Word: thickness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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SOMETHING INSIDE Alvin Toffler rebels at the convention of mealtime. During the technological age, he notes on page 135 of his very thick book The Third Wave, "eating became technologized with the diffusion of forks and other specialized table implements." And every fall and spring, Toffler frets mightily at the ritual of standard time. "Periodically, in unison, as though motivated by a single will, millions of people set their clocks back or forward an hour, and whatever our inner, subjective sense of things may tell us when time is dragging, or conversely when it seems to be whizzing...
...range from setting the North Sea oilfields afire to capturing U.S. nuclear plants. In one, a team of thugs heists Manhattan, no less; in another, Muslim-backed bullyboys hold Queen Elizabeth II hostage. The authors tend to go in for archetype casting: scheming Arabs, for example, are now as thick as No. 2 crude, and several new novels are based on the machinations of Carlos, a.k.a. Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, the shadowy, ubiquitous terrorist mastermind whom the free world's police have been trying to nab for a decade...
...matter what the vantage point, coxswains broke the thick silence with frantic exhortations until the boats left earshot, when once again only the wind whistled...
Same whiskers, thick wrinkled skin...
...enemies, still faces a marine foe: the whirring propellers of the state's 500,000 speedboats. Because manatees loll just below the water surface with only their nostrils showing, they are often invisible to pleasure cruisers. Collisions are common, and even if the manatee survives, its 1-in.-thick skin is brutally gouged by the sharp blades. One marine expert estimates that 80% of the state's manatees are propeller-scarred. Manatees also drown by drifting into flood-control gates; some have been cruelly murdered by vandals...