Word: harmless
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...would lead to all sorts of natural disasters, including the disruption of rainfall patterns. (Lindow and his backers say this is hogwash. They note that the ice-fighting bacteria, developed into a commercial product called Frostban, was sprayed on a test field in 1987. As they predicted, it proved harmless.) Typically, Rifkin would plunge into a scientific setting, armed with papers from dissident researchers, and warn about the potentially catastrophic consequences of inadequately regulated research. Says geneticist Zinder: "The accusations are made simply, with simple words. But the proof is very sophisticated and often difficult to grasp." Rifkin acknowledges that...
...daily mail from the mailbox. Our lives here at Harvard can be very complex. That is undeniable. Yet compared to most of the world's people, we lead easy existences, and we are generally pretty complacent about doing so. An interruption of our habitual activities by an ultimately harmless "shooting" or a draft card can shock us into at least a temporary awareness of our complacency...
...seem to be caught in a time warp, perhaps in the decade of the 1820s, when subsistence hunting was an important food source for most families. Bears, these days, behave like large raccoons. They are smart, cute, hungry corn thieves and garbage raiders, happy in the suburbs and virtually harmless. Last year the state paid less than $7,000 to corn farmers because of bear damage. This is a tolerable figure. It would cost more to keep a bear in the zoo. A citizen determined to be grumpy might reflect that while the last recorded human fatality from a bear...
...Government isn't the solution; it's the problem." As a candidate and a President, Ronald Reagan loved that line. But Reagan seemed simply to be indulging in harmless hyperbole or offering his version of the time-honored aphorism that government is best when it governs least. Surely he did not seriously propose to dismantle an institution that had brought the U.S. through two world wars, restored stability during the Depression and played a major part in developing one of the highest standards of living on earth...
...earth's protective ozone layer. A group of British scientists reported in 1985 that the ozone layer over Antartica had been diminished by 40 percent. Despite global agreements to curb their use, CFCs' destructive potential lasts long after they are released. And even CFC- free styromfoams are not harmless; they will clog our landfills for centuries to come...