Word: massing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Elah, The Kingdom, Rendition, Lions for Lambs and Redacted--and soon, Badland, Grace Is Gone and Charlie Wilson's War. Most are worthy; some feature Oscar-winning actors and directors. And so far, all show how tough it is to turn this war into edifying entertainment for the mass audience...
...cater to those fickle younger audiences, BBC3 has scored several successes, including the exuberantly tasteless comedy Little Britain. Featuring such popular characters as a pugnacious, latex-clad homosexual named Dafydd Thomas, who has the deluded belief he is "the only gay in the village," Little Britain has won a mass following, yet BBC3 attracts only a 3.7% share of 16-to-24-year-olds. Veteran broadcaster John Humphrys advocated that BBC3 and its posher, arts-oriented sister BBC4 should be axed to save money. After all, he harrumphed, they're watched by "only...
...staffing (23,000 before the new round of cuts) and budgets but leaves the range of activities pretty much intact. There's a constant tension between the BBC's aim of making what Byford calls "brilliant, outstanding, special, standout content" and the need to justify its existence by attracting mass audiences, which, as Fox Television has proved, tend to gather at the bottom of the taste pyramid. Consider the huge popularity of reality TV, which is cheap to produce and capable of provoking controversy that hooks big audiences. Controversy is, of course, hard to control. Channel 4's last...
...newly found planet has about half the mass of Saturn, but its orbit places it about 73 million miles (117 million km) from 55 Cancri, or 20 million miles (32 million km) closer to it than Earth is to the sun. That gives the planet a roughly Earthlike year of 260 days and, more important, puts it in what astronomers call the habitable zone, the distance from its sun at which liquid water can exist. The planet is too dense and gaseous to harbor life as we know it, but if it has any moons, they could be warm enough...
...before long--and the discovery of life on other worlds could get a whole lot closer. The 55 Cancri Family of Planets [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] A SIMILIAR SYSTEM? The Star 55 Cancri is 41 light-years away and roughly the same mass and age as our sun. Here's how the orbits of its planets compare to our solar system...