Word: merest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seven fire extinguishers primed for instant use. However, a quick check showed that the alarm was set off by a sensor in the cargo area's aft bay No. 1 that had a history of being supersensitive, like a home smoke detector that goes off at the merest cigarette puff. Other sensors on Challenger's control panel were normal, and so, with the approval of flight engineers, the crew turned off the trigger-happy sensor, relying for fire warnings on the others aboard. "They handled it with easy skill," said one flight director, "like the old pros that...
...years of preparation, the contest can founder on the merest wisp of bad luck. But Australia II's performance so far, along with the New York Yacht Club's anguished reaction to that success, has created extraordinary confidence in the Aussie camp. Australia II's skipper, John Bertrand, 36, is already contemplating how Australia will change the rules after it captures the Cup. "If we win," he says, "we're going to make sure all sailcloth must be made of kangaroo hide. Then we are going to fill up a salt lake in the outback...
Franz Biberkopf presses his hands to the sides of his head, as if he were about to pulverize a rancid cantaloupe, and screams. He staggers wildly about the apartment-house courtyard, its high walls allowing the merest tantalizing glimpse of sky. This is Germany, 1927. As the nation spun from the humiliation of Versailles to economic and social anarchy, and then into the toxic delirium of the Third Reich, so Franz spins. A laborer and part-time pimp who has just been released from prison after serving four years for beating a girlfriend to death, Franz has few resources...
...right Surkov reflected Darwinism doesn't explain it. To create all this mysterious existence in only ten thousand million years--the merest blink of an eye. The spontaneous creation of order like the improvisatore's "Cleopatra" No, I can't believe it. It may have happened by impulse, but it's not random...
...Cottle, "celebrities express the feeling of being dehumanized by dint of their celebrity. I'm trying to recapture their humanity." The trouble is that his famous guests, performers by instinct, have a tendency to be psychic strippers. With the merest prodding they will shred the last thread of privacy and reveal intimate aspects of their lives. Cottle calls it the "strangers on a train" phenomenon. Yet his guests expose themselves to a faceless audience of millions, turning viewers into video voyeurs...