Word: normalization
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There is no such thing as normal weather. The average daytime high temperature for New York City this week should be 57[degrees]F, but on any given day the mercury will almost certainly fall short of that mark or overshoot it, perhaps by a lot. Manhattan thermometers can reach 65[degrees] in January every so often and plunge to 50[degrees] in July. And seasons are rarely normal. Winter snowfall and summer heat waves beat the average some years and fail to reach it in others. It's tough to pick out over-all changes in climate...
...earth's climate does change. Ice ages have frosted the planet for tens of thousands of years at a stretch, and periods of warmth have pushed the tropics well into what is now the temperate zone. But given the normal year-to-year variations, the only reliable signal that such changes may be in the works is a long-term shift in worldwide temperature...
...Paul Reubens, though, the guy is within driving distance of normal. He's not the greasy, bearded freak from the infamous mug shot or the manic wad of frustration that is Pee-wee but a mellow, slyly funny 48-year-old whose oddest obvious quirk is that he's trying--and succeeding--at coming off like a 30-year-old. He has shaggy, jet-black hair with bangs, wears a horseshoe-embroidered black Guyabara and jeans and has a freakishly creaseless complexion. And he has proved his ability to pull off non-Pee-wee characters over the past few years...
...downed plane, had told his mother. It got so bad that U.S. officials complained. "We went to the Chinese and said, 'Your aircraft are not intercepting in a professional manner. There is a safety issue here,'" recalls Admiral Dennis Blair, head of the U.S. Pacific Command. "It's not normal practice to play bumper cars...
...retuned the message, the administration discussed even tougher options. Diplomatic meetings and military exchanges could be canceled. Bush could drop his fall visit to Beijing. He could make dark noises about trade, even end normal trading status. The U.S. could get in the way of China's quest to hold the 2008 Olympics. Then there was the question of whether to sell advanced defensive weapons to Taiwan. "He's got a lot of sticks," a former Clinton administration official says of Bush, "but the problem is, they...