Word: ranke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Karenni agent in Mae Sariang, a small Thai border town, has operated there for nearly 30 years, almost with the rank of honorary consul. A gray-haired gentleman, he emerges from his teakwood house in cardigan and sarong. Inside, on a wall, is a photograph of him shaking hands with a U.S. ambassador, and a U.S. medal for services to the hill tribes. "Goodness gracious," he says in mellifluous Raj English, when asked about the medal, "I don't know friend from foe. We've got to do or die. We've got to keep the wolves...
...releases pent-up emotions and reveals crucial information about culture and psychology. Among other things, he is studying the language of German prostitutes and Peruvian criminals, American college slang, Mojave insult gestures and the terminology of Chinese eunuchs. In an Olympics of world cursing, he believes that Yiddish would rank high, and Hungarian would win the blasphemy prize hands down. Also notable are Turkish rhymed insults, deadly serious Eskimo singing duels and a sneaky insult in Hindi that translates literally as "brother-in-law" but actually means "I slept with your sister." In general, says Aman, Anglo-Saxon cultures prefer...
...party in Western Europe, would alienate the conservative north and scare off sorely needed Western capital. But an attempt to form a coalition with the Social Democrats and the C.D.S.-which Soares last week castigated as "parties of the extreme right"-would have alienated his own party's rank and file. Meanwhile, the Socialists had the unenviable task of trying to right the wrongs of a series of post-revolutionary leftist, military-led governments. That meant returning to former owners land and factories illegally seized after the 1974 revolutions, borrowing money from the West and pleading for private investment...
Jean-Bedel Bokassa was educated at mission schools, joined the army at the start of World War II and by 1950 had risen to the rank of company sergeant. He survived the debacle at Dien Bien Phu and later retired as a captain. When the Central African Republic became independent in 1960, the country's first President (and Bokassa's cousin), David Dacko, named him commander of the army. As the fledgling state suffered through the inevitable independence pangs, the frustrated President at one point shouted to a group of bureaucrats: "What this country needs is a good...
...Mensa society accepts only applicants who can prove they scored in the top 2% on any standard IQ test (among its 32,000 fellows: Isaac Asimov and F. Lee Bailey). The International Society for Philosophical Enquiry is even more select: its members, who now number more than 100, must rank in the 99.9 percentile...