Word: plasticities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...couple in New York City who had vowed to live a whole year without toilet paper. They were conducting an experiment in environmentally low-impact living as research for a book, they said. For a year they would eschew transportation that emits carbon dioxide, shun foods wrapped in plastic packaging and, most dramatically, conduct the elimination of their waste without the aid of wasteful paper products. I mull the logistics of paperless hygiene as I load a family-size pack of Charmin Ultra Soft into my Subaru Forester. According to the plastic packaging, each roll contains...
...observe ordinary roach behavior, Halloy and his colleagues created an enclosure with two "shelters" inside - red-tinted plastic disks mounted so that roaches could scurry underneath to avoid bright light, which they do instinctively. When the insects were dumped into the enclosure, they scrambled around randomly for a while, but eventually all huddled under the same shelter. That they huddled is no surprise, since roaches like to gather in crowds. But since cockroaches don't have enough intelligence to allow for leadership skills or even communication, the fact that they collectively decide on one shelter looks, says Halloy, "like...
...owned by former Indian Airlines engineer B.C. Gupta. Take, for example, the safety demonstration. After asking for a volunteer from the 120 or so kids crammed, some two to a seat, in the plane's economy-class cabin, flight attendant Ridhi Sehgal explains how the oxygen masks work. A plastic deck chair appears, and Sehgal helps the volunteer, a worried-looking boy of 7, up onto it so that the other passengers can see him. "This is just for show," Sehgal explains. "You don't have to stand on your chair. The oxygen will drop down to you." The perky...
...were as suspicious of Vietnam humor as they were of mother-in-law jokes. Their stuff was apolitical--but radical. It challenged the very notion of making people laugh. When Albert Brooks impersonated a mime so inept he must describe his movements, or Andy Kaufman turned on a plastic record player and lip-synched to the Mighty Mouse theme song, the laughter was uneasy or unheard. Audiences were forced to wonder: Is this supposed to be funny? And that was funny, in a new way. By renouncing the notion of the stand-up as sage and replaying the silly gags...
...company typically uses moldable plastic over several layers of metal, but the details depend on the application. Creating the sensors hasn't been easy. Vice president of engineering Jonathan Luke says that rather than any one eureka moment, there has been "a lot of trial and error"--right out of the Thomas Edison playbook...