Word: canalization
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Nature loves the rhythm of a meandering river, with the summertime droughts and spring floods that nurture wildlife and push a waterway down a new path. Commercial barges, however, demand constancy, in the form of a canal filled with enough water to keep their 9-ft.-deep hulls from running aground. So after the great 1927 flood, the Army Corps of Engineers began shackling the unruly current. The corps built levees along the river's banks to hold in the water and turned its rapids and ever changing sandbars into a more civilized staircase of 29 locks and dams stretching...
...vast film and recorded music holdings with Vivendi's sprawling Internet, pay-TV and software-publishing properties. Classics from Universal's library of 24,000 TV episodes and more than 3,000 films, including such blockbusters as E.T. and Jurassic Park, could run on Vivendi's majority-controlled Canal Plus subscription-TV service, the Continent's largest. And Seagram's Universal music group, currently the biggest on earth, could deliver Limp Bizkit and Sting to millions of European households via Vivendi's 50%-controlled Vizzavi Internet portal. Such synergies will be enshrined forever--or at least until the next deal...
...year. Erin Brockovich's boffo box office (expected U.S. gross: $125 million) could help, particularly if Julia Roberts wins an Oscar for Best Actress. But studio chief Ron Meyer will doubtless be sent packing by Vivendi, which reportedly plans to replace him with Pierre Lescure, chairman and CEO of Canal Plus. Messier must also decide what to do with Seagram's 45% stake in Barry Diller's USA Network, which has cable channels and film- and TV-production facilities. Diller has feuded with Bronfman since the Seagram heir scotched Diller...
...complementary therapies, but I'm not at all impressed with this one," says Benjamin Asher, chairman of the committee on alternative medicine for the American Academy of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery. Aside from an earful of candle wax, candling could lead to infection, burns to the ear canal or eardrum--or burning hair. The FDA considers ear candles hazardous to health...
Even the most celebrated technologies of the past are now regarded as low tech. Take the Panama Canal, an unparalleled feat of human vision, perseverance and engineering 85 years ago. Standing at the mouth of the canal, in the northern port city of Colon, peering out at the cargo ships, you get an overwhelming sense that you're witnessing an archaic process. Heavy ships traversing the surface of the globe, loaded down with computer parts, petroleum products and Pokemon cards, pause in mid-voyage to pass slowly through the strategically placed Isthmus of Panama before continuing their journey to another...