Word: stagnant
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...basement an American canoeist who has converted a small coal bin into a stagnant river crouches on one knee and endlessly paddles nowhere. His sloshing is a nighttime sound of the neighborhood. A roller skate wedged beneath his forward foot simulates the bobbing boat. Old mirrors of every shape, rescued from dressers and garage sales, are suspended all around. In each of them, he checks his technique against the home movies he has taken of the Rumanians and Swedes. This is the Olympian getting ready...
...then that the natural growth of sea grass may be ended, as has happened in Chesapeake Bay, or sudden blooms of algae can occur, particularly in stagnant waters. The exact reasons for these spurts of algal growth are unknown. They can be triggered, for example, by extended periods of sunny weather following heavy rains. Scientists believe algal growth is speeded up by the runoff of agricultural fertilizers. The burgeoning algae form a dense layer of vegetation that displaces other plants. As the algae die and decay, they sap enormous amounts of oxygen from the water, asphyxiating fish and other organisms...
Some economists believe that if Cardenas surges at the polls, De la Madrid may declare a partial moratorium on Mexico's foreign debt. This would serve to undermine the left, allow De la Madrid to leave office drenched in public applause, and give Salinas the funds to prime a stagnant economy. Yet just as the Spanish defeat of Hidalgo's revolt against the crown only postponed Mexican independence, such fiscal populism might only delay a more fundamental political reckoning...
...Unfortunately, his biographer can offer only sparing, truncated and oblique evidence of his subject's distinctive gift. The snippets that are included simply underscore the absence of so many others. Here is Cheever, taking tranquilizers as a prescribed substitute for alcohol, complaining that the medication made him feel as "stagnant as the water under an old millwheel." On a visit to the University of Utah in 1977, the author grows enamored of a teaching fellow and confides to his journal: "Lonely and with my loneliness exacerbated by travel, motel rooms, bad food, public readings and the superficiality of standing...
...course, this turnaround is ominous to conservatives, who fear that Reagan has become senile in his old age and is no match for the skillful Gorbachev. The new reforms, they argue, mask Gorbachev's plan to revive the stagnant Soviet economy and rival our technological capability. What they fail to realize is that a paranoid Soviet Union presents a greater threat to world peace than one that openly recognizes its past atrocities and encourages the expression of different views. An economically weak military superpower would be more likely to play off its area of strength; so America should welcome relations...