Word: blowup
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are other distress signals as well. Interest in food or sex often flags, while indulgence in alcohol or drugs deepens. People may be jumpy and their tempers short. In the first seven months after the Mount St. Helens blowup, reports of domestic violence in Othello, Wash., increased 45%, and criminal arrests went up 22%, according to one study. The most profound impact is a new sense of vulnerability. Victims wonder when disaster will strike again and conjure up fresh calamities. "Disasters like earthquakes challenge a fundamental fantasy that we live with: that we're immortal," explains psychiatrist David Spiegel...
...Underneath, though, the town seethes. Even the silence is telling. Herded by their supervisors to the military museum's "True Story of Tiananmen Square" exhibit, those I see viewing it are stone-faced. Politically reliable cadres are everywhere, but so are wry smiles, especially when people see a giant blowup photograph of the man who defied a column of tanks, with a caption saying he had been spared because of the army's humanity...
...hard-line U.S. position was prompted by the trade bill passed by Congress last year, which compels the Trade Representative to battle foreign protectionist barriers aggressively. Japan's willingness to give ground last week was an encouraging sign that the country is determined to avoid a major blowup in forthcoming rounds of barrier-bashing talks required...
Investigators analyzing the blowup of the Challenger shuttle and the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have found that in each case, critical errors were made by people struggling with unusual work schedules and lack of sleep. The two nuclear plant accidents happened in the wee hours of the morning. Similarly, most truck wrecks related to fatigue occur between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. "Shift workers classically have to perform when their brains are trying to put them to sleep," observes Dr. Charles Czeisler of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "They are fighting the internal clock." Many...
...unlikely combination of Ronald Reagan and Muammar Gaddafi resembles nitroglycerin: it can produce an explosion at the slightest jolt. Last week, for the fourth time since 1981, just such a blowup took place in the Mediterranean skies off Tobruk, where a shootout that could have been taken right from the movie Top Gun ended in the downing of two Libyan jets by American pilots...