Word: squirts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...there at the creation. His enlisted-man's version of brain-storming days at Los Alamos seizes the spirit of the place with typical zest and informality: "What (Hans) Bethe needed was someone to talk to, to push his ideas against. Well, he comes in to this little squirt in an office and starts to argue, explaining his idea. I say, 'No, no, you're crazy. It'll go like this.' And he says, 'Just a moment,' and explains how he's not crazy, I'm crazy. And we keep on going like this. You see, when I hear about...
...badger, Stewart notes, can tunnel into the earth so fast that ten men with shovels cannot keep him in sight. Texas horned toads can, when angry or excited, actually squirt blood from the corners of their eyes. No animal seems more, well, humane than the American lobster, as portrayed by Stewart. Most sea creatures are love-them-and-leave-them suitors, impregnating their mates, then allowing them to fend for themselves. Not the crustacean, whose mate must shed not only her defenses but her shell when she visits his underwater den. Sensing something about vulnerability, he lets her stay...
...Iraqi Third Corps is fighting in the area around Basra, insisted that there were no such weapons within his command. He pointed out that poison gas would be extremely difficult to use in a close-combat situation. But he added, "If you gave me some insecticide that I could squirt at this swarm of mosquitoes, I would use it so that they would be exterminated, thus benefiting humanity by saving the world from these pests...
...million device resembles nothing so much as a clumsy overstuffed armchair without a seat. On earth it weighs 340 lbs., but in zero-g an MMU can fly like a bird. A squirt or two of nitrogen gas from any of its 24 small jet thrusters can propel it in any direction. Strapped into this flying chair, an astronaut need only work the handle-like controls built into the armrests...
...rapists in turn call the cellblocks' child abusers scum. But in fact the three groups have some rough affinities. The privately violent are often alcoholic or drug-dependent. All three species tend to have low opinions of themselves; they get violent, psychoanalysts say, because it gives them a cheap squirt of power. Like most criminals, they are immature and impulsive. Everything they want they want instantly. And they are uncommonly isolated people, often virtually friendless, cut off from those who lead richer, happier or just plain calmer lives...