Word: precursor
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...with the text's mood and meaning? It quickly becomes clear that the spirit of "The Hollowmen" is based on a shallow, but understandable, misinterpretation of the poem, whose repetition of certain apocalyptic words and images--"broken," "death," "dream," "hollow"--can make it seem merely psychedelic, the precursor of Jim Morrison's lyrics...
...life happened to form elsewhere in the solar system first, muses biochemist Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, then it's at least possible that something more complex could have been included in the cargo--not necessarily a living organism but a molecular precursor that could have given life on Earth "a kind of kick start...
...such cutting-edge performers as Beck, Tricky and Rage Against the Machine, Sublime draws confidently on the group's new CD from both alternative rock and avant-garde hip-hop, creating a sound that is sharp and soulful. The band also tosses reggae and ska (a faster, jerkier reggae precursor) into the sonic mix, resulting in songs that are hard to categorize and harder still to resist. While much of today's pop wallows in recycled schlock rock from the '70s (Kiss) and rehashed alternative rock from last week (just turn on the radio), Sublime offers up a sound that...
...Catholic Charities, worked side by side with government. Conservatives have lamented the fact that today's newest associations are often parochial, nimby-style protest groups. But even in the sepia-tinted past, many associations were formed in reaction to perceived injustice--we've just forgotten the original provocation. The precursor of the PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, was formed in part to help push through laws for women's pensions. The American Legion lobbied for the G.I. Bill. "Organized civil society in the United States has never flourished apart from active government," Skocpol has written...
Floods. Droughts. Hurricanes. Twisters. Are all the bizarre weather extremes we've been having lately normal fluctuations in the planet's atmospheric systems? Or are they a precursor of the kind of climactic upheavals that can be expected from the global warming caused by the continued buildup of CO2 and the other so-called greenhouse gases? Scientists are still not sure. But one of the effects of the unusual stretch of weather over the past 15 years has been to alert researchers to a new and perhaps even more immediate threat of the warming trend: the rapid spread of disease...