Word: direness
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...news from China in recent weeks has been dire. Violent strikes and protests are reported almost daily. Millions of workers are out of jobs. Economic indicators presage more gloom, with electricity production for industry falling 4% in October, the first time it has declined in a decade. So is China - the "fragile superpower," as historian Susan Shirk memorably termed it - about to experience the one thing its leaders have feared for years: a so-called hard landing of its economy that could spark widespread social unrest...
...Cuban sound. In 10 to 15 years, adds the bandleader Jesús, there won't be any Cuban music left on the island. It will all be in foreign countries, stagnant nostalgia acts like the kind that spun off from the Buena Vista Social Club album. That seems a dire prediction, but a Thursday night in Havana makes you wonder how Cuban music will survive. On Avenue G, the roqueros gather to get high and watch rock videos on makeshift outdoor screens. On the Malecón in front of a gas station, a band called Aria thrashes out garage rock...
...times are certifiably tough for this group. I don't mean to discount that. But the news has been so bad lately that every retiree may be fearing all is lost. Yet despite this pervasive sense of dread, here are three reasons things may not be as dire as you imagine...
...nine months and is a gauge of what investors collectively believe will be the situation far into the future. That's why stock prices began to slump well before the recession was in full bloom. It also means that now, just as economic woes seem the most dire, the market could be close to focusing on the recovery and moving higher...
...tenets of tragic opera would naturally hold a dire fate for lovers from disparate worlds like Dionysos and Lily. But when the ghosts of Carmen, Butterfly and Norma visit Dionysos in his sleep singing "Opera always kills its lovers," Dionysos brushes off their calls for a proper opero-tragic suicide. "He doesn't want anything to do with that Valhalla tradition celebrating tragedy, pain and death," says Teodori. "And neither do I." It's one of the opera's more effective conceits, and Nieve's arias shine with what one applauding critic called "a true musicologist's reflection...