Word: watered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sometimes, of course, our markings may be simply a matter of aesthetics. Popping in a comma can be like slipping on the necklace that gives an outfit quiet elegance, or like catching the sound of running water that complements, as it completes, the silence of a Japanese landscape. When V.S. Naipaul, in his latest novel, writes, "He was a middle-aged man, with glasses," the first comma can seem a little precious. Yet it gives the description a spin, as well as a subtlety, that it otherwise lacks, and it shows that the glasses are not part of the middle...
...Memorial Day weekend the invaders descended with a vengeance. Each day some 250 ATVs gathered on a stretch of the Black River near Centerville, a wide-open area of gravel bars and shallow water. The weekend warriors jousted at one another with their three- and four-wheel vehicles, running up and down the riverbed with abandon. As some ATV riders sat chugging beer on the bank, cohorts roared past at breakneck speeds, narrowly missing other vehicles. Music blasted from portable radios and car stereos, commingling with the whoops of riders and the growl of unmuffled engines. The air stank...
...ride the river. The catch is that much of the Black River is still unposted, and the law has failed to halt the nightmare. "These things destroy the ecology of the river," says Larry Koeler, a Centerville lawyer, of the ATVs. "Some drivers drain their crankcases in the water. And if you're running a machine with oil and gas through the water, some of that gets in the river...
Conditions are harsh but not inhumane. There is enough water for drinking, occasional showers and laundering each prisoner's army-issue shirt and pants. Everyone receives one bar of soap a month. The food is army rations -- filling but hardly appetizing. The primitive latrines reek; rats, scorpions and mosquitoes are ever on the prowl...
Scientists believe the adult seals' immune systems have been weakened by chemical pollutants in the water, making them susceptible to pneumonia induced by a herpes-type virus. Such ravaging of a seal population is not unprecedented: a flu virus, for example, killed more than 500 harbor seals along the coast of New England from Cape Cod, Mass., to Maine over a period of ten months beginning in December 1979. This time, researchers believe, the deadly virus may have originated in slaughterhouse refuse deposited in open dumps along Sweden's western coast. It may then have been transmitted by sea gulls...