Word: plasticity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...computer digests the rectangle of plastic you hand her. "Yes, you've got a bad case of flu," she says reassuringly. "I'm having the pharmacy create a drug for you. It'll be ready before you're dressed, and you should be as good as new by tomorrow...
...never regenerate themselves. If you nick your finger with a knife, the cut will heal in a few days because your skin has the ability to generate new cells. But when something bad happens to the brain, it doesn't repair itself. Why's that? "The brain is not plastic," says Snyder. "It doesn't make new cells. You are born with more brain cells than you need, and you lose them progressively and get dumber and dumber as you get older--or so went the conventional wisdom...
...consumer markets, recycling has already spawned an army of alchemists. Jackets are being made from discarded plastic bottles, briefcases from worn-out tires and belts from beer-bottle caps. Even though the U.S. has barely begun to get serious about recycling, about 25% of its 430 billion lbs. of municipal garbage is now salvaged, at least temporarily, for some sort of second life...
Williams explained that each of her songs "tunnels through the experience of being a woman." The poetry resonates in me: "I am the brainchild, I am the mortar, with a plastic trophy and an eating disorder and a vision as big as a great big wall, and they tell me that I'll move forward for the good of us all." This illustrates the dilemma women face, as we are expected to be the mortar which holds society and family together, but also encouraged to move forward, though unable to see past the aesthetic images which also colonize our minds...
Propped against the computer in my Lowell House room is a plastic figurine of a bald little man wearing sunglasses, army boots and a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt bearing the words "death before unconsciousness." His presence is not an ode to Hunter S. Thompson, nor to any passion of mine for hallucinogenic substances; instead he stands in homage to G. B. Trudeau, the creator of the political cartoon Doonesbury...