Word: procession
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ever since 1776, when Manhattan's first reservoir was built on lower Broadway and pipes made of hollow logs were laid in the streets, New York City has been trying to keep ahead of its thirst. At first it was a simple process; though the population jumped from 22,000 to 60,000 in the 25 years after the Revolution, many of the newcomers simply dug their own wells. But as the city mushroomed into a monstrous mechanism of steel, stone and subterranean conduits, it became helplessly dependent on the surrounding country...
...scientists made an astonishing discovery: 24 of the bodies were completely mummified and in an excellent state of preservation; other bodies, although skeletons, were still held together by their ligaments. How were the bodies preserved? The experts disagreed. Some attributed the mummification to the climate, others to some unknown process of embalming, probably of Moorish or perhaps even Egyptian origin. The nuns had a simpler explanation. Said Sister Blanca: "They were all saints. Their bodies could not decay...
...scientists who having a command of their subject to begin with, learn to express their thoughts in prose clear and simple enough that the average person can understand it; in short, they successfully "write down" to their reader. Possibly the worst science writing is the reverse of this process; a journalists or some other unqualified commentator "writes up" to a subject, trying to explain to the reader something that he himself only vaguely understands. In "Cancer", Bewa Doherty attempts just such a feat and fails rather miserably...
...that one treatment for cancer is the use of "radioactive isotopes from the heart of the smashed atom." Now radioactive isotopes have something to do with atomic energy, but by no stretch of the imagination do they reside in the hearts of atoms nor are they released in the process of nuclear fission. There are several other bad errors...
Basing his conclusion on the assumptions that human behavior is a natural phenomenon and is an orderly process, Zipf listed three impediments to world domination. The first is the movement of persons, goods, information, and services which is subject to the harmonic law, governing the rank and size of cities...