Word: mud
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...were closing in. The Iranian side is just as vacant of authority as the Pakistani and Afghan frontiers. But it's also possible that if bin Laden was in the vicinity, he remained in the mountains around Ribat Qila. A five-year drought has emptied the area, and abandoned mud houses litter the wasteland. Sometimes I'd see a 4-by-4 parked outside an isolated house, and my guide would tell me it probably belonged to a smuggler. Who knows? It could easily have been al-Qaeda...
...your TV screen, but you're not stuck in a deadly Star Trek time loop. It's 60 Minutes, where for the next 10 weeks Dole and Clinton will engage in a series of mini-debates modeled on the show's old "Point/Counterpoint" segments. "This won't be a mud fight," says Clinton, cannily keeping open the possibility of an ex-presidential mud-wrestling franchise on Fox. If the Bill-and-Bob matchup is a ratings winner, could a revival of the electric chemistry of the 1988 Bush-Dukakis debates be far behind...
...that at every four-way stop, someone in a fuel-efficient compact is sneering at my moral deficiencies. I might as well be wearing a scarlet letter (three of them, actually). I want to scream, "But I live on a dirt road! I have a farm! See all the mud on my fenders! I need this...
...depiction of Nango, The Thirteen Steps resembles Akira Kurosawa's 1952 classic Ikiru, which tells the story of a cancer-stricken bureaucrat who tries to redeem his stuck-in-the-mud existence by building a neighborhood playground. Like Ikiru's Kanji Watanabe, Nango is in a race against time to make amends for a lifetime of dutiful work by which he now feels poisoned. But compared to Kurosawa's characters, these protagonists are less deftly rendered. Nango's fanatical devotion to the case makes him the personification of a guilty conscience rather than a flesh and blood character...
...possible to hike entirely alone?without a guide or a porter?but it's a false economy. Kamal was a font of knowledge about local culture and the unique flora and fauna I would have otherwise overlooked. He showed me how to crack open a type of mud-color river stone to reveal ancient fossils. He also pointed out ragged scars on the mountain flanks caused by landslides that not only destroy villages but take out trekking parties as well. Altitude sickness is another potential killer. I chafed at Kamal's exhortations to go slower, but soon came to heed...