Word: shapes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...over the conduct of foreign affairs. The trip to Russia of Senator Humphrey, the remarks of Senator Fulbright both before and since his ascension to the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, and the speech last week of Senator Mansfield on Berlin are recent examples of their endeavors to shape and influence policy...
Since then three editors have tried to shape this mass into an orderly autobiography. The first version appeared in 1924, and by cutting out all seemingly offensive passages. Editor Albert Bigelow Paine tried to keep Mark Twain's reputation as spotless as his linen. In 1940 Bernard DeVoto published another portion of the manuscript. Now Charles Neider, novelist and essayist, gives what seems closest to the truth of the matter...
Japan has long had a special regard for the navel. The shape of the umbilicus of a newborn baby would be discussed at length, and if it happened to point downward, the parents would brace themselves for a weakling child who would bring them woe. The thunder god Raijin, with his terrifying drums, his great horns and long tusks, was said to have an insatiable appetite for young navels, and mothers had constantly to nag their youngsters to keep themselves well covered up. But for all the national preoccupation with it, the navel in Japan never quite achieved the status...
Once the gravitational variations had been measured, the NASA scientists could calculate their effect on the shape of the earth. The excess of gravitation around the North Pole, for instance, indicates an extra 200-ft. bulge of rock over an area equivalent to the Atlantic Ocean. This extra mass would attract enough sea water to raise sea level about 50 ft. above the theoretical curve of an ideally plastic earth. None of the newfound bulges are large compared to the polar spin-flattening (about 13 miles), but they may cast new light on the earth's mysterious interior...
...exist if the earth were a simple, spinning mass of plastic material. One possibility: the earth's mantle (the 1,800-mile layer below the crust) may not be as plastic as has been thought. It may have mechanical strength, like brickwork, that keeps the earth out of shape. Another possibility: the bulges are supported by slow currents in the mantle, which push up the surface like massive bubbles in a spring...