Word: marvell
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...islands of the Maldives--little circles and half-moons of platinum sand--seem as fragile as they are exquisite. To see them is to marvel--as Charles Darwin did--that they did not long ago succumb to "the all-powerful and never-tiring waves." But as Darwin went on to explain, these islands are more substantial than they seem. They are in fact the visible crests of massive limestone reefs that extend from the sea floor to the surface. The limestone is made of the consolidated skeletons of tiny marine organisms, including untold generations of coral polyps that millions...
When it was first attempted nearly 20 years ago, the operation was hailed as a marvel of technical virtuosity and medical logic. Cerebral bypass surgery was designed to circumvent one of the most common causes of strokes: a blockage in one of the arteries that carry blood to the brain. To reroute blood around a blocked vessel, the surgeon uses a nearby, less vital artery to build a bypass road. Taking this detour, blood continues to flow to the brain, and the risk of a stroke's occurring is presumably lessened...
...system is an engineering marvel of the first order. It is designed to move precious Colorado River water, at the rate of more than 10 million cu. ft. per hour, from Lake Havasu on the California border southeast across the state to the expanding population centers of Phoenix and Tucson. A series of 14 pumping stations will force the water through a seven-mile tunnel in the Buckskin Mountains and lift the load 2,900 ft. over the course of a seven-day journey. The flow is monitored by a Modcomp JC 5000 computer situated in CAP headquarters near Phoenix...
...that inevitable query, there are two plausible responses. One is "Of course, this is a Disney picture." The other is "Shut up." Shut up and marvel anew at the wonders of Disney animation. It used to be that serious people objected to the strange, destabilizing jumble of motives and styles that so rapidly alternate in the typical animated feature from the studio. Always trying to have it both ways, they said, blending the humorous and the horrific, the benign and the baleful. Scared the grown-ups and muddled the moppets. Or was it the other way around? Anyway...
Commodore officials insist that the Amiga is a technological marvel, rivaling in quality professional graphics systems (see COMPUTERS). The machine has a color palette of 4,096 hues, animation abilities that make soccer balls bounce, and a keyboard that sounds like a banjo one minute and an electric guitar the next. Computer buffs are impressed, but the general public seems skeptical about all home machines. WINE Guaranteed Not to Freeze...