Word: corde
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...none of these reasons captures the true horror of long-distance love. I hate distant relationships because of the way they enslave lovestruck collegiates. No freedom is allowed for those unlucky ones joined by the fiber optic umbilical cord...
Consider the case of Jeannette Shulda, rendered a quadriplegic in 1984. She was helping her long-haul trucker husband when a pallet fell on her, crushing her spinal cord. A company called Transit Casualty (remember that name) paid out more than $300,000 in medical expenses and 24-hour care. Then everything stopped. At the end of 1985 Transit Casualty went broke. For technical reasons, the California state guaranty fund wouldn't cover the claim. Eventually it probably will (just hang in there, Mrs. Shulda), but nearly five years later, the case is still in the courts...
Performers at theme parks learn things never taught in a classroom: how to dance without tripping over a microphone cord, how to improvise when a prop disappears or scenery just won't move, how to entice an audience distracted by weather or a crying child or a plateful of food. Says Steven Fox, 24, a singer and pianist at Pennsylvania's Hersheypark: "Our show takes place in a restaurant. We call it performing at McDonald's. For every person who came to see us, another wanted spare ribs...
...attend meetings of the Komsomol ((Communist Party youth wing)) Committee to Save Baikal. I learned that in the late 1950s, Orlov, the minister in charge of the paper industry, had ordered construction of a large cellulose complex on the lake's shores to produce a particularly durable viscose rayon cord for airplane tires. It was assumed that the pure Baikal water would facilitate polymerization ((a chemical process in which many small molecules combine to build much larger molecules called polymers)) and the resulting fibers would be stronger...
...plant's output showed that this hypothesis was unfounded. More important, the aviation industry switched from rayon cord to metallic cord. Whatever rationale the Baikal complex may once have had -- and it never offset the potential harm to the lake -- vanished. Construction nevertheless went ahead, with whole armies of officials defending their decision and saving face by insisting on the complex's importance for the defense of the country, the usual clinching argument...