Word: corde
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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...
...craze among the young, particularly in California, New Zealand and France. Many American TV viewers were introduced to it last month by a controversial (and now discontinued) Reebok sneaker ad that showed two men leaping from a bridge: in the final scene, one jumper dangles safely from an elastic cord while the other, wearing a different brand of shoes, has tumbled out of them -- presumably to his death...
Enthusiasts maintain that the thrills outweigh the risks. Jumpers leap headfirst from bridges, cranes and hot-air balloons, from 90 to 300 ft. above the ground, with only a long nylon-cased rubber bungee cord to break their fall. Anchored around the ankles or to a body harness, the wrist-thin cord is long enough to allow a few seconds of free fall before it stretches, dampening the force of the plunge. The jumper sometimes hurtles to within a few feet of the ground before rebounding skyward like a yo-yo as the cord snaps back to its original length...