Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Scientists say that the American prairie was born of circumstances unique in the world. Unlike the pampas of Argentina or the South African veld, the North American prairie was molded in part by continental glaciers, which enriched the earth with a deep base of pulverized rock. "The original prairie soils are fluffy, loamy, aerated, and that contributes to amazing productivity," says John Madson, author of Where the Sky Began, a natural history of the prairie. The Rockies govern the climate, forcing the prevailing winds that blow off the Pacific to give up moisture and continue eastward too dry to nourish...
...Italian art dealer whose purplish prose has long been one of the hazards of Marcel Duchamp scholarship. Alchemy sought to change base metals into gold and silver. More broadly, it embraced astrology and occult religion, being founded on the picture of a fourelement universe (air, water, fire and earth) proposed by Empedocles in the 5th century B.C. There was an early link between alchemy, technology and art, since ancient glassblowers and metalworkers were always trying to make base stuff look like gold and silver. Over the centuries, alchemy gave painters, notably Hieronymus Bosch, a rich vein of fantasy...
Scholars know about Jefferson's insistence that "the earth belongs to the living, not to the dead," and how he wanted that principle applied to eliminating national debts, particularly war debts. But few practitioners of today's politics have read those admonitions. Jefferson contended that one generation, which he meticulously calculated from the rough data available to run about 19 years, should not unreasonably burden its successors. He believed sufficient taxes should be levied to clear the books in that 19-year stretch so that a new generation could face its own problems unencumbered. That pay- as-you-go principle...
...make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law," he wrote. He felt, like few other men of his age, the inexorable current of humankind in which the only constant was change. But, of course, he was too much the dreamer. His friend James Madison brought him down to earth, pointing out that generations were not mere tidy mathematical certainties and that debts, like those incurred for the American Revolution, could benefit those who were to come. As always, Jefferson acknowledged the wisdom of Madison's view, but he could never rid himself of the feeling that unrestrained debt...
...ever-increasing numbers of Homo sapiens inhabiting our planet have caused worry among statesmen and scholars about how the earth can support so many human mouths to feed, he said...