Word: alarming
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...scene, by contrast, from real life: One recent evening on West 68th Street in Manhattan, the alarm on a little red sports car goes off. Who knows what started it? The passing thunderstorm, a bump from a car pulling into the % parking space ahead, someone leaning against the fender? The plates on the wailing car indicate that it comes from Long Island. After 15 or 20 minutes someone puts a note on the windshield: GO BACK TO LONG ISLAND WHERE YOU BELONG AND LEAVE YOUR ALARM THERE. Two hours pass; alarm still wailing. Someone else scrawls some impolite advice...
...police responded whenever an alarm shrieked wolf, they would waste time and taxpayers' money, and dull their own crime-fighting reflexes. The endless ululations of alarms in big cities fray people's nerves, inure them to noise and, on a deeper level, undermine their civic morale, their subliminal expectations. Crime, no crime -- the distinction vanishes in undifferentiated wailing and rage. The machine screams. The quality of life within earshot dies a little more...
LIVING The shrieking, whooping car alarm is a crime in itself...
When 15,000 anxious Americans were evacuated from Clark Air Base in the Philippines last week, they didn't know what to think. Were they in real danger or the victims of a false alarm? Within 48 hours, they got their answer. Nearby Mount Pinatubo, after sleeping quietly for more than 600 years, suddenly erupted in a series of explosions that shot plumes of steam and ash as much as 30 km (20 miles) into the sky. Debris rained down on surrounding villages, and a giant mushroom cloud was visible 100 km (60 miles) away in Manila...
Mount Pinatubo's blasts came just one week after Japan's Mount Unzen blew its top, with more deadly results. The red-hot avalanches hurtling down the mountain's slopes killed at least 35 people. But the toll could have been much higher if scientists had not sounded the alarm that an eruption was imminent. In fact, many of those killed were journalists and volcanologists drawn to the mountain by the warnings, whereas most residents of the area fled to safety. They may have to stay away for a long while: Mount Unzen erupted again last week, and the worst...