Word: thresholds
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...from the floorboards of his seaside hotel became another thing. Here is the silent ugly cannon in the room of screens, each bearing a familiar image; in a second it will fire of its own accord, blowing the screens to shreds; we stand, as the title says, On the Threshold of Liberty. Some of Magritte's images have taken on, with time, a truly prophetic aura. One of these is Eternity (1935). Three pedestals in a museum, with a red rope stretched in front of them. On the left one, a medieval head of Christ. On the right, a head...
What scientists fear is that the southern San Andreas has reached a similarly critical threshold. "If the Landers earthquake put a little stress on the San Andreas," exclaims Allan Lindh, chief seismologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, "then what about the accumulated stress of 300 years of plate motion?" For Lindh and other experts, the Landers quake and its resulting tremors are all too reminiscent of the increased seismic activity that preceded the great San Francisco blowout of 1906. "I mean," says Lindh, with a dramatic pause, "how much more on the edge of our chairs...
...began to shudder -- scant notice indeed, though enough to prevent the derailment of a speeding bullet train. Such simple motion-detecting systems are now used throughout Japan and in parts of California to halt subway trains and nudge elevators to the nearest floor when ground motion exceeds a certain threshold. The Alaska pipeline is similarly equipped for instant shutdown...
...when discussing the miseries of families, that, for example, Eastern prep schools are filled with children packed off to get them away from divorce, incest, alcoholism, child abuse, wife battering and other horrors at home. The willingness to let the racist implication stand unchallenged, unexamined, loitering on the threshold, is the ugliest aspect of all this...
...right now Perot is not exactly competing against an all- star team from Mount Rushmore. Says political analyst Kevin Phillips: "If Bush is re-elected, I don't think he'll have a successful four years. I'm not sure Clinton would do better. So in my mind the threshold of successful governance is lower...