Word: desertic
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STONE GARDEN They look masterminded. In the Pinnacles Desert, thousands of soaring spires rise from shifting yellow sands like some antipodean Stonehenge. Dutch explorers sailing along the coast in the 16th century spied these jagged sharp-edged columns and tombstone-like pillars from their ships and concluded that the formations were evidence of some ancient civilization. They were wrong. The Pinnacles are another of Western Australia's natural wonders, and perhaps its most photographed...
...surefire way to commit political suicide a few months ago was to oppose more school testing. The name of the landmark education bill President Bush signed in January--the No Child Left Behind Act--reflected the prevailing mood: to resist standardized tests was to desert kids. The legislation, which mandates annual testing in Grades 3 through 8, passed overwhelmingly. But as state legislatures sew up their budgets and students dive into year-end exams, a change is afoot--the sacred cow of school testing is getting tested itself...
...machete their enemies?civil servants, anybody with a job?and shatter their legs over wooden blocks. Sometimes beauty can even seem obscene. No journalist I know ever takes a day off in Afghanistan?partly because there's a terrible guilt, an abhorrence, about enjoying the scenery in such a desert of destruction...
...along the way an Omani invites you home, don't be surprised, and don't refuse. Hospitality is fundamental to Omani culture. Thesiger's Bedouin guides shared their few dates and salty desert well water with everyone they encountered. Luckily, the fare in the cities is more abundant. Omani delicacies include shrimp, dried fish, lentils and raisin-spiked basmati rice and tender spiced mutton, smoked for three days in an underground pit. But even that tradition is evolving. "We used to wrap the meat in banana leaves," says my host, a young Omani woman. "But now in Muscat we wrap...
...WELCOME BACK Oman is home to a wealth of rare desert animals, including the Arabian oryx, a white antelope with long spiral horns and distinctive black markings. Special kidneys allow the oryx to survive long periods of time without water. By 1972, however, oryx in the wild were hunted almost to extinction, but a new herd, bred in captivity, is slowly being reintroduced to two desert areas. The Central Area Wildlife Reserve has been closed to the public for the past 25 years, but is now opened to limited official tours; browse www.discoveryinitiatives.com/oman.asp....