with the average bug, which goes from birth to death in less than a year, the 17-year cicada is Methuselah: it has the longest life cycle of any known insect. In all, there are twelve distinct broods of 17-year cicadas, each of which emerges in a different year. This year's group is referred to by scientists as Brood 10. The other large group, Brood 14, is due to make its next appearance...
...female deposits hundreds of eggs in a series of pockets cut in twigs. Nine weeks later the microscopic nymphs hatch, drop to the ground and burrow down as far as 2 ft., where they grow, eat and await their coming-out 17 years hence. The fact that this brood will not reappear until 2004 is one reason scientists are reluctant to put too much of their time into unlocking the cicada's secrets. As Richard Froeschner, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, points out, "Enthusiasm and curiosity tend to wane between generations...
NATURAL history tells the story of a rare insect that lays eggs in a single cocoon; the young, emerging from their shells, eat one another until, like a Democratic presidential candidate emerging after the primaries, only one of the murderous brood is left to see the light...