Word: cloud
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...summer of love across the Taiwan Strait, at least where the arts community is concerned. While political tensions simmer on other fronts - China's military buildup, Taiwan's ongoing bid for U.N. recognition, the Olympic torch route, to name a few - cultural exchanges have never been healthier. Cloud Gate is just one example. The largest group of terracotta-army artifacts ever to leave China (116 in total) is another: it was on exhibit last month at Taiwan's National Museum of History, before embarking on a world tour that will include London's British Museum and a sweep through...
...That approach appears to be working. For Cloud Gate, which has performed at arts festivals in Shanghai and Guangzhou in recent years, the return invitation to the Chinese capital carries political weight - seen as the mainland's nod toward the island's contemporary-arts scene (even if not to the nascent Taiwanese democracy in which the arts have thrived). Mainland Chinese are "beginning to realize what has happened in Taiwan's artistic environment over the last 40 years," says Hsu Po-yun, director-general of the International New Aspect Culture and Education Foundation, a Taiwan arts-promotion body. "They take...
...while they're not immune to the hot and cold winds of politics, artists and curators have become adept at taking shelter from them most of the time. "After all, we share the same traditions," says Yeh Wen-wen, Cloud Gate's executive director. "From both sides, we can appreciate how hard it is to become a creative artist." Doing away with decades of mistrust isn't easy either, but artistic communities on both sides of the strait can take a well-deserved...
...luck could end for Toowoomba and the rest of southeast Queensland. Last month a group of scientists in the area got one step closer to launching what could be the world's most advanced experiment in rainmaking - or, as it's known in weather circles, cloud seeding. That's the practice of injecting clouds, usually with silver iodide "seeds," salt or dry ice, to make the clouds' water or ice particles bigger and yield more rain. The technique has been used in different parts of the world for more than 60 years - with varying success. But the slow ramp...
...Cloud seeding was developed in 1946 by scientist Bernard Vonnegut, brother of author Kurt. Countries quickly adopted it. Over the three decades following its introduction, the U.S. spent many millions of dollars a year on the technology. It was even used for a while during the Vietnam War to increase rainfall on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to hamper supply movement. By the 1980s, however, the science of cloud seeding acquired a snake-oil whiff, as disreputable private companies tried hawking it to desperate, drought-ridden communities. Within the decade, it had fallen out of favor...