Word: commoners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There's a particular thrill in seeing an amateur attempt your job. Especially when that job is comedy and the amateur is a Fox News personality. So when I heard Glenn Beck was doing a weeklong, six-city Common Sense Comedy Tour, my funniness ranking went up without my having to do anything. Beck, after all, is known for ranting, and sometimes crying, to a massive audience about how our country is approaching the End of Days. This is less the stuff of comedy than the stuff the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives likes to keep tabs...
...your run-of-the-mill tourist island. With just 2,000 lucky inhabitants and one hotel, it's a place where the sight of a boy washing his horse in the surf on an empty black-sand beach, or copra drying in someone's front yard, is common. Hiva Oa is the second largest island in the Marquesas, a distinct group of 14 isles within French Polynesia, located about three hours northeast of the French Polynesian capital Papeete. It's the kind of far-flung spot on the map that would attract an artist looking to escape the clutches...
...Beaver's study shows, not all carriers of the defective MAO-A gene join a gang, and not all gang members have the defect. It remains largely unknown how common the low-active gene variant is in the general population, though one 2002 study indicated that genetic factors, including MAO-A, account for as much as 50% of the population variance in risk for antisocial behaviors. Additionally, Beaver's and other studies have found that low levels of the MAO-A enzyme affect only men, despite the fact that the MAO-A gene is located on the X chromosome...
...group of students' B average, while inadequate shut-eye pushed owls into the C range. Peszka also compared the students' high school GPAs with their college scores, and found that owls had lost an entire GPA point once entering college - larks and robins also saw their grades drop (a common phenomenon as students transition from high school to university), but not as much. "Not only did they flat out have a lower freshman GPA," she says of the owls, "but they also dropped their grades more." (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
Faced with high technology and drones, the Taliban has resorted to its own innovations. When the militants ruled in Afghanistan, it was common to find spools of discarded cassette tape hanging from tree branches as a warning against banned pop music. They've since devised more lethal uses for the recording medium. After a recent roadside bombing of an American convoy in Ghazni province that killed three Afghan police officers, streams of tape were found ahead of the blast crater. The reflective quality of the tape, soldiers said, had allowed militant spotters to be forewarned of the arrival of enemy...