Word: swarmming
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When rivers in the U.S. and Europe began to billow with evil-looking foam and tap water frothed like lager beer, the blame was quickly pinned on the synthetic detergents in modern cleaning agents. They wash shirts gleaming white and they make dishes shine, but the bacteria that swarm in soil and sewage do not eat them with the same appetite they have for old-fashioned soap. Rejected by the bugs, the detergents sweep through sewage plants and seep out of septic tanks into the ground water. They are not poisonous, but who likes creamy froth on his drinking...
...demoralized diplomats are all for pulling out when the fireworks begin, but Ambassador Niven-gnawing his mustache to denote deep thought-counsels them to stay put, walk softly and hope for the best. Soon hordes of murderous Boxers swarm over the compound, knifing, shooting, burning. Imperial Chinese troops join the attack after the Dowager Empress (Dame Flora Robson in plastic eyelids and black contact lenses) darkly observes: "China is a prostrate cow. The foreigners are not content to milk her, but must also butcher her." Ava goes to work in the hospital like a Pekinese Scarlett O'Hara, pawning...
...medieval days any dog, hog, horse, donkey, mouse, rat, beetle or swarm of flies charged with a crime could get a fair trial-complete with sharp-tongued defense attorney and a day before the bench. When a sow was hanged for devouring its young, a dog executed for biting children, or a rat pack or fly swarm ordered exterminated, there was no question about it: the whole legal system of the 15th century was in there pitching...
Scholarly Swarms. Where is the multiversity going? At a time when C. P. Snow estimates that about 80% of the West's pure science research is going on in the U.S., says Kerr, "good scholars tend to swarm together," and university centers are coalescing into "mountain ranges" of higher education. Kerr charts three "great plateaus." The first runs from Boston to Washington, D.C., embraces 46% of the nation's Nobel science winners and 40% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences. Next comes the West Coast university complex with 36% and 20%, followed...
...London center gathers its reports on locusts and weather from every available source. Meteorologists and entomologists constantly check their maps to decide whether a sighted swarm is likely to prove dangerous. Trouble is that few of the 300 weather stations spread from Spain to India are in the uninhabited desert, where locusts get their start. Until recently, it was often impossible to predict the behavior of a swarm that had been spotted in one of those empty places...