Word: descent
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...classes and ethnicities. Made up of short, numbered chapters that count down, like a bomb, rather than up, each focuses on one of the book's six major characters, then repeats the cycle. Each set begins with Ray Beam, a burnt-out pop star of ten years ago whose descent from debauched musical godling to weird, unproductive recluse resembles that of Axl Rose. He suddenly seems to find his muse in Lily, a young Hispanic-American woman whose side of the story bookends each chapter cycle. Initially hired as Ray's personal assistant, Lily cautiously allows herself to be wooed...
...Israelis were growing weary of the economic and moral costs of the endless occupation. In South Africa the white minority faced a catastrophe: a main achievement of apartheid had been to inflict fatal damage on the country's economy. As for Mandela's African National Congress, it foresaw a descent into chaos and civil war that might destroy any nation worth its inheriting. And so on. Some thought that South Africa and the Middle East proved what might be called the Exhaustion Theory of Peacemaking -- which arises from the cynical, and accurate, observation that peace is the last resort when...
...Striking as the Hubble images are, there is one thing they couldn?t reveal. The telescope?s giant eye can see lunar objects no smaller than 60 yards across. Somewhere in Taurus-Littrow and Hadley-Apennine are the comparatively tiny, truck-sized descent stages of the Apollo lunar modules, left behind when the crews blasted off. Neither of those metal relics has been seen in the more than 30 years since human beings last walked on the moon. Only if the U.S. actually commits itself to its new lunar plans will they be seen again any time soon...
Alpine climber Yuichiro Miura knows something about rapid descent?in 1970 he became the first person ever to ski Mount Everest, hurtling more than a mile down the peak's icy flank in less than two minutes, and barely surviving. But handling the downhill slope of his own life proved trickier. Miura retired from climbing at age 60, deciding he was too old to haul himself up mountains anymore, but after five lazy years of Japanese beer and Korean barbecue, he had an epiphany: "I was only talking about my past, not my future. I wanted to challenge my dreams...
...Funding for future exploration depends on the continuing success of missions such as Hayabusa. Unfortunately, JAXA announced last week that Hayabusa had developed steering trouble. For now, the probe is still being prepared for its critical descent next month. But JAXA engineers are under more pressure than ever to ensure this falcon will find its target and fly safely home...