Word: sheerly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Torvill and Dean once carved perfection, the jam-packed crowd of children looks like it is having recess on an oil slick: hardly a child in Sarajevo had owned a pair of skates until the Olympic rinks were built, but they manage to stay upright, so far more on sheer enthusiasm than grace...
KINETIC-ENERGY WEAPONS. They are simply objects like rockets, homing vehicles or even pellets fired at a missile, bus or warhead to destroy it by sheer impact. They are potentially effective at any stage from boost to re-entry, and can be fired either from the ground or from space. Their technology is well enough developed to make them available by the 1990s, much earlier than any of the beam weapons. Indeed, a terminal defense of sorts could be put into place right now. Main drawbacks: the range of kinetic-energy weapons is measured in hundreds rather than thousands...
...changed in recent years. Beaty visited Central and South America, where he had, as he puts it, "whispered interviews with cocaine traffickers in Rio nightclubs, a clandestine meeting with one of Panama's most influential smugglers, and spirited political discussions with coca plantation owners in Bolivia." But given the sheer size, profitability and economic importance of the dope trade, Beaty says, "it wasn't surprising that some of my most secret meetings were held not with cocaine barons but with hard-pressed Latin American prosecutors or opposition politicians, who described the involvement of their country's military and political establishment...
...record numbers for European vacation trips, to find antique bargains in London and enjoy three-star meals in Paris. Travel agencies report bookings are up more than 100% over last year. Says Jane Levin of Boston's Garber Travel: "Europe is going to sink into the ocean under the sheer weight of American tourists. In 24 years in the travel business, I have never seen it so busy so early. It's incredible." The strong dollar has also brought benefits to the American consumer. By making imports cheaper, the dollar's rise means that consumers have more foreign products...
That is a prospect that the superpowers faced once before and decided to avoid. They realized in the early '70s that virtually no matter what they did to defend themselves, in the end offense would always prevail. That fact seemed built into the sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the relative ease with which one side could proliferate its offenses in order to overwhelm the other side's defenses...