Word: dirt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hesitation. We sent a friend down to check it out, and we were somewhat disturbed when she told us about the broken window ("I think they threw a baseball through it") and the fact that it was "really dirty," but no matter. We figured we could handle a little dirt. We were also concerned by the fact that our overtenants kept saying things like, "Yeah, we're really glad we found you girls--we heard girl tenants are supposed to be the best kind. We know girl tenants will take good care of the house." As the "girl tenants...
...front door, we gasped. The house was in a state of utter disrepair. The basement had recently flooded, the ceiling had a hole in it and the entire interior of the house was coated with a thick layer of grime. As we walked through the house, we saw more dirt and destruction than we had ever seen indoors. The furniture was falling apart, and every abandoned wall-hanging--from the grubby Olympics posters to the 8-by-10 foot American flag (in patriotic red, gray and blue)--was a cover for a "Shawshank Redemption"-style hole in the plaster walls...
After bombarding the reddish dirt with helium nuclei and analyzing the resulting patterns of radiation, the spectrometer revealed that the soil was rich in iron and virtually identical to that examined at other sites 21 years earlier by the Viking landers. This suggested to scientists that Martian topsoil is widely distributed by the planet's frequent global dust storms. Why the reddish hue? "The surface of Mars is rusting," explains Jim Bell, a Cornell University scientist...
Moving on, Sojourner headed toward a nearby, bear-shaped rock named Yogi, stopping on the way to test the consistency of the soil by using five of its wheels for traction and one to dig into the dirt. Sojourner's cameras showed that the rover's shove had displaced what seemed to be a thin layer of crust over the soil. "We used the rover as sort of a bulldozer," explained Golombek...
...human types, I am aware of the effect of their conspiratorial, scandal-seeking message on my own assumptions and world views. Although I laugh at their incredulous reports, the pernicious element of these papers is that they undermine trust; they create an environment where the given is illegality and dirt, and only the naive believes anything else. So as not to seem gullible and provincial, we become more suspicious of the government, more disenchanted with public officials and more complacent about the general lack of humanity among our fellow citizens...