Word: flattening
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...globes are awkward to carry around. And no matter what gimmick is used, drawing the surface of a sphere on a flat plane results in distortion. Anyone who tries to flatten the whole peel of an orange can imagine the difficulty. The features of a globe cannot be transferred accurately to a flat map. If the shapes of continents are correct, the sizes are wrong; a system that is accurate at the equator is hopeless at the poles...
While the students roll chocolate heads and flatten rose petals, one might still ask why, when the trendiest folks seem intent on gobbling up the world's broccoli production and depleting the oceans of red fish, does mastery of chocolate remain so important? Says Hirsch: "You can read people a list of a dozen unique desserts in a restaurant and they'll say, 'What was that chocolate thing you said? I'll have that.' I don't know why, but Saturday night in America is chocolate night." Kumin and his growing legion of graduates seem intent on spreading the sweetness...
...downright sexy. But it is also true that in preparing for Big, one scene of which displays all but a few centimeters of Hanks' pelt, he had to work out for weeks at a Manhattan gym, huffing and puffing to reduce that upholstered posterior, expand that narrow chest and flatten that soft stomach. Even so, he will not give Arnold Schwarzenegger any competition. In fact he found himself gasping at the end of a tough scene in which he and Robert Loggia dance a duet on giant piano keys embedded in the floor of a toy store. "It was exhausting...
...Superman lore. Like the proposition that Superman's sun sign is Leo. Or that he voted for Reagan in the past two elections. Or that one of his leaps over a skyscraper would require an acceleration force 20,000 times his weight and thus would cause hurricanes that would flatten any bystanders. The book also tackles trickier questions, like whether Superman is still a virgin. Also, is Superman Jewish? His creators are, and Dr. Joseph Goebbels is reputed to have denounced the man of steel as a non-Aryan, but one of the book's contributors boldly answers...
...unwed teenager, Jesse learned early that his real father, Noah Robinson, lived right next door. This was in Greenville, S.C., and big Noah was a local hero, a handsome, hardworking man no one dared challenge. If pushed too far, Noah Robinson would flatten adversaries, even whites, with his fists. "He was a black Lone Ranger," recalls a half brother of Jesse's, Noah Robinson Jr. "Jesse loved our father, but he felt totally rejected." When he was nine, Jesse used to stand in the yard and gaze across at his father's ) house. If a face appeared in the window...