Word: aridity
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...destiny brought Erwin Rommel face to face with the man who would prove to be his nemesis: Bernard Montgomery. By July 1942 the Germans had pushed the British out of Libya. All that stood between the Nazis and Alexandria was the strongpoint at the arid village of El Alamein, 70 miles to the west. A worried Churchill sent Montgomery, an eccentric, bullheaded disciplinarian, to head the Eighth Army. In spite of frantic pleas from London, Monty -- as the Ulsterman asked his soldiers to refer to him -- took his time, rebuilding troop morale and stocking up on ammunition. Churchill wanted...
Never mind that trying to grow grass in hot, cold or arid regions is almost as silly as trying to grow kelp. Americans have belawned 25 million to 30 million acres, an area larger than Virginia. Lawn is our connection to the English manor houses to which most of us cannot trace our ancestors; it is the decent, respectably dull necktie we knot around our houses...
...Moresby (John Malkovich), the protagonist of Bowles' story and of the swank, sexy, bleak and very beautiful film that Bernardo Bertolucci has made from it, is traveling with his wife Kit (Debra Winger) and an upper-class twit of a friend (Campbell Scott). He lands in Algeria, a hot, arid country where each hotel is more primitive than the last and the transportation, when there is any, is mostly by truck and camel. There are pestilential insects everywhere; the breakfast tray comes with a DDT spray can. When Kit isn't complaining about the heat or the stupidity...
Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding, Mandalay has neither flying fishes nor even a bay; Burma's second city sits on an arid plain. For the clergy of the Phaya- gyi monastery, however, the dawn really did come up like thunder one morning last week as government troops raided the 206-year-old pagoda and arrested about 20 of its monks...
...abolished in 1973, the Pentagon adopted the Total Force Policy, placing heavy reliance on the reserves. National Guard units today supply 53% of the Army's potential infantry and 47% of its armored fighting power. Reserves account for nearly all the Army's water-desalting capability, particularly important in arid Saudi Arabia, and 93% of the Navy's cargo- handling capacity...