Word: ashes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Houston. The Administration plans some kind of publicity event on five of the six days after the conference, each probably featuring a horror story of inefficiency. Gore has compiled an extensive list, headed by the 10 pages of specifications for ashtrays -- or, as they are known to the government, "ash receivers, tobacco (desk type...
...mystery may have been solved by researchers from the U.S. and France. In last week's Science, they put forth evidence that the empire was undone by a combination of climatic catastrophes. First a volcanic eruption blanketed the region in ash. Then a drought, which eventually lasted 300 years, crippled the farming communities on which the cities depended, forcing urban dwellers to abandon their empty granaries and silent temples. Refugees migrated to southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq), which had escaped the disaster. But the unexpected influx of people from the north so strained the region's resources that the Akkadian empire...
...pieces of the puzzle started falling into place after Marie-Agnes Courty, a geologist with the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, painstakingly examined and sorted the soil samples from the roofs of the abandoned buildings under a binocular microscope. She identified a thin veil of volcanic ash, one quarter of an inch thick, underneath 8 to 20 inches of silt. The layers showed no evidence of having been disturbed by earthworms and also showed patterns characteristic of soil that has settled after a dust storm. It looked like a volcano had erupted, perhaps in nearby Turkey...
Wherever the researchers looked throughout the area, they found the same story: abandoned buildings and layers of volcanic ash and debris from fierce wind storms. After 300 years, when the rains returned, so did the people. The telltale scars of scarcity eventually were buried under 15 feet of new dirt. A new empire, whose capital was Babylon, arose and fell. Today the region is flush once again with wheat fields...
...biggest is to avoid being swept up in a destructive swirl of publicity as many earlier black intellectuals and leaders have been. Starting with Booker T. Washington, America has seemed to have room for only one top black spokesman at a time, consigning each former favorite to the ash heap of inauthenticity as soon as a new H.N.I.C. (Head Negro in Charge) appeared...