Word: desert
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...scientists had equated sleep with flicking off a desk lamp. For more than two decades they'd been able to record brain activity in sleep, but the feeling was, why bother? Why waste reams of costly graph paper making electroencephalogram recordings of what was thought to be a neurological desert? With no strong expectation of finding otherwise, University of Chicago researchers Eugene Aserinski and Nathaniel Kleitman decided it was worth doing, monitoring 10 subjects in a laboratory. Their findings turned our understanding of the sleeping brain upside down...
Lately, I have been driving around the desert eating roast sheep intestines. The desert has been beautiful, and the gizzards a lot better than you'd think. The problem has been the driving. Or to be specific, the driver. My problem is Bishaq...
...Bishaq was also a terrible driver. We hit trees, bushes, berms, several other cars, and even a barn door. He got lost frequently - not a happy situation in the desert, and one he often prolonged by taking most of his directions from pre-schoolers. We also had to backtrack several times to retrieve washing or a suitcase he forgot. And besides the guinea fowl, he squashed a dog, grazed a camel, thwacked a goat, blatted a pigeon and sucked a rare-looking green finch into the grill...
...beating, is imprisoned (along with his siblings) in Camp Ganci, a satellite of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Ganci houses prisoners who have no intelligence value - it seems to be simply a place to file and forget American mistakes - and its population mainly sits around sweltering in the deadly desert heat, without adequate food, sanitation or medical attention. Now and then, insurgents subject it to mortar fire, randomly killing some of its inhabitants, who from time to time riot in protest over their treatment. If there's a grace note to be found in this grim tale it is provided...
Dubai lures visitors not only with its year-round sunshine and superlatives - a "seven-star" hotel, the biggest theme park - but also its over-the-top luxury. Heck, even living like a bedouin can be a deluxe experience. Al Maha is set in the 225-sq-km Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve - 5% of the emirate's total land area - and is designed to resemble a bedouin camp. Endangered Arabian oryx (al maha in Arabic), desert foxes and gazelle meander around the grounds and, if you're lucky, quench their thirst in your own private pool. The spa and airy suites...