Word: albatross
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While the sharks rule the depths and mankind clings precariously to the surface, the albatross owns the air above the sea. In the mid-1990s, when scientists first started tagging albatrosses for tracking via satellite, they discovered something astonishing: albatrosses spend 95% of their lives over the ocean, and most of that flying. Albatrosses have the longest wingspan on earth, and they can stay aloft continuously for years, dozing on the wing. In Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival--ignore the sappy subtitle--Carl Safina follows a single bird as it roams the globe gathering food...
...those effortlessly synthetic minds that range almost as far afield as his beloved birds do, from vulcanology to population biology to the history of Pacific exploration, alighting to sketch thumbnail portraits of the curious characters who study seabirds. But none of them are as memorable as his protagonist: "An albatross is a great symphony of flesh, perception, bone, and feathers," Safina writes, "composed of long movements and set to ever-changing rhythms of light, wind, water...
...have never been insulted in this particular way. Going to Red Sox games is the way I communicate to my students. Dean Shinagel is behaving like a bull in a china shop. But I suppose that in this society, once a summer school professor has the albatross around his neck, its hard for him to shake...
...last week Pittman had to be called on once again to save AOL, which is beginning to look like the media giant's albatross. After eagerly devouring Pittman's hype just a year ago, investors and critics now feel woozy. Incoming AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, 54, clearly felt that nobody could clean up the mess better than Pittman, which is why he asked his top deputy to go back to Dulles, Va., on a new rescue mission. "AOL is our biggest problem, and so we're putting our best fighting general on it," says Parsons, who was designated...
...They are sort of an albatross for us, but we’re stuck with them,” Meltzer said...