Word: havoc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Less familiar is the havoc wreaked on the nitrogen cycle. Through the use of fertilizers, the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing, humanity has doubled the levels of nitrogen compounds that can be used by living things. But those levels are more than can be efficiently absorbed by plants and animals and recycled into the atmosphere. These excess nitrogen compounds wash into fresh- and saltwater systems, where they produce dead zones by stimulating suffocating growths of algae. Since the global food system is based on aggressive use of fertilizer, restoring the balance of the nitrogen cycle poses a daunting...
...beauty and of its transience. The subject of love crops up repeatedly in the book's 60 lyrics, but the Boss Cupid of the title is not the chubby winged cherub of popular lore. He is something of a hooligan, "devious master of our bodies," wreaker of joy and havoc: "Love makes the cuckoo heave its foster-siblings/Out of the nest, to spatter on the ground." Pleasure is the other side of loss. In "American Boy" Gunn writes, "Expertly you know how to maintain me/At the exact degree/of hunger without starving. We produce/ What warmth...
Some 2,000 years ago, Christianity was born during a time when the Jewish faith was well established in Israel. A few hundred years later, Islam entered the picture. Ever since, these three religions have been bickering over land and people, creating wars and other havoc. Who is to blame depends on whom you ask. Pope John Paul II has taken a major leap forward to help bring Christians, Jews and Muslims together in a bond of peace. Unfortunately, it may take a few hundred years to improve these dysfunctional relationships. Because of all his efforts (including his support...
Twenty-five years after wreaking havoc on the Empire, Lydon is still as piercing as a safety pin through the nostril. Ask about Bono's reworking Anarchy in the U.K. for a new sound track, and the response is swift. "It's horrible!" How about American rabble-rousers like shock jock Howard Stern? "He's one joke that's already tired." Post-punk diva Courtney Love? "Courtney Loves Kurt's money." Don't count on Lydon's accepting any Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors either. "Never. I don't need accolades from boring old farts." Thankfully, Lydon remains rotten...
...leader in the increasingly successful hunt for planets outside our solar system, feels that we may well be alone in the universe. Most of the 33 newly discovered planets--giant gas bags all, including those two new ones--swing so erratically around their parent stars that they would create havoc on any smaller, nearby, life-friendly planets...