Word: polarization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...neither the acting nor the story matters much here; the movie is simply the sum of its 3D effects. In recent years some upscale films, notably Robert Zemeckis' Polar Express and Beowulf, have been available in 3D. Yet for a viewer to put on those glasses, still as cumbersome a visual appliance as they were in the '50s, is to surrender to cheesiness. (I tell moviemakers who want to work in the format: get back to me when you invent 3D without specs...
...Eastern Europe. (An estimated two billion people in the world suffer from iodine deficiency, which can lead to goiter and which can be prevented with iodized salt.) For $19 million, this problem can essentially be solved. Delivering salt to the developing world isn't as dramatic as saving the polar bear, but the benefit of reducing human suffering is real. "It shouldn't be about who has the cutest animal," says Lomborg. "It's about the value of life...
...Seen It The "A Kangaroo from Space" item in Briefing asserted that the polar ice caps are "currently shrinking because of global warming" [June 2]. But the ice at the Antarctic has been expanding for 30 years. The New Zealand Antarctic Centre currently shows a display that quantifies the recent growth in the South Pole ice cap. If publications with your status and resources can't get the facts right, what hope has the general public of coming to grips with the complexities of climate change? John Watt, Brisbane, Queensland...
Never was the oddly ex post facto quality of celestial news more surreally on display than on May 25, when the Phoenix spacecraft touched down on Mars, the first landing ever in the Red Planet's polar region. In order to arrive at its destination in one piece, Phoenix had to cap its sleepy 10-month journey with a fiery 7-min. plunge through the atmosphere, during which it opened its parachutes, jettisoned its heat shield, fired its engines and decelerated from a blistering 12,700 m.p.h. (20,400 km/h) to a toe-in-the-dust touchdown speed...
...Phoenix Lander is something of a make-good for the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander (MPL), which crashed near the south pole in 1999. The two spacecraft share the same design and Phoenix was originally headed to the planet as Mars Surveyor 2001 until the MPL crash prompted NASA to mothball the project. After correcting several design flaws, NASA resurrected Surveyor as the Mars Phoenix Lander. The space agency, which spent $100 million on Surveyor, has invested another $420 million in the improved vehicle. The Canadian Space Agency contributed another $37 million for a weather station...