Word: recentering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Americans are morally outraged whenever war atrocities bubble to the surface, as they have in recent revelations of the July 1950 killing of civilians by G.I.s at No Gun Ri, South Korea [NATION, Oct. 11]. Somehow we feel that we are above this type of behavior, that we are the protectors of democracy and freedom. But we forget that in times of war, every human being is capable of behavior that would never occur in times of peace and prosperity. The My Lai massacre is a reminder of that painful past. But do isolated terrible acts make us a nation...
Jonathan Weiner is the Pulitzer-prizewinning author of The Beak of the Finch. His most recent book is Time, Love, Memory
...heal itself. In 1988 neuroscientist Martin Schwab of the University of Zurich isolated substances in the central nervous system whose sole purpose appears to be to block growth. In a healthy spine, the chemicals establish boundaries that regulate cell growth. After an injury, they do little but harm. In recent years, however, Schwab has developed antibodies that neutralize the growth blockers, allowing regeneration to occur...
Unfortunately, this isn't just a matter of productive capacity. Mass production of meat has also become a staggering source of pollution. Maybe cow pies were once just a pastoral joke, but in recent years livestock waste has been implicated in massive fish kills and outbreaks of such diseases as pfiesteria, which causes memory loss, confusion and acute skin burning in people exposed to contaminated water. In the U.S., livestock now produce 130 times as much waste as people do. Just one hog farm in Utah, for example, produces more sewage than the city of Los Angeles. These megafarms...
What has proved an unsustainable burden to the life of the planet is also proving unsustainable for the planet's dominant species. In China a recent shift to meat-heavy diets has been linked to increases in obesity, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and colorectal cancer. U.S. and World Health Organization researchers have announced similar findings for other parts of the world. And then there are the growing concerns about what happens to people who eat the flesh of animals that have been pumped full of genetically modified organisms, hormones and antibiotics...