Word: static
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sense, the current fights over extinction theories are merely the latest variation of a venerable tradition that dates back to the early 19th century, when a growing corps of paleontologists and geologists had determined that the world is not the static Eden-like meadow of legend. At least intermittently, they concluded, it is an unstable, dangerous place, where vast numbers of species, like the giant mastodons, mysteriously disappear. Eventually, after analyzing the bones long thought to be the remains of dragons, they pieced together the almost more fantastical story of the dinosaurs and their inexplicable demise. They zealously...
...waiting passengers cover their ears as a mass of hurtling steel comes screeching from the blackness of the tunnel beyond. Smoke from a fire on a distant track wafts through the station. A crowded train from the Upper West Side sits simmering on another track for 20 minutes while static from a broken speaker drowns out the conductor's incomprehensible explanation. "I'm afraid to get in that subway system even when I'm with my bodyguard," says Senator Alfonse D'Amato, a Long Islander. "Even my bodyguard is afraid." Although it was clearly an overstatement ("I think he should...
...wholly on one painting. It was no slight thing to have painted The Sleeping Gypsy, by now perhaps the most famous dream image in Western art. The silhouette of a sniffing lion, with one unwinking yellow eye and a tail stiffly outstretched, its tip erect as though charged with static electricity, quivering like Rousseau's own paintbrush; the swollen, white Melies moon; the black nomad like a toppled statue, her feet with their pink toenails gravely sticking up; the djellaba, with its rippling stripes of coral, Naples yellow, cerulean; and the lute, like a pale lunar egg, hanging...
Nonetheless, the character of the conflict clearly has changed. For several months now, Thailand, China and the U.S. have been advising the resistance to regroup in small, mobile units that can strike swiftly, rather than relying on static defenses. Said one U.S. official: "The resistance can't fight and win this war from fixed camps. They must become real guerrillas...
...sidewalks and streets. There are fantasies here just as surely as in Philadelphia. They say with pride, "In school, the other kids call us 'Olympians.' " A cab driver buzzes about town with his new CB radio turned up to catch a dispatcher's grating squawk through the static. "We got this radio system new since the Olympics," he boasts. "Now tourists can call for a taxi, and we come just like in other cities." At the skating rink where Torvill and Dean once carved perfection, the jam-packed crowd of children looks like it is having recess...