Word: nodes
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Consider, for a moment, how memory is supposed to operate. Consider, that is, the hippocampus. A cashew-shaped node of tissue, the hippocampus sits deep in the temporal lobe of the brain, near the amygdala, which is the seat of emotions. If the brain has a gatekeeper of sensory information, the hippocampus is it. The aroma and sizzle of bacon frying, the smooth finish of polished granite, a phone number you need to call--all must pass through the hippocampus. Only if information gets in can it be moved along to the prefrontal cortex, where it will be held briefly...
...star as it was dying. Typically, a massive star exhausts the elemental fuel in its core and begins to collapse inward. The outer layers blow off in a huge flare we recognize as a supernova while the core becomes more and more compressed, eventually forming the infinitely dense node that is a black hole. In SN 2006gy, the sheer mass of the star produced so much core heat and gamma-ray radiation that it created matter and antimatter particle pairs. This blew the star to bits, leaving no cold core behind...
...lose more than $500 million a month in visitor dollars. J. Stephen Perry, head of the Convention and Visitors Board, says the empty and damaged hotels "are like Baghdad on a bad day." But for the national economy, what's more critical is that Katrina disrupted a vital node in the country's transport network. You name the commodity--coffee, fertilizer, lumber, steel, wheat--it ships through the Gulf's ports, rails and riverways. All told, Katrina knocked out a region that contributes $130 billion to GDP, roughly 1% of the national total, according to Economy.com Risk Management Solutions...
...last breath of the terrorists"--an assessment that even some U.S. commanders found unduly upbeat after yet another bloody week. "We have not broken the back of the insurgency," says a high-ranking U.S. officer. "The insurgency is like a cell-phone system. You shut down one node, another somewhere else comes online to replace...
...Archigram drawings and watercolors were musings about what the postindustrial city had become, a compact node of entertainments and spectacles in a society of people in motion. That's the spirit of Peter Cook's Instant City in a Field Long Elevation from 1969, a deadpan fantasia of a city with all its diversions that could be lowered from the air by balloon. The philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote that "the monuments of wit survive the monuments of power." If that's true, then these whimsical flights of fancy will still be around long after some of the uglier skylines...