Word: descending
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...increasingly crushing pressure and the laborious decompression process required to purge the blood of nitrogen (which can form bubbles as a diver returns to the surface and cause the excruciating and sometimes fatal condition known as the bends). And pressurized diving suits make it possible for humans to descend only to 1,440 ft.--far short of the deepest reaches of the oceans...
Underwater vehicles date back at least to 1620. But it wasn't until Barton's bathysphere came along that scientists could descend to any respectable depth. The Bathysphere eventually took Barton and zoologist William Beebe to a record 3,028 ft., off Bermuda. But it wasn't at all maneuverable: it could only go straight down and straight back up again. Swiss engineer Auguste Piccard solved the mobility problem with the first true submersible, a dirigible-like vessel called a bathyscaphe, which consisted of a spherical watertight cabin suspended below a buoyant gasoline-filled pontoon. (A submersible is simply...
Would not Bosnia--I hear it's lovely this time of year--profit if tens of thousands of tourists were to descend with dollars and cameras? Would the Heisenberg gaze of strangers shame the ethnic purifiers and spoil the snipers' aim? Would commercialism defeat tribalism? Or maybe Disney could take over the war and give the fighters blanks and dummy mortar shells to fire: they would enact their hatreds daily as a permanent tourist attraction...
...visitors who descend on the park each day are a mere trickle compared with the daily flood tide of 27,000 that park officials expect in July and August. By midsummer, they predict, hour-long waits for shuttle buses to the overlooks will be common. Fistfights will break out in parking lots as thousands of motorists compete for 2,000 slots. So many hikers will suffer from exhaustion and other heat-related problems that park rangers will be forced to practice triage, leaving the least seriously affected vacationers at the bottom of the canyon to fend for themselves. Says...
Walzer's inability to descend from the academic tower and make a decision on an important issue of the day is reflective of a larger tension, that between the open mind and the strong backbone. How to reconcile continual questioning with the need to make decisions on contemporary issues? It is a question that is relevant far beyond the halls of an academic institution. Both qualities are not only beneficial, they are essential in society. Each of us, consciously or unconsciously, arrives at a moral or ethical system for making decisions, yet these systems are often unexamined and sometimes flawed...