Word: decayed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...protectorate that must be destroyed. In the first half of the 1990s, radical fighters sought to repeat the Afghan victory by making jihad in Bosnia, Egypt and Algeria. As the host states took repressive measures to smash them, however, these militant groups saw their support from the masses decay. By 1997 a number of exiled leaders of Egypt's al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, or Islamic Group--responsible for the assassination of foreign tourists, native Egyptian Christians known as Copts, police officers and politicians--had come to recognize violence against tourists as a dead end and publicly renounced the practice...
...face still adorns everything from the gate of the Forbidden City to kitschy Cultural Revolution clocks. The portraits serve as frequent reminders that, with each succeeding generation of cadres, the throw weight of Beijing has diminished. Market liberalization introduced by Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, started the decay by freeing millions of entrepreneurs from the state's grasp. Today, Jiang, only the third leader in the history of the People's Republic, has neither the adulation of the masses nor the authority of his predecessors. It is the thousands of mayors, governors, Communist Party chiefs and other functionaries from China...
Ideally, the researchers would have preferred to find the bones sandwiched between layers of volcanic ash containing potassium and argon, as these can be precisely dated by tests involving radioactive decay. Unfortunately, the geology at Toros-Menalla did not cooperate. But the scientists found something nearly as good. The site was replete with fossils from all sorts of other primitive animals, including fish, crocodiles, rodents, elephants, giraffes, aardvarks and more--42 types in all. Many were identical to specimens that have been radiometrically dated with great precision elsewhere. As a result, a team led by Vignaud confidently pinpointed the skull...
...says. "It assures them, in the midst of a general cultural breakdown and a time of growing danger, that God is going to redeem the time." Evangelicals who had felt somehow left behind in secular terms, by a coarse culture and a fear of general moral decay, welcome arguments that even the most tragic events may be evidence of God's larger plan. In fact, you don't have to be religious to be hoping for that as well...
...Gold and death: Yu links Kazuki's personal meltdown to the decay of a Japanese society in which money is all that matters. Tellingly, Kazuki's dad owes his fortune to pachinko, an utterly mindless form of low-stakes gambling that annually rakes in some $250 billion, is linked to organized crime and sometimes inspires zombie-like trances that have caused Japanese mothers to leave their babies to suffocate in overheated cars. As in real life, the cops in the novel enjoy a cozy relationship with the gaming industry, routinely looking the other way in exchange for high-paying post...