Word: cosmic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ability to perceive complex truths without doodling long equations on paper astounds his colleagues. "He has an ability to visualize four- dimensional geometry that is almost unique," says Werner Israel, a University of Alberta physicist who has collaborated with Hawking in relating mini-black holes to the new cosmic-string theories. Observes Kolb: "It's like Michael Jordan playing basketball. No one can tell Jordan what moves to make. It's intuition. It's feeling. Hawking has a remarkable amount of intuition...
...common knowledge that the engine that runs the Harvard men's squash team revs higher and works harder. In a road test yesterday at Hemenway Gym, the racquetmen powered past Tufts, 9-0, lending more cerdence to the Crimson's reputation for cosmic greatness...
James Oberg, a veteran U.S. Soviet space watcher, is impressed by Moscow's achievement but points to other serious physical dangers inherent in extended flights deeper into space. Perhaps the most significant: cosmic rays and high- energy radiation from the solar wind. Earth-orbiting space travelers like Romanenko are protected from this potentially deadly radiation by the earth's magnetic field. But, says Oberg, "there is no real experience anywhere on the effects of long-term, deep-space radiation exposure." Even so, with Romanenko's performance the Soviets bolstered their commanding lead over the U.S. in long-duration space flights...
...third suggestion, the Overpowering Assumption, I think, is best. But not for the reasons he suggests--that the assumption is so cosmic that it might be accepted. It is rarely "accepted;" we aren't here to accept or reject, we're here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay it is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course--and we all like to be called "assistants," not "graders"--you may be able to ferret...
There is a third method of dealing with examination questions--that is by the use of the overpowering assumption, an assumption so cosmic that it is sometimes accepted. For example, we wrote that it was pretty obvious that the vague generality was the key device in any discussion of examination writing. Why is it obvious? As a matter of fact it isn't obvious at all, but just an arbitrary point from which to start. That is an example of an unwarranted assumption...