Word: placidness
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...Placid Space. The best way to think of space as a navigable medium is to imagine the frictionless surface of a calm, glassy pond. Small objects drift across it easily, propelled by feeble forces. Scattered at wide intervals over the mirror surfaces are deep, sucking whirlpools. If a floating leaf drifts close to one of them, it plunges down to the bottom. A self-powered object, say a water insect, that gets sucked into a whirlpool has a terrible time battling back to the surface...
...force of the sun's light is extremely small-9X10-5 dynes per square centimeter, or about the weight of four cigarettes per acre of surface at the distance of the earth. But it is free and unfailing, and in the weightless, placid vacuum of space, large, frail sails might be spread to intercept it. For a starter, Dr. Cotter would like to try a 50-lb. space sailer. Once launched in the usual way to an orbit around the earth, the satellite would sprout a circular sail of thin plastic coated with shiny aluminum. If the satellite...
...been variously interpreted as sly and tender, coquettish and aloof, cruel and compassionate, seductive and supercilious. At Yale University last week an eminent British physician, visiting professor of the history of medicine, coolly swept aside all such adjectives and offered his own theory: the lady was smiling with "placid satisfaction" because she was pregnant...
...Thames, England, children sat at small tables last week putting colored pegs into holes. Except that the children were psychotics-mostly the scarred offspring of disturbed parents-the room had all the friendly calm of any normal kindergarten. What made it doubly so was the children's custodians, placid-looking young women in their early 20s, who spoke little but seemed unusually affectionate. They sat with their arms around the children, frequently hugged and kissed them. It was no chore to the women; they were all mental defectives, who think on a level close to that of their charges...
Weary of always being outvoted in the Diet, the Socialists have tried to outshout and outbrawl their opponents, at times reducing Japan's postwar democracy to a mess. Faced with these outbursts, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi remained politely placid, meek and smiling. "But Kishi's smile," the Socialists admit with just a trace of admiration, "is like a rose-it has thorns that slash." Last week, faced with the toughest battle in his 21 months in office, Kishi injected some thorny parliamentary shenanigans...