Word: aridity
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Broadway's paladin of laughter is back. It almost seems like an act of chivalry for Neil Simon to bestow his tonic comic gifts on a season as arid as this one has been. Of course, he has able assistance in this musical that, according to a program note, is "loosely based on the real-life relationship between the show's composer Marvin Hamlisch and its lyricist Carole Bayer Sager." Perhaps that is why the sharp crackle of humor in They 're Playing Our Song seems to emanate from a warming log fire of shared humanity...
...Indians in the higher altitudes are growing an even more potent variety of pot: Mona (blond) plants so pale that they look bleached. The Cielo Azul heights produce a pale plant known as Blue Sky Blond, developed as a hybrid two years ago with seeds from Thailand. Even the arid and low-lying fields of the Guajira peninsula, which are irrigated and farmed with tractors, grow a good green grass. The broiling sun forces the plants up to 15 ft. within six months and infuses them with an abundance of powerful resin. The emerging new drug-cultivation area...
...Flinty, arid Baluchistan is a sparsely populated land that only its sons could love. Corrugated by rugged mountain ranges, the area receives an average of 10 in. of rain a year, usually all at once, vs. 36.5 in. in more fertile northern Pakistan, near Kashmir. In summer, temperatures can rise to 130° F. In winter, they can fall to subfreezing levels. Desert scorpions and other noxious fauna abound. Prolonged exposure to Baluchistan can be fatal: when the army of Alexander the Great marched across it on the way home from India, two-thirds of the men died. But local...
...waiting until last month to present detailed proposals, management angered the chapels and reduced chances for a settlement by the deadline. "We object to negotiating with a gun to our heads," says one union leader. The National Graphical Association, which represents 600 Times arid Sunday Times compositors, machine managers and stereotypers, is refusing to come to the bargaining table at all. "Only a fool conspires at the destruction of his members' jobs," says Joe Wade, union general secretary. "No trade union leader in any industry can give an ironclad guarantee of continuous production...
...drama, however, were huddled in the rear of the chamber among other members of the House of Commons, who had been summoned to the Queen's presence by another treasured anachronism known as Black Rod. Prime Minister James Callaghan and Conservative Leader Margaret Thatcher listened idly to an arid speech that the government, by custom, had prepared for the Queen to read...