Word: tars
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...Friday night, a local lady stopped me and asked me whom we were playing the next day. When I told her, she immediately says, 'I hope they beat the tar outta you,' turned on her heel, and strode away. I think that summed up the town/gown relationships of that era," says Robert Wechsler...
...view, the crackdown was an unpleasant necessity to keep China from spinning into chaos. But that slant requires a selective recall. The movement was initially a peaceful call for reform. But Deng Xiaoping didn't get that. Soon after the demonstrations began, he ordered the People's Daily to tar the movement as "a planned conspiracy" and "a riot," transforming China's idealistic young into enemies of the state. With that error, Deng lost the ability to compromise...
Others nearly beat him to it. As early as 1872, German chemist Adolf von Baeyer was investigating the recalcitrant residue that gathered in the bottom of glassware that had been host to reactions between phenol (a turpentine-like solvent distilled from coal tar, which the gas-lighting industry produced in bulk) and formaldehyde (an embalming fluid distilled from wood alcohol). Von Baeyer set his sights on new synthetic dyes, however, not insulators. To him, the ugly, insoluble gunk in his glassware was a sign of a dead...
...20th century alchemy. From something as vile as coal tar came a remarkably versatile substance. It wasn't the first plastic, however. Celluloid had been commercially available for decades as a substitute for tortoise-shell, horn, bone and other materials. But celluloid, which had developed a reputation as a cheap mimic of better traditional materials, was derived from chemically treated cotton and other cellulose-containing vegetable matter. Bakelite was lab-made through and through. It was 100% synthetic...
...know you shouldn't smoke. You know all that tar and nicotine are destroying your heart and lungs, not to mention what they will eventually do, if you're a man, to your sex life. But if you, like 48 million other Americans, are still smoking, you've got another chance to quit this Thursday as part of the American Cancer Society's 22nd annual Great American Smokeout. One in 4 smokers is expected at least to try kicking the habit. Nobody says it will be easy. A national survey made public last week by the Hazelden Foundation of Center...