In their urban cocoons, city-dwellers take for granted the abundance and availability of the economic goods that they consume.

FORBES: What Explains The Partisan Divide Between Urban And Non-Urban Areas

The silk floss for the yarn in Yuki-tsumugi weaving is produced from empty or deformed silkworm cocoons, otherwise unusable for the production of silk yarn.

UNESCO: Culture

Waitresses in starched aprons make their way around a room filled with cushioned banquettes, its white walls rising to a vaulted ceiling that cocoons customers from outside chills.

BBC: Krak��w, inside out

According to the Web site Ecouterre.com, the dress is made from what's sometimes known as ahimsa, or "peace silk" a material spun from cocoons without killing the worms inside.

NPR: Red Carpet Awaits The Star In The 'Eco-Dress'

They boil the cocoons in a solution of sodium carbonate to separate a protein called fibroin, which is the one they want, from another, called sericin, which they do not.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

On February 18, 2009, Eric Holder offered a similarly tonic and provocative commentary on race when he begged us to cease from our cowardice and come out from our racial cocoons to confront the business at hand.

CNN: Commentary: Holder wants to tear down wall of race

Kirkpatrick also commented on the fact that the music industry is missing the boat completely by failing to notice that iPods and other portable audio players are actually creating a bigger potential market, because people are listening to more music, as they wrap themselves tighter in their white plastic cocoons.

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Now that official restraints have been loosened, Americans nonetheless retreat into what Holder calls "race-protected cocoons" and rely upon cliches, stereotypes and familiar habits of ethnic and racial congregation instead of opening ourselves to the undeniably uncomfortable, but ultimately rewarding, prospect of facing each other across the chasm of learned behaviors and inherited reflexes.

CNN: Commentary: Holder wants to tear down wall of race