Word: dulling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...catering is never dull, and neither is the trekking. And while Sikkim is big on adventure, it's a thumbnail of a place, hemmed in by Nepal, China, Bhutan and India. In 1975, this Hobbit-sized realm-a cute 110 km by 60 km-was annexed by India. But borders here have always been vague, making the Sikkimese a loose mix of Himalayan peoples and of forest-dwelling Lepcha, the area's earliest inhabitants. Unlike other parts of the Himalayas, few in Sikkim make their homes in the inhospitable mountains. Tending yaks and planting rice on barren slopes...
...more than 300 meters above the previous night's resting place. This meant some days of short treks simply to acclimatize. Hours were measured out with cups of tea and swapped books. At the Thangsing camp at 3,800 meters we fashioned a ball from plastic bags, turning a dull afternoon into an impromptu football match, with dzo droppings for goalposts. But a hard lesson was driven home: playing soccer at altitude results in vomiting and a skull-splitting headache...
...luck of the Irish run out? While the euro zone's largest economy, Germany, is slipping toward deflation, Ireland has runaway inflation that threatens to dull the Celtic Tiger's famously sharp teeth. Although Ireland's gross domestic product grew an impressive 6.3% in 2002, its inflation, which approaches 5%, is the euro zone's highest. With prices already 12% above the euro zone's average, a new government report warns that the country will surpass Finland in 2003 to become Europe's most expensive country. In the early '90s, Ireland was one of the E.U.'s cheapest. Ireland...
...three books of fiction and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Hemley has a great story on his hands, and he has done much valuable research. His book, however, is far from satisfying. In tone it alternates between a voice so low key as to verge on dull and a stuffy attempt to make the book appear more scholarly than it is. Hemley's humor is always just off target, or trite, or both. "To paraphrase Groucho Marx, we don't want to be members of a human race that would have us as members"; it almost makes sense...
...besides the Pentagon's traditional reluctance to dull the blade of its fighting forces by deploying them as policemen, there is also a concern that these troops are not specifically trained for the complex and challenging mission of providing day-to-day security in an alien, often hostile environment in a manner that endears the occupying forces to the local population. And to win the hearts and minds of that local population while knowing there are bad guys lurking among them whose prime purpose is to kill Americans - just last week two U.S. soldiers were shot dead in separate incidents...