Word: extinct
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...measure, the Mercedes and the BMW have become the power cars, diamonds the only cover for naked earlobes. Dissipation, which used to go with the bulgy, rumpled political image, is about extinct. Big shots exercise...
Mickelson's passions are diverse: family, flying and the unified theory of the universe. He's a fan of physicist Stephen Hawking. "I find it very fascinating[the concept of] traveling at the speed of light and how the aging process ceases and how the planet has been extinct 20 different times," he says. "It's just a much bigger picture than the here and now." One of Mickelson's closest friends on the tour, Davis Love III, chuckles at his pal's cosmic ruminations. "Basically, I'm like, 'What the hell?'" he says. "Obviously, he's a very smart...
...Joshua Copel, president-elect of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, can come up with only one other example of medical imaging equipment being used in a nonmedical setting--and that fad became extinct decades ago: "They no longer have those X-ray machines in shoe stores so you can look at the bones in your feet as much as you want...
...Guns, Germs, and Steel, his attempt to understand how Western nations rose to political and technological pre-eminence (the title gives you a pretty good hint). In Collapse, he's a little like the title character in Dr. Seuss's The Lorax: he perches on the smoking ruins of extinct societies and calmly explains how they fell--and why, in almost every case, they never even saw it coming...
Despite all the devastation, there are hopeful messages in Collapse. In most cases, the problems those extinct peoples faced weren't insoluble; they just couldn't spot the difficulties in time, whether because of cultural blind spots, scientific ignorance or sheer pigheadedness. "We don't need new technologies to solve our problems," Diamond writes, "we 'just' need the political will to apply solutions already available. Of course," he adds, "that's a big 'just.'" With Diamond's help, maybe we'll learn to see our own problems a little more clearly--before we chop down that last palm tree...