Word: sheer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tough. Playing in the spotty Pacific Coast Conference, Oregon was a two-time loser in its last three games. And Ohio State's brawny Buckeyes, despite an opening-game upset by Texas Christian, were undefeated in the mighty Big Ten. From San Diego to Portland, bookies hefted the sheer weight of the Ohio State ground attack and made the visitors the favorites by as much as 24 points...
When you come right down to it, The Bridge on the River Kwai is only a war melodrama. Its only valid "meaning" is as a glorification of human courage. Its primary appeal is not to the understanding or the esthetic sense, but to whatever in us is receptive to sheer physical action. But as such, it is a very fine movie, a highly effective blend of tension and irony...
...science and the sheer fun of it, Zoologist Graham Hoyle of the University of Glasgow set about learning what puts the hop in the grasshopper. Writing in Scientific American, Hoyle tells how he used a slow-motion camera to analyze how the insect cocks its rear legs "by squatting with the femurs (thighs) doubled against the tibiae (shins)," rears up and takes off with a velocity of about 10 ft. per second. The jumping muscle of the grasshopper, which weighs only one twenty-fifth of a gram, develops "the astounding power of some 20,000 grams per gram...
Specter & Cheer. One major bright spot of the season is the "special," as TV now calls its "spectacular." The genre produced one sheer disaster-Mike Todd's go-minute commercial for Mike Todd on CBS-but its batting average has been lifted high with such hits as The Prince and the Pauper, The Green Pastures, Annie Get Your Gun and the NBC Opera production of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. Most of these were in color, but there was still no big breakthrough in sales to U.S. homes of color sets, which now number only...
...poorly indexed, studded with tantalizing gaps left by oversight, fire and disintegration. Nitrate-base film, widely used until 1948, has a lifetime of only 25 years. "It is not unusual," says an expert, "to open a can of film and find nothing but dust." Almost as frustrating is the sheer volume; the vaults of the U.S. armed forces alone hold 166 million feet visible to the public-enough to provide 3^ years of solid viewing, day and night...