Word: packed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scientists calculate that for objects having diameters of 100 m or more that are spotted late in the game and intercepted at a distance any closer than about 150 million km (93 million miles), only nuclear explosives pack enough wallop to avert disaster. At that distance, the energy needed to deflect a 2-km-wide (1 1/4-mile) object enough to spare Earth is about the equivalent of a 1-megaton nuclear explosion. If the object gets to about a tenth of that distance, the energy required is 100 megatons, more powerful than any nuclear device yet exploded...
...week, when movie and music stars descended on Washington in numbers not seen since the bond drives of World War II. The whole wide world of American tinsel and twang -- Oprah Winfrey, Little Richard, Kenny Rogers, Bill Cosby, Kathleen Battle, Macaulay Culkin, Harry Belafonte -- showed up, swelling the Rat Pack of John F. Kennedy's day to Hamelin proportions, offering its best wishes to a new Administration. Chuck Berry updated the lyrics to his '50s chugger Reelin' and Rockin': "I set my watch and it was quarter to eight,/ You know, Bill's gonna get this country straight." Rapper...
...other taxes to raise are two voluntary ones: tobacco and gasoline. In Canada and the United Kingdom the tax on a pack of cigarettes is more than $3. Here, with state taxes, it's 50 cents. If we added a buck (still lower than Germany and about the same as France), we'd raise $20 billion a year. Anyone who didn't want to pay could switch to one of the cheaper "generic" brands (only 13% have so far) and save much of the tax that way; smoke less; or quit. Side benefits: high prices deter kids from becoming smokers...
Does all this mean that the scientists, conservationists and cleanup crews can pack their bags and go home? Hardly. Conservation groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have been using the spill in the Shetlands as a bully pulpit to raise public awareness of the very real danger of the world's overreliance on oil. And, of course, a dramatic event in which animals are threatened makes fund raising easier. Greenpeace ads featuring oil-coated birds and soliciting donations appeared in British papers four days after the accident...
Hits: Aladdin (the only animated offering in the pack, grabbing $114 million), A Few Good Men (Tom Cruise=$55 million), The Bodyguard (Kevin Costner=$88 million, despite intense critical pummeling) and Home Alone 2, the failure-proof sequel that has rung up $146 million, already placing it in the top three of 1992's big earners, along with Batman Returns and Lethal Weapon 3 -- also sequels that offered more of the same...