Word: benign
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...other 90% of hysterectomy patients opt for the surgery for noncancerous, non-life-threatening-and some would say unnecessary-reasons: 35% of women use it to remove fibroids (benign tumors in the uterus); another 30%, to do away with abnormally heavy bleeding during menstruation. Other common reasons for hysterectomy include endometriosis, or growth of tissue outside the uterus, and pelvic pain. Today, twice as many women in their 20s and 30s undergo hysterectomy as do women in their...
Kudzu is a flowering, ropelike vine, first introduced from Asia in 1876. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service once paid farmers to plant it to stop erosion; now kudzu rampages across large swaths of the South, strangling and killing trees and all other plant life in its wake. Benign-looking cheatgrass carpets the shrub-steppes of the West and feeds some grazing species and birds. But it's also explosive kindling that increases the frequency and intensity of wild forest fires. Drive along any U.S. highway and you'll likely catch sight of purple loosestrife's telltale slender stalks and magenta...
...sufficiently muzzy--the President can change policy "subject to unexpected developments," Alexander told me--so that Bush can pretty much ignore it at will. Still, there is a possibility that the amendment will succeed as an anodyne bipartisan plea for a change of strategy, which would be an oddly benign, if ineffectual development. "It's a sleeper amendment," Alexander said. "It's there for Senators who are tired of voting for futile partisan resolutions that fail...
...brilliant essay on exchanging credits for carbon use and child abuse, Kinsley has approached the paradoxical level of irony that Jonathan Swift achieved with A Modest Proposal. The logic is flawless, the intent is benign, yet the solution proposed is so repugnant. Perhaps that is the true nature of capitalism...
...president of the Mongrel Mob's foundation Hastings chapter, admits "sporadic gang violence flares up now and again. But because of the network of older guys, a dialogue and communication is there now." He says he has been negotiating with the gangs in Wanganui, and claims to exercise a benign influence on gang affairs, despite having once been told, he claims, that police thought he was the largest amphetamines dealer in New Zealand. "I was so hurt by that," he says, "not just me, but for my family and my larger family. But I can honestly tell you that crime...