Word: nearer
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...stumbled onto something truly astonishing. The new supernova, some 50% closer to the beginning of the universe than any supernova known before, was far brighter than had been predicted. That neatly eliminated the idea of dust, since a more distant star should have been even more dust-dimmed than nearer ones. But the level of brightness also signaled that this supernova was shining when the expansion of the cosmos was still slowing down. "Usually," says Riess, "we see weird things and try to make our models of the universe fit. This time we put up a hoop for the observations...
...homo sapiens are easily flattered. We like dolphins because they seem to like us. They smile--or rather, their mouths curve upward in an illusion of cheeriness--and we feel the urge to touch, to pet, to be nearer. It hardly registers that dolphins smile even when they have nothing to be happy about...
...most extreme example was Daikatana, a game nearly five years in the making from John Romero, co-creator of Doom. Each successive E3 would offer tantalizing glimpses of an action-adventure that never seemed to get any nearer to completion, and ultimately got drubbed by the critics upon its release...
This made Japanese feel like country cousins and fed their anxiety about what others, and specifically others living nearer the centers of power, thought. There are stories about old rivalries with the Koreans, who were always a little closer to the Chinese metropole and thus, in Korean eyes, more civilized. As a deliberate ploy to make the Japanese feel provincial, Korean envoys would compose letters to the Japanese court in such obscure Chinese phrases that their Japanese recipients had trouble deciphering them...
...newlyweds began looking for a home to buy but found nothing they could afford in the city. Morgan was showing signs of what was to become a turbulent adolescence (documented in Adair's book Hold Me Close, Let Me Go), and the adults felt they needed to be nearer rather than farther apart. So Bill and Adair had little trouble persuading Jim to sell them the downstairs apartment he had previously rented out. "It immediately made things better for the kids," says Adair. She and Jim were able to coordinate strategies for dealing with Morgan and relieve each other when...