Word: weather
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wabi-sabi in the home, according to Lawrence, is "flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather and loving use leave behind." Although at first glance it may seem a bit shabby chic, a style that cultivates a worn patina, it differs in philosophy, asking that we "set aside our judgments and our longing for perfection" and concentrate instead on "the beauty of things as they are." It celebrates the tiny flaws that make everything--your mismatched kitchen chairs, a worn teapot...
Everybody talks about the weather, but James O'Brien is often rendered speechless by it. He's spent hours watching how snow forms drifts around buildings and how mud moves when someone steps in it. O'Brien, 34, is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the world's top experts on how to make computers simulate complex physical systems--such as waves, snowdrifts, viscoelastic fluids (goopy stuff, like mud) and (his favorite) explosions. His work lends a layer of reality to computer games and film animation in which wind, rain...
What the rich world suffers as hardships the poor world often suffers as mass death. The rich, unlike the poor, can afford to live in fortified structures away from floodplains, riverbanks and hillsides. The rich, unlike the poor, have early-warning systems--seismic monitors, weather forecasts and disease-surveillance systems. The rich, unlike the poor, have cars and trucks that enable them to leave on short notice when a physical disaster threatens. And rich countries, unlike poor ones, can quickly mobilize food, drinking water, backup power generators, doctors and emergency medical supplies in the aftermath of disaster...
...Ross Hoffman has his way, weather will someday submit to the whim of man instead of the other way around. Hoffman, a principal scientist at the technology research firm Atmospheric & Environmental Research, in Lexington, Mass., forecasts a sunny future in which, say, stampeding typhoons could be safely corralled and driven back out to sea. The key to weather control, says Hoffman, is understanding that even the fiercest tempest is a delicate creature. And by exploiting the sensitivity of weather to tiny changes in the environment, Hoffman has successfully tamed two hurricanes, thus saving dozens of lives and billions of dollars...
...idea struck in 1977 when, as a graduate student at M.I.T., Hoffman was introduced to chaos theory. A chaotic system like weather appears to behave randomly but is actually governed by rules. It is also influenced by seemingly trivial tweaks to the system--hence the old romantic notion that a flap of a butterfly's wings in the rain forest of Brazil might give rise to a storm off the coast of Iceland. Perhaps, thought Hoffman, chaos and sensitivity, which make weather so difficult to predict, could be harnessed to purposely change...