Word: earthly
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Touching down on the West Side of Manhattan in late winter was a wondrous new vehicle for transport to the stars: the Hayden Planetarium, centerpiece of the $210 million Rose Center for Earth and Space. The 87-foot aluminum sphere that is the Hayden's core seemed to float inside a 10-story glass-walled cube, which is the Hayden's outer shell. "A cosmic cathedral," was how architect James Polshek proudly described his creation. A planetarium is, of course, only a transmitter of outer space to those of us on terra firma. By contrast, the new space station...
Throughout the past century humanity did everything in its power to dominate nature. We dammed earth's rivers, chopped down the forests and depleted the soils. Burning up fossil fuels that had been created over eons, we pumped billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the air, altering atmospheric chemistry and appreciably warming the planet in just a few decades. And as our population began the year 2000 above the 6 billion mark, still spreading across the continents, dozens of animal and plant species were going extinct every day, including the first primate to disappear in more than 100 years...
...there were also, in the year 2000, signs of greater awareness. Linked by the Internet, hundreds of millions of people rallied for the cause of conservation on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. Governments from Washington to Lima took steps to protect large wilderness areas from development. Progress was made toward using more renewable energy from the wind and the sun, and new hybrid cars that used both gasoline and electricity sported impressive fuel-economy statistics...
Three and a half years ago, no one on earth had heard of Harry Potter except J.K. Rowling, the writer who dreamed him up, and the publishers' readers who had rejected the manuscript of her first book featuring the bespectacled boy wizard. And now? Four Harry Potter novels later, translations into 42 languages later, 76 million copies sold worldwide later? Strange, strange things are happening wherever on Earth the young fictional hero and his friends can be found...
...could be a grand renovation, with a nationalized ballot and of course a national network of databanks for voter registration. Flawless records with up-to-the-minute information, courtesy of the DMV. An unshakable voting system worthy of the richest, most innovative nation on this earth...