Word: comprehend
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...billions of stars in a disc-shaped galaxy, or island of stars, then believed by many to constitute the entire universe. In 1920 Harlow Shapley calculated that the galaxy, called the Milky Way, was some 300,000 light years* in diameter, a distance too stupendous for most people to comprehend, and about three times larger than today's estimates of its size. But the boundaries of the universe were not yet in sight. Using ever larger telescopes, astronomers discovered that some of the "stars" thought to be part of the Milky Way were actually other galaxies−each containing...
...Rand Corporation resembles an eager biology student at his first dissection. It can carefully lay bare the anatomy of its subject but cannot comprehend its motivation. It can describe the details, but misses out on the whole animal...
...anyone comprehend what Gerald Ford must have experienced when he dictated his message of defeat? After a year of campaigning, of speaking before a handful of dirt farmers in some rural backwater, or before a throng of urban humanity screaming his name, and hearing their response, not from their mouths but from the computer printouts of a hundred opinion surveys, after the exhilaration of a heartfelt speech, warmly received, and the magnified shame of a few mistaken words, after the victories of the primaries and the defeat on November 2, Gerald Ford is finally left in solitude to remember each...
What does all this mean about the post-season contests? Who knows? The Phils have never won a World Series; they have only won one series game. But to tell the truth, for me it doesn't really matter what happens. I actually haven't been able to comprehend the title, the play-offs, or anything else associated with the Phillies' victory. That's a whole different mentality. You see, we've got this kid Lersch coming up from the Oklahoma '89ers, and Rick Bosetti--boy can he throw. Maybe we'll get 'em next year...
...Africa mostly owe their existences to accidents of geography or language, the fortunes of war or interference from imperial powers. But the U.S., to a very great extent, is the product of its citizens' own ingenuity. Faced with an untamed wilderness and distances their European forebears could barely comprehend, the settlers who came to colonize the new land responded by becoming a nation of tinkerers, backyard inventors and, ultimately, technologists. Now, lacking a wilderness but confronted with challenges as great as those faced by their ancestors, mid-20th century Americans are responding similarly. In university and corporate laboratories...