Word: shale
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...were in a very bad position, pinned down on the beach, with a German division in front of us and only water behind us. We had 7 yds. of beachhead with no cover; the highest thing around was a shale rock. The only way to get off the beach was to blow up a big tank trap that was blocking our way. Finally one of our guys took the trap out with a bangalore torpedo ((a metal tube packed with high explosives)). They sent me to find our commander, Colonel George Taylor, and tell him we'd opened a breach...
...Dust devil!" someone yells, and a stinging, 30-ft.-high spiral of sand, sagebrush, shale bits and a lizard or two snicks up the cliffside. Everyone grabs for the gliders, fluttering half assembled and helpless an hour before launch...
...LISTING of the great millennia always reminds me of the cross-sections of soil levels that we learned in science class. Topsoil, sedentary soil, shale coal, diamonds, oil, primordial sludge, fire brimstone the boogey monster and the other side of the globe...
...part it is a double entendre because the animals in the Burgess Shale are so peculiar and wonderful. It is also because the movie illustrates this fundamental concept of contingency: that is, George Bailey is about to commit suicide because Mr. Potter has stolen some money, which is going to drive Bailey's firm into bankruptcy, and he figures his life has been utterly insignificant. He says, "I wish I had never been born," and then follows that famous ten-minute scene that shows the town of Bedford Falls had George Bailey never been born. It is an alternate reality...
...with respect to your own view is that you can engage in a lot of vigilance and scrutiny so that you can try to identify your own biases. You hope that a consciousness of social embeddedness makes you more sensitive. So, yes, of course, the interpretations of the Burgess Shale are in part conditioned by what's happening in society. But there is also a basic factual issue. I think that the description of the anatomy of these organisms can be done with objectivity. It is how we interpret these animals, and what we say they mean for the history...