Word: delta
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While studying aerial photographs of the Nile Delta after their country's 1967 conquest of the Sinai, Israeli geologists noticed soil markings that were clearly vestiges of two dried-up waterways. One was quickly identified as a silted offshoot of the Nile River called the Pelusiac branch (after the ancient city of Pelusium at its mouth). The nature of the other waterway baffled the geologists until they visited the area and found man-made embankments. With that, they realized that these old mounds marked the route of a remarkable ancient canal that predated the Suez Canal by as many...
...lush countryside. When you fly over Bangladesh you have to wonder how a land so green could ever have a food problem. This is the richest and most fertile farmland in the world--nothing in Iowa or the Ukraine can compare to it. The whole country is a delta formed by two of the mightiest rivers in the world, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Since the Brahmaputra is essentially liquid topsoil and the Ganges flowing shit, the resource base for producing the highest crop yields in the world are there. With their weather which allows a twelve month growing season...
...hard, and die young. The Bengalis are by one estimate 95 percent illiterate, which puts them in the running for least educated people in the world. Although Central Africa has the distinction of being the world's most unhealthy region, health conditions in Bangladesh are none too good--the delta is the place where cholera and smallpox originated and is regularly stricken with diseases the West forgot about centuries ago, such as bubonic plague. A mother can expect at least two of her children to die (ever wonder why they have so many kids?) and has a pretty good shot...
There is little doubt that Hanoi would like to have all of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia under its control. Saigon and the Mekong Delta, for instance, are prizes the North Vietnamese treasure, but they would prefer to absorb them with a minimum of dissension and violence. Thus Hanoi's tactics in South Viet Nam are shrewd and pragmatic: go slow, don't push, reeducate...
...last year of all the innovations, ideas, and administrative changes and goals that it has instituted in the last four years under Hall's guidance. Hall is proud to tick off items from the list--the administrative handbook, weekly staff meetings between the directors of all administrative departments, the Delta 2000 computer, centralizing the personnel office, and a whole host of gadgets and programs. All these items add up to a major effort to centralize, automate, computerize and economize administrative services at Harvard. When measured solely on a cost-effective basis, it is difficult to argue that Hall's efforts...