Word: decay
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CLAUDIUS Hurtling back through history for a couple of millenniums, we encounter the parlous state of Rome in decay as depicted in I, Claudius. Historical plays of this sort are like a cram course with illustrated color slides. The audience can never quite settle down to the entertainment for fear of some impending exam. Knowing the names of the characters does not really help, since their natures change with bewildering rapidity. Click: here is Messalina gamely struggling to protect her virginity from Caligula. Presto: here is Messalina, Empress to Claudius, cuckolding him wholesale in the foulest brothels of Rome...
...fossil-laden sediment from the ocean floor. The standard method for determining the age of fossils is the so-called carbon 14 clock, which is based on the ratio of ordinary carbon atoms to atoms of the radioactive isotope carbon 14 found in the specimen. The carbon 14 atoms decay at a known rate and are not replenished after the creature dies; thus the proportion of ordinary carbon to carbon 14 slowly increases. But the carbon clock only works up to about 50,000 years after the death of the organism. After that time, almost all the carbon...
...President Salvador Allende Gossens bragged that "the Chilean road toward socialism has been reached with the least cost of any other revolution in the world." Unfortunately for Marxist Allende, Chile's socialist road now seems to be rather bumpy. Last week, in the wake of continuing economic decay, Allende announced a sweeping austerity program of "work, sacrifice and savings...
...Politics. If McGovern can win without them, he will have proved that a candidate can bypass such traditional intermediaries and go directly to the people. He will have shown both the labor hierarchy and the big-city machine to be in a more advanced state of decay than anybody had thought. At this point it looks as if McGovern will have to do without their services. Both Meany and Daley have made it clear that they have been mortally offended, and neither is one to forgive or forget an insult, much less a public humiliation...
...decay of the antique buildings provides part of the reason, but San Quentin is also the victim of a spreading view that prisons simply do not work. Over the past two years, judges in Arkansas, California and Pennsylvania have ruled that certain local jails are so bad they violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. One federal judge in Wisconsin, taking a slightly bolder view, recently wrote, "I am persuaded that the institution of prison probably must end." At last month's meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, California Deputy Attorney General Nelson...