Word: blackbirding
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...hard to know precisely when the red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, is about to attack. The birds tend to swoop in, hitting victims from behind. Sometimes, the birds take turns attacking victims. It's unclear, however, if the red wing attacks from its beak, which is usually sharp and cone-like, or with its feet. Given the bird's size, the danger is more likely to come not from the attack itself, but from the reaction to it. For instance, a newly attacked bicyclist veers into the path of an oncoming bicycle. Or car. Or an attack so deeply traumatizes...
...women's names out of an urn like a door prize and a belief that the first person you spotted on the morning of Feb. 14 would be your mate for life doesn't say much for romance. (Some maids were taught that if they awoke and saw a blackbird, they would marry a clergyman; a bluebird meant a poor man; a robin meant a sailor.) Over the years, Valentine became the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages, but also of beekeepers and, of course, greeting-card manufacturers. Love comes with a sting, and at a price...
...Moss's book-the third volume in an autobiographical trilogy that began with Bye Bye Blackbird and Distant Archipelagos-is more than just a civil servant's confessional, however. The story begins with his arrival in Hong Kong in 1965 as a senior information officer in Government Information Services (the departmental initials were sarcastically said to stand for "God Is Speaking"). A rich store of anecdotes spans what were, arguably, the most tumultuous periods of Hong Kong's history-the civil unrest and refugee influx of the late 1960s, the social changes wrought by the rapid industrialization of the 1970s...
...Scarlet Knights recovered in the fourth frame, Harvard demonstrated its ability to win tight games, fighting off a match point at 29-30 before closing out the match, 32-30.LONG ISLAND 3, HARVARD 0Coming off a Northeast Conference championship and having already played seven matches this season, a better prepared Blackbird team swept the Crimson, winning 3-0 (30-22, 30-23, 32-30) on Saturday morning.Long Island (6-4) kept the Harvard offense off balance through the first two frames, holding the Crimson to sub-.200 hitting. Featuring bigger players, many of whom had international experience, the Blackbirds controlled...
...measures up to some of the other products I've looked at this year, such as Sony's Nav-U and Alpine's Blackbird. Its female voice is pleasantly sultry, and is available in 18 different spoken languages. Like those other navigators, it has the Navteq mapset, which was quite useful in most cases. The user interface was a bit frustrating at times. It was hard to sift through the 1.5 million points of interest, and, during a route, I could never get what I call the "Mapquest" view - that is, a text itinerary of the turns it's planning...