Word: powerful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...punishing mudslides killed at least 160 people in the capital, San Salvador, and the province of San Vicente. The deluge on Nov. 7 and 8 damaged or destroyed at least 2,000 homes--many nestled into hillsides that later gave way--and left much of the country without power or clean water. The low-pressure system also wiped out broad swaths of crops, leaving 10,000 people in need of food aid. Officials fear that the death toll will climb as rescuers search for the missing; President Mauricio Funes called the storm's damage "incalculable...
Whether a higher power exists is debatable, but widespread belief in one has helped humanity advance for millennia. Wade, a New York Times reporter, defends that provocative thesis with evidence drawn from biology, archaeology and anthropology. Humans may be innately selfish, he argues, but early hunter-gatherers needed to subordinate self-interest to the will of the group in order to survive, and "the solution that evolved was religious behavior"--humankind's best organizing principle. Ritual chants and dances fostered kinship and inspired tribes to battle outside threats. As language developed, people ascribed their good fortune to the supernatural...
When the Nazis came to power in Dessau, the Bauhaus moved again, this time to Berlin under the directorship of none other than Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He did what he could to appease the Nazis, forbidding left-wing student gatherings and producing exhibitions of what he hoped would be seen as apolitical abstract work, but it was no use. In 1933, with Hitler firmly in power, Mies arrived one morning at the converted factory where the school was housed to find it surrounded by black-uniformed Gestapo. Soon after, he shut it down for good and made...
Apart from his wife, the pivotal figure in Carver's adult life was Gordon Lish, an influential fiction editor at Esquire magazine who later became a power in book publishing. In 1970, when Carver was 32, Lish gave him his first crucial exposure in Esquire--but at a price. He revised Carver's manuscripts extensively, cutting out whole pages, changing titles, expelling lyrical passages and moments of uplift. The result was a set of stories more terse and elliptical than the originals, more "minimalist," which was how Carver's early style came to be known...
...bush turboprop to be built with the latest aerodynamic and engine technologies. Organizations serving populations in crisis in developing countries need a plane that can operate safely on short dirt airstrips. The Kodiak, with its small wingspan of 45 ft. (15 m), advanced flap technology and high power-to-weight ratio, can land and take off in less than 700 ft. (210 m) and climb at a rapid 1,700 ft. per min. (520 m per min.). The Kodiak can be retrofitted for other uses such as border patrolling, hauling emergency equipment and carrying military paratroopers. That...