Word: descent
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Williams is one of a host of Polynesian players who are shaking up a century-old game in both Australia and New Zealand - and transforming rugby union as well. As recently as the 1980s, players of Maori or Pacific Island descent were rare in the elite ranks of union and league in Australia, and well outnumbered in New Zealand. Broadly speaking, union, amateur until 1995, was the exclusive domain of affluent private-school alumni, while league was the professional game of the white working class. The few Maori or Islander players who broke into the latter were often racially abused...
...conscientious gardener and farmer," says Gordon Bowker, one of Orwell's many biographers. "He would detail the state of the weather, what he had planted, what needed to be pruned, etc." Orwell's political diaries, which will start appearing from Sept. 7, chronicle his daily thoughts on Europe's descent into World War II. Those writings, says Bowker, are based mostly on the many newspapers Orwell read and show him "trying out his political ideas...
...stop there. Everything from Obama's left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent," which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam...
...Pakistan Expedition Takes Dizzying Toll In one of the deadliest episodes in mountaineering history, 11 climbers died on K2, the world's second highest peak. Falling ice severed their ropes, killing several and forcing others to either continue their descent without assistance or wait for rescue in perilous conditions. Both decisions proved fateful. With its 28,250-ft. (8,600 m) summit, steep ascent routes and rough weather, K2 is often considered the world's toughest climb...
...airlines' unwillingness to offset the entire cost of rising fuel prices directly is part of air travel's 40-year, post-deregulation descent into denial. Long after the friendly skies became a lot less special, long after multiple bankruptcies and the demise of TWA and Pan Am, the airlines continued to delude themselves, and us, with the idea that flying is glamorous...