Word: diminish
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...third of a century ago, before anyone had ever heard of videotapes or the World Wide Web or 24-hour TV news stations, Daniel Boorstin, in his uncannily prescient book The Image, described how, as we move deeper into what he called the Graphic Revolution, technology would threaten to diminish us. Ideas, even ideals, would be reduced to the level of images, he argued, and faith itself might be simplified into credulity. "Two centuries ago, when a great man appeared," the historian wrote, "people looked for God's purpose in him; today we look for his press agent...
...relegating the role of the Internet to the Politician's Next Great Cause, we diminish its value as a free forum and delude ourselves into thinking that the solution to a political or social problem is just that easy...
...beautiful thing about grade inflation is that as grades keep getting higher and higher, closing in on that perfect top mark, their importance must diminish considerably. This greedy, average generation of which we are a part is gloriously shooting itself in the foot. Whether it is because we need good grades to get ahead and teachers are rightly hesitant to deny us, because inflation is somehow natural or because people in America today simply have no backbone, in the not-too-long run, the "problem" will take care of itself. We'll all have such high grades, or at least...
After two hours of working and kneading, tension and knots begin to diminish. Not only that, but by the end of class, students are in a noticeably better mood...
Given the present state of knowledge, no one can tell. The more scientists learn about the earth's climate system, the more complex and interconnected it seems, and the harder it is to unravel. That does nothing to diminish the tremendous advances that have occurred over the past decade. In fact, it is only because they have learned so much that scientists are finally ready to tackle the questions that the current El Nino has so eloquently framed--questions that may still be formidable, but perhaps no longer quite so intractable...