Word: decay
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...situation, he could have made the film into a psychological study, a detective story, or a lover's confrontation. But his aim is merely to tease the possibilities of all three, just enough to provide a context for his real interest which is to create a parable of the decay of capitalist consciousness. The hallucinating mind of Antonio comes to represent a political system deprived of coherence, left only to a bombast of images of its growth, crimes, guilts and fears. The plot is a contrivance to make feasible the various fantasies and surreal dramas that provide the core...
Agronomists have managed to calculate and predict crop disasters, but when it comes to urban blights, no one has devised a coherent method for measuring them, let alone overcoming them. Poverty, crime, narcotics, pollution and sheer physical decay are the new locusts, as terrifyingly confusing as Egypt's plagues...
Having eliminated various factors that might have accounted for the decay slowdown-such as a lack of oxygen or the presence of any substance with preservative qualities-the scientists decided to double-check and expand their findings by suspending marine bacteria and nutrients at even greater depths. They concluded that the rate of degradation is an average of "ten to 100 times slower in the deep sea." In the deep, they found, there seems to be "a general slowdown of life processes," probably due to the "combined effect of high pressure and low temperature." Alvin's sandwiches, for example...
...early-warning system: the cries of startled birds, the fetid scent of the deadly fer-de-lance, the click-click of an enraged wild boar. Xumu, the old chief of the Amahuaca, also instructed him in jungle medicine. The stem of the paka nixpo plant, when chewed, prevented tooth decay for years; the extract of the ayahuasca vine was especially prized for producing visions that, Córdova-Rios says, actually enhance human intelligence. After many adventures-hunting, harvesting rubber, procuring arms for the tribe-Córdova-Rios eventually tired of the Indians' pettiness and "musky odor...
...will give the city a stake in development of new communities outside the city," said Locke. "We're trying to develop a new lifestyle to overcome social problems. This entire region will stand or fall together. Today, there are people living in a sea of social and economic decay while affluence blooms around them. If the present situation continues, the city will be dead in ten years, and the suburbs will go in the eleventh...