Word: railroads
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...everything argued that such development would continue in the small, incremental steps that had marked the progress of much of the 19th century. Inventions like the railroad or the telegraph or the typewriter had enabled people to get on with their ordinary lives a little more conveniently. The news, in 1901, that an Italian physicist named Guglielmo Marconi had received wireless telegraphic messages sent from Cornwall to Newfoundland was hailed as a triumph, but few discerned its full meaning: the birth of a communications revolution. Rather, it was another welcome convenience...
...This accounts for the faint feeling of deja vu that even non- Magritteans sometimes get when looking at his work. Magritte died in 1967, but for the best part of a half-century his images -- or variants on them -- have been used to advertise everything from the French state railroad system and chocolates to wallpaper, cars and political candidates...
Chapman has further simplified the quest for the precise word by placing certain terms in useful vertical order, rather than running them in dense paragraphs. Thus about 150 manias, in riveting variety, are listed both by subject (railroad travel: siderodromomania; crossing bridges: gephyromania) and by name (trichorrhexomania: pinching off one's hair; typomania: writing for publication). Similarly organized is a catalog of more than 200 phobias, which only begins to suggest why psychiatrists will never lack for patients. Fear of the Pope is papaphobia; fear of failure, kakorraphiaphobia; fear of the flute, aulophobia...
That evacuation prompted a local group called Project Freedom to construct a network dubbed the underground railroad to funnel gang members and their families to safety in cases where all else fails. Six former gang members and two families have been shuttled to safety through a patchwork of churches both in and out of the state. The relocations are coordinated with the Wichita police, who check for outstanding warrants. Project Freedom pays for the initial move, while local congregations agree to assume housing costs and arrange for jobs and education for as long as two years. "It's a stopgap...
...underground railroad may be impractical, but so are most of the other options available to a young gang banger who wants out. At least Project Freedom is saving lives. Frances Sandoval, founder of Mothers Against Gangs in Chicago, gets tearful phone calls from parents with kids too scared to leave a gang but terrified of staying in. "Unfortunately, there is very little I can offer them," she says. "In most cases it's hopeless unless they can literally pack up and leave. And we're talking about moving to another state...